With 20 minutes of the EFL Championship season to go, Nottingham Forest were in the playoff spots. They had a 3 point and 5 goal cushion over Swansea City in 7th place. Then 6 goals went in across 2 games and everything fell apart. Matt from Forza Garibaldi and Sean and Steve from Bandy & Shinty try to make sense of it all and help each other come through the other side of a dreadful night of football. It’s good to talk.
In this episode we bring together three of the four founders of Bandy & Shinty as Sean Hockett, Phil Juggins and Steve Wright discuss the games so far, since the Championship returned to action, and the developing identity of Nottingham Forest under Sabri Lamouchi. We also talk to Sean about his artwork that has been a feature around the ground since the restart and how it helps to connect the players and fans at a time when we can’t be there to support the team.
Steve Wright looks at the developing identity under Sabri Lamouchi and wonders whether this is the beginning of something special for Nottingham Forest.
I have talked on the podcast about the sense of confidence I have felt as football has restarted, but I think that in reality it is actually something more than that. What I really feel about Lamouchi’s Forest is more akin to contentment, happiness. This is something new for me, I have long wrestled with many aspects of both the game and the part we play within it, but recently I have felt much more at peace, at least with my club.
I have always made a big play of the need for a football club to have an identity. At times, this has been conflated with the specific way that I would like to see Forest develop on and off the pitch, but it has always mattered more to me that the club has a clearly defined identity than specifically that it is the one that I prefer. Sabri Lamouchi has managed to put something in place with remarkable speed that provides us with the cornerstone on which to build and it is the prospect of that journey that I am now enjoying, whether we achieve promotion this summer or not.
I am not naïve enough to assume that this is now a long-term vision that will feed a consistent strategy for the development of the club, it is fragile and could easily be lost, but there is finally hope that we are on the right path after years of rudderless travel. We are demonstrably different to the Forest we have watched over the last few years. Lamouchi has quickly instilled a personality into his squad, a determination and focus on a shared goal that has been sadly lacking in recent years. Some stable leadership and decision-making can now build on that.
A warning. I am going to talk about Brentford. I know that the relationship between Forest and Brentford fans has not been great over the past couple of years, but they are an excellent example of a club that knows what it is and has followed a consistent strategy to improve over time. Financially they are a small club, supported by a wealthy owner and a recruitment strategy that has seen them consistently buy low and sell high. Obviously, it requires knowledge and experience, not just words, to deliver, but Brentford have stayed true to their long-term plan and not been distracted by selling their best player or losing their Head Coach. They build that into the plan.
Brentford have a clearly defined way of playing, a very attractive way of playing too, that remains consistent through changes in the coaching staff. They are able to recruit to that style, knowing what they need for different positions on the pitch, and keep a tight squad of around 20 players that ensures their limited resources are all on the pitch contributing. With a tight budget, they have closed their own youth system, a potentially controversial move, and have instead focused their attention on scouting. Their geographical location means they have access to a pool of players that is not able to make it at the elite clubs and can provide a second chance to those just below the mark.
Each year without fail, they sell at least one leading player but they do not miss a beat. Last summer it was Neal Maupay, bought for £1.6M from St-Etienne in July 2017, sold in August 2019, 41 goals later, for £20M. Ollie Watkins, who also arrived in July 2017, for a reported fee of around £1.8M from Exeter, has stepped into the void with 23 goals in 40 league starts. None of this is easy, nor can it guarantee success, but by having confidence in their scouting and keeping their resources tight so that they get to play and improve, Brentford have continued to move forward.
I am not saying we need to do what Brentford are doing, that is not the point. Another season the model club was Swansea, another time it was Southampton. This is not about looking at a successful club and copying what they do, that would not work. It is about finding your own identity, planning your own strategy, appointing the people you think have the skills and experience to deliver and having the confidence to let them put it into practise.
What Lamouchi has done at Forest looks nothing like Brentford, but it does look a fair bit like Forest. Over time it would be great to see us have the ball more and play it with more confidence, especially at home where it is “sacrilege” for the opposition to have more possession. You sense from the manager’s interviews he would like that too. Our best teams, however, were built from the back and counter attacked with pace and precision. Strong, no nonsense defenders prioritised clean sheets and then gave the ball to the better footballers, who could play.
