Watching the "top" teams has been soul destroying

Having now seen us play Watford and Stoke in the last week I have found the experience profoundly depressing and in fact it is seriously diminishing my enthusiasm for the game.

Both will be challenging for auto promotion right up until the end of the season. Both can rightly point to the fact that their methods get results.

I can just about take the fact that we are currently second best to teams that would not long ago have been regarded as some of our least attractive and most winnable home games of the season. At the end of the day football is cyclical. They will have their moment and I am sure our time will come again.

What I found particularly depressing however is the way that this division has evolved so that to obtain success sides are now hell bent on filling their teams full of 6 foot 5 inch robotrons, hoofing the ball up to six foot plus pacy strikers and constantly hurling long throws into the box at every possible opportunity. The depressing thing is it seems to work and I can only see more sides following the model in future.

It is however dull as f**k and is not the reason that I became so hooked on football many years ago. The game is clearly evolving but not in a good way (at this level at least) If the trend continues I can only see crowds in general dwindling as nobody wants to watch that. Admittedly Stoke were not as bad as Watford but they came with a game plan to wear us down through a battle of attrition and it worked perfectly. The goal was predicted by all of us in the bar at half time who were unanimous that we would face an aerial bombardment and would be lucky to hold out. When it came it was not a surprise and nor was the fact they were able to hold out for a one nil.

Posted By: Jim, Mar 12, 11:36:06