Most liked posts in thread: Are we no longer the big fish in this division?

This myth has been peddling about for years. The idea that teams raise their game when they come to VP because we’re their cup final is bollocks. For the most part, we’re just shit.

 

Christ I honestly don't care what other clubs think of us. We are lower league club, our appalling history is proof of that.

Seeing City fans like Nick Kitchen and others goad Leeds is absolutely cringeworthy. They will be off to Man Utd, Liverpool and Chelsea next term. We could be off to Harrogate and Barrow ffs.

It's humiliating how deluded some people are about us because we got big crowds for a few seasons and spent a couple of years in the Prem.

 

Exactly.

Even though we lost to Millwall in the playoff final, the trajectory for the previous years since getting out of league 2 had been excellent. The club was building up a sizeable fan base, benefitting from cheap tickets, but a fan base all the same.

We were ready to move to the Championship the following year, correctly funded and with the right approach. We all know what happened.

It is embarrassing and entirely self-inflicted. At this level, you need an owner with a passion for football who gains personally, if not financially, from involvement in the club. We are always going to struggle when the owner has no real interest in the club. He may feel obligated after demonstrating his gullibility, but that isn’t commitment.

 

Pop up stadium or not, in July 2016 Bradford City finished 5th in League 1. Sheffield Utd won the division, Cov City were relegated, Millwall were sixth

At the same time Salford finished seventh in their league, not the Conference, not even the Conference North, but the Northern Premier League. This season just gone they finished four points and two places behind the behemoth that is Bradford City. About 65 places higher than four years ago. A decade before that they were at Steeton’s level.

If City had not had that short spell in the PL. Apart from the Midland Road stand, VP would have been unchanged since it was rebuilt in 1986, City fans have no right to mock Salford. They will be in the Championship before us.

 

Absolutely. Its gone. History.

Reality is 20 years ago, Wycombe, Fleetwood, Burton, mk Don's were not members of the football league. They are now and all above us despite being "smaller" clubs.

We are more likely to shake hands with the conference than the premiership with the current situation at Valley Parade.

 

No, our record at VP is ok. Teams will still come to VP sit back and play for a draw but they will do it at Bolton.

The key is how we play and we need to attack the league but be smart and if it means going to Bolton sitting back then fine but I don't expect to going to Leyton Orient, Carlisle etc and boring the hell out of us.

Teams that attack the league will do well.

 

I want the manager and owners to come out and publicly state that league 2 football is not good enough and our target for this coming season is top 3.
All we seem to hear is that the salary cap will affect us. Well not having it never helped us

 

We shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as the three teams above. Apart from inflated crowds with cheap season tickets and a ground built with Geoffrey Richmonds magic money tree historically we're not on the same planet.
Its not pretty reading but we are what we are, a stereotypical lower league club that had a spell of success under an ambitious owner and the odd cup run here and there.

 

Forest Green players came and took photos on our pitch pre game, it’s only natural players who haven’t played above this level will enjoy playing at a big stadium instead of their usual cowsheds. It’ll be the same for Bolton. But there is no such thing as big fish at this level really, anyone can beat anyone it’s just about not been crap. Get a good squad and stadium sizes will be irrelevant.

 

And still more PL points than Huddersfield

 

Exactly my point. Somebody had the foresight to lead the Swans back up the leagues. Wouldn’t accept failure and bigged up the club. Got the fan base believing.

Only the astonishing progression of the 80’s under Trevor Cherry / Terry Dolan and then further down the line G.R has done that in my lifetime of watching the Bantams. All others seemed happy to accept the “poor Bradford , always the underdog tag”. Unfortunately too many of our supporters love that as well.

 

Size is all relative in my opinion. We're never going to be a big club, we don't have the fanbase (outside the county), we don't own anything, we won the FA Cup over 100 years ago, we have a handful of legends and no one new in the last 30 years or so. No meaningful representatives at international level in the last 50 years or more. The list goes on.

But that doesn't really matter to the majority of City fans. All we want is a team that competes at the top of the table and gives us an identity to be proud of.

It's time the fans were told what the future holds. If the current owner and CEO can't do that, then they owe to us, to find someone who can.

 

We're 9th in league 2. So we're just a bit 'bigger' than Forest Green and not quite as 'big' as Port Vale. Anything else - size of ground, number of season ticket holders, how big your dad is, how big your penis is - are all irrelevant. The regularity of this debate is quite frankly embarrassing.

 

Don’t want to spend money, don’t own a football club. Why own or support a football club and be happy to be plodding along in League Two? Rupp, Rahic and Rhodes’ reign has been little short of embarrassing.

 

This topic of discussion, as others have mentioned, is bizarre and has been brought up several times.

What I will say is this... People out here ask me about Leeds and how big they really are. I always say it is somewhat a myth how big they are. They're a one-club city. However, so are we. The belittling of clubs like Salfords attendance is laughable when they have two of the most successful teams in England on their doorstep.

Let us face it; we're a lower division side, with a lower division outlook and we're not really that big.

While I am at it - videos all over twitter tonight of Leeds fans celebrating. At this point, I'm not even jealous. I'm just genuinely worried we won't ever see those heights again. City fans that are 30 will barely remember the premier league days. I'm not normally negative about the club - but it's a sad sad, albeit typical, situation.

 

This is what irritates me about City....we love having an inferiority complex. People talk about Bolton and immediately I know we’ll suddenly think we’re inferior. To me they’re a similar sized club to us and certainly nothing to be afraid of.

But I think we’re a similar size club to jokers like Swansea, Huddersfield, Burnley, Barnsley, Cardiff, Stoke etc, but apart from a brief spell in the 80’s and under GR in the late 90’s and early 2000’s we’ve always liked to revert back to feeling inferior.

when people talk about Mansfield, Salford and Forest Green as though they’re some kind of galactico’s I know it’s down to our old Love of inferiority

 

Burnley 9th in the PL are a tinpot club? You talk out of your arse.

 

There are mitigating circumstances such as having two football teams for a long period in a city that can't sustain one successful team but yeah, most of our history has been spent in the bottom divisions. We aren't unique in this but for some reason we are built up as this mythical large city with a latent fan base just waiting to be discovered. In truth its never been there, the crowds we saw rise under Parkys reign were pretty unique in my 40 years of following them. As it stands now, apart from having a fan base bigger than most if not all in league 2 we are no different to most teams in this division in terms of potential and ambition.

 

I love McCall to bits, i'd love him to be successful. But the appointment of McCall for a third time was for one big reason, it was easy and required no behind the scenes work. The lad bleeds claret and amber, just one phone call to him and he would be back in a flash. Which, ironically, he did. No interviews with other managers, no shortlist of up and coming young hungry managers with a vision to take this club forward. No, the appointment had no ambition at all to it, it was because it was the easy option with no caveats.