Whereas Brentford are ideally suited to focusing their player development on older age groups dropping out of other academies, Forest have always brought through a core group of their own. It gives them an opportunity to shape them as people as well as players. It is a miracle that Gary Brazil has made our academy thrive under the difficult circumstances he has worked through, a great example of trusting talented people to do their jobs over time. It has provided money and players over the years and Worrall, Cash, Yates and of course, Dawson provide a vital core to Lamouchi’s determined, focused and ambitious squad identity.
Sabri Lamouchi celebrated the anniversary of his appointment just last week. It is too early to tell whether he has just been very successful at bringing his own personality to bear on his squad, or whether this will form part of a greater vision for the club. If this developing identity is as precarious as the position of a Head Coach in the Championship then it may be nothing more than a false dawn, but it does feel like we have an opportunity to begin shaping a new future for the club.
This is where my new sense of contentment comes from. I am enjoying watching Lamouchi mould this squad into a lean and focused unit and I am excited to see how we build on the foundations he is putting in place, both with him and beyond. The experience of a football fan is built from three elements, glorious individual moments, the ups-and-downs of a season and the broader narrative of a club through time. For years, Forest fans have lived off the scraps of moments, but now we have the enjoyment of a season long drama and the hope of a journey worthy of the grander narrative of Nottingham Forest.
Merci Lamouchi, je suis content.
In episode 5 of the podcast, Simon Bristow, David Marples and Steve Wright discuss the return of Championship football as Nottingham Forest prepare to play Sheffield Wednesday in their first competitive game for 3 months.
Steve Wright says this is no time to be tinkering around the edges, the EFL needs to start thinking radically about a viable future for the game.
There has been criticism of Financial Fair Play (FFP) ever since its first implementation. While purporting to improve the financial sustainability of football clubs, it has felt in practise more like an attempt to further secure the positions of those at the top and prevent late entrants from breaking through.
The precarious financial nature of many clubs outside of the Premier League, however, does mean that something is required to ensure that football can thrive as a coherent and sustainable pyramid.
The recently published Deloitte’s Annual Review of Football Finance 2020 suggested that some sort of limit needs to be put on wages in the English Football League (EFL), explaining that a salary cap of 70% of revenue would have reduced operating losses for Championship clubs in 2018/19 by £308M.
The problem with a cap based on a club’s revenue is that it creates a huge gap in competitiveness between clubs that have been in the EFL long term and those recently relegated from the Premier League, with their associated Parachute Payments.
This type of cap would further extenuate the problem highlighted earlier, that the financial rules would effectively create a closed shop, reducing the upward mobility of EFL clubs.
A better approach might be to create a wage cap based on two key elements, a maximum wage for any individual player and a maximum number of players in an EFL senior squad.
As an example, for the Championship, this might be set at a maximum weekly wage of £10,000 for any individual player and a maximum senior squad size of 25 players. This would give each club a senior wage bill of up to £13M (not allowing for other employment costs such as employers’ NI).
In the current context, those numbers might appear quite shocking, especially bearing in mind that some players in this league currently earn more than £60k a week and the average is reported to be upwards of £8k.
In addition, when Nottingham Forest suffered a transfer embargo for breaking FFP rules in 2014 they were restricted to signing players on free transfers and to a maximum weekly wage of £10k, as a punishment.
Given the state of finances in the EFL it is perhaps better to look at the wider context outside of football than to compare with the current position, which is clearly unsustainable.
According to the ONS, the median weekly salary for a full time employee in April 2019 in the UK was £585. That means that £10,000 a week would still represent 17 times the median wage in the country, which does not feel too bad for a second division footballer.
In 2018/19 Forest had a wage bill of £36.3M and an EBITDA (Earnings before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation) of £(25.6)M. Reducing the wage bill for the senior squad to around £13M would still see the club, which is fairly large for the league, making losses, so if anything maybe these numbers aren’t radical enough.
