The First 90 Minutes.com

  TF90M’s Tim Sansom takes a look at the different types of relegation teams suffer, and examines their consequences. 

   

By the time that you read this article, you will know which teams have played their last Premiership game for the foreseeable future. These fans can commiserate with their compatriots of teams like Charlton, Southampton, Norwich, Hereford United, Cheltenham Town, Crewe Alexandra and Northampton Town as well as Luton Town and Chester City.

The final weekend of the season is always of great interest to the neutrals but it is torture for the fans of those teams that straddle the trapdoor of any league. Television producers love to cut away from the action on the pitch to do a close up of a fan with their head in their hands, or tears in their eyes that sorrowfully drip over their ‘We will stay up’ banner.

It is tempting for sceptics to wonder what all of the fuss is about. You could suggest that there are worse things in life then your club being relegated into a lower league, and this is probably true, but it is upsetting if your club is your life or a big part of your existence. If relegation has the hint of more than just a switch from playing Manchester United to facing Blackpool at a windswept Bloomfield Road, relegation can be the start of a very uncertain and painful summer.

For some fans, relegation should not be a particular surprise. If your team has been surprisingly promoted at the end of the previous season, and it becomes pretty clear that your club are hopelessly out of their depth in the higher league, relegation should not be a particular surprise, unless there has been a dramatic recovery after Christmas.

It will become apparent that you will have to win every single game that is left in the season, and you will know that the club has not been able to offer anything more than a couple of 1-0 victories since the previous August.  You know that it will take a miracle of the same magnitude of pigs flying through skies, for relegation to be avoided at the end of the season. You could call this Predictable Relegation and this fate was suffered by Derby, Sunderland and Norwich in the Premiership since 2000

Relegation is the most painful when you, as a fan, believe that a demotion will have a catastrophic effect off the pitch at your beloved club. This worry is made worse if you do not feel that your club is not telling the whole truth when it tells you that it has “budgeted for relegation.” Simple maths and the realities of modern day football will tell you that the club will be up the financial creek if they are forced to face lower gate receipts and dramatically lower television revenue, after spending millions on players that have failed to deliver throughout this season.

The last match ends and the bloodied carcass of your team is taken off the pitch. Your players are hanging their heads within their shirts, and you could wonder whether your team is going to manage to play their next game, regardless whether it is in a lower division. You are watching Financial Implosion Relegation which has happened at Leeds, Southampton and Bradford City during recent seasons, and could have happened at Newcastle.

There is the Yo-Yo Relegation, where some fans have become blasé about being demoted to the lower league, because they know that they have enough resources on and off the pitch to ensure promotion during the following season. This relegation will happen to those clubs that seem to alternate their seasons between struggling in the higher league, and achieving a comprehensive promotion during the following ninth months.

Birmingham City, and West Bromwich Albion fit into the yo-yo relegation category, although it is important to note that some clubs, who believed that they were guaranteed an immediate return to the Premiership, fell out of the sequence with dramatic consequences. Nottingham Forrest is the most obvious example. Yo-yoing can collapse into Plummeting Relegation.    

Plummeting Relegation happens to those clubs who climb through the leagues with charismatic managers, a ‘them against us’ attitude, and some quality players. If you throw in a stadium that generates a febrile atmosphere when fans seem to be able to virtually touch the players, you are looking at teams like Northampton Town in the 1960s, Wimbledon in the 1980s, as well as Cambridge United and Southend United in the early 1990s.

It is a rollercoaster ride for these clubs. After being used the mediocre dross being served up to them every Saturday afternoon, a little bit of steam is built up when a run of results starts to splutter into life. Going to a football match becomes a ride on the crest of the wave, and what is equally exciting that no one knows when this journey is going to end. These clubs may gain a trophy that is beyond their wildest dreams, but the momentum will not be maintained. All good things come to the end.

The players and manager will move on to bigger clubs who can guarantee European football and bigger riches, and the replacements will be not quite up to scratch. As quickly as the rise, the club will plummet at the same rate. After being a few steps away from the inaugural season of the FA Premier League in 1992, Cambridge United face another season in the Blue Square Premier League in 2009/2010.

Do I laugh at the fans facing relegation from any league? I support a team whose local rivals were relegated this season, and some people think that I have spent most of this month shedding crocodile tears into my beer. It is not quite the case. I always wanted my team to gain the local bragging rights during the derby matches, but I would not wish relegation on anyone. It does not do anything positive for a club to be relegated. For any fan who thinks that relegation is nothing more than a dodgy horror movie, it is probable that they have never experienced relegation and the disappointment and embarrassment that the thought of lower league football will cause.