[Archived] Today I Fell Out Of Love With Football

[riverside returns]

Well said Cletus.

We are Rovers, yes we get hammered by teh big boys but we are a club with a heart and a soul and not in massive debt waiting for the inevitable bang when the money stops flowing and the club stops exisiting. It is a pleasure to be in the big league and to have won major trophies in our recent history. It is really all about surviving for us and enjoying a spectacular cup run now and then.

When we won two weeks ago, all was rosy in the garden, now, after chelsea, all is bad. Not at all!!!

Enjoy being a Rover and forget the uneven playing field. Life could be worse, you could be a Clarrot or a stanley fan!

[mhead]

If you want to follow a team that usually does not get beaten follow Barca or the scum. When they get beat it is a national disaster.

Try losing at Shrewsbury(2-6 ?) or the famous Palace play-off defeat. There felt like no hope. Now its incremental improvement on little

money and seeing the Dingles in their place!

Barmy army and DTC.

[ihateburnley]

I appreciate the feeling of depression when people look at the table and see the same 4-7 teams dominating at the top of the Premiership year after year, but these people need to look at the bigger picture. English football is MUCH bigger than 'the big four'. It often feels like everyone follows the bigger clubs these days but when you look at the attendances down the divisions you will find this certainly isn't the case - indeed attendances are on the up.

Football has never really worked whereby every club is on 'an even playing field' since it started. At various points in history there's been clubs that have enjoyed periods of dominance and the game of football just adapts to what the majority want. I have no doubt that over the next few years there will be some rules brought in that limits the dominance a club can have based on finances alone.

The problem Rovers have is that we are a big club in a small town. We always have been and we always will be. For our wider appeal to increase we would need more external finances pumped in, which is what many people argue is what created the gulf in the first place. The alternative is that we accept that we will never get crowds over 28k average, because the town simply doesn't support this. But there's no problem with that - look at the likes of Burnley, Bolton, Preston, Blackpool, Oldham etc etc that are in the local area and depend on local support - compare them to us and we should be eternally grateful of everything we have right now. We are 10/15/20 years ahead of these clubs in terms of finances/stadia/youth academy/general structure and we have won more over the years than most of them put together.

As a town we should be comparing ourselves to the likes of the above, it's only because our club has been so successful that we perhaps naively compare ourselves to the likes of Aston Villa, Everton and Spurs.

[Sandiway Blue]

15 years you say? Hmmmm I make that what, 1994? So basically you started supporting us when we were up at the top and had all the cash, rather like the Chelsea's etc do now? Of course it was fine for us to spend cash whenever we wanted whilst others around us struggled, but now the tide has changed you're crying like a baby.

Get a bloody grip, things have been a hell of a lot worse than they are now for Rovers fans.

Especially those of us old enough to remember the late 70`s right up to the late 80`s when we didn`t have a pot to p*ss in and was REALLY struggling.

[American Rover12]

off topic but I went to plus 1 you ihateburney not -1.