EFL MARATHONS & THE BURDEN OF HISTORY

The EFL Championship has been talked up in recent years as the biggest and best non-top-flight league in world football. This is based partly on finances, but also on its aggregate attendances which place it third in European football, behind the Premier League and the Bundesliga, but ahead of Serie A (Italy), La Liga (Spain) and Ligue 1 (France). Statistics can, of course, be twisted to argue all manner of things, as every politician knows only too well. In recent years, the German 2 Bundesliga has seen higher average gates than the Championship. [1] However, given the 18 club format of German’s second division, it means that 306 league matches are played each season, compared to the EFL figure of 552. This vast difference ensures that the EFL can make claims which are, arguably, misleading.

Nevertheless, it is easy to argue justifiably that the Championship is the hardest second division in major footballing countries. The sheer size of our second tier ensures that its clubs endure an unforgiving marathon season, with plenty of Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday encounters in the congested calendar. Add in the rigid transfer windows and you can sympathise with Mick McCarthy for the major injury crisis which hit Portman Road last season. To further complicate matters, the play-off system then adds a sprint at the end of this marathon. I am not a fan of it, although many would argue that it has now been in operation for a generation and that every club knows the rules before a ball is kicked back in August. [2] For the finalists, this adds another three matches to the gruelling schedule, making it only one short of fifty, even before you add in at least two cup competitions.

Putting attendances, schedules and finances to one side, there is a far better way to justify the unique status of the EFL Championship. Let us take the make-up for the 2018-19 season as an example. Of the twenty-four clubs taking part, all but one have competed in the top flight of English football. OK, this is not exactly an earth-shattering statistic. However, ten of these clubs have been crowned as English champions, two as kings of Europe. Between them, the current Championship boasts twenty-five top-flight titles, thirty-seven FA Cups, twenty-two League Cups and four major European titles. That constitutes an impressive array of honours.

While a club such as Rotherham would probably view a place in Championship football as success in itself, the vast majority of fans view the league as a waiting room to the Promised Land, something which Paul Hurst hinted at on his appointment at Portman Road. [3] On one level, this is understandable. The Championship boasts eleven grounds with 30,000 + capacities and nine venues saw healthy average gates of 25,000 + in the 2017-18 campaign. It is not just fans in Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds who feel that their club ‘deserves’ to be in the Premier League. How many Ipswich Town supporters are content to be simply proud of the fact that the Blues have remained in the top two divisions for the past sixty years? We should be. Instead, fans bemoan the club’s record – aka sterile – stay in the second tier since 2002. History suggests that clubs like Wigan, Hull and Reading are punching above their weight in the second tier, but try telling that to their supporters who have all tasted the Premier League.

Did the creation of the Premier League in 1992 change fans’ perception of the second tier? Certainly the vast wealth which awaits clubs in the top tier has affected the way players, managers and club owners view the divide. This has been exasperated by the controversial (and colossal) parachute payments which reward failure in the Premier League. Has the rebranding of the second tier as the Championship, in 2004, helped add a sense of competing in the top flight of the EFL? Not really. Most supporters would prefer a season of struggle in the top tier to relative success in the second division.

Top flight history, it would appear, brings with it a burden. At Portman Road, the statues and stands of Alf Ramsey and Bobby Robson look on, reminding us all of golden ages in which ITFC not only competed with the big clubs, but frequently bettered them. In Suffolk, as elsewhere, supporters and club owner await the manager who will take them back to the land of milk and honey. Perhaps we should be proud that at Portman Road the patience – as well as the wait – lasts a little longer. [4]

© Rodney Marshall

1.      In 2016-17 Championship crowds averaged 20,130 compared to 2 Bundesliga’s 21,717. 2 Bundesliga attendances had been higher in the previous campaign as well.
2.      I would argue that it artificially keeps alive the campaign for mid-table clubs and is particularly cruel when a club finishes the League campaign well ahead of the three clubs below it.
3.      ‘I’ve got to… look to move us forward and help get us to where we all want to be – the Promised Land, as they say.’ (Paul Hurst, 30/05/2018)
4.      No doubt Mick McCarthy would question this suggestion.