A maximum weekly salary of £7,500, which would create a senior wage bill of around £10M a year, might be more realistic. This could be reviewed periodically alongside the wider economic environment and a new level set if appropriate.
With Championship football due to return shortly, clubs and fans are already starting to think about a return to normal, including in the way they spend money and accumulate players, but is it feasible now to return to what was once considered normal?
We have been hearing for years of record wage bills and record losses at Championship football clubs and there comes a point where we have to say enough is enough.
A thoughtfully implemented cap on spending can protect the long-term sustainability of our clubs and ensure that we have a competitive league that is unpredictable and entertaining to watch.
There will remain issues that need to be resolved around the transition between the Premier League and the Championship, given the financial disparity that exists there, but the Premier League must not simply push this down.
The EFL, and the clubs playing within it, needs to find its own leadership and direction to grasp a problem that threatens its very survival.
For too long, too many have looked enviously up at the money in the top flight and been unprepared to challenge their own status quo. Now is the time for that to stop and for radical discussions to take place about what the future of English football should look like.
David Marples and Matt Oldroyd discuss the @NFFC40 Twitter event, what it’s all about and what to keep an eye out for as we head towards a big weekend in the history of Nottingham Forest.
As we talked to Danny Rhodes in the last episode of the podcast last week, I thought I would share this review of his novel Fan for those who have not come across it before. I wrote this review on the book’s release back 2014 but I hope that by including here it might encourage others to seek it out now.
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The opening chapter of Fan, the new novel from Grantham born author Danny Rhodes, made me feel like this might be a book for Nottingham Forest fans of a certain age. I followed my team to Wembley to see them lift the League Cup, I was at the City Ground when we bade farewell to Brian Clough, Highbury when Brian Rice became a legend and I was at Hillsborough when a beautiful Spring day turned into a nightmare and as a teenager I came face to face with death on an awful scale. Later I even sat behind Clough at Eton Park as we both supported his son Nigel in his first steps into management. The fictional John Finch walked many of the same roads that I trod myself in real life.
It isn’t just about a personal history of following Forest, however, there is a wider social history in these pages that will resonate with a much broader audience. All football fans in the 1980’s, before Italia ’90, the Premier League and prawn sandwich hospitality, were impacted by the emphasis on control rather than safety of football crowds and the chapter on the Bradford fire will cause all fans to bristle with anger. And whilst football is a major backdrop these events also coincided with the Thatcher government, the Miners’ Strike and huge social change in Britain.
There is also a fierce human energy that drives the book forwards through a series of short, snappy chapters that keep the pages turning and emphasise the desperate emotion of a man overflowing with demons. The football is a backdrop but John Finch is really facing two points of crisis and transition, ones that we all recognise. In 1989 the safe and familiar environment of his youth is falling away and he is wondering what lies ahead of him, old friendships coming to an end and Hillsborough bringing the reality of death crashing into the experience of previously indestructible youth. Whilst in 2004 he is faced with another major change, a partner who wants to settle down and start a family, but he cannot provide a solid future for a potential wife and kids when his past is still unresolved.
Finch heads back to his home town of Grantham to face his demons, but it’s messy. He has to see the world through other people’s eyes as well as his own, has to learn to accept who he was and who he is now and has to acknowledge that life isn’t straightforward, answers are not perfect, the world does not revolve around him and everyone is just trying to make the best of it in whatever way they can. The narrative glides between these two periods of time as Finch tries to bring proper closure to his first departure so that he can leave again more able to move on into the responsibility of adulthood. It is an emotional human story that will appeal to anyone who has mourned lost youth and feared the responsibility of family life.
As a football fan it is the story of a game that has also had to face great change and has done so imperfectly. The warnings upon warnings that built up to death on a horrific scale at Hillsborough are devastating. Why did it take so long for anything to change? Why did the football authorities, the clubs, the government and the media seek to criminalise and dehumanise football fans, determined to control rather than protect? Why did the fans themselves not refuse the cages of death they were forced into each week and also refuse the violence within their own ranks?
