City's bitter romance with the Championship

[reddogkev]

Why do we struggle in this league?  There must be a clear reason, bigger than the current manager and the board, perhaps even bigger than SL.

For a city our size, why have we never become established in the league?  Even in the play-off year, we punched massively above our weight, and couldn't develop after losing to Hull.  The Championship soon cut us down to size, chewed us up and spat us back into League One.

This season is horrendous, offered so much at the start, and is now the usual struggle against the drop.  I'm sick of it.

It must stop, but how?  Even massive investment in the squad, and the developed stadium is offering little help to the cause of securing a happy relationship with the Championship.

Will we ever buck this trend?

[cidered abroad]

You were not around in the late 1960's? Alan Dicks took over a struggling City side the season after John Atyeo retired and for the next four or five years, we were deep in the relegation battle every season.

No social media, just the Evil Post and whoever you met in your local pub to chew it over with. So no concerted effort by many or perhaps many of the few on OTIB, to campaign for his removal. Harry Dolman stuck by AD, a complete rookie when he came from Coventry with a big recommendation from their manager, Jimmy the chin Hill. Even less experience at this level than LJ.

We all know how that went as AD took his team of youngsters plus a couple of older heads to the promised land. So perhaps Lansdown is following Harry's method and allowing LJ to grow into it.

Now, I believe we are nowhere near as patient as we were then. I'm certainly not, perhaps because at 73 years.I haven't got too many years to allow us to drop, promote, or struggle at the bottom every season before I go to live elsewhere in the universe.

[Gert Mare]

3 minutes ago, cidered abroad said:

You were not around in the late 1960's? Alan Dicks took over a struggling City side the season after John Atyeo retired and for the next four or five years, we were deep in the relegation battle every season.

No social media, just the Evil Post and whoever you met in your local pub to chew it over with. So no concerted effort by many or perhaps many of the few on OTIB, to campaign for his removal. Harry Dolman stuck by AD, a complete rookie when he came from Coventry with a big recommendation from their manager, Jimmy the chin Hill. Even less experience at this level than LJ.

We all know how that went as AD took his team of youngsters plus a couple of older heads to the promised land. So perhaps Lansdown is following Harry's method and allowing LJ to grow into it.

Now, I believe we are nowhere near as patient as we were then. I'm certainly not, perhaps because at 73 years.I haven't got too many years to allow us to drop, promote, or struggle at the bottom every season before I go to live elsewhere in the universe.

That was a different era. You cannot compare what happened in the 1960's and 1970's to today. Football is in a different stratosphere these days and this is why we are suffering because we fail to move with the times. 

We also live in a City where we shouldn't have two teams. We need one in the top flight but as long as the opposition exists blocking our attempts to progress and vice versa then we will always be stuck where we are.

 

[reddogkev]

4 minutes ago, cidered abroad said:

You were not around in the late 1960's? Alan Dicks took over a struggling City side the season after John Atyeo retired and for the next four or five years, we were deep in the relegation battle every season.

No social media, just the Evil Post and whoever you met in your local pub to chew it over with. So no concerted effort by many or perhaps many of the few on OTIB, to campaign for his removal. Harry Dolman stuck by AD, a complete rookie when he came from Coventry with a big recommendation from their manager, Jimmy the chin Hill. Even less experience at this level than LJ.

We all know how that went as AD took his team of youngsters plus a couple of older heads to the promised land. So perhaps Lansdown is following Harry's method and allowing LJ to grow into it.

Now, I believe we are nowhere near as patient as we were then. I'm certainly not, perhaps because at 73 years.I haven't got too many years to allow us to drop, promote, or struggle at the bottom every season before I go to live elsewhere in the universe.

Born in 1980 I'm afraid, so can only comment on events from about 1994 onwards!  If I could time travel, I'd go back to the late 70's and enjoy the 4 years in the First Division.

Back to your point, unfortunately, patience doesn't seem to exist in the modern game of football - except at Arsenal and Bournemouth. 

[reddogkev]

3 minutes ago, Cheesleysmate said:

We also live in a City where we shouldn't have two teams. We need one in the top flight but as long as the opposition exists blocking our attempts to progress and vice versa then we will always be stuck where we are.

 

I'd question whether the presence of Rovers has blocked our progression, in fact they've tried to help us recently by giving us Taylor on a borderline free!

[Honiton Tony]

7 minutes ago, Cheesleysmate said:

That was a different era. You cannot compare what happened in the 1960's and 1970's to today. Football is in a different stratosphere these days and this is why we are suffering because we fail to move with the times. 

