Well done Bournemouth! Used to be one of my favourite away trips when I was a regular Reading follower, when we were both shit.
Can i do my cynical bit now….. as a Reading fan whose been to the promised land a couple of times now.
The PL is rubbish for clubs like ours. The first time you get there, you see the novelty of seeing Rooney and Sanchez and Hazard and (in my day, Torres, Ronaldo, etc.) all come to your ground and you can’t believe it’s happening. And then you get to see them on MOTD, and you tell yourself this is real, and you’ve made it!
Then you get mullered every week, and Alan Hansen’s pointing out how shit your defence is, and on Monday Night Football Gary Neville’s drawing lines showing what a donkey your centre forward is… and all of a sudden you can’t buy a point and you haven’t even scored for 5 games, and it’s only October and already the bookies aren’t accepting bets on you going down. And there’s another 7 months to go before you play anyone you can beat (apart from in the FA Cup, but then you’re everyone’s tip for a ‘giant’ killing because you’re playing the reserves to focus on the league, and your big money Lithuanian panic transfer window signing doesn’t even understand the magic of being repeatedly kicked up in the air by a plasterer from Nantwich on a cowfield in the arse end of nowhere. On a cold January afternoon)
Until finally around this time of year the relegation is confirmed (and it’s only taken this long because there’s 4 other teams who are equally as shit as you. One of which is Sunderland, because it always is, but they’ll escape somehow) And you act disappointed, and you might even throw the remote control as an act of defiance, but your heart isn’t really in it. And your best players will leave, and the manager gets sacked (the same one that you declared undying love for just 12 months earlier) and then you undergo rebuilding because you can’t afford the wages.
And then it starts again. And despite all this, you’d give anything to win the Championship and go up because this time it’ll be different.
Jeez, I hate being a football fan. It’s fun at the time, but it’s the after effects, the self loathing. I could give it up if I wanted to, but why should i, it’s only myself I’m hurting.
Stay in the Championship, with an aim of winning more games than you lose but ultimately losing in the playoffs and avoiding the need for all that nastiness. It’s the future.