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Relegation - A Matter Of Context
Topic Started: May 11 2006, 10:03 PM (115 Views)
pgmayhew
Steve Claridge
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Firstly, this is neither a Bruce in or out post (so please don't view it as one), Its merely a little food for thought about the last few years from going up to coming down.

To start with, and having taken my blue-tinted glasses off, Birmingham City will never (unless a Russian tycoon takes over) be the biggest club on the scene. And by size I mean popularity and fan-base. In fact thats the best and oft forgotten thing about our club - that it isn't followed by a band of gloryhunters and it has a true partisan following (as all the threads on here show). Something to be proud of.

However, like all fans of any team, we sometimes lose sight of the greater scheme of things. When we got promoted, after years of playoff trauma, nobody on here can dispute that we were a bit lucky, especially with the run in the last three months of that season after SB had first joined. More significantly, that team which got promoted while a fine bunch of grafting players, would never have stayed up the following season were it not for the re-inforcements brought in (Savage, Upson, Cunningham, Maik Taylor and so forth)

Unfortunately what happened is that everyone fell victim to delusions of grandeur. We brought in big names for big money that didn't perform. We took a gamble - rather than consolidating and maintaining a hard-grafting team with the likes of the Horse, the club set out to bring what the fans were crying out for - attacking footballers. So in came Melchiot, Heskey, Pandiani and out went the grafters. This didn't pay off and the club have now paid the price for it. Its everyone's prerogative as to who to blame, but I can't believe everyone at the club wasn't initially behind this strategy.

So now we are down and all the moaning has started, things seem pretty bleak. But history has shown that this is just one of those cycles that clubs of our size and stature go through. Now hopefully we won't do a Man City or Notts Forest and get relegated again but for now lets put things in context.

We are not too big or too good to go down. We have done fantastically to stay up for four consecutive seasons. Now that dream is over but its time to start building towards a new one.

A few things to put a slightly better prospect on things. After four years in the Prem, we have established ourselves a bit more in the footballing world. That in the Championship is not a bad thing. Whereas before we might have struggled to attract top players, we will now be one of the bigger fishes in the pond. Thats no bad thing. Regardless of what the board say, we are financially far more secure than Leeds or Notts Forest ever were when they went down.

As far as I am concerned i'm viewing relegation as last weeks news already. I'd rather look forward to another season of what we all love - football, and going to blues to watch it. There is a platform in place - we are now a bigger club than we have ever been in our history (in terms of modern media at least). So lets use that as well as the partisan passion we have for the club to stand behind it together, regardless of opinions.

I haven't heard too many Baggies or Sunderland fans calling for the manager's head or refusing to go to future matches. And both had far worse seasons than we did. And while i'd love to put on my blue-tinted glasses and say we are bigger than them, reality shows that we aren't (though certainly not smaller. The difference is we gambled and splashed more cash. It didn't work, c'est la vie, so back to basics and a bit of hard graft, from everyone concerned.

Keep Right On.
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Blues
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Mikael Forssell
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Here here.


What a bloody good post.
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djmmusic
Alex Govan
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That post was not only good - it was necessary for my sanity!

Nice one pg **thumbup
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Trevildo
Kenny Burns
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well said mate **thumbup
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mandy@blues
Frank Worthington
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Excellent post that puts it all into perspective. **thumbup
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