We also live in a City where we shouldn't have two teams. We need one in the top flight but as long as the opposition exists blocking our attempts to progress and vice versa then we will always be stuck where we are.

 

Bristol has a bigger population than Liverpool and they have to Premiership teams  

[Gert Mare]

Just now, reddogkev said:

I'd question whether the presence of Rovers has blocked our progression, in fact they've tried to help us recently by giving us Taylor on a borderline free!

If the city had one club I believe that we would be better positioned to support Premiership football in this city. It's hypothetical but we don't get on as clubs and always look to block each other's attempts to progress...Village Green bollox and Trash Horfield. 

People from outside the city must see us as a bit of a joke. Massive rivalry between two mediocre clubs in a big city.

[Nogbad the Bad]

I'm not optimistic we will buck the trend. The Championship is a very strong league with so many well off clubs due to parachute payments that we can't compete at the top end and we don't seem capable of building patiently like Preston.

We - i.e. the board -  set unrealistic targets so as a club we're not content to be mid table/lower for a few years while we establish ourselves, and we consistently fail to get the right manager in to build the club up gradually.

As fans we enjoy and celebrate div 1 promotion campaigns but once the euphoria dies down the truth is we always enter the Championship with a sense of foreboding. We've seen it all before, we inevitably struggle, long term planning goes out the window with far too panic signings, and we eventually, after a few seasons of little enjoyment or entertainment, go down again in a mess and having accrued an unmanageable squad.

It's a predictable and depressing cycle until we either support the likes of SC to use promotion momentum to try and establish City through doing something different by attacking the Championship, or employ an experienced manager at this level who we can more or less rely on to at least keep us up reasonably comfortably while we build because being at such a disadvantage to so many of our rivals, the right manager is crucial.

Where entertaining and exciting football - from City - comes into all this is anyone's guess, and keeping the fans interested if we're going to be mid table at best for years on end while not being great to watch is another problem for BCFC at this level. 

[Gert Mare]

2 minutes ago, Honiton Tony said:

Bristol has a bigger population than Liverpool and they have to Premiership teams  

And they have had two top flight clubs for decades. They are not starting from the same position.

They also don't mutually hate each other.

[Nogbad the Bad]

6 minutes ago, Honiton Tony said:

Bristol has a bigger population than Liverpool and they have to Premiership teams  

Not in the figures I've just looked at.

Liverpool 466,400

Bristol 428,100

Greater Liverpool , i.e Liverpool/Birkenhead metropolitan area 2,241,000. 

Greater Bristol, i.e Bath, WSM, Cleveon etc 1,041,000

[JoeAman08]

9 minutes ago, Nogbad the Bad said:

I'm not optimistic we will buck the trend. The Championship is a very strong league with so many well off clubs due to parachute payments that we can't compete at the top end and we don't seem capable of building patiently like Preston.

We - i.e. the board -  set unrealistic targets so as a club we're not content to be mid table/lower for a few years while we establish ourselves, and we consistently fail to get the right manager in to build the club up gradually.

As fans we enjoy and celebrate div 1 promotion campaigns but once the euphoria dies down the truth is we always enter the Championship with a sense of foreboding. We've seen it all before, we inevitably struggle, long term planning goes out the window with far too panic signings, and we eventually, after a few seasons of little enjoyment or entertainment, go down again in a mess and having accrued an unmanageable squad.

It's a predictable and depressing cycle until we either support the likes of SC to use promotion momentum to try and establish City through doing something different by attacking the Championship, or employ an experienced manager at this level who we can more or less rely on to at least keep us up reasonably comfortably while we build because being at such a disadvantage to so many of our rivals, the right manager is crucial.

Where entertaining and exciting football - from City - comes into all this is anyone's guess, and keeping the fans interested if we're going to be mid table at best for years on end while not being great to watch is another problem for BCFC at this level. 

Yup this is how I view it. We get to the league and immediately set our sights on the league above or at least that's how I have viewed this spell. I'd be perfectly happy if it was said we are looking to finish mid table. Some will say why set standards so low but we set them so high we are bound to fail. You can't compete with PP right away. Us buying young and developing talent is the only way to get the money to start competing more. That takes time and means some hard times first but seems like SL and everyone below him seem to think it can happen in a year. Teams like Preston and Barnsley I don't think plan so much for the future as they do for the now. Finish 10th? Let's strengthen 2 positions and see where we are again. Obviously I've simplified it but in general that's what Preston have done. We didn't strengthen any positions in the summer enough. Tammy and Kodjia is about even. Everyone else hasn't improved the squad. January focused on this but we now have to integrate them into a squad low on confidence. We make it hard on ourselves and it starts at the top. Our ambition needs to be stable championship club first before we start talking about Premier League. 