In the end it took the loss of 96 innocent lives in Sheffield to make change happen and much of it has been good – the ability to watch football safely should never be under-valued, the past never forgotten – but in amongst it something significant has been lost. The changes have been used to increase prices, to sanitise atmosphere, to commercialise football and to replace the passion of labour with the wealth of capital. Football has been cleansed and as a result sterilised.
In his closing acknowledgements Rhodes calls for the game to be given back to the fans. It is an appealing statement but also a broad one that has all sorts of interpretations and implications. It is difficult to pin down, it’s messy, just like John Finch’s journey through his past and his tentative steps forward into an uncertain future. It is good that the game has moved away from its violent past, but it also needs to take some time to reflect on what it has become and where its future lies. Football is about the fans, but fans are a diverse group with different needs and all need to be considered.
The best writing stays with you, makes you think well beyond closing the back cover. Fan does that on two levels; life and football. What else is there?
We catch up with Danny Rhodes, the author of Fan, a semi autobiographical novel that hinges upon two major events in the Nottingham Forest psyche – the Hillsborough disaster and the death of Brian Clough. We talked about writing, growing up as a Forest fan in the 1980s and how football and the fan experience has changed over the years.
In the midst of these strangest of times football finds itself in a conflicted state.
There can be little doubt that while sport matters it is not significant against the backdrop of a deadly pandemic. But still many of us feel the loss of the ritual of filling stadia each week to follow our football team.
Football’s absence, however, does have some refreshing consequences. It’s brought about a drastic reduction in the hyperbole of the mundane and the trivial, less incessant chatter about tedious superstars and respite from the saturation of a sport that never stops being pumped into us every single day of the week, every month of the year.
Still there is no doubt football is enchanting. I particularly adore what sits around the game; the community that football fosters and the simple pleasures of meeting in the train stations, the pubs and the concourses before a match. Simple things that have been taken from us.
And I miss raising my arms aloft and singing at the maximum volume my lungs will allow, the heightened roar as our team surge forward and losing myself in the bedlam of a goal scored. These are the moments that lead me to devote so much time, energy and money to it.
Outside of this, however, there are parts of football I have begun to despise.
For a year or two now I have become more extreme in my views that football is treating me like an idiot. The spread of Covid-19 has served to strengthen that thought.
Chapter 1 – The Rising Tide
The sheer love of my football club combined with the camaraderie that comes with it have so far trumped any doubts about the side to football that I loathe by a long way, but recent weeks have undoubtedly left me in more of a quandary.
The notion that football supporters are customers is not a new phenomenon. I’d suggest that most of us realise this and sign up on the basis that the good outweighs the bad in this regard. Where I do possess severe reservations is in how match going supporters are increasingly being taken for granted; our loyalty is abused and our commitment is disregarded.
I don’t think it’s fair to aim this solely at individual clubs; the issues rise above them largely albeit I would question whether they could do more to fight the corner of their supporters. Nor do I think these matters exist as much further down the leagues where football has not been blighted by vast sums of money being gathered and spent.
It was actually the weeks most recent to the eventual shut down of English professional football that I felt most ill at ease. As Forest tentatively solidified a play-off position and even threatened to trouble the automatic placings, our schedule was shredded by TV broadcasters eager to treat their audiences to every blow of the Championship promotion race. Such was the upheaval that in February five of our seven fixtures were selected for TV and it continued into March and would have in April too.
In addition to this away ticket prices, which appear to have risen significantly this season in The Championship, were making supporters dig deep. Our two away games on sale prior to the suspension were Sheffield Wednesday (£33) and Derby (£37). Notably, having been so eager to strip us of our money initially there is no word yet on offering us it back to us.
Some will say such examples are a consequence of a promotion race and should be expected. Some will argue that nobody is forced to attend games rescheduled for TV or pay for expensive tickets.
I would contest that this is not only ignorant to the mind-set of a football fan but part of a wider problem of acceptance which blights the game. Football supporters who follow their team everywhere and anywhere are deeply invested and often hell bent on supporting their side irrespective of circumstances. It is far from simple to switch off from it especially when it’s tantamount to cutting your nose off to spite your face.
