Tomorrow, we hope.
posted on Saturday May 3rd at 9:22pmThe Championship this season has been perhaps the worst spectacle of football seen since Germany and Austria played out a mutually beneficial 1-0 German victory in the 1982 Spain World Cup. There are piles of statistics I could present to illustrate just how bad it’s been, but you need only look at the league table to appreciate the complete lack of quality shown by all but one or two of the 24 competing teams.
Tomorrow 12 games will bring down the curtain on this torrid campaign, and I, like all fans of Leicester, Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday and Barnsley and Coventry will be hoping upon hope that a disastrous season doesn’t end in the unthinkable prospect of relegation to the third tier of English football. It’s remarkable to think that all ten years ago, in the 1997-8 Premier League campaign, all five of these teams were competing against the very best in English football. Ten years later, and with a common trend of financial meltdown, each of these former top flight teams are awaiting their fate and come 4pm tomorrow, one of them will be swapping trips to Molineux and the KC Stadium, with the unenviable prospect of playing their trade at places like Huish Park and and stadium:mk. A far cry from those heady days of lining up in the tunnels of old Trafford and St. James Park.
The gap between the two top leagues in English football has undoubtedly broadened, but perhaps the bigger concern for fans of clubs like ours is that a gap is also developing between those relegated fro the premier league, and the rest of us. Parachute payments are an enormous advantage to clubs who will have structured their finances based on the prospect of relegation. The likes of Coventry and Southampton, who found life in the old first division hard going for those first few years are now stuck with a premiership legacy, and the resulting apathy from a fan-base used to seeing Beckham and Bergkamp, who are now turning away rather than paying through the nose to watch players such as Lee Trundle and Dean Windass.
The demise of the five clubs battling to retain their championship status was far less sensational than that of perpetually-troubled Leeds United, and was down to mis-management rather than criminal negligence, but to every supporter who pulls on that shirt of a saturday afternoon, and trunters down to their - out of town - footballing mecca, tomorrow is massive. It not only defines the places they’ll be visiting next season, but potentially, will decide the very future of their beloved teams.
For what it’s worth, I expect Coventry City to be alright, we’ll pick up the point we need away at Charlton, and Liecester will be beaten by Stoke - hopefully signalling their exit into oblivion under Milan Mandaric and his managerial fancy of the month.
Here’s to another season of the Championship, which is (incredibly) the second best supported domestic league in all of Europe.
