First Day Nerves

I used to attend as many pre-season friendly matches as I could. It was an opportunity to get a football fix after the frustration of the close season; a first glimpse of any new players; the chance to exchange a few words with a favourite player; an early look at a new manager’s tactics, style of play, etcetera. Perhaps, like arriving at the stadium on match day ninety minutes before kick-off, it is simply one of those habits I have grown out of. While others would no doubt disagree, pre-season matches now feel like treading water or time wasted. The results are meaningless and often misleading. You cannot celebrate any of the goals in any real sense and so many players nowadays come into the building in the final days – or even hours – of the transfer window that you do not even come away with an idea of what to expect once the season gets underway.

One thing which has not changed, though, is the nervous excitement which greets me on the opening day of the new season. Despite my advancing years, it still feels special. Even if – deep down – you know that you would accept mid-table and a decent cup run – there is something unique about travelling to that first match top equal in the table. OK, thanks to Sky bringing forward Reading versus Derby to the Friday evening, that was not the case. However, it remains a day when every fan can dream of a magical season, if only for a few hours. In an age where social media is king, it was time to put that #ANewEra hashtag to a first test.

Greater Anglia had not, unfortunately, entered the spirit of the occasion. The 13:47 from Stowmarket was running half an hour late and when it finally rocked up it consisted of just one carriage. With a healthy smattering of Town fans getting on it was uncomfortably squashed, made worse once more supporters pushed on at Needham Market. What with the heat, the delay and the lack of breathing space it was a far from ideal prelude to the opening day fixture.

Two hours later I am not sure that we were any wiser about what it will be like supporting ITFC under Paul Hurst. The match had the perfect start: high energy pressing and a great team goal. Portman Road exploded with joy. Town then began to look inexperienced and vulnerable against a Blackburn side which has been playing together for a year. The final ten minutes of the match saw Town begin to finally apply pressure, even if the equaliser was a fortunate one. While it had been great to see a genuine winger taking opponents on and showing some artistry, it would clearly take time for Hurst to finish assembling his squad, never mind it gelling. The New Era might equally be called the Left-field Gamble. Most of us had wanted the club to head in a new direction. It had done. However, with so many of the new players being unfamiliar with life in the second tier, no one left a relieved Portman Road with any firm idea where this ‘work in progress’ was heading.

Were the bookies and national football reporters right to make ITFC one of the favourites for relegation? Having finished comfortably mid-table in 2017-18, were they basing this bleak prediction solely on the loss of MM’s savvy experience? If so, this plays straight into the ‘be careful what you wish for’ mantra of a minority of Town fans. Would Paul Hurst continue to prove a miracle worker on a tight budget? Or would he now be punching above his weight? Who would plug the gap created by the sale of Martyn Waghorn? Can 27 Championship goals and assists grow on lower league trees? There were so many questions running through my head on the way home. Predictably, despite the late, late equaliser, Twitter was populated with Suffolk doom merchants after this opening match. ‘Relegation fodder’, ‘no better than it was under MM’… Unfortunately, one of the down sides of social media is the knee-jerk reactions, the unthinking ease with which people – often not even at the game – ping a negative or corrosive remark into the virtual ether.

If forty odd opening days have taught me one thing, it is that they tend to teach us nothing. This is even more the case when a club is attempting a mini-revolution. A year ago who thought that Sunderland – freshly armed with a £40 million parachute payment – would suffer a second successive relegation? Or that Warnock’s unfancied Cardiff would go up automatically? First day nerves are proof of at least two things: that we still passionately care; and that we have no idea where the new 46 game marathon journey is taking us. The torment of relegation? The euphoria of promotion? The calm of mid-table? Who knows? As a number of famous writers have suggested, maybe life (as a football fan) is a journey, not a destination. Let us try to enjoy the ride.

