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If I didn’t want to believe the outcome of last season, I have certainly learned recently exactly what relegation means for our club. I have been on holiday for a few weeks and while away I relied on only the national newspapers to keep up with what was going on at the Boro. It really brought home to me that the Premier League is the be all and end all of football coverage in the press. Scouring most of the papers for any info on the Boro I was hard pressed to find even one scrap of news, bar the Downing transfer. I suspect that if he had signed for a foreign club or another Championship club then it may not have even been worthy of the ink but the move to Villa, a top 5 club, warranted a couple of columns.
I know that not a lot more may have been happening at our club but there was plenty of coverage of transfer rumours, whether true or not, for the 3 premiership new boys and all the other team plying their trade in the BIG league. We are no longer of interest to the journalists or editors, which is why that a return to the top table is vital at the first attempt. Other clubs, who could be perceived to be big, suffer from the same fate. Leeds, Forest, Leicester, Derby among others are the forgotten giants who don’t warrant any column inches because they languish outside the ‘EPL’ as it is often referred, despite regularly commanding bigger crowds than a lot of the teams in it.
The fans, but more importantly the club, must do all it can to return to the land of riches and even strive to emulate the fantastic years of semi finals, finals and European competition. Whether or not we can do it in our current financial situation remains to be seen, but we have bounced back previously so we must hope that we can repeat that fate. It will be much harder this time around but we must give it our best shot. Our fans deserve it. We endured a dismal last season; we must be given something to cheer and to dispel those memories.