To demonstrate this, if I don’t turn up at Derby away in protest at the scandalous ticket price I know there are hundreds who will take my place. My absence is irrelevant and I have missed out on being part of something I love dearly. Our devotion is often a gun to our heads.
Such devotion fans should be supported and treated better. Fans too should be given a better platform to raise these concerns. Much of what exists now is little better than lip service.
And still these matters have continued to mount up. Every season the ask seems to get bigger and new initiatives are devised to make it more difficult for your average supporter.
There was the ill-judged line from the former EFL chief Shaun Harvey about making the furthest away trips midweek because these games attract less fans. This was followed by the red button showing all midweek games. We also now endure greater privileges being afforded to non-domestic supporters which is increasingly impacting on the time of games; our cup game at Chelsea being moved to the Sunday to cater for ‘overseas broadcasters’ is one recent example. And let’s not pretend that domestic games being played in the Far East or the States has gone away for good – give it time and that proposal will be back.
Those that go to games; those that do so at such expense and hassle are penalised to cater for a TV audience.
I have no malice towards those who choose to consume their football from their living room or who wish to follow from abroad (credit to those supporters and networks in far flung places who wake up at stupid times to watch their team play in GMT) but I am wondering more and more why I and many others are being disrupted to such an extent to service this requirement.
I do, of course, know the answer. It’s because collective TV subscriptions are worth more than gate receipts at the higher levels and it’s these higher levels of football that generate the money and thus matter considerably more. And this is the problem. Loyalty gets you nowhere in football.
Those of us trudging up and down the country, handing over considerable sums of money for season cards and match tickets are worthless to those responsible for the English game. The Premier League, the FA and EFL do not make their riches from this unwavering but small part of the ‘football family’ and we therefore matter little to them.
It is somewhat ironic that supporters inside stadiums are, however, a vital part of experience that these bodies package up and sell to Sky Sports, BT and broadcasters globally. It isn’t much without us. Yes, there is still a game able to be played but it’s a vastly reduced spectacle.
Football without fans is nothing, remember.
What frustrates me is that this has happened before our very eyes and we have let it. It continues to get worse and still it goes unchallenged. Probably because a fair chunk of the same match going fans still subscribe to these broadcasters and happily indulge in Super Sunday and other such gimmicky obscenities.
We will scream blue murder about our own team’s game being moved but will relish the prospect of tuning in for Arsenal v. Newcastle on a Monday night. And we do so without a single thought for the Geordies being expected to travel the length of the country on a work day to suit our often casual interest.
Football in this country thrives on the partisan atmospheres but as supporters we often fail to see past it and stand together on issues such as this. We think of our own individual grievances on TV scheduling and ticket prices but rarely do we think about how all football fans are impacted by these things. Individually we are a mardy Twitter feed for a few hours, a sad spray painted bedsheet or a lone chant. Hopeless.
Together, if we could stomach it, we would have more joy being heard. And we could have a chance at righting some wrongs.
Admittedly there has been more and more anger directed at Sky Sports during games and their response is to muffle the sound so their audience doesn’t hear thousands of frustrated supporters venting anger. It’s a neat metaphor for English football fans this don’t you think? – Ignored.
A question remains on whether we should go further. In Germany and elsewhere in Europe supporters have risen up against injustices which include Monday night games. They, together as a united supporter network, rallied and fought this. In extreme examples they boycotted games. And they won.
Similarly they have battled back against the notion of clubs like RB Leipzig who have procured their sponsors a place in the Bundesliga. What helps German clubs is they mostly operate on the 51-49 ruling which means supporters retain a majority say in their own team and fan movement is a real powerhouse as a result. Could you imagine how that suggestion would go down in England? It would be laughed at.
A man called Clough once uttered these words:
‘’We feel we should have a voice in running our industry – and I mean ours – I don’t mean mine. Because football belongs to everybody’’
This phrase belongs to another age but is still used today. I fear the meaning of it, however, is becoming lost. We like the sound of it but I can’t help think that we have surrendered our say.