[Major Isewater]

Perhaps if we invested in a coaching team with Championship experience and a backbone of Championship experienced players we might just push on .

The infrastructure is there for us to succeed. We are not the smallest club in this League and don't have money worries. 

The buck stops with Mr Lansdown who seems incapable of getting it right on the Manager/ Coach side of things .

We are not a Leeds , Sheffield Wednesday type club where even if they cock it up they get by .

I feel SL should have bought in a safe pair of hands to establish the club at this level before experimenting with a rookie in the fourth most difficult league in world football.

Even an unexciting appointment like McCarthy from Ipswich or Grayson at PNE would have given us more chance to survive .

He has gambled and is close to losing .

If we go down that will be a set back of epic proportions. There is no guarantee that we would come straight back up , just ask Sheff Utd .

 

[Mr Popodopolous]

This is not a defence of Johnson post but...

• Nigel Pearson was an experienced Championship manager and I remember many on here clamouring for him...terrible at Derby, plus off the pitch issues.
• Steve Bruce is decorated at this level- plus PL experience as a manager, quite a number of seasons.So far Villa are treading water.
• Di Matteo has won a CL, got promotion from this level with WBA and managed in CL with both WBA and Chelsea- so both ends of the spectrum. Oh and he managed Schalke CL regulars and a big Bundesliga club. Sacked after about 2 months.
• Hell even Hollowhead has got 2 promotions, Paul Lambert good record neither doiing great things thus far (though tbh QPR are a bit of a basketcase).

Point is there are no silver bullets, no guarantees. Grayson would represent a sound choice though and Mick McCarthy is vastly experienced and would certainly do a job here. If it was simple as merely appointing a good manager and things falling into place Wolves would be upper midtable, QPR would be higher than now, Villa would be right up there with Newcastle and Brighton Derby would be probably 4th let's say.

[reddogkev]

26 minutes ago, Major Isewater said:

Perhaps if we invested in a coaching team with Championship experience and a backbone of Championship experienced players we might just push on .

The infrastructure is there for us to succeed. We are not the smallest club in this League and don't have money worries. 

The buck stops with Mr Lansdown who seems incapable of getting it right on the Manager/ Coach side of things .

We are not a Leeds , Sheffield Wednesday type club where even if they cock it up they get by .

I feel SL should have bought in a safe pair of hands to establish the club at this level before experimenting with a rookie in the fourth most difficult league in world football.

Even an unexciting appointment like McCarthy from Ipswich or Grayson at PNE would have given us more chance to survive .

He has gambled and is close to losing .

If we go down that will be a set back of epic proportions. There is no guarantee that we would come straight back up , just ask Sheff Utd .

 

Agree that hiring LJ seemed a big gamble, but talking about the experienced manager, didn't we already have that with Steve Cotterill?  How many seasons experience did he have with Burnley / Forest etc?  Steve was taking us down, despite knowing the division.  Was it just City doing what City do best and struggling to grasp the challenge of the league?

Going back to last summer, it seemed like all the ingredients were in place, and I don't recall many Johnson doubters before the campaign began, but still we've got the usual problems.

33 minutes ago, JoeAman08 said:

Yup this is how I view it. We get to the league and immediately set our sights on the league above or at least that's how I have viewed this spell. I'd be perfectly happy if it was said we are looking to finish mid table. Some will say why set standards so low but we set them so high we are bound to fail. You can't compete with PP right away. Us buying young and developing talent is the only way to get the money to start competing more. That takes time and means some hard times first but seems like SL and everyone below him seem to think it can happen in a year. Teams like Preston and Barnsley I don't think plan so much for the future as they do for the now. Finish 10th? Let's strengthen 2 positions and see where we are again. Obviously I've simplified it but in general that's what Preston have done. We didn't strengthen any positions in the summer enough. Tammy and Kodjia is about even. Everyone else hasn't improved the squad. January focused on this but we now have to integrate them into a squad low on confidence. We make it hard on ourselves and it starts at the top. Our ambition needs to be stable championship club first before we start talking about Premier League. 

Perhaps that's it, we never find the middle ground of quietly growing the club without trying to force a rapid escalation.  After our promotion year, we should have signed the players from league one who would have enhanced the club and developed - Bradshaw and Dack for example.

