as good as it gets? Could we ever go any further? I don’t belive so as I think our clubs business model is to buy low and sell high, this in turn will always lead to a scenario of us the fans being punished for the more successful our side is, surely there has to be a better way for football to run itself, wage caps, squad restriction on foreign players (we can do this now) or club can only spend what they earn.
clubs only spending what they earn would surely just reinforce the hierarchy that exists now? How would Grimsby ever be anything but shit?
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I’m afraid I think it is.
The stated aim is of course Champs League, but we’ll never spend enough/have enough money to achieve that against the current Premier League hegemony.
Leicester’s timing was perfect, with Chelsea, United and Man City in state of flux, combined with Arsenal being Arsenal. They earned it for sure, but a ‘regular’ season would have seen them finish perhpas in the top 4 (and the lottery of Champs League qualification) or just outside.
As a Saints fan I only ever hope for upper-mid table, and a decent cup run or two. Win more than we lose, grab a couple of top 4 scalps along the way.
I know my place.
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I was talking to a football fan twenty years ago and I kind of said that we knew our place, and he laughed at me.
He said that if we were just happy to finish top eight and beat a few of the leaders every season we had no ambition, and if you couldn’t win there was no point in being in the competition.
The good news for him is that his team are no longer in the competition - the Toon Army went from title contenders to Burton Albion.
I’d rather be realistic than a laughing stock - see pompey.
They honestly believe that Fratton Park has the best atmosphere in world football.
Forget Celtic/Rangers, Boca Juniors, Milan, Barcelona, Galatasary - because Portsea beats all of them.
Sometimes you just have to accept where you are, which is better than looking like a deluded village idiot who has no grasp of reality.
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But surely thats accepting the system is broken and corrupt? So our future lies in a good cup run which is luck of the draw? Thats it? Its depressing that.
A bookmakers dream is what it was
A couple of hundred Leicester fans make a few bob which the press and Bookies publicised like hell.
Whilst 95 % of the betting population lost oodles of cash which more than covered the Leicester winners.
Its all relative though. If City, Arsenal, Utd et al have a good cup run, its the absolute least their fans expect and its very much secondary to the league and to Europe.
We seriously enjoy any success we get. They go “meh, but is that all?” Even back in 2003, witness how few Arsenal fans were in Cardiff at 10am, when the city was packed with our lot (many without tickets), who had been drinking for 3/4 hours already.
I know which I would rather have
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The alternative to accepting it is broken and corrupt is to fix it.
Don’t know about you but I’m kinda tied up with life a bit too much to have time to rise through the ranks of the FIFA committee structure until I have the power to change anything.
In all fairness I could have started a while back - but I hadn’t thought of it then.
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That was 13 years ago! I want a bit more than that, I’m serious here name a club larger than us with fewer trophies?
First you have to define what a BIG club is - Leeds United? Aston Villa? Forest? Newcastle?
Are they still big if they are currently living in the shadows of Bournemouth, Burnley and Hull?
That is a BIG question.
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Did you miss the two promotions? Winning a trophy at Wembley? Winning at OT 2 seasons running (the first one being the first time in 27 years). Finishing 8th, 7th and then 6th in the PL having been in League One only a few seasons earlier. These are all successes that we enjoyed very much, which illustrate my point.
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Name a club larger with less trophies?
Those clubs you mention are far larger than us. Clubs too me are measured in size by
Fan base
Stadium Size
Trophies
Prominence
Money
And along those lines there isn’t a club in the Country bigger than us with so few trophies.
That is success but not being successful in the sense of winning a trophy.
The relegations were failures so they even out by your example.
Well, going by your original post, referring to ‘modern day football’, you’re referring to post-Sky football?
And the clubs you refer to as bigger - Newcastle, Villa, Forest - have won few trophies in the ‘modern day’. And Leeds precious little apart from the Prem in 1992.
Also, I would suggest the fans of each of those clubs would prefer to be in our position now rather than (eg. Villa) winning the League Cup in the mid-90s
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If you only consider success as winning a trophy then you would be very welcome as a fan of any of the other 5 teams finishing in the Top 6 last season. Or Liverpool. Or Chelsea.
At the end of the day they have trophies, we don’t, football at boardroom level should be all about winning, nothing else.
Trophies play a huge part, denial of that is an excuse for mediocrity.
This acceptance of a fixed system is part of the problem. we should be questioning such a poor unequal system, they did in the NFL.
So you would rather be in the Championship having won the League Cup 20 years ago, rather than about to embark on the biggest European campaign (six games guaranteed) in the club’s history?
I know I’m new round these parts, but wouldn’t you be happier over on TSW?
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Mr Pharmacist in discovering Bazzer’s true nature shocker!!
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