the random nature of football

This time last year you'd have had Leicester in that 'mini league'. Not long ago it would have been Stoke. In a couple of years it might be Everton. We might come back up and do a Watford. Champions League may cock up Leicester's season next year.

If success/failure was simply a function of financial clout then I would tend to agree with you.

As it is, I don't subscribe to a theory that says that in the seasons that we're out of the Premier League every PL club will spend their riches wisely and that none of the players we buy will turn out to be unheralded superstars.

In theory the PL clubs should pull away from the Championship clubs at a massive rate of knots, but it won't happen because it has never really happened (due to the vagaries of life, injuries, players getting older/retiring, duff purchases, player suspensions, managers being poached, managers going stale, dodgy referees, managers sacking their physio, managers thinking players like Grabban are worth ?7m etc etc)

In short, whilst I understand your point I just don't think that it is going to be the end of our footballing world if we go down, and in relative terms I don't see future survival as being materially harder than it has been this year (or was when Lambert brought us up). There will always be clubs that underachieve and end up towards the bottom and there will always be clubs that overachieve. There's no reason to assume that we will never be competitive again.

Posted By: CWC, Mar 3, 16:31:29