This thread is for reporting and complaining about your club’s performances in the Championship, League 1, League 2, and below. Please note, this is a Premiership-Free Zone.
In other threads, posts concerning clubs in these leagues tend to get submerged by trivia relating to the Premier League and European football, matters which do not concern this Blackpool supporter as much as where our next three points are coming from.
We are in our second season in the Championship, having avoided relegation by a point in 2007/2008. The poor relation of this division, the club is definitely punching above its weight. There is no money to spend on players, salaries must be the lowest in the Championship, the ground redevelopment remains unfinished and the pitch is in a disgraceful condition.
Currently Blackpool lie 6 points above the drop zone (4 points if Southampton win their game in hand) and with home games to come against Plymouth and Notts Forest one would think we have every chance to survive. However, our home form is unimpressive (W5 D6 L9) so good results at Bloomfield Road are by no means a given.
Notwithstanding these statistics, I predict safety by a narrow margin.
Interest in this thread will be limited (perhaps too limited) but if it strikes the right note I’ll submit another for season 2009/2010.
A dismal season, with a manager who’s run out of ideas and so opted for endless bizarre changes of lineups and tactics, and an owner who’s still sticking by him. The play-offs are pretty much out of reach now, so all that’s left to hope for is beating Norwich next month. On the other hand, losing to them would get us a bit closer to a new manager.
I find the Championship amazing this season for the fact that the current three teams in the relegation zone are all former Premier League teams. Takes some real work to get yourself to the point of being TWO whole divisions below the top (witness the implosion at Leeds).
Leicester City are still hanging on to the top spot in League One. However, recent results, including yesterday’s dismal showing against Posh, are not very positive. It’s possible they will finish second; I am hoping that it is not possible that they will end up in the playoffs. I want to see Foxes back in the Premiership soon, so I can actually watch them play, rather than root for them from afar, as it were…
I’m a Swansea fan and on the whole fairly satisfied with our first season in the Championship for 20+ years.
We’re in eighth position and but for a humungus number of drawn games (19) we could have been in the playoff positions. Perhaps a little more adventure in our games and instead of settling for a draw and going for a win would - even if we’d lost half of the games - have moved us up the table.
However, like many teams with a smallish squad we have suffered badly with injuries and I think we’ve had the best of this season. I don’t see much hope for improvement from here on. We’re safe though from relegation (barring going into administration) as we have 58 points.
In your promotion year from League 1 our last game was against Blackpool at our ground, and you ran rings round us. Admittedly we stood a chance of the playoffs ourselves if we could have won so we did go all out for the win but we were second best that day.
I see our last game this season is at home to Blackpool, I’d like to think that we will get revenge for that 6-3 drubbing you gave us then, but we have just as much trouble playing teams from below us as from those above. And if Blackpool are still more or less where they are now they will have more to play for.
It was our seventh win hand running, and we made it ten out of ten by winning three playoff matches. I’m one of my club’s worst critics but we fully deserved to go up in 2007.
To be honest, I’d much prefer to play any team away from home right now. We try to play a passing game but the Bloomfield Road pitch doesn’t really allow it to flourish. Also, I think Blackpool’s poor home form has become a psychological issue with the players. That said, I hope we don’t go to the Liberty Stadium needing to win.
Like DSYoungEsq, I’m surprised by the number of former Premiership teams at the bottom of the Championship and lower - you could also have mentioned Oldham, Bradford, Swindon, and Wimbledon (now MK Dons), although admittedly some of them have been out of the top flight for a number of years now. Bradford is probably the most shocking one, in the Premier League this decade and now struggling to make a play-off place in division 4.
My team, Bristol City, briefly looked like making a late run for the play-offs, but as expected fell away, the draw at home to Cardiff probably ending our challenge. Incidentally, the late Cardiff equaliser in that game was the luckiest goal I’ve seen in a while - the ball ricocheted off a Bristol City player from a clearance and bounced straight to a Cardiff player in space, and the brilliant (but frustratingly error-prone) goalkeeper Basso then not only spilled the subsequent shot, but then failed to either get both hands on the ball or simply punch it out for a corner, allowing the Cardiff striker to force it home from a narrow angle.
Anyway, nobody is too worried about not making the play-offs this year, as it could easily have resulted in “doing a Derby”, possibly even worse. Having said that, Hull (who narrowly beat City out of the play-offs last year) and Stoke have shown what can be achieved with a small but determined squad. There is a new stadium in the pipeline which should vastly improve the capacity and facilities (currently 20,000, and none) at Ashton Gate, we can then make a concerted challenge to finally put Bristol on the map of Premiership football.
It is amazing the rapidity with which some teams descend into the depths of Hell (metaphorically speaking), having been among the lofty giants. One year, you are toasting your home draw with the visiting men of Arsenal, then a few years later, you have to travel on the road to such limelights as Rochdale.
