Getting major flashbacks to 11 years ago when we were relegated from the Premier League.![]()
I'm sure when they went down, Scunthorpe and Preston would have expected to do much better this time around. Being relegated offers no crumbs of comfort for me. The whole mentality thing is completely different here to at Southampton or Norwich. We must survive this time around and then find some new and significant investment.
If both Sheffield clubs and Charlton went up, and us plus 2 of the current bottom 4 went down, we would be the biggest club based on average attendance alone, if all teams maintained their current levels of support.
Division Three is a great laugh - if you've got confidence in your team to make it fun and get back up within a season or three. When we went down we were somewhat fortunate (as fortunate as you can be when your club's a complete and utter farce handled by an escaped Serbian mental patient, anyway) in that we were easily the biggest and best in that division. Consequently we travelled all over the place to these previously unvisited grounds, smashing pretty much everyone else. When we came back up as clear champions, the players had so much confidence they thought they could beat anyone - and finished 5th. Ok, so the sins of Alex Bruce and Yann Kermorgant (and if truth be told, a partially-sighted linesman) kept us away from Wembley, but I think you'll agree playoff semis is better than a relegation scrap.A while back i was feeling pretty shite about the prospect of us going down to the third tier, so went onto a Sheffield Weds site to see if it was that bad....
Looks like it is.....
http://www.owlstalk.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/161713-league-onenot-a-piss-take-by-the-way/