hienzeECFC
Member
I tend to be more of a quiet observer on these pages rather than a commenter, but one thing that has stuck at me this season is the growing number of fans who have become dissatisfied with our manager, our board, or whomever may fit between them. While there have always been people seemingly sharpening their blades, even in our League 1 seasons, there appears to be a burgeoning group who are coming around to the idea that ECFC are not meeting the expectations of the fans. This has of course been demonstrated by the Red Legion protest at the weekend.
Before I go any further I should say that I have been a fan of City since the latter conference days, and used to hold a season ticket every year, however I have been to only a handful of games since 2012 when I started at university up in sunny Nottingham. I should also add that in the handful of games I have been to, the Red Legion have been bloody fantastic, and I would in no way wish to criticise them, or their right to protest as they see fit.
What I would say though is that I fail to see how the club are underachieving. A quick glance at the history section of Football Manager shows what I suspect we all know, that ECFC have been a League 2 club for the vast majority of their history (Right up until I take over at the start of the game and win the CL in three years) I do however, appreciate that the point of being a football fan for most is to look forward with hope and expectation that the next stage of our history will be one of unprecedented success.
Anyone who has read the quite brilliant 'Soccernomics' by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, , will be aware that there is a consistent and generally reliable correlation between league position, and wage expenditure. Of course there are always outliers, and that is why we love football - because we all hope our club will do a Leicester. Now of course I don't have a league table of the last ten years of every club in the football pyramid's wage expenditure relative to their final position, but it does not take much imagination to see that generally speaking, we are probably not in the top 10 for wages in League 2 most seasons. We may pop in and out, but it strikes me that every year that goes by there will be at least seven clubs spending more per week on players than we are. So the question is, what gives us the right to think we deserve a top 7 finish in any particular year? And more to the point what makes us think that by failing to achieve this, the club are underachieving?
I would argue that rather than underachieving, we have been doing quite the opposite. Since our relegation, I would argue we have been finishing about where we should. And for the four years prior, we were overachieving. I do not know enough about our time in the Conference to definitively say if we were underachieving by taking the time we did to return to the Football League, but in fairness there have and continue to be clubs bigger than ours getting stuck in that bear trap for prolonged periods.
The truth for me is that success in football is, in the vast majority of cases, bought. As a fan owned club we are unlikely to ever have the means to buy that success. Personally I am too proud of the community run nature of our club to believe that any amount of success is worth exchanging for being able to sing 'we own our football club'. But the fact remains that it is unfair to criticise any member of our club's management or board for failing to achieve more than they are funded to achieve.
Anyway I apologise if this was a bit long winded and utterly pointless. I'm currently writing my dissertation and its a bit difficult to fully switch off once you get going but I love to procrastinate and thought I would weigh in.
Before I go any further I should say that I have been a fan of City since the latter conference days, and used to hold a season ticket every year, however I have been to only a handful of games since 2012 when I started at university up in sunny Nottingham. I should also add that in the handful of games I have been to, the Red Legion have been bloody fantastic, and I would in no way wish to criticise them, or their right to protest as they see fit.
What I would say though is that I fail to see how the club are underachieving. A quick glance at the history section of Football Manager shows what I suspect we all know, that ECFC have been a League 2 club for the vast majority of their history (Right up until I take over at the start of the game and win the CL in three years) I do however, appreciate that the point of being a football fan for most is to look forward with hope and expectation that the next stage of our history will be one of unprecedented success.
Anyone who has read the quite brilliant 'Soccernomics' by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, , will be aware that there is a consistent and generally reliable correlation between league position, and wage expenditure. Of course there are always outliers, and that is why we love football - because we all hope our club will do a Leicester. Now of course I don't have a league table of the last ten years of every club in the football pyramid's wage expenditure relative to their final position, but it does not take much imagination to see that generally speaking, we are probably not in the top 10 for wages in League 2 most seasons. We may pop in and out, but it strikes me that every year that goes by there will be at least seven clubs spending more per week on players than we are. So the question is, what gives us the right to think we deserve a top 7 finish in any particular year? And more to the point what makes us think that by failing to achieve this, the club are underachieving?
I would argue that rather than underachieving, we have been doing quite the opposite. Since our relegation, I would argue we have been finishing about where we should. And for the four years prior, we were overachieving. I do not know enough about our time in the Conference to definitively say if we were underachieving by taking the time we did to return to the Football League, but in fairness there have and continue to be clubs bigger than ours getting stuck in that bear trap for prolonged periods.
The truth for me is that success in football is, in the vast majority of cases, bought. As a fan owned club we are unlikely to ever have the means to buy that success. Personally I am too proud of the community run nature of our club to believe that any amount of success is worth exchanging for being able to sing 'we own our football club'. But the fact remains that it is unfair to criticise any member of our club's management or board for failing to achieve more than they are funded to achieve.
Anyway I apologise if this was a bit long winded and utterly pointless. I'm currently writing my dissertation and its a bit difficult to fully switch off once you get going but I love to procrastinate and thought I would weigh in.