Chapter 2 – Deep Flaws
I will be the first to admit that I didn’t ever hold much hope of English football being able to free itself from the stranglehold it finds itself in. And I still don’t. Yet the pandemic, for all its horrible consequences, has exposed some deep flaws within the game which may, strangely, provide some motivation for change.
The game is in a right old state. There are no simple escape routes and decision makers have got a very difficult situation to resolve. A situation that is in part their own making. And I worry, however unprecedented this virus is, that football has compromised itself through its own greed.
I am not suggesting they should have foreseen the spread of a deadly virus but it should maybe have given greater thought to selling its soul to every organisation and chancer who wants to get rich off the game or get their moment in the spotlight. And even still the money pours out nearly as fast as it pours in, perhaps quicker, in a never ending quest for dominance. Dominance for the best and richest ‘product’ which investors and broadcasters will pay the most for.
It doesn’t consider how to keep itself sustainable in case the boom turns to bust or how it can spread this vast wealth to the real benefit of smaller clubs and the revolution of grassroots football. Instead the rich and powerful get ever more rich and powerful. That is until, like now, the game and subsequently the money stops flowing – suddenly paying out these ludicrous sums of money seems a bad idea, especially with the possibility of your sponsors and your broadcasters enquiring about getting their money back.
Put bluntly it’s very possible that football needs to come back, and quickly, because if it does not it will implode.
It’s suckled on the teat of its broadcasters and its sponsors way too hard. Big clubs have loaded up on ‘assets’ like a panic buying cock in Asda. Players they do not need but can’t let anyone else have. Further down, the top flight clubs wonder whether to push themselves way over the limit to bust into that gold mine. And those circling in the moat that is The Championship are so desperate for a place at the feast they risk the financial stability of the club and breaking financial rules to scramble across the drawbridge when it drops every May.
Every season I am irritated by the description of The Championship play-off final in a monetary sense. The ‘£500 million game’ or whatever sum it is these days; it seems to go up by £150m every season. Apart from the supporters nobody stops to think about what this single 90 minutes is actually about, how much it means to visit Wembley as a player and a fan and what joy victory would bring. Most of us don’t give a damn about the money; we’re thinking about how we got there, a jolly in some new places and going toe to toe with the best in the country. But instead it’s sold as who will get rich.
It’s so wrong. Football in and around the Premier League has lost its way in its own quest for power and a desire to make money.
Yet still clubs are readily falling back on taxpayer bail-outs in response to this pandemic. This did lead to the rare sight of collective fan pressure working as clubs rallied back with sincere apologies amid big questions being asked.
Furloughing is especially a delicate matter at Championship level and a signpost to how unsustainable the race for promotion is. Each club that have relied on the Government Job Retention Scheme will have their reasons and some may be justified. But if these same clubs are back spending ridiculous amounts on new acquisitions in the months ahead then they deserve our disdain. And it will be important they get both barrels. We mustn’t lose this thought in the glee of a new multi-million pound striker.
I hope this enforced watershed will give rise to us all being a little more conscious about how our football club operates. That wages outstripping our total turnover by half is not ambition, its recklessness. And that, as supporters, we should covet a role as guardians of our clubs to protect their long-term interests and not short-term aspirations.
If it doesn’t we have wasted this opportunity.
The entire football industry will lose out due to Covid-19 but those down the leagues will be hardest hit. Those dependent almost entirely on gate receipts face a particularly tough period – not only will they be unsure how they survive but their prospects do not appear to be a big part of this debate. Focus sadly sits with whoever will be backstroking like Scrooge McDuck in the Premier League and Champions League money pits next season.
Andy Holt, owner of Accrington Stanley, has made some persuasive points to question how unfeasible resuming the season is from his perspective. With no supporters permitted but many of the usual costs involved with holding a game in place clubs, especially those with little to play for, face further hardship. Coupled with this, furloughed staff will be required and their salaries, previously met substantially by the Government, will somehow need to be financed. They just cannot afford it. But does anyone in power care about that? A top level cash injection has been mooted but will no doubt be way down pecking order.
