No tears, please ... the drop can be a joyous journey
YOU can see them now, close-ups of grown men and women sobbing as though their pet labrador has just bought it.
Destined to be on Sky’s closing credits, weeping because their team won’t be getting thumped by Manchester City next season.
Wailing because there’s a chance they might soon be winning more than the odd game.
Blubbing because they could be facing the prospect of having more possession than the opposition in future encounters.
Remember those adverts for a soft drink that had a particularly unusual taste?
The catchphrase to try and get you to drink the stuff ?
“What’s the worst that could happen?” The same should be said about relegation from the Premier League. What is the worst that could happen?
Well, you could go down again, like Sunderland are about to do, and plenty of others have done before them.
But even then, you will still be playing football with the aim of winning matches rather than just surviving them.
Ahead of yesterday’s match against Swansea, doomed West Brom had enjoyed the majority of the possession in just five of their 32 Premier League games.
More than likely, that will not be the case in the Championship next season.
In your first season after promotion, there is a novelty MESUT OZIL (right) will find no greater supporter than this column, but the more he turns it on so sublimely against weaklings such as CSKA Moscow, the more those who consider him just a beautiful flat-track bully will feel vindicated.
But performances like the one he produced on Thursday night show that one of those clubs who are guaranteed to be competing at the very top of their leagues missed a trick when not tempting him away from the Emirates. about the Premier League, a novelty about having Manchester United come to town, a novelty about a day trip to Anfield.
That is why Huddersfield fans can stomach a strike rate considerably less than one goal per game.
But the novelty has to wear off. Surely.
In an annal of football quotes, Danny Blanchflower’s most memorable one should have pride of place.
“The game is about glory. It is about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”
Impossibly romantic, for sure, but the philosophy should underpin the approach of each and every club. Of course, supporters are now brainwashed into believing the financial implications are what makes relegation from the Premier League so calamitous, so heinously unthinkable.
To the contrary, what relegation should be is a test of how well a club is run.
Stoke City has long been championed as a very wellrun club but that will be put to the test if they drop down a level.
How many of the contracts they have liberally handed out contain relegation clauses?
Relegation is a test on every level but rather than the disaster it is portrayed as, it should be a challenge.
On reflection, would Burnley fans have preferred to scrape into 17th place and earn Premier League survival at the end of the 2014-15 season rather than drop back into the Championship for a campaign that saw them lose just five of 46 games, score 72 goals and collect 93 points?
Yes, it does not always work out that way, but that season back at level two must have been pretty enjoyable.
And the most positive spin-off about relegation for every fan of whichever clubs go down is they will not have to stomach their manager banging on about 40 points being his team’s one and only goal.
So to the fans of the two clubs who join West Brom in being demoted, no tears please. You’re going to the Championship.
What’s the worst that could happen?