[JoeAman08]

9 minutes ago, reddogkev said:

Agree that hiring LJ seemed a big gamble, but talking about the experienced manager, didn't we already have that with Steve Cotterill?  How many seasons experience did he have with Burnley / Forest etc?  Steve was taking us down, despite knowing the division.  Was it just City doing what City do best and struggling to grasp the challenge of the league?

Going back to last summer, it seemed like all the ingredients were in place, and I don't recall many Johnson doubters before the campaign began, but still we've got the usual problems.

Perhaps that's it, we never find the middle ground of quietly growing the club without trying to force a rapid escalation.  After our promotion year, we should have signed the players from league one who would have enhanced the club and developed - Bradshaw and Dack for example.

I think in the summer we had too many irons in too many fires. We overstretched with the stadium rushing to be completed to the incomings and outgoings of the first team to the enhancing of the U23s to looking for another coach. We had way too much going on for a young team with a young coach in only the second year back in a division that only gets tougher. 

Now that I've seen a few championship seasons, I wish we would've invested more in English players(those with league experience) a bit more. Perhaps Bradshaw and Dack could've enhanced us, we won't ever know but I watch someone like Matty Taylor or Bailey Wright step in seamlessly and less so with the others. It's not a talent thing either they just have the feel for where to be or what they can get away with. 

[reddogkev]

4 minutes ago, JoeAman08 said:

I think in the summer we had too many irons in too many fires. We overstretched with the stadium rushing to be completed to the incomings and outgoings of the first team to the enhancing of the U23s to looking for another coach. We had way too much going on for a young team with a young coach in only the second year back in a division that only gets tougher. 

Now that I've seen a few championship seasons, I wish we would've invested more in English players(those with league experience) a bit more. Perhaps Bradshaw and Dack could've enhanced us, we won't ever know but I watch someone like Matty Taylor or Bailey Wright step in seamlessly and less so with the others. It's not a talent thing either they just have the feel for where to be or what they can get away with. 

You've always got the good, sensible answers, Joe.  Agree with what you've said.  Here's a slightly tougher one for you, if we stay up this year, what should our policy be in the summer?  Does the squad need a few tweaks here or there, or is a larger scale revamp required?  Which type of players would you be in the market for?

Furthermore, do we need to invest heavily to replace Tammy, or do we enter the loan market again?

Looking ahead, provided we don't drop down, our activity in the Summer will be intriguing again.

[CotswoldRed]

Generally, I think we've invested in the wrong players, don't get value for money in what we do buy and have a woeful record in bringing through youth. Makes for a fairly unstable and short term mix. 

As for this season, that's entirely down to coaching imo. 

[Major Isewater]

45 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

This is not a defence of Johnson post but...

• Nigel Pearson was an experienced Championship manager and I remember many on here clamouring for him...terrible at Derby, plus off the pitch issues.
• Steve Bruce is decorated at this level- plus PL experience as a manager, quite a number of seasons.So far Villa are treading water.
• Di Matteo has won a CL, got promotion from this level with WBA and managed in CL with both WBA and Chelsea- so both ends of the spectrum. Oh and he managed Schalke CL regulars and a big Bundesliga club. Sacked after about 2 months.
• Hell even Hollowhead has got 2 promotions, Paul Lambert good record neither doiing great things thus far (though tbh QPR are a bit of a basketcase).

Point is there are no silver bullets, no guarantees. Grayson would represent a sound choice though and Mick McCarthy is vastly experienced and would certainly do a job here. If it was simple as merely appointing a good manager and things falling into place Wolves would be upper midtable, QPR would be higher than now, Villa would be right up there with Newcastle and Brighton Derby would be probably 4th let's say.

Of course there are no guarantees but there is risk management and appointing a rookie in this division would appear to be a higher risk even than appointing Holloway .

You have also made a great point in the fact that most of the managers you listed are/were hired by basket case owners.

 I have no doubt that Steve Bruce would stabilise our club given the chance but at Villa ...

Our owner , for all his faults, tries to do right by the managers and the club . 

To coach here must be a good gig to get .

