End of the season report

Last night, the domestic season drew to a close, when Fulham beat Brentford 2-1 after 120 minutes of poor quality football.

It was 368 days since the Championship season began back on August 2nd.

It has been quite a ride. And one we will never forget.

It will be remembered for the season, at least in the Prem, with two mid-season breaks, one planned and the other not so.

As a Norwich fan, this season, especially since the restart, has been very painful, and joyless. One goal scored in nine league games, and few other shots on goal. 21 points and 26 goals says everything. As a team, Norwich wasn’t good enough, made too many average teams look like Brazil 1970.

So, bear the above in mind when I write about this season. The one just finished.

I am glad it is over.

Before the lockdown I watched some games, but every MOTD. Since it returned I watched most games and no MOTD. Not one. The avalanche of games and goals meant that it all became meaningless. It was bad enough following the games I watched, sometimes three in one evening. All merged into one.

Up to the return and the start of lockdown, football and its TV coverage has all been about “events”: Super Sunday, Monday Night Football, Friday night football. And so on. With two hours build up, two hours analysis after, a 90 minute game could take six hours to get through. If you watched all that, I only ever watched the games. But I did enjoy the build up, on Twitter and on BBC sport website. But with three games, kicking off at four in the afternoon, next one at six and the final one at eight, there was no build up, just bang, bang, bang!

The lack of build up, especially for the second and third games meant by the end of the night, it felt like being punch drunk, games flew by, night after night, week after week. And then the season ended. And it was like the lockdown.

Games had no fans of course. I had the sound turned down, or had the fake Sky Crowd effect on, and was OK. Even the cut out figures, banners and scarves made it look OK. And once the slow start in terms of tempo was over, games were played pretty much like as before, at the home team’s ground, though statistics show that without fans there was little advantage to playing at home, as away teams won a higher percentage of games.

I was doubtful that the restart would be any good, or safe, but I was proved wrong. After a few early positive tests in the build up to restarting and in the opening week, after that it was fine. Players began to celebrate as before, even without fans.

And without fans is the important part. WSC this months says that football has been stripped to bare basics, nothing other than the game, 22 players, 5 subs to be used, and little time for the added value that TV has brought. Will we ever want to go back? There is no passion driving on teams from the stands, no roar when the ball goes in the net, so “ooohhhh” when a shot is missed or saved. Just pick up the ball and move on.

Outside the Premier League, football isn’t viable without fans. Championship might survive, some teams will, but many won’t. If there is to be no fans for months, maybe even the whole of next season, then it won’t finish. Some leagues below the EFL won’t start until fans are allowed into grounds, as it really isn’t viable. But players have to be paid, bills have to be paid, and no income is coming in. Clubs will either have to come to agreements with players under contract to suspend contracts, or reduce wages, or the clubs will become insolvent and fold. Dover Athletic announced that beyond this month it cannot go on as players refuse to take a 20% pay cut.

There are professional footballers outside the EFL, making enough money not to have a “proper” job, but without football, they can’t pay their bills either. Hundreds, thousands of footballers also face ruin.

A pandemic was always likely to happen, at some point, and the fundamental problems with the game became laid bare. There is enough money in the game for every club to be protected, every player to be paid, it needs the money at the top to filter down. Which won’t happen. The Prem will return on or about September 12th, TV money will roll in, bills and wages will be paid. Heck, talk is of hundreds of millions to be spent on players over the summer, as if there was no change.

It needn’t be this way. But since the mid-80s, football has been about money, and the top clubs getting more and more of it. And keeping it. And will continue to do so. Ask a Liverpool fan if they think their club should support Blackpool, Wigan or Tranmere instead of buying a third choice left back, you know what the answer would be. Money no longer trickles down the league ladder with big clubs buying from small er ones, at least in England. Premier League clubs buy from all over the world, because it appears that buying a home-grown player is more expensive than buying from elsewhere.

Over the 27 years of the Premier League, all amateur grounds could have been bought and saved with just a few percent of TV deal money skimmed off the top. But that was never an option, enriching themselves, at whatever the cost. And the smaller clubs in the Prem getting bagfulls of fifty quid notes to go along with the Ponsi scheme, which keeps the rich, rich and out of reach from the rest.

And football without fans on the terraces and in the stands isn’t the same. They are part of the matchday experience for TV fans as well as for those who go to games. No consideration is ever given to the fans; matches switched, sometimes with little notice, to satisfy TV who, in fairness, pay top dollar for that. But getting to the other end of the country for an 11:30 kick off on a Sunday, or on Boxing Day when there are no trains or public transport, clubs don’t give a shit. Mostly.

In the future, football needs to consider fans. And really ask, we have representation at clubs and in football administration, so they can ask fans what their decisions would mean, to us. Acknowledge that we are every bit as important as the players and managers in the whole package that is sold to TV, especially overseas where they can feel by the passion and noise, what games mean to us. Until fans are part of the decision making process, things won’t change. I fear nothing will change, we will be just happy to get back inside a stadium and cheer our team on that we won’t notice the dozens of clubs that didn’t make it back to normal.

I am lucky, in that I got a sense of perspective 15 years ago when I nearly went bankrupt, had to give up my season ticket and nearly lost my home. When I could, I went back, and still do. I watch games on TV, when it suits me, not just because they’re on. I might give up sports on TV again. I survived before, listening to the radio and watching MOTD. I get to see the action, the goals, just not as it happens, and not having to pay £30 a month either.

I support Norwich, and last season was a heck of a ride, it was stressful, but we came through and got promoted as champions. This season didn’t go well, and got worse and worse. We are relegated, but time will pass, players will leave, others will come in, the new season will start and we will forget how sit we were for those nine games. But, I for one, will not get depressed, not about being relegated, about being one of the worse teams in PL history. It isn’t everything in my life, just about everything is more important than football, and the fact that some players are paid £400,000 or more a week and people who filled shelves as the pandemic raged at its worse get minimum wage should not be forgotten, and I hope it isn’t, that shelf-fillers, care workers, delivery drivers are all more important and deserve to be paid more than the lowest, least experienced, least skilled professional footballer.

We can live without football, after all, but we can’t live without food, and the people who grow it, deliver it, work in our shops.