Fan expectations and how that impacts the club

Alcoholic_Author

Alcoholic_Author

Striker
I was just reading the recent Roker Report interview with a Huddersfield fan and he said something that resonated with me (bolded in purple):

rokerreport.sbnation.com

What’s the Championship really like? Terriers fan Matt says the secret to success is team spirit

The Championship can be a brutal slog, something that Terriers fan Matt Shaw knows only too well having watched his side get all the way to Wembley, only to fall at the final hurdle. What should Sunderland expect?
rokerreport.sbnation.com rokerreport.sbnation.com

RR: Why do you think well-established clubs struggle to gain momentum in the Championship, whereas in recent seasons smaller clubs like Luton and Barnsley have successfully broken into the Play-Offs and came close to promotion?​

AHTTC Podcast: There are probably a lot of differing reasons. A lot of it is down to good ownership and planning. I can’t emphasise how much planning plays a part.
Forest, Leeds, Derby, Sheff Wed and a few others in the past have been guilty of throwing money around without a real coherent plan.
Short termism often fails in the Championship and with FFP looming, bad planning can then affect you for several years. Take our success in 2017 – it was driven by a plan with funds raised for that season over the previous 2/3 seasons.
Recruitment had a clearly devised plan; specific character traits were sought in players and we had a manager who did things slightly different from the norm. Same again last season. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but when a club not of the stature of say Leeds like Bristol City tries this and fails people tend not to notice as much.
On the small clubs, I’d say that Bournemouth are one of the smallest clubs in the top two leagues - if not the smallest - but they have a huge financial advantage which allows them to compete at the top table so perhaps they are an anomaly.
For Barnsley and Luton these are clubs that can plan without pressure and so long as they’re pushing upwards then the fans are quite happy.
On the other end of that scale, it was felt at Elland Road in particular that several sides before the Bielsa one crumbled under the expectations of an impatient crowd.
Bigger clubs tend to have bigger expectations and smaller tolerance levels. They also go a bit mad when you win a few games and go full bunny boiler when you lose a few.
I don’t think that is helpful to a lot of clubs.
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I think this has often been at the crux of our success and failure, trying to balance the high expectations of the fanbase that can help maintain high standards with the reality that it is never going to be plain sailing all the time, and if players and staff are actually given the opportunity to recover in the eyes of the fans once they've been through a poor run or an outright failure.

I think we all understand that this is a big club and standards should be higher than some others, but at the same time if it results in constant failures is there space for us as a fanbase to reflect on that and amend expectations as strategy, like even though we all want a 100 point season in our heart of hearts, tempering that to something much more realistic and achievable, gives the club space to makes some errors in the knowledge that that we aren't going to lose our shit about it.

In recent years I have probably, as a strategy, had lower than average (compared to average Sunderland fans) expectations as a countermeasure. We're all individuals but as a fanbase we're also a collective, sometimes I feel like the expectations are so high it makes the club buckle at the first sign of poor form and the club act by sacking the manager or make a rash transfer decision etc
 


Alcoholic_Author said:
I was just reading the recent Roker Report interview with a Huddersfield fan and he said something that resonated with me (bolded in purple):

rokerreport.sbnation.com

What’s the Championship really like? Terriers fan Matt says the secret to success is team spirit

The Championship can be a brutal slog, something that Terriers fan Matt Shaw knows only too well having watched his side get all the way to Wembley, only to fall at the final hurdle. What should Sunderland expect?
rokerreport.sbnation.com rokerreport.sbnation.com



I think this has often been at the crux of our success and failure, trying to balance the high expectations of the fanbase that can help maintain high standards with the reality that it is never going to be plain sailing all the time, and if players and staff are actually given the opportunity to recover in the eyes of the fans once they've been through a poor run or an outright failure.

I think we all understand that this is a big club and standards should be higher than some others, but at the same time if it results in constant failures is there space for us as a fanbase to reflect on that and amend expectations as strategy, like even though we all want a 100 point season in our heart of hearts, tempering that to something much more realistic and achievable, gives the club space to makes some errors in the knowledge that that we aren't going to lose our shit about it.

In recent years I have probably, as a strategy, had lower than average (compared to average Sunderland fans) expectations as a countermeasure. We're all individuals but as a fanbase we're also a collective, sometimes I feel like the expectations are so high it makes the club buckle at the first sign of poor form and the club act by sacking the manager or make a rash transfer decision etc
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Doesn’t seem to effect Liverpool, Man U, Barca, Bayern, real etc.

The fans have nothing to do with success or failure. It’s having a clear philosophy, money, the best or better players and a good manager. Always has been. Always will be.
 
robbied1 said:
Fans can definitely have an effect, especially if things have started to go wrong.
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In terms of expectations, they cannot. The OP is suggesting expectations effect results. They don’t. The whole narrative of fans fault is proven time and time again to be false.
 