[cityloyal473]

1 hour ago, JoeAman08 said:

Yup this is how I view it. We get to the league and immediately set our sights on the league above or at least that's how I have viewed this spell. I'd be perfectly happy if it was said we are looking to finish mid table. Some will say why set standards so low but we set them so high we are bound to fail. You can't compete with PP right away. Us buying young and developing talent is the only way to get the money to start competing more. That takes time and means some hard times first but seems like SL and everyone below him seem to think it can happen in a year. Teams like Preston and Barnsley I don't think plan so much for the future as they do for the now. Finish 10th? Let's strengthen 2 positions and see where we are again. Obviously I've simplified it but in general that's what Preston have done. We didn't strengthen any positions in the summer enough. Tammy and Kodjia is about even. Everyone else hasn't improved the squad. January focused on this but we now have to integrate them into a squad low on confidence. We make it hard on ourselves and it starts at the top. Our ambition needs to be stable championship club first before we start talking about Premier League. 

Spot on.

I'd be quite happy to sit mid table for a couple of seasons and openly have the club state that. Lets find our feet in the Championship first.  But we get the inevitable play offs/premier league/europe in five years, up and coming manager BS from the club it raises expectations - unnecessarily, and to the detriment of the club.  If your told that's the aim and you fail miserably of course people are going to bitch and moan about it.  And quite rightly so.

Two bulls - a dad and a son - overlooking a field full of cows.  The son says "Hey Dad, why don't we run down into the field and screw one of those cows?".  Dad says "why don't we walk down and screw em all".   That's the approach we should be taking. 

 

[CotswoldRed]

2 minutes ago, cityloyal473 said:

Spot on.

I'd be quite happy to sit mid table for a couple of seasons and openly have the club state that. Lets find our feet in the Championship first.  But we get the inevitable play offs/premier league/europe in five years, up and coming manager BS from the club it raises expectations - unnecessarily, and to the detriment of the club.  If your told that's the aim and you fail miserably of course people are going to bitch and moan about it.  And quite rightly so.

Two bulls - a dad and a son - overlooking a field full of cows.  The son says "Hey Dad, why don't we run down into the field and screw one of those cows?".  Dad says "why don't we walk down and screw em all".   That's the approach we should be taking. 

 

That reminds me. I'll need to start thinking about booking days off work in a year or two for those trips to the continent. 

[BCFC Rich]

1 hour ago, Nogbad the Bad said:

I'm not optimistic we will buck the trend. The Championship is a very strong league with so many well off clubs due to parachute payments that we can't compete at the top end and we don't seem capable of building patiently like Preston.

We - i.e. the board -  set unrealistic targets so as a club we're not content to be mid table/lower for a few years while we establish ourselves, and we consistently fail to get the right manager in to build the club up gradually.

2

I totally agree with what you're saying here. But we are literally 8/10 points off mid-table right now! We had a bad run that was hard to break and haven't lost by more than 1 goal all season, we are pretty close to doing what you suggest and given a tiny bit more luck would be. So why don't we be patient? 

[Alessandro]

The summer transfer dealings, although on paper looked good, I believe have been a huge factor in our downfall.

We invested in too many 'future' players and not enough 'ready to go' championship signings. 

To compound this, the 'ready to goes' we did sign have each been disappointing, GON, Matthews, Tomlin. Injuries, fitness, baggage, form.

In turn this has put pressure on the likes of O'Dowda, Magnussen, Reid, Brownhill etc to perhaps step up and take too much responsibility too soon. These players could become our future legends, but not this season.

I think we are also learning more and more, that championship clubs 'cast-offs' are that for a reason. GON, Golbourne, Paterson. All came with a bit of pedigree but weren't wanted by the clubs, probably for a reason. Cotterill so far only one to buck that trend.

Januaury went a good way to balance that out, but now as Joe said, they will take some time to settle, especially the foreign ones. 

This, along with an inexperienced manager, who like some of our young players is also learning the ropes in this thankless league. 

Will he learn quick enough, or can he learn quick enough to save his job? Time will tell. He has been given every opportunity and more to.

This summer, after we stay up, which I firmly believe we will, the squad won't need more rebuilding. We will see more of the younger players and new full backs and the massive task of filling the huge whole that will be Tammy Abraham.

 

[Major Isewater]

6 minutes ago, cityloyal473 said:

Spot on.

I'd be quite happy to sit mid table for a couple of seasons and openly have the club state that. Lets find our feet in the Championship first.  But we get the inevitable play offs/premier league/europe in five years, up and coming manager BS from the club it raises expectations - unnecessarily, and to the detriment of the club.  If your told that's the aim and you fail miserably of course people are going to bitch and moan about it.  And quite rightly so.

Two bulls - a dad and a son - overlooking a field full of cows.  The son says "Hey Dad, why don't we run down into the field and screw one of those cows?".  Dad says "why don't we walk down and screw em all".   That's the approach we should be taking. 

