A slightly premature post-mortem

I write articles for a football fanzine about my team, Birmingham City.  As we are in dire straits, my last article of the season is a rather lengthy rant.  I thought I would put it on here for a change….

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Without the benefit of a crystal ball or any other sort of jiggery-pokery, I can foresee that I am not going to be the only voice in this last of the season MIB that lays the blame for our current predicament upon the Board.

However, before I get that far, there are a few other points I want to make about this season. At the time of writing, we are almost down and almost out, with one game to play and matters not in our own hands. We have a one in three chance of survival and for added stress, Sky Sports (in their infinite wisdom) have decided to televise us. Maybe they think that we will be more distraught than Fulham’s or Reading’s fans if or when the hammer blow of relegation falls upon us again. Maybe they’re just sadistic.

As usual, the Londoncentric media have been gleeful at the prospect of us paying only a brief visit to the top floor of the footballing skyscraper; in fact, the only thing they seem to have been more gleeful about is the resurgence of Fulham, whipping themselves up into a masturbatory frenzy last Saturday at the prospect of yet another London team retaining a place in the Premier League.

Putting the media loathing of us aside, there has been much else about this season which should be a sharp reminder to every Bluenose that the way of Royal Blue is truly the Way of Suffering.

Over the course of the last nine months, we have nearly been subject to a Far East takeover (which thankfully went down the pan), got through two managers, bought a bunch of players with very variable success, seen our ex-manager and the Board getting into some rather unseemly slanging matches, seen members of the Board carted off for questioning over the “bungs” affair, been subjected to the inevitable abuse from David Sullivan about match attendances, gained some points in very unlikely circumstances (Liverpool [twice] and Arsenal), thrown points away needlessly (Derby and Sunderland, just for a start) and been painfully taken apart by our loathsome near neighbours (They who shall not be named).

We have also been shown that the Jamie Clapham Memorial Cupboard still exists and there never was any such thing as the fabled Big Screen.

In short, it’s been a bit of a mess.

I suppose at least we managed to get through this season without another team’s honours in the front pages of the corporate diaries, or without sweating that we could be in line for a points’ deduction for not having a pitch. For those of us who have been quietly working on the project to catalogue Birmingham City’s cock-ups through the ages, this season has given us plenty of material; but that’s another story.

So, is any one factor that has contributed to us going into the last weekend of the season in nineteenth place?

For me, the players are not particularly to blame, certainly not in the way they were in our last relegation season, when we were saddled with a number of wasters who seemed only to be interested in the size of the pay cheques they were receiving. I won’t bother to name them.

Many of our regular first-teamers have tried incredibly hard this season, but the sad truth is that a number of them simply lack the requisite quality to compete at this level.

Some were new to the Premier League, or had only limited experience and have found it hard going. Fabrice Muamba comes into this category; he did well last season in the Championship but has struggled at the higher level.

Others were, in effect, cast-offs from other teams and weren’t making the grade elsewhere. Ridgewell comes into this category; he was error-prone at Villa and does not seem to have improved significantly over the last months, apart from not giving away quite as many penalties.

With McLeish arriving mid-season, he has not had the opportunity to build his own team, having to work with what he had available. Like any manager, he seems to have favourites that make the fans question his judgement and has so far not been able to crack the problem of our appalling away form.

But I don’t blame him alone; I think it’s a bit unfair to judge him entirely on what he has done in the last few months, and I suspect that he will be given time to attempt to shape the team his own way – as long as he is left with a reasonable core of players to work with, should we get relegated on Sunday.

Would Steve Bruce have done any better? I remember saying in an article earlier this season that I would be gutted if Wigan survived and we didn’t. Well, needless to say, I am preparing to be gutted, but I don’t believe that Bruce would have done significantly better with this team than McLeish has, for a number of reasons.

He had reached the end of the road at Birmingham; the relationship with the Board had obviously deteriorated; the team were stagnant, struggling and lacked ability in vital areas of the pitch. There didn’t seem to be much money available in support.

When the offer came from Dave Whelan, it gave Bruce the chance to make an reasonably dignified exit (although this has degenerated since) and to go and work with an underperforming team containing some better quality players than the ones he had available at Birmingham.

Dave Whelan had spent more on the Wigan team.

And that’s the issue; that old saying about not being able to solve a problem by chucking money at it does not seem to hold true for the Premier League. It’s not quite as simple as “he who spends most, wins most” (as that sort of talk tends to raise the spectre of Leeds United, white and ghastly), but as a general rule, one tends to get what one pays for.

Witness Sunderland; of the three promoted teams from last season, they have spent the most money and are the ones are will be living to fight another day. We mostly raided the bargain basement (apart from McFadden) and seem to be destined to be playing Plymouth Argyle on a wet Tuesday night this November.

Yet, we were assured it wasn’t going to be like this; the Board had “learnt from the pain of relegation” (pardon me if I’m paraphrasing) and wanted to do better this time. I don’t believe that Blues fans have an unrealistic idea of what that might mean; ask the average supporter and they would be happy with anything from tenth to seventeenth place in the league. We’re just not going to be European challengers without massive investment, but we have been led to believe that survival at least would be within our grasp and that the Board would do anything in their power to ensure that.

Sadly, this has been yet another empty promise to the “customers”, many of whom have been around far longer than the Board, and will be around after they’ve moved on to their next project.

The next soundbyte that we will be hit with should we not survive on Sunday, will be “we are not a selling club”, shortly followed by the “but we don’t want to keep unhappy players” mantra as Brady and Sullivan shovel players out of the back door with unseemly haste.

It’s about time (in my humble opinion) that they took just one leaf out of Jeremy Peace’s book and told a number of key players that they are not going anywhere; correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that what the parachute payments are for?

The Baggies kept the nucleus of their relegated team together, and although not getting back into the top flight at the first time of asking, have succeeded this time and by all accounts are playing some decent football. Whether they survive or not is another issue, but at least they have given themselves a fighting chance with some continuity amongst the players.

For us, the vultures are already circling; the papers are already full of rumours about offers being tabled for our decent players, with Seb Larsson probably on several other managers’ shopping lists. That will be the heartbreaker; our player of the season, one who genuinely seems to enjoy playing for us, destined to be the first one out of St Andrew’s so that Sullivan can gloat over his latest profit.

We just might survive on Sunday, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m fully expecting our next game to be in the Championship, with only a few remnants of the current team remaining.

That will be painful – because I’m not a customer, Mr Sullivan, I’m a fan – and that’s the difference.

I’m fed up of the empty promises, the disparaging comments, the money-grabbing policies and the disregard – and so are thousands of others, who have voted with their credit cards by not buying season tickets for next year. It’s not because they love Birmingham City any less, but because they have been worn down by the Board’s attitude and feel that they are unimportant.

Start regarding those “customers” as “fans” and you might start getting an appreciation of what the club means to us.

See you next season, wherever; Turf Moor or Old Trafford…