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Are we a Birmingham or a Wigan? That’s the simple question.
I know a few who wont be renewing their STs whatever league were in, once that happens and they just start picking and choosing matches, you have to be an entertaining team to attract them back.
The thing is, it isnt even the cost thats the issue, theres a couple of them that I know are just bored with the current situation and the cycle of just clinging on that has happened over the last few years apart from the bore fest of last season.
Maybe they can just be replaced by other customers???
I dont see us getting relegated will see the end of this current team in charge, I dont think anything will change until the outstanding court case is resolved.
Once thats concluded, theyll be off imho, until then I doubt well see any major investment or changes.
We will just tick over with the minimum required until there ready to sell up, unless theres a complete rethink
It can happen and it does happen are two completely different things. The number of sides that have looked like relegation scrappers in December and have ended up in the top 6 are few and far between. It rarely happens because you need automatic promotion form over several months to make up for an awful start. So, while it is often argued that it is a tight division, the occasional team suddenly finding form to make the playoffs (or losing form and finding relegation) is hardly more prevalent in the Championship than it is in any other division. It's the nature of league football.
Which makes the last 4 seasons particularly disappointing, to put it mildly. We haven't even had a sniff at the play offs during that time, not even a few weeks. Sheff. Wed. Wurzels, Preston, even the likes of Stoke - they have all at sometime been a couple of points off the play offs. We've been in a frozen state of gloom since the COVID season..
Whenever someone posts a comment like this, it intrigues me and I have to have a look. It's not for trying to prove someone wrong, it's out of a genuine interest.
I've had a look at all the sides finishing in the top 6 since 2000/01 and where they finished the season before.
10/144 were promoted from League 1 (6.9%)
10/144 finished between 19th and 21st in the Championship (6.9%)
7/144 finished between 16th and 18th (4.9%)
32/144 finished in the bottom half of the Championship (22.2%)
66/144 finished in the top half (45.8%)
30/144 finished in the top 6 (20.8%)
36/144 were relegated from the Premier League (25%)
Going from the 2nd division to the 4th in just over 12 months was DEVASTATING. I was a young man at the peak of my time as an active fan. I used to go home and away. I used to wish for City to be an average 2nd division team with crowds of 15,000. Can you imagine? By the time we got back I was almost 40 and living in another country. There were so few fans on the Bob Bank in the mid-late '80s I can still remember the faces of some of the regulars that I never even spoke to. It was like you almost knew every City fan to give a nod to. If this team gets relegated, we're going to be ****ed. We've been shit for a few years now. If we go down, we'll still be shit, just in a lower division. Then what? God forbid it all happens again.
I'm at the point where the thought of relegation has to be weighed up against the thought of survival. What happens if relegated? I don't know. What happens with survival? Now that, I think I have more ideas on. I'd suggest more of the same. Pitiful management, underwhelming players, poor results and embarrassing stewardship of the club from the top. That existance became boring a long time ago for me. I'd rather take the uncertainty of relegation with the chance of the owner cutting his losses. The dream that we could then have a fresh start and get some football people through the door. I know that it would not be a fairytale. It would be tough and probably take years but the experience of having this awful period of purgatory over the last few years means I'd take any odds of change over the probability of it continuing.
Having said that... if we somehow manage to stay up... I'd celebrate it and force optimism on myself during the summer, convincing myself that the waifs and strays that get signed up to represent my football club will deliver us back to the top table... because that's what being a football fan is... being an idiot 😅
A possible difference is that, say, four of our younger players establish themselves as first team regulars and turn out to be as good as we think they may be. I was fairly confident of that watching our under 21s playing in the first half of the season, but not as confident of it after watching them through the first three months of this year.
Paranoia? I don't really understand how that enters the equation. I am basing my thoughts on what has happened since we got relegated from the Premier League six years ago. We've become worse and worse. With the same people doing the same things, why should we get any better?