I must say, when we were mixing it with the big boys i was getting disolusioned with the refs, play acting, prima donnas etc, but now were not there i do yearn to be a featured game on Soccer Saturday, Football first etc. I dont want to come across as shallow but the overall Premier league media package and coverage was good for the Club and the City and it would be nice to have another crack at it.
While it was good seeing the club do well and playing against the likes of Chelsea, Man U, and even Arsenal, after the intial string of wins I did get fed up of seeing us losing nearly every week and when we did win it was still often a poor performance. I like to enjoy watching a game and losing more often than not tends to ruin your mood for the weekend. Overall, I would much rather watch games like Hull v Leeds again than most of our Premier league games, both teams having a chance to win it. That's not going to happen in the PL unless you are a top 10 team. I have nothing per se against new fans (I've only been going to watch City since the KC was built) so I didn't join the ranks of people slagging off the glory-supporters, but I did hate the fact it was a mightmare to get tickets as a non-season ticket holderand I ended up missig games against some of the top teams.
I'm one of the few that prefers watching games in the lower leagues, but the Premiership is where we need to aim for even if it has a lot of downsides in terms of the fans, atmosphere at the ground and so on.
i always said one of the higlights of going up, was having andy gray commentate on our games...that was a sign wed made it,...so doesnt matter if we go up or not now
I prefer the Championship. I like having the optimism back in my weekends. I hated knowing every weekend we were going to lose, and if we won those bell ends on MOTD would slag us off anyway and say it was a lucky win.
It was nice to play the top six teams and for a while be up with them but must say i prefer the championship until we have a squad that could compete if we went up without having to bankrupt us again
Miff you're welcome to it, I've never appreciated football as much in the last three years as after yesterdays game with Scunthorpe 'town' and Dirty Leeds. Far better than playing side who have individual players getting paid more in a season than our clubs worth. How stupidly unfair the EPL is.
Does no one feel confident that if we got up there we'd be able to stay there under NP? Him and his team have a very good eye for a player and I would like to go up just to see what gems they find.
I do and i don't. I enjoyed playing the bigger teams at first, and i enjoyed being on TV and the coverage we got on MOTD, but it really is not that different, its just easier getting away tickets, and i just enjoy the atmosphere more. I think we have a more loyal supporter base. We are also more likley to win, we are financially secure again and i am enjoying football with HUll once more
I enjoy going to matches and seeing us be competitive. Unfortunately, too often in the Premiership we were not able to be competitive; it is not equal for all teams when some spend the sums we have seen this week on just one player. I also thought it acted like a cancer on the club, and the poor attitude of some of the players could be seen even at the start of this season. We developed a losing mentality. Fortunately, NP has taken steps to instill the spirit we need. Much prefer games such as Leeds and QPR, where the result is in the balance and we go into the match on an equal footing.
its odd how our football in the premiership was far worse than what we are playing at the moment, the first goal against scunthorpe was one of the best worked goals ive seen in a long while at any level, on the deck with some crisp short passing, tore them apart.
i liked the 4th goal, the movement from barmby then mclean...cant help but wonder if we where really good, or scunny just absolute tripe tho....how much space did they give our forwards.
The Prem's a league of paranoia with the fear of losing and the financial implications over-riding any opportunity for clubs and players to simply enjoy it and have fun.
yeah true, the movement with the first and the fourth was very good, there was no massive urge to cross it, pass it into space, barmby seemed to know exactly where mclean would be, the same with mclean and koren in the first. Mcleans got a really good touch and pass which is good, not had forwards with that since marlon king.
The Barmby ball to Mclean was very generous, Nicky has scored from there on many occasions, but he decided a ball to Mclean was more important. It wasn't an easy shot, so the ball to Mclean may have been the better option, but normally Nicky would have gone for it anyway. It's great having a fan on the pitch, Barmby may be 36, but he's still the most passionate and probably the most talented player on the pitch.
I prefer to have 46 fixtures per season rather than 20. lets face it the premier league is two or three leagues in one and we were always in the bottom one. By the time we get up there again I would prefer the top six to have gone to a full time european league so we can get back to real football. despite what murdoch and all the ex pro hangers on say, with regard to excitement, entertainment and good old fashioned passion, the championship is the best league in the world, because the prize is so high. the reality is that apart from the prize of staying there, there is no enjoyment in the premier. i dont enjoy aspiring to 4th from bottom in any league
The Premiership is a starange one really. Every supporter dreams about watching their team playing the top players week in week out, BUT no one likes to be constantly losing. I half agree with the European super league idea above, but maybe if that happened would the resulting league just be what is now the Championship, as most of the teams outside of the teams that would make the Euro league wouldn't really look out of place in the Championship. Would the focus be lost on what would be the English top tier, as most of the money would then be transferred to the Euro one. As much as people don't like the fact, it is the external money that comes in from the Skys and such like that keeps the supposed top players in England, without it they would be plying their trade to the highest pimp. To me it is also not easy for the clubs themselves as many supporters will soon turn on you if you do not try to make a go of playing in the Prem. How many of Citys fans would have been happy to have kept the same players that won our play off game for us. Yet the same fans are also the ones that are quick to criticise when we run up huge debts on mediocre players. I do think if we went up again there would be an element of this again. If you look at Citys team now, how many fans would be happy to keep the same players for an assault on the premiership, where mere survival would not be an option, as to have that aim would mean that City would lose far more than they won, which again most supporters would be up in arms about, and quite often would trigger another round of throwing money around, where once again City would struggle to attract many decent players so end up paying through the nose for lesser ones (this sounds familiar). The whole concept behind the Premiership is seriously flawed as teams who go up soon find out. Until some restrictions are put on teams on what they can throw around then the Premiership will always be this way. At City we were astounded as reports of just how much in debt we were, yet Chelsea announce a massive debt one day, then the next day they sign two players for ridiculous amounts of money. One of them alone dwarfed the debt we had accumulated, yet teams like Chelsea are allowed to do that (Liverpool are just as bad, immediately throwing away 35m on Carroll), and teams need controlling. If you can't trust the teams to control themselves then someone else needs to do it for them. But for me, at this moment in time i think City should be content to sit in the upper part of the Championship, where fans can see us win more than we lose, and the standard of play is good to watch (once the team gels and settles down of course).