Blyth said:
In terms of expectations, they cannot. The OP is suggesting expectations effect results. They don’t. The whole narrative of fans fault is proven time and time again to be false.
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Expectations drive results. Take a look at Tollisso’s interview after leaving Bayern and going back to Lyon. Losing a game is unacceptable and top players move on from a defeat with a heightened desire to steamroller the next team and keep going right up until the whistle in games they are trailing.

Signing mentally weak players may mean positive expectations have a negative impact on them as they fold. But absolutely no fanbase should go into a season expecting clubs to have filled their squad with mentally weak quitters. And to be honest if that has happened fans trying to grind those players out of the team is only positive for the direction of the club in the future.
 
RedFlag1308 said:
Expectations drive results. Take a look at Tollisso’s interview after leaving Bayern and going back to Lyon. Losing a game is unacceptable and top players move on from a defeat with a heightened desire to steamroller the next team and keep going right up until the whistle in games they are trailing.

Signing mentally weak players may mean positive expectations have a negative impact on them as they fold. But absolutely no fanbase should go into a season expecting clubs to have filled their squad with mentally weak quitters. And to be honest if that has happened fans trying to grind those players out of the team is only positive for the direction of the club in the future.
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Yes but the narrative is our expectations are too high. If that’s the case then we should be in the premier league and competing for titles.

What drives results is having a good team, a plan and execution of a well crafted vision.

Fans can hold decision makers accountable, of course depending on how much a club will listen.
 
Blyth said:
In terms of expectations, they cannot. The OP is suggesting expectations effect results. They don’t. The whole narrative of fans fault is proven time and time again to be false.
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They certainly do. We've seen it time and time again that when results aren't going our way, the crowd turns inwards and players can become more conservative and indecisive in their decision making, leading to worse outcomes on the pitch. A claim can be made that this roots out the weak but ultimately it has only aided our plummet to League One as we recruited progressively worse players. Expectations are relative, I'm not suggesting Sunderland fans should be happy to accept obscurity, I'm suggesting as a strategy, expectations should be checked to allow the club to grow in this period.
Blyth said:
the OP is saying that the reason we fail is the fans. It’s not.
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I am not suggesting it is the sole factor, but it is a contributing factor.
 
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Alcoholic_Author said:
They certainly do. We've seen it time and time again that when results aren't going our way, the crowd turns inwards and players can become more conservative and indecisive in their decision making, leading to worse outcomes on the pitch. A claim can be made that this roots out the weak but ultimately it has only aided our plummet to League One as we recruited progressively worse players. Expectations are relative, I'm not suggesting Sunderland fans should be happy to accept obscurity, I'm suggesting as a strategy, expectations should be checked to allow the club to grow in this period.


I am not suggesting it is the sole factor, but it is a contributing factor.
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As if you’re blaming the fans man :lol:
 
Alcoholic_Author said:
They certainly do. We've seen it time and time again that when results aren't going our way, the crowd turns inwards and players can become more conservative and indecisive in their decision making, leading to worse outcomes on the pitch. A claim can be made that this roots out the weak but ultimately it has only aided our plummet to League One as we recruited progressively worse players. Expectations are relative, I'm not suggesting Sunderland fans should be happy to accept obscurity, I'm suggesting as a strategy, expectations should be checked to allow the club to grow in this period.


I am not suggesting it is the sole factor, but it is a contributing factor.
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So why isn’t it for Liverpool? Chelsea? Real Madrid?
 
Alcoholic_Author said:
What about Man Utd?

They're in constant meltdown, unable to recapture their former glories and the fanbase cannot take it.
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Because they have been badly ran since Ferguson left. Made wrong decisions. Haven’t had a clear plan and flip flopped. Sound familiar?

Are you saying Chelsea, Liverpool, Brighton, fulham, Newcastle and every club that’s doing well have better fans than us?
 
Blyth said:
Because they have been badly ran since Ferguson left. Made wrong decisions. Haven’t had a clear plan and flip flopped. Sound familiar?

Are you saying Chelsea, Liverpool, Brighton, fulham, Newcastle and every club that’s doing well have better fans that us?
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No, I'm not saying anything like that, I am positing that when expectations are beyond the immediate capacity of the club, we are dooming ourselves to failure by cranking up the pressure when we do not have the capabilities to deal with it. Winning and losing is a part of football, sometimes you even lose more than you win, understanding that and tempering what you expect should simply be common sense. As a fanbase we play our part, we aren't the be-all-and-end-all, but we do have influence. Maybe it's time to use that wisely?
 
Blyth said:
No doubt. But again the OP is saying that the reason we fail is the fans. It’s not. If that was the case every club would fail. We’ve failed simply because we haven’t been ran well for 70 year.

Joke isn’t it
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Exactly, we have a great fanbase. The reality is it makes very little difference to results on the pitch.
 

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