Just over a week ago we lost our manager to Leeds, despite the fact he was a lifelong fan and, up to until Sunday that week, had seemed a decent bloke. Now we are on the lookout for a manager and Jack Ross at St Mirren is in the frame. I've just spent the last hour reading 19 pages of comments (not much valantines night love) on the St Mirren forum. Just replace the name Ross with Heckingbottom and it could be ours from last week. First of all denial, then why Barnsley, then he'd be mad not to money etc. We'll be doing this to some club just like Leeds did to us. In my mind that's why football is losing out. The smaller teams and fans can't dream anymore, the best we can hope for is the fleeting success like we enjoyed over 2016. Players and managers will move on, money is the be all and end all. Maybe I'm just old and realism has dawned but it never felt like this when I first went to Oakwell. Looking at the St Mirren site we are the big horrible club with money, Leeds et al are that to us and then there are the premier league teams to eat up the Leeds of this world. Dare to dream? Not so much these days.
At least it's only a 10er to get into st mirrens park. 4 times cheaper than the "championship".. It's all about money .. it's fkd up
It’s worse now but football has always been plagued by money and the haves and have nots. It has lost that certain degree of romance for me, although the form we showed just 18 months ago ignited it again, but from then on its been business as usual.
In terms of big club wealth then yes of course that's increased ridiculously but for us and clubs at a similar level (bottom half of championship) and below, I don't think it's changed much.
The game hasnt been, and never will be, the same since the Greed League gatecrashed the party and wrested total control from our weak and spineless "governing" bodies.
1949 Robledo Newcastle 26,500 1951 McCormack Notts County 20,000 1953 Taylor Man Utd 29,999 1970 Barraclough Newcastle 40,000 1976 Otulakowski West Ham 60,000 1985 McCarthy Man City 200,000 1986 Hirst Sheff Weds 250,000 1990 Currie Notts Forest 700,000 1991 Tiler Notts Forest 1,400,000 1995 Taggart Bolton 1,500,000 And all before we get on to the era of Ashley Ward, Craig Hignett, John Stones, Alfie Mawson and Conor Hourihane. It was ever thus!
I was going to post something similar but going back a lot further than 1951. But I couldn't be arsed so thanks. The big difference with the OP though is that he's talking of managers not players. Managers' spells these days are far shorter than they used to be and that's to do with money. They can now jump ship like players can knowing that their careers will be relatively short, building up a nice nest egg till they're sacked in 12 months. There must be scores of unemployed managers in their 40s and 50s who won't manage again and don't need to work again financially.
Yes but look at the list it's one player every couple of years not the wholesale destruction of the squads, that then leading to the departure of a frustrated manager. We've always been a club that sells it's best players eventually but not on the scale of the last 18 months it's that factor that's lead to out current plight. Caused by parachute payments and our clubs rigid compliance with ffp rules while others openly flout them and achieve success.
I was wondering the other week after I read about the Yorkshire national side forming, whether at some point someone will start a breakaway independent league where towns / city suburbs have a team of local amateurs competing against other towns / suburbs etc, and if they did how popular would it be?
To a large extent that happens here in gaelic football. Mostly parish/village based teams. The bigger towns tend to have bigger populations to draw on for their clubs but it is still possible for a small club to discover a talented generation now and then and prosper. The team right on the western end of the Dingle peninsula are called An Ghaeltacht. They represent a couple of villages which can't have a population of more than a thousand. In 2004 they had a golden generation and made it to the All Ireland club final. After that the team broke up but now they have a new crop who have just got the team back to the Kerry senior League and made it to the All Ireland Intermediate semi final last month (sort of the level for 2nd tier teams). It's refreshing to see. They don't get paid, they train hard and they do it for the love of the game.
With the exception of a few clubs who have monopolised the big prizes in football since the 70s, the best most fans can hope for is fleeting success. Since the mid 90s we have been riding a roller coaster with misery following success quite frequently. I would venture to suggest that we have had a more exiting time over this period than in the preceding 100 years. Success for Barnsley FC is remaining in the second tier of English football anything better is a definite bonus. There is no reason, however, why we cannot "do a Burnley".
I disagree with this considering Bournemouth, Burnley, Brighton and Huddersfield are in the premier league.. Burnley are 7th by the way. Leicester won the premier league a couple of years ago. And on the flip side, you've got bigger teams (I'm sorry to say) like Leeds, the Sheffield teams, Nottingham Forest, Birmingham, Aston Villa all in our division. I remember when I first got into soccer, teams like Charlton, Blackburn and Portsmouth were comfortable premier league teams and now they're all below us. In conclusion, I think everyone's overreacting because we don't have a great team at the moment. If we stay up this year, it'll be a great accomplishment and I'll be super optimistic about our first full season under the new owners. I will be "daring to dream" as this thread puts it.