Relegation!
Unless Premier League rules change, the Sky 5 piggies disappear off to feed in a European Super League trough, or we get an owner with money and sense, we are never going to win the Premier League. I’d say we have at best a 2% chance of qualifying for the Champions League in the next decade. Even if we did, the players would be snapped up by richer clubs and it would be a one-off.
It is a struggle to find any part of our club that we can be proud of, or anything that offers any signs of any impending green shoots of recovery. We have a weary, want-away owner, and the only replacements on the horizon have a very depressing CV. We are losing money like crazy despite an ever-decreasing squad in terms of both numbers and ability. We hope Thelwell will turn recruitment around, a long-standing joke of a department, but we have had equal faith in others before, only to be let down.
The Premier League shows no signs of letting up in their efforts to penalize us for daring to try to aspire to greater things with PSR points deductions. The latest accounts indicate that, unless we sell every player deemed half-decent in this league, and unearth another two each year, we can expect points deductions every year.
This brings us to matchdays. Apparently, two of the top sides played each other yesterday in a match that could help decide this year’s Champions. I couldn’t care less! It has about as much relevance to me as a supporter of a League Two side. Everton are in the top teams’ league in name only. We play in a separate league, the ‘Relegation Fodder League’. That means when we play teams from the ‘European Competition Challengers League’, we set up our stall to not get thrashed.
Getting regularly thrashed by ECCL teams gets the manager sacked. The other games are all 6-pointers playing other RFL teams, where we set out our stall to nick a goal and hope to hang on for a result. Getting comfortably beaten by other RFL sides gets the manager sacked.
This makes the match a nervy and usually depressing experience. That’s every match!
And that’s the future! Players may change, managers may change, but that is our likely future if we remain clinging on by our fingertips in the Premier League every season.
Maybe the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock will improve things, but I can’t see a little extra matchday revenue is going to make enough of a difference. The light at the end of the tunnel is only some Premier League official with a torch, bringing another points deduction threat.
So, what’s the worst that can happen? The club going bust? Relegation?
The club could go bust. So what! It will return because 40,000 of us will watch it in the 8th tier if necessary.
Relegation. Well at least then we will be playing for something. I look at the likes of Leicester and I actually feel envy. Their supporters go to every match without fear, they believe they can win any match. At the end of a season, they could even win a trophy… a trophy… silverware, imagine that! (yes, I know, we were the proud winners of the Sport Pesa Cup). But interesting, maybe attacking football, all the time… with goals! Imagine travelling home from the match feeling happy – regularly, not just once every couple of months.
‘But we have played in the English Top Flight more than anyone else, it’s a proud record.’ No, it isn’t. It’s something losers say to make themselves feel better; winners quote what they have recently won. There’s a difference between being in something and competing in it!
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want relegation. I want something to turn us around where we are. But this has gone on for so long now, I’m no longer scared of it!