© Rodney Marshall | Follow on twitter - @RodneyMarshall1

EFL MARATHONS & THE BURDEN OF HISTORY

The EFL Championship has been talked up in recent years as the biggest and best non-top-flight league in world football. This is based partly on finances, but also on its aggregate attendances which place it third in European football, behind the Premier League and the Bundesliga, but ahead of Serie A (Italy), La Liga (Spain) and Ligue 1 (France). Statistics can, of course, be twisted to argue all manner of things, as every politician knows only too well. In recent years, the German 2 Bundesliga has seen higher average gates than the Championship. [1] However, given the 18 club format of German’s second division, it means that 306 league matches are played each season, compared to the EFL figure of 552. This vast difference ensures that the EFL can make claims which are, arguably, misleading.

Nevertheless, it is easy to argue justifiably that the Championship is the hardest second division in major footballing countries. The sheer size of our second tier ensures that its clubs endure an unforgiving marathon season, with plenty of Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday encounters in the congested calendar. Add in the rigid transfer windows and you can sympathise with Mick McCarthy for the major injury crisis which hit Portman Road last season. To further complicate matters, the play-off system then adds a sprint at the end of this marathon. I am not a fan of it, although many would argue that it has now been in operation for a generation and that every club knows the rules before a ball is kicked back in August. [2] For the finalists, this adds another three matches to the gruelling schedule, making it only one short of fifty, even before you add in at least two cup competitions.

Putting attendances, schedules and finances to one side, there is a far better way to justify the unique status of the EFL Championship. Let us take the make-up for the 2018-19 season as an example. Of the twenty-four clubs taking part, all but one have competed in the top flight of English football. OK, this is not exactly an earth-shattering statistic. However, ten of these clubs have been crowned as English champions, two as kings of Europe. Between them, the current Championship boasts twenty-five top-flight titles, thirty-seven FA Cups, twenty-two League Cups and four major European titles. That constitutes an impressive array of honours.

While a club such as Rotherham would probably view a place in Championship football as success in itself, the vast majority of fans view the league as a waiting room to the Promised Land, something which Paul Hurst hinted at on his appointment at Portman Road. [3] On one level, this is understandable. The Championship boasts eleven grounds with 30,000 + capacities and nine venues saw healthy average gates of 25,000 + in the 2017-18 campaign. It is not just fans in Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds who feel that their club ‘deserves’ to be in the Premier League. How many Ipswich Town supporters are content to be simply proud of the fact that the Blues have remained in the top two divisions for the past sixty years? We should be. Instead, fans bemoan the club’s record – aka sterile – stay in the second tier since 2002. History suggests that clubs like Wigan, Hull and Reading are punching above their weight in the second tier, but try telling that to their supporters who have all tasted the Premier League.

Did the creation of the Premier League in 1992 change fans’ perception of the second tier? Certainly the vast wealth which awaits clubs in the top tier has affected the way players, managers and club owners view the divide. This has been exasperated by the controversial (and colossal) parachute payments which reward failure in the Premier League. Has the rebranding of the second tier as the Championship, in 2004, helped add a sense of competing in the top flight of the EFL? Not really. Most supporters would prefer a season of struggle in the top tier to relative success in the second division.

Top flight history, it would appear, brings with it a burden. At Portman Road, the statues and stands of Alf Ramsey and Bobby Robson look on, reminding us all of golden ages in which ITFC not only competed with the big clubs, but frequently bettered them. In Suffolk, as elsewhere, supporters and club owner await the manager who will take them back to the land of milk and honey. Perhaps we should be proud that at Portman Road the patience – as well as the wait – lasts a little longer. [4]

© Rodney Marshall

1.      In 2016-17 Championship crowds averaged 20,130 compared to 2 Bundesliga’s 21,717. 2 Bundesliga attendances had been higher in the previous campaign as well.
2.      I would argue that it artificially keeps alive the campaign for mid-table clubs and is particularly cruel when a club finishes the League campaign well ahead of the three clubs below it.
3.      ‘I’ve got to… look to move us forward and help get us to where we all want to be – the Promised Land, as they say.’ (Paul Hurst, 30/05/2018)
4.      No doubt Mick McCarthy would question this suggestion.