The Prem. The most exciting League in the world if you’re Sky Sports (bar when they’re doing their ‘La Liga finale’ ads of course)…the most predictable, boring League in the world for those millions of us whose teams don’t entertain any serious aspirations of ever getting there…but what’s it like for fans of the yo-yo clubs, those teams forever caught in a footballing purgatory, suffering an identity crisis season after season (are we a big Championship club or a Prem minnow?) You aspire to ‘do a Charlton’, til they finally mess it up…so you aspire to ‘do a Bolton’ instead, but what if, post-Big Sam, they ‘do a Charlton’?…you might settle for ‘doing a Reading’…except what if Reading end up ‘doing a Wigan’ or, indeed, ‘an Ipswich’?
You get our drift…so we invited correspondents from the perennial yo-yoers of the noughties, Sunderland & West Brom (one now back in the promised land for a season at least, one still writhing on the track after falling at the final hurdle) to share their thoughts on this greatest of football-supporting conundrums…and for good measure got the views of a Blade - bridesmaids for so many years, is the height of their aspirations now to yo-yo too?
After the storm…
A Blade’s view with Simon Heath-Harvey
“For many of us, football support is simply about the journey. I’m not sure what I’d do if we ever arrived. I am literally Waiting for Godot – but in my case he’s a French second division striker with a bad back.”
Click here for full article
Premiership pain, Championship gain
Jonathan Lowe’s mind is yo-yoing like his team…
“I’d love it for my sons’ Albion shirts to actually get recognised by the locals as we walk round some Mediterranean holiday resort, and for them to say, ‘ah, West Brom, that’s who Darren Carter plays for……’”
Click here for full article…
No yoyo with Keano
Carol Ward is like the Black Cat who got the cream…
“Signings of players have to be greeted with a look of bewilderment and a quick trawl through lower league stats. Managerial appointments must be met with groans and a shrug and a sigh that Martin O’Neill must be clearly nuts to turn you down. On hearing about his appointment during The Howard Wilkinson Horror Show, having to Google “Steve Cotterill” was a personal low.”
Click here for full article