If a decent chunk of Premier League clubs didn’t fancy paying their own staff during the pandemic will they suddenly feel obliged to chuck several million into the lower leagues?
While the top levels fret about reimbursing broadcasters I’m nervous where months of supporter-free football leaves clubs further down who are almost fully reliant on gate receipts. And this applies to clubs outside of the Football League too.
Of course there are very valid reasons why the 2019/20 season should return. Joe Worrall demonstrated how important it is to him from a career perspective and various clubs, including Forest, have earned a right to challenge for achievements following a strong season. There would inevitably be a horrendous fall out from clubs being denied and the ramifications could be huge.
But as much as I want Forest to succeed I still can’t shake the idea that a resurrection of the 2019/20 this summer is unwise. That’s not to say it should be voided but to see whether it’s possible to pick it up somewhere down the line. The problem there is money once again will dictate that both 2019/20 and 2020/21 will need to be played out, by hell or high water.
A completed 2019/20 campaign could be a good thing I think but it’s dependent on so much and is a resolution the most important factor here? As the days go by plans to finish the campaign gather strength but also seem to get more preposterous. Widespread testing which could maybe be best used elsewhere, players like Sergio Aguero admitting some players are scared, the plan to imprison players away from families for a prolonged period and the latest talk being of relegation being scrapped from the Premier League due to the unfairness of neutral venues. This just seems like having your cake and eating it. Clubs want the money a completed season will bring but without any risk of losing access to the golden goose.
I can see the appeal of finishing the season and I can acknowledge why it should but I’m honestly not sure it is being done for the right reasons. And, in a climate where much of the country is having to be flexible and financially prudent, the upper end of football looks like it’s got no such plan to do the same.
Chapter 3 – Dead Behind The Eyes
Amongst those losing out in football it shouldn’t surprise anyone to think that fans will be hit once more. The reasons may be justified but I am expecting supporters to fall even further back in the list of priorities.
With the likelihood of behind closed door matches it is very likely that thousands and thousands of individuals are going to be due partial refunds for season tickets and match tickets they can no longer attend.
As identified in Chapter 2 our football clubs face an uncertain time and I would think most fans will have some understanding that ticket monies may not instantly be recoverable. But this can’t be all one way. Clubs can’t hold on to fan money indefinitely without some communication, for instance. This even applies to season ticket revenue collected for a 2020/21 campaign which remains very much in doubt, at least in the anticipated format. And many supporters would benefit from recouping some of their outlay in these tough times.
Will supporters be entitled to money back on matches not fulfilled? Or are we being enticed into the spectacle of having games streamed live for our pleasure and in agreement we don’t chase our money back? Some clubs may genuinely struggle to meet these refund obligations and where possible you’d think fans will try and support them. But hopefully this is approached openly and honestly. Rather than some blanket expectation that supporters will pick up the tab once more.
At Forest where admission prices have been fair combined with welcome initiatives like free entry to pre-season friendlies hopefully supporters will, where possible, take a reasonable position on this and a workable solution can be found.
Beyond this the thought of us being barred from stadiums for the finale of the season and probably beyond is deeply troubling. I will not argue with the justification of this, clearly large gatherings are going to be off limits for a while and no-one is going to question that. Yet, as already inferred, if football is shoehorned in out of necessity then it is fans who will pay the price.
You may have heard the Leeds fan on Talksport recently who was mocked by the presenters for suggesting that he would rather his team not get promoted if fans were not there to be part of it. I appreciate lots will not agree with this but I can sympathise with his view.
The prospect of this is crucifying to supporters. I feel perhaps the kinship and the emotion of being stood shoulder to shoulder with our fellow fans; the ride that we go on season after season come rain or shine, is something those at the top of the game have little knowledge of. That football for us is in no way a television event, nor is it about what league we play in or how successful we are.
And this is why I fear match going supporters are so misjudged. Forget the moans online about the latest defeat or not signing enough players; inside the football grounds across the country the allegiances, the relationships and the moments we share together are everything. Whether it’s a spanking at Gillingham or a last minute winner at Pride Park.
