I have a dream.
It has nothing to do with cheese at bedtime and all that stuff but I have a dream.
I have a dream that the tsunami of corporate greed has washed away all football heritage and out of the slewn debris grows a US-inspired franchise heaven. I dream that my team, the South Yorkshire Steelbacks, are a permanent member of the Premiership elite regularly entertaining Europe’s finest in the new Betterware Bladetyke Millerowl International Arena. I dream that I will one day get to see them play in one of the designated non-corporate matches, which take place on Thursday lunchtimes for the benefit of Middle Eastern TV audiences.
Hang on a mo, wake up man! . . . that’s no dream, that’s more like a hideous nightmare scenario of a future that should never be allowed to be happen.
Sealing the premiership off with enfranchisement, as rugby league is due to soon, is often proffered by the pound chasers as the answer to a promotion and relegation merry-go-round which they perceive to be failing miserably because it upsets balance sheets and destabilises profits by occasionally and inconveniently taking Premiership football away from large “target audiences” in big conurbations.
It would be easy to hold up Barnsley, Bradford and Swindon as proof that such clubs can enjoy an albeit brief membership of the Premiership and therefore can make it to the top of the pile. But the stats, and I know how we all feel about stats, don’t lend too much credence to the argument.
The idea of promotion/relegation is fundamental to me as a supporter. Our elaborate system of four enormous divisions backed up by a pyramid of supporting geographical leagues, backed up by even larger pyramids of even larger players in strangely named and colloquially-sponsored divisions, has given us one of the most respected and extensive footballing structures in the world.
The point is that you can see your way forward, you can plot your rise to league status and beyond and no amount of reality checks will ever hold back that dream. The possibility of advancement from one league to another is essential. Cynics will pity the supposed naivety of the dream and ask how many clubs have actually bridged gaps between non-league and league or league and Premiership and not just for a few seasons but for a sustained life-changing and meaningful period. But I maintain the possibility should always be there.
I’m not a prostitute to the Premiership but I have to believe that one day I can pimp the Blades off the street corner and up the road to where the high-class escorts ply their trade in the comfort of their own homes – and stay there.
But is this dream crumbling? Does the possibility of Premiership football still exist for the vast majority? Or, is the Prem door already very tightly shut, locked and bolted by parachute payments and TV rights deals. Do we have still have real and meaningful promotion?
Take a quick look at the brief history of the Premier League and you’ll find the following stark figures.
- Only 40 clubs have plied their trade in the top flight
- Of the 45 promotions 20 were relegated immediately the following year
- In more than half of the 15 seasons two of the three promoted clubs from the Championship went straight back down the following season or the one after.
Of those clubs that were promoted to it for the first time and managed to stay there for a sustained period, there are just five examples; Newcastle have enjoyed the last 14 years since promotion to the Premiership in 1992/93, Middlesborough have had a decade at the top since promotion and then there’s Blackburn, Fulham and Bolton who have managed six years each in the Premiership since they were all promoted together in the 2000/01 season.
As I write, two of this trio looked doomed to Championship football. If that’s the case it would mean that over the 15 year lifespan of the Premier League there are just three examples of clubs who got promoted to it and managed to stay there for more than five years.
The point could be rammed well and truly home by pointing out that those three examples are all famous footballing clubs with successful pedigrees and all based in large conurbations and with a dozen FA Cup wins between them and in effect, are simply returning to where they probably think they normally live.
That’s why I said in article for this website last year, that surely the most interesting Premier League inclusion in recent years is Reading, who had a spell in the old Division Four as relatively recently as 1984. Theirs can realistically be called a transformational promotion and those of us clinging to the wreckage of meaningful movement between the divisions, will wish them luck forever more in staying right where they are.
With due respect (you have to say that when you’re about to diss clubs you consider beneath yours) to Swindon (immediate relegation), Barnsley (immediate relegation) and Bradford (survived one season) will the Premiership ever see their like again? And if it does, for how long?
Despite a first half century of stability among football’s elite my Sheffield United have spent the years since the end of WW2 being one of the mainstays of the no-man’s-land between first and second, a so-called yo-yo club and now a casualty of the split between the Premier League and the Football League
And we’re not alone, the list of yo-yos in the last 15 years alone includes familiar names; Sunderland, West Ham, Leicester, Manchester City, Bolton, Watford, Birmingham, Derby, Charlton, Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest, West Brom, Wigan Fulham and Middlesborough. Most are currently loitering around the top of the Championship and lurking in the depths of the Premiership - a kind of Premchamps division all of its own which has, as part of its membership criteria, ecstatic highs and play-off dramas smeared with the stains of seismic lows and relegation long before Easter. Barely enough time to complete the Match Attax club collection.
So pity poor West Brom, Watford and Palace – they know the score. But shout loudly for Stoke, Hull and Bristol City for they know not what they do and they have yet to feel the suffocating weight of expectation which the Premchamps Yo-Yos carry strapped to their aching backs.
And what of the Blades and me. Well, my dad has spent the last 60 years –a lifetime - hoping for sustained membership of whatever superior division existed and no doubt I shall do the same. But God has allowed me to go up the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Premiership. I may not get there with you. But I want you know today that we, as team, will get to the promised land of the Premiership. . . if only to come down again
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