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Relegation: The silver lining

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bagpuss
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Barnacle Boy said:
Not reading all that.
There are zero positives anyway.
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If by some miracle we stay up I won't be going as the bairn said he'll only renew if we get relegated. He's sick of watching us get beat and he's not the only one. The positives will be massive for our next generation of fans if we start picking up wins and have something other than finishing 4th bottom to aim for. A kid off his footy team was in a proper huff when we saw him, he said "I can't believe me mam's made me come" and the usual chatty little bollocks just stood there with a thousand yard stare. now that's not f***ing right man. We're losing them. It's meant to be fun not a f***ing chore.

It would have been fantastic if we could have done the rebuilding in this league and went on to better things but we haven't.


Honestly for the first time in years I'm actually looking forward to next season. Aye it's going to be a long slog and we might fail spectacularly but I don't f***ing care. Anything's better than this nightmare..
 
Bagpuss said:
Always a glass half full kind of guy I have been having a think about the positives of this relegation.

There is only one.

For years we have been dogged with shit recruitment that has had the knock on effect of managers having to buy bang average (worse than average) journeymen "Premier league" players hoping to mould them into some kind of team that will win enough games to stay up.

For me the seeds of this debacle were set when we signed every man and his dog on top dollar to get out of the Championship under Keane. To get those players they were offered big money and long contracts (them up the road should take note).......

We took years and years to get many of them off the books which then meant new signings were also impacted in terms of fees and wages available.

This relegation will finally give us an opportunity to clear the decks and to build the club from the bottom upwards. Re-evaluate everything from the Academy through the reserves (which always seem to perform to a high standard) and then how that transition continues into the first team which is where the whole thing seems to go shit shaped.

As fans I think we need to be patient, what would be a disaster is to get rid of the dross and because of fans impatience we then end up recreating the same scenario again buying sticking plasters to try and stem the blood flow of a severed artery.

One of the biggest issues is defining our identity as a club, that has been lost and if Im honest we havent had an identity since the Keane era and Reid before that.

We need to decide what kind of club we want to be; Southampton is often held up there as a sustainable, in fact desirable model and its hard to argue with that so what makes Southampton able to develop and sign player after player, get the best out of them and then sell them on for big money without actually impacting on performances.

With the facilities we have both in terms of a fan base, an incredible stadium, a brilliant academy facility and a support most of Europe would die to emulate then everything is in place for the right person to build a club we can all be proud of.

Now the fly in the ointment. Can any of this happen under the stewardship of Moyes and Short? I would love it to happen, I would love the stability of a long term owner and a manager who creates an Everton style identity and legacy. Im just not sure Short has the desire to make it happen anymore even if he cant sell and is Moyes really the inspirational character that has the desire and drive to create another Everton? I actually dont think we will have to wait long to find out tbh as Short will not be able to sell while we are in the Championship without taking a huge financial hit and while he is in charge I dont think there is the will to pay off a very expensive 4 year contract ...'

Very well argued. In addition, I think it's likely that any financial gains from a successful season would go towards servicing that bloody debt...
And then we'd have more of what we have, right now.
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Kevin Arnott's right boot said:
I'm not convinced that there were loads of Keane's signings in the Championship that we "took years and years" to get rid of, mind.
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Keane full safc transfers

Keane's signings in full:

2006/07

Liam Miller. Free. Manchester United
Dwight Yorke. Free. Sydney FC
Graham Kavanagh. £500,000. Wigan
Stanislav Varga. £550,000. Celtic
David Connolly. £1.4m. Wigan
Ross Wallace. £550,000. Celtic
Lewis Nyatanga. Loan. Derby
Jonny Evans. Loan. Manchester United
Marton Fulop. £500,000. Tottenham
Carlos Edwards. £1.4m. Luton
Anthony Stokes. £2m. Arsenal
Danny Simpson. Loan. Manchester United
Stern John. Undisclosed. Coventry

2007/8

Craig Gordon. £9m. Hearts
Paul McShane. £2.5m. West Brom
Dickson Etuhu. £1.5m. Norwich
Kieran Richardson. £5.5m. Manchester United
Michael Chopra. £5m. Cardiff
Greg Halford. £2.5m. Reading
Roy O'Donovan. Undisclosed. Cork City
Russell Anderson. £1m. Aberdeen
Danny Higginbotham. £2.5m. Stoke
Kenwyne Jones. £6m. Southampton
Ian Harte. Free. Levante
Andrew Cole. Free. Portsmouth
Phil Bardsley. £2m. Manchester United
Rade Prica. £2m. FC Aalborg
Andy Reed. £4m. Charlton
Yves Mvoto-Mvoto. £300,000. Paris Saint-Germain

2008/9

Nick Colgan. Free. Ipswich
George McCartney. £4.5m. West Ham
Anton Ferdinand. £8m. West Ham
Pascal Chimbonda. Undisclosed. Tottenham
Teemu Tainio. £4m. Tottenham
Steed Malbranque. £5m. Tottenham
David Meyler. Undisclosed. Cork City
Djibril Cisse. Loan. Marseilles
David Healy. £1.2m. Fulham
El-Hadji Diouf. £2.5m. Bolton
 
Only silver lining for me is that I'll get to see my grandson in Norwich more often. On the downside I'm not looking forward to the treks to Bristol Cardiff and possibly Swansea and at the risk of sounding melodramatic at my age its possible that'll I'll not get to see us play in the top flight again
 
I'm Spartacus said:
If by some miracle we stay up I won't be going as the bairn said he'll only renew if we get relegated. He's sick of watching us get beat and he's not the only one. The positives will be massive for our next generation of fans if we start picking up wins and have something other than finishing 4th bottom to aim for. A kid off his footy team was in a proper huff when we saw him, he said "I can't believe me mam's made me come" and the usual chatty little bollocks just stood there with a thousand yard stare. now that's not f***ing right man. We're losing them. It's meant to be fun not a f***ing chore.

It would have been fantastic if we could have done the rebuilding in this league and went on to better things but we haven't.


Honestly for the first time in years I'm actually looking forward to next season. Aye it's going to be a long slog and we might fail spectacularly but I don't f***ing care. Anything's better than this nightmare..
Click to expand...


This is absolutely spot on and I couldn't agree more.

What does the Premier League hold for us? The best we can hope for is to be Stoke. f***ing Stoke for fucks sake and we're a million miles from even being that! I'm sick of Saturday afternoon being a complete chore and I want to watch my team win more than two or three home games a season (which I don't think is too much to ask).

I'm now at the stage that I just want to enjoy going to the match again. I don't expect us to win every week, but I expect us to be more competitive than we are now. If that looks like the Championship, so be it. It's got to be better than the slow death we're witnessing currently.
 
Loads of positives, not least losing the pretentious pricks that "support" PL teams that have no soul. Some day it will become clear that the PL & all its self fulfilling media hyping wankers are just money driven tossers.
 
Le Chuck said:
we've bounced back immediately once. (Keane)
A further twice within 2 seasons (Reid & McCarthy)
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You might well do, it's not half as common as people think.

Also, should Benitez manage it, Newcastle will become only the second team out of last 18 relegated to gain automatic promotion (4 in play-offs) to Premier League.

The longer you're out of the top flight, the harder it will become to consolidate whenever you return.
 
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