 

I refuse to have relationships with cows . ( The experience with ex Mrs Isewater was more than sufficient ) 

[JoeAman08]

49 minutes ago, reddogkev said:

You've always got the good, sensible answers, Joe.  Agree with what you've said.  Here's a slightly tougher one for you, if we stay up this year, what should our policy be in the summer?  Does the squad need a few tweaks here or there, or is a larger scale revamp required?  Which type of players would you be in the market for?

Furthermore, do we need to invest heavily to replace Tammy, or do we enter the loan market again?

Looking ahead, provided we don't drop down, our activity in the Summer will be intriguing again.

I personally think this squad is mostly capable. A few glaring holes to fill but we shouldn't be in our position. So when it comes to the summer, I don't think we need to do a lot. Full backs are a big one for me. You don't have to spend huge money on them though. We should look to our versions of Greg Cunningham and Luke Ayling. Players that can play but somehow have been overlooked. Either that or lower league. One I think we overlooked was Morgan Fox from Charlton went to Sheffield Wednesday for less than 1m or a more extreme example would be Yiadom at Barnsley coming from Barnet I believe. 

As for a striker I'd like to think if we spent big it would be here. Maybe not 7-10m big but 4-5m for sure. Also we've seen with Tammy and Izzy Brown that these loans can be high reward and low risk. It's something we should always look at, IMO. 

Plus I don't want to overlook players like Moore, COD or even Engvall. If any of them make progress similar to Brownhill then we've already got a few gems in there as I think they're all at least equally gifted to Brownhill in their own ways or even better. The club is doing a lot right its just that it getting in the way of results which can end up stopping all progress and making us take a step back.  

[Iron Acton Red]

5 hours ago, reddogkev said:

Why do we struggle in this league?  There must be a clear reason, bigger than the current manager and the board, perhaps even bigger than SL.

For a city our size, why have we never become established in the league?  Even in the play-off year, we punched massively above our weight, and couldn't develop after losing to Hull.  The Championship soon cut us down to size, chewed us up and spat us back into League One.

This season is horrendous, offered so much at the start, and is now the usual struggle against the drop.  I'm sick of it.

It must stop, but how?  Even massive investment in the squad, and the developed stadium is offering little help to the cause of securing a happy relationship with the Championship.

Will we ever buck this trend?

We've just not had the right coach/manager to take us forward.like you said after the playoff season it just slowly went downhill.its hugely frustrating when you think how much money Steve Landsdowns ploughed into the club.

 

[pillred]

5 hours ago, Cheesleysmate said:

That was a different era. You cannot compare what happened in the 1960's and 1970's to today. Football is in a different stratosphere these days and this is why we are suffering because we fail to move with the times. 

We also live in a City where we shouldn't have two teams. We need one in the top flight but as long as the opposition exists blocking our attempts to progress and vice versa then we will always be stuck where we are.

 

there's another club?

[Gert Mare]

1 hour ago, pillred said:

there's another club?

Yes and they have a massive away following and are the 6th richest club in the world.

[ashton_fan]

The problem is Bristol is a football backwater and in a way too nice a place. Players who have been successful elsewhere come here and get too comfortable, lose their 'edge' and ambition and end up the same as all the rest. Our best players historically have been those from the local area or who have come through the youth system, but there's not enough of those to make up a team.

[...]

Totally agree with the OP.

Whilst no team has a right to their status, given the size of the club, the fan base, and its resources, it is not unreasonable for us to have established ourselves as a Championship level side.

We have not done this in recent history!

We might have a good season - typically first year up and then we struggle or slide back to league one level, over a few years - division 3 in reality. Can't we do better than that??

Take Scunthorpe - the typical Championship / League 1 yo-yo side. Now compare the resources they have with ours. There is no comparison.

We don't have the biggest budget in the second tier, but many Chairman would kill to be able to spend what we spend. Someone said recently we had £7M worth of talent on the bench. This might not be strictly true, but we have spent more than enough to be established. Look at Preston by comparison.

If I pin it down to one thing, it is the lack of investment in a proven manager. The players cost a lot of money to sign and payroll and you need to invest too in the manager to get the best from these assets.

We won't do that.

 

tfj

[Glyn Rileys Mullet]

I agree with many views.  It is about the players we can attract.  We will never be able to attract the right quality in the championship.  In league one we are the big fish....in the championship we are seen as a minnow.  It will take a generation to change that.