That's a good point, do we really want promotion (from a pure supporters perspective BTW). It's a bit of a conundrum - we want the team to play well, to get goals, entertain us - but promotion this season would be a poison challis?
Some do, some don't. I wouldn't want it. Promotion should be the dream but the Premier League is a TV show more than a football division. I know Ipswich fans who have longed to get there and are already finding it to be a glitzy, showbiz style TV show with no regard for match going punters. Each to their own of course, some people still get drawn in by 'the magic of the Premier League' and think it is the best place to be. Good luck to them but it isn't for me and many others.
Promotion? Yes, of course, but only if Pozzo invests in the squad and manages to recruit the equivalent of Capoue, Behrami, Holebas etc. Having got rid of the butterfly man, and the return of Nani, along with the transfer window just gone, gives me a hope that it could be better next time around. But maybe I’m being naive. My main hope for this season is to see good football, win more than lose, have a united squad that seems to care, and stick with Tom. And hold on to him if he achieves the impossible. Oh, and to somehow stuff Man City in the cup.
We had our fun in the Prem, but the game has changed since then, it’s almost always about mere survival for promoted teams nowadays, whereas at least we gave it a good go from 2015-2020 (at what cost though!)
Only point of us going up again would be the sizeable prize money. There would be little point as spending it to upgrade the squad to a level capable of finishing 17th, it would be largely a waste of everyone's time and the PL has changed an awful lot since we went up under Joka and stayed up comfortably under QSF 1.0. If you look at the teams that sniff around 15th-20th most seasons they would destroy the Championship (mostly) even with the squads they have now. We would need to yo-yo a least twice to get to reap the benefits of building a squad capable to maintaining our PL status for a season. If you can do that, you can builld on that squad and make sure your capable of staying there. We did that, until we didn't. Muff have become a PL main stay and Brighton are beating Man Utd and Everton with ease most seasons. Shows how far both clubs have come. That sort of transistition is not beyond us, but it would take longer for us to get there as the fall we have taken since relegation in 19/20 is still hurting.
If you’re a smaller club, the smart thing is to create a Championship superteam in the Prem for when you come back down, just look at Lut…oh
Fair point. We kept more or less our PL squad the following season, but it needed Captain fantastic out of the team and a WTE super team talk under a smiley Xisco to get us back up first time. We didn't really start playing well until after Xmas (when Xisco came in). I think going up that season was a total U-Turn back to the Championship and we knew that, but Gino still wasted X-amount of money on firing Xisco, CR70 and Woy. We should of stuck with Xisco that season and binned him off in the Summer. But I think our overlord had aspects of PL survival.
The Pozzos had clearly lost their touch, they weren’t afraid to can Joka when we went up the first time, Xisco was never good enough but for some reason they kept him. Not that it would have made any difference, we built a honking squad topped up not with young players with the potential to improve, but not so golden oldies who had us back to square one come the following summer…
Yes you get a lot of money for promotion but you blow every penny on money grabbing tw*ts who don't care about playing for the club, before getting relegated in tens of millions worth of debt.
You take promotion when you can get it. Promotion is an opportunity, but like any opportunity it’s about how you make the most of it, or not. You’ve got two options, the first one is invest all the riches back into the squad and attempt to build a squad that can compete and stay up. Obviously this has its risks and it has its rewards. People will say gravity always catches clubs like us out, but the list of small clubs like us that are regularly surviving in the premier league season in season out is roughly same size as the likes of Stoke, Portsmouth etc. who ****ed it up. It’s never a forgone conclusion. The second option is go up, bank the money, probably get humped around the league every week and go back down but you’ll be better for it as a club in the long run. There are drawbacks and negatives to both, but when it comes down to it the opportunity of promotion is almost infinitely greater than a boy standard championship season, and ultimately we’re all lifelong supporters of the club, one season here and there of losing most of our games in exchange for £100m+ and the occasional chance to beat a genuinely big team really isn’t the end of the world that many make it out to be.
It's that ever widening gulf between the Championship and the Premiership that is so soul destroying. To go up you have had a very good season watching your team win a lot of games, then comes the season of playing with the multi billionaire clubs, the ones whose owners don't give a toss about FFP, the pundits get all moist over and seem to be given every 50/50 decision... and then some. There follows a season of getting battered week in week out, maybe the odd freak result to buoy the spirits, accompanied by stories of if only we'd hung on for that win or that point, but we didn't, in the end it's a relief to get back to the championship where at least you have a chance of winning each and every game. The sad thing is that you don't want to get relegated, promotion is a poison chalice so you end up actually wanting mediocre mid table football.
It's funny how excited fans get about surviving relegation in the Premier League. All you're doing is staving off the inevitable before spending the next year circling the drain again.
To not want promotion for me as a supporter means the end. There is just no point going to games anymore. If you can go up and stay up there is the opportunity of a trophy, FA cup or League cup which we were one game away from achieving. That will never happen in The Championship. I understand the reservations people have for going up but the possibility of seeing players of the calibre of Delefeou, Pereyra, Capoue again makes me want to go up.
Quite aside from the fact that winning the Championship would be the biggest achievement of our club's history and a bona fide trophy. I'd take the high of promotion and the subsequent shellacking in the PL over two seventh place Championship finishes every day (although would prefer it if we don't spend the PL riches on the likes of Kalu, Pussetto, Fletcher, Kayembe, Bayo, Rajovic, Hause, Davis , Samir, Louza etc etc)
Exactly - I wonder how much fun it has been to be a Palace fan over the last 10 years, celebrating surviving each year, without the lows of relegation and the highs of promotion ? However you have to want to get promoted to the prem or the whole reason for wanting your team to win/succeed agains the odds falls away and it becomes pointless. I doubt I will see us back in the prem. If we did get up I'm 95% sure we'd immediately drop. Doesn't stop me wanting to see us promoted every season....
I honestly can't see how there is anything in this that suggests a lack of 'fun' - I imagine they've been having a fuccking ball throughout, relatively speaking, sitting at the top table, watching top level exciting players come through, having players called up to the England team, attracting exciting up and coming coaches, playing and at times beating teams considered amongst the best in the world, and generally being far richer and more visible whilst continuously building their club up.
And us for 5 years till 2020 when we recruited poorly and couldn't be bothered to perform after the COVID break. It can be done...
I think narrowly avoiding relegation in any league, certainly if it goes down to the wire gets fans of any club excited, it’s not unique to the PL at all, but it’s deemed a harder thing to do (certainly for clubs our size) so the reaction makes sense. It seems you can’t get excited or be entertained about either surviving in the PL, or being comfortably mid table, and yet last season we won 13 games out of 46, so 72% of the time we didn’t win, and yet that’s apparently more fun than it is for Palace or Forest fans doing the former and the latter. Before the Pozzos took over our seasons were overwhelmingly mediocre, for the majority of our history, 2 promotions since it became the Championship, the rest treading water for decades and longer at a time, or at a lower level. We’ve had 3 promotions battles under Pozzo (2 successful) and whilst I think those days are gone, how anyone could prefer the never ending drudgery of a season like last season over more regular promotions which will also likely come with inevitable tough seasons and relegations is truly beyond me.
Those Everton fans who questioned the fate of their club after their 1930-31 promotion are about to look rather smug
Both teams charged by the FA. No great surprise. https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/24563171.watford-sheffield-united-face-fa-misconduct-charge/