So don’t tell us that the return of football in any capacity is the most important thing. Because it’s not to all of us.
Using Forest as an obvious example, we had previously faced a thrilling end to the season. Promotion was possible, the play-offs loomed. God forbid maybe we might make a maiden trip to the new Wembley and banish that particular hoodoo.
Imagine the days that *potentially* lay ahead. Imagine the memories.
We haven’t just waited for such occasions, we’ve dreamt of them. Christ, we’ve even sobbed over them once or twice.
It appears to be an almost certainty that we won’t be there to see them if they happen. And if they don’t happen for Forest that’s not really the point, because they’ll be another team’s amazing moments that will be lost.
Cast your mind back and think about Collymore at Peterborough in ’93, Bart Williams against Reading in ’98, Osborn at Pride Park in 2015 or Cohen’s goal in 2017 that secured safety. Imagine those moments in an empty stadium; imagine not a single Forest supporter being present.
Think too about Jimmy Glass’ heroics for Carlisle to keep them in the Football League, Troy Deeney against Leicester in the play-offs or Aguero snatching the title for City at the death.
These incredible times are nothing without spectators. It is the outpouring of emotion and jubilation that define them and make them so special.
A friend of mine has just finished reading a book on South American football and its supporters. It contains a quote from a Uruguayan journalist named Eduardo Galeano which struck a chord, especially now:
‘’Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators.’’
My argument here isn’t that BCD games should automatically be ruled out, more that I suspect football’s decision makers can’t ever see how painful this is for many fans. They are blind. They are ruled by spreadsheets and legalities, not the deep romance that the game stirs up. It is why they see no issue in supporters being treated so poorly. For them I sense the return of football in empty stadiums this summer will be a resounding success.
I would be gobsmacked if a scenario that at least tries to put supporters first has even been strongly considered. Because football, which never stops telling us how important we are, has a habit of forgetting us.
Perhaps this is the best of a bad solution but the failure to pause and think is telling – governing bodies could use the opportunity to actively look at ways to put the season back to later in the year, maybe allowing fans to be present. To use this downtime to ease worries and strengthen the position of Football League clubs facing financial run and considering that, as explained in Chapter 2, indefinite BCD games are potentially catastrophic for them. And seriously put some thought into how financially crippled even the biggest clubs have become and how troubling that is.
Yet I don’t think any such ideas will be thought about nearly enough. We are also told why football has to return but it doesn’t seem to be on their radar to wonder why it shouldn’t. The increased health risks, the prospect of footballers being isolated from families at a worrying time, the burden it places on smaller clubs and Liverpool winning the league*. Plus a season finale that no-one is going to be part of.
For the broadcasters this will also be a victory. Daily matches screened to a fatigued nation and the best thing is they’ll have us where they wanted us all along. On our sofas. All time high viewing figures and no anti-Sky chants having to be edited out. Bliss.
We are being fed the line that screened games will lift a jaded football family as the Palace Chairman Steve Parish recently suggested in The Sunday Times. And perhaps they will but I can’t help but think once the novelty wears off months of football behind closed doors will become farcical and tedious. I have this suspicion many, especially those of us who would have otherwise been there in those empty stadiums, will start to feel detached from it. God forbid maybe find other things to do with our Saturday’s. And maybe that will bring longer term implications.
The immediate scenario is as dark as ever and there needs to be some talk at least of reforms that address how football is so far removed from its people and so rich yet teetering constantly on the edge of the cliff. I do not doubt there is no perfect immediate scenario but I feel that football, more than ever, needs to think outside its money box. Starting now.
The return of football this summer without its supporters would be nothing more than a zombie season. Upright and moving but dead behind the eyes.
Soulless.
But then again maybe that’s just the way it is these days.
Episode 2 of The Clinton Arms brings together Steve Wright from Bandy & Shinty, Simon Bristow of Our Glorious Banners and Harry Fish from Forza Garibaldi to discuss the ongoing situation with football being suspended and take an in depth look at the candidates for this season’s Player of the Year.
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