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*Official* English Football Season 2012-13

Furball

Furball

Evil Scotsman
GIMH said:
The thing is, I am strongly against 'forced equality' in sports so I don't know what to suggest.

And to answer your question. Off the top of my head the following were all at least one division below us when we were first in what's now the Championship:

Swansea
Cardiff
Stoke
Fulham
Wigan
West Brom
Reading
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But football's cyclical. West Brom were a good First Division team in the 70s and 80s, Stoke and Fulham were pretty successful back in the days of black and white.

By and large over the 125 years of the Football League, teams have more or less found their level. Occasionally a team will punch above its weight and get a couple of divisions ahead of where they "should" be (Wigan being a good example), while other clubs go through a bad phase and are below their true level (Leeds being the classic example).

The biggest barrier to teams is money. 30 years ago Tranmere could have got to the top with a good manager who could spot good talent. Nowadays, you need that, plus a massive chequebook.
 
sledger

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
Pothas said:
Dire.

On Stoke, I know they are out of trouble but can we just kick them out?
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I remember very little about that game, other than the fact that Steve Hunt had a Ljungberg style haircut, Sidwell sending a shot into the crowd right above our head, and Pothas Snr shouting "come on Brentford" when the rest of the crowd had fallen into deathly silence.

The highlight of the day was that we went to Burger King, I remember that well.

Funny, and sad, how most of Brentford's squad went on to play in the Premiership shortly after.

Edit: Another thing I remember is that Ben Burgess was absolutely ****house, and I think may even have scored an own goal.
 
P

Pothas

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Love Benteke a little bit.

Surley even Villa will manage to win from here?

Wigan are going to need to start winning but this result would put Sunderland and Newcastle right back under pressure.
 
P

Pothas

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
sledger said:
I remember very little about that game, other than the fact that Steve Hunt had a Ljungberg style haircut, Sidwell sending a shot into the crowd right above our head, and Pothas Snr shouting "come on Brentford" when the rest of the crowd had fallen into deathly silence.

The highlight of the day was that we went to Burger King, I remember that well.

Funny, and sad, how most of Brentford's squad went on to play in the Premiership shortly after.

Edit: Another thing I remember is that Ben Burgess was absolutely ****house, and I think may even have scored an own goal.
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Remember the perfect stereotype of a Cardiff hooligan on the train the way back, turned out to be really pleasant and said we would both go up next year. Think they went up, safe to say Brentford didn’t.

10 years on and we are back in the same position, losing out on automatic promotion in dramatic fashion on the last day. Don’t want to think about what comes next.
 
sledger

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
Somewhat annoyed that I forgot to swap Suarez for Benteke in my fantasy team until after this week's deadline tbh.

But yes, this is hilarious. Looks like the Di Canio honeymoon has ended in spectacular fashion.
 
GIMH

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
GingerFurball said:
But football's cyclical. West Brom were a good First Division team in the 70s and 80s, Stoke and Fulham were pretty successful back in the days of black and white.

By and large over the 125 years of the Football League, teams have more or less found their level. Occasionally a team will punch above its weight and get a couple of divisions ahead of where they "should" be (Wigan being a good example), while other clubs go through a bad phase and are below their true level (Leeds being the classic example).

The biggest barrier to teams is money. 30 years ago Tranmere could have got to the top with a good manager who could spot good talent. Nowadays, you need that, plus a massive chequebook.
Click to expand...
I don't disagree with any of that tbf. With regards to us, our most successful time came when we had money, but that was only by our standards and we still had a small budget compared to the rest of the division, but we had a manager who could find a bargain and a top drawer striker who wanted to come back to Merseyside. Getting him (Aldo) then made others like Nevin, Stevens, Tommy Coyne (whose spell with us was shortlived due to his wife's death) and O'Brien think 'well if someone like Aldridge is there then they must be going places'.

But when we got promoted to what was the second, the immediate aim was to go straight up and nobody laughed at us for saying it. If we had gone up this season, or if we do next, the aim for the first 2-3 years would be 50 points, even if Johnson decided to throw a bit of cash at it. The main reason for that is that the bulk of the clubs in that league have now been in the Prem for at least a few years. The sides that struggle are the ones with none or very little prem history. Which I suppose you could also attribute to the cyclical nature but a part of it for me is how smaller sides approach promotion to the Prem. west Brom are the perfect example of managing it correctly - took a couple of relegations on the chin but didn't bankrupt themselves to try and stay up there and slowly established themselves. Compare that with Bradford who are far worse off for having been up there than if they'd never got there.

Not sure what my point is, rambling chain of thought and all that.
 
Jarquis

Jarquis

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Wanted to lay Sunderland this evening (@~3.3 IIRC) but was in the lib doing Tort revision. Gutted.
 
HeathDavisSpeed

HeathDavisSpeed

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
GIMH said:
As for dramatically lower? Hmm

Stockport County, Grimsby Town, Luton Town all out of the league and all played a lengthy amount of second tier football, top tier for a short while in the case of the latter

Do Wimbledon count?
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Oxford United were also in the old first division around the same time as Luton and have since been out of the Football League completely. Sheffield Wednesday, Notts Forest, Coventry City were all fixtures of the old first division and haven't been there for a long time and have sat in League One for a while. Leeds United too.

If we're going back to the 70s then Ipswich were a 'big' team and Carlisle were in the old first division for a while too.

EDIT: More recently, Portsmouth's fall from the Premiership has been beautiful and Blackburn have tried their best to create a new level of ineptitude. Not many teams have been banished from the Football League completely - Aldershot and Maidstone the ones I recall, and I think Newport got thrown out too - or did they just suffer successive relegations?
 
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Uppercut

Uppercut

Request Your Custom Title Now!
If you'd said Villa would be above Newcastle tonight no one would've believed you- 11 goal swing in one round of games.

Newcastle are my new hope for the drop but I fear for Wigan :(.
 
Nate

Nate

You'll Never Walk Alone
Yeah, really not looking good for Wigan.

I think I originally wanted Villa to go down, but I like Lambert, and I appreciate that Villa have stuck by him when all the other threatened clubs were sacking their managers. Perhaps some sweet justice there. :)
 
sledger

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
I remember watching the playoff final between City and Gillingham on the TV, was a really exciting game iirc.
 
dontcloseyoureyes

dontcloseyoureyes

BARNES OUT
Uppercut said:
Where were you when you were ****?

Sang the Spurs fans two weeks back, unaware that Citeh averaged 27k crowds in the third tier when Spurs were averaging 28k crowds in the Premiership.
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I was 12 with dial-up internet haha. Got most of my news from football weekly magazine/newspaper thingo. I never used to buy it, just read it at the newsagent.

Spurs fans are a joke anyway, you don't even have to try to make them look like complete idiots.
 
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