Only the Birmingham City board - and maybe Steve Bruce himself - know the moment this year when the Blues manager came closest to being sacked.
Was it last month, following that home defeat to Norwich City, when it was suggested that Blues needed to win their next game - at Derby County - to keep their manager in a job?
Was it that miserable day on the penultimate day of April when Portsmouth came from behind to win at Wigan and relegate both Blues and West Bromwich Albion from the Premiership?
Or was it just over a month earlier, the night Bruce's Blues lost 7-0 to Liverpool in an embarrassing FA Cup quarter-final and suffered the worst home defeat St Andrew's has witnessed in the 100th year of its long history?
Tonight, Bruce gets the chance to reflect on that awful evening by facing up to Liverpool again, this time on Carling Cup duty. But he remains insistent that he never once considered throwing in the towel.
"I didn't have a drink with anyone that night," he said. "I just scarpered home in a sulk.
"I don't think as a manager you can take a reaction from one individual performance.
"I never thought 'I'm packing it in'. That's not in my nature. It was the same after the Norwich game. The one thing I wanted to do was get cracking again.
"The closest I came to walking away was when I went away with my family in the summer.
"I reflected then on what had gone wrong, what I could have done different, the challenges that were ahead and what I wanted to do myself but I also knew I wanted to try to get a new team and get us back to where we were four or five years ago and start all over again."
He has done just that by pulling off four successive league wins and if results elsewhere go their way and Bruce's side win at home to Barnsley, they could be back in the Coca-Cola Championship's top two come 5pm on Saturday.
But the winning run also includes the 4-2 Carling Cup win over Sheffield United in the last round and it is not only his emphasis on the league, but the memory of just how successful Blues were at Bramall Lane with a much-altered team that night, which tempts him into making changes again.
"There were signs of fatigue in the win at Plymouth," said Bruce. "We've played a lot of games in the last three weeks and, when I left a few out at Sheffield United, we saw the response on the Saturday against West Brom.
"We all love a cup run. We know we're the only big-city club that has never won anything and this game gives us a chance to erase the memory of last year, a game I'll not forget it in a hurry, especially as up until then we'd had a good record against Liverpool but I've got Barnsley on Saturday at the back of my mind.
"Whatever team we have out there, though, let's hope we put on a show that erases a few bad memories."