I suspect that Cardiff will do the same for Swansea on Sunday. We do have a mathematical chance for the play-offs but as I mentioned above we’re down to the bare bones of a squad with key players either injured or playing with injuries.
The Cardiff v Swansea fixture is always a rather tasty one, and is usually a “bubble match”, the fans of the away side can only get into the ground by being bussed in on official coaches with police escorts. Add to that the game is starting at 11am so the police will hope to stifle any trouble before it starts.
Any trouble and next year the game will start at 8am so we’ll have to have the floodlights on for the beginning of the game:)
It isn’t obvious??? :eek:
Seriously, back in the 90’s, when I was finally able to regularly watch soccer here in America on television (on what was then called something like the Fox Sports regional network), I took up spending Saturday mornings (really early, like 7 or 8 am!) watching the then nascent Premier League (and the predecessor, the First Division). I like rooting for teams, it helps develop interest to have some group to get all excited about. At the time, America’s number one 'keeper, Kasey Keller, was between the pipes for Leicester. This made them a natural for a team to root for. When they scored Martin O’Neill as manager, that made it even better, because I liked his attitude. Thus was my allegiance born.
My sons, at the time, rooted for Liverpool, because they liked the fancy Carlsberg script on the shirts. Now, one of them is a Manchester United fan; he’s something of a front-runner lover. <sigh> You try to teach them by example, but I blame his mother, with whom he lives.
There’s no if about it, they are going up my friend and yes it will be a shock, not only to Dale fans but to the football world as a whole.
Rochdale are the most unsuccesful team in any of the leagues 4 divisions, they have been promoted just once in their 100 year history and were soon relegated back whence they came
I suspect they’ll suffer the same fate again but I hope not.
Rochdale (the Town) need something other than curry houses,KFCs, MacDs and a team in Div 1 might just be it.
Looks like this was pretty much bang-on, though we’ll have to wait and see about the last part :). I retain a fond hope that football violence is still diminishing - from what I can gather it is far better than the situation in the 70s and 80s, so there seems to be a chance that it will eventually peter out altogether. Whether that will be in my lifetime I don’t know.
Bristol City got a draw at home against fellow play-off hopefuls Preston. According to a friend who saw the game, both sides were awful, just relying on hoofing the ball to a big centre-forward (Adebola for City, John Parkin for PNE) and couldn’t hope to survive in the Premiership. I agree with this - it’s only a few short years since City were struggling to escape from the third division (can we agree to using first, second third divisions etc. instead of the new names, or will that be too confusing?).
Don’t fancy Blackpool’s chances much - I certainly don’t want to see them go down, but the same is probably true of Norwich and Southampton. Just shows what a competitive league it is.
As I suspected, Cardiff have pretty much put paid to our chances of a play-off place but of course the game will be remembered for the coin incident and not the football. The fact that it was a Cardiff “fan” responsible still doesn’t alter the fact we have our share of mindless idiots too. Most clubs seem to have a small minority that only go to football to cause trouble.
I’ve been going to football games since the early fifties and I honestly don’t remember incidents like that then. Perhaps my rose coloured spectacles prevent me from remembering.
Bristol City along with Swansea don’t seem to have enough to get into the first division* but I can’t see any of the clubs there would be even partly successful if they got promoted. Wolves probably are just about the best team but I can easily see them coming straight back down again.
Yes, there was an article in The Times (I think) recently suggesting that this may be the worst year in terms of “quality” in the second division, on the basis of average points-per-game achieved by the top team. In the past teams such as Reading and Bolton have won the league with over 100 points, and over 90 is the norm for the league champions, but it looks like this probably won’t be achieved this season after last night’s Brummie derby result.
Personally, I think this is a good thing - makes for a much more exciting climax to the season, certainly. Whether it means the league winners are consequently less well-equipped to succeed in the top flight, I don’t know - it’s probably the effect rather than the cause, anyway, if that makes any sense.
That’s 29 points on the road this season, a tally bettered only by the top 3 in the second division. I’m feeling a lot better after this result.
It looks like the current top 6 will constitute the final top 6 with only the finishing order to be decided. On current form, I’ve got to like Sheffield United’s chance of automatic promotion. At the wrong end of the table, Charlton are all but doomed and Southampton probably need to win all their remaining games to survive. The third relegation slot seems to be reserved for Norwich, Notts Forest, or Barnsley.
Commiserations to supporters of Ipswich, Bristol City, and Swansea. There’s always next season.
I’m not actually too disappointed, I would have settled for our position now at the start of the season.
What would upset me is if either Senor Martinez gets poached, or if we don’t improve next year. However, I’ve followed the Swans for a long time and the only predictable thing about them is the bad times generally last longer than the good.
and looking good for auto promotion.
