I remember a time when Blackpool posters would be boasting that they supported a better run club, with more fanatical support and were racing ahead of us. True they did beat us and were higher in the league, at the time, but it proved to be a false position. It takes a lot more than TV money to stay in the Premier League as Newcastle showed when they went down. However, clubs like them and us have a better base to sustain them and a much better following. Clubs like Blackpool, Wigan, etc who come up through the leagues and quadruple their support can find that things can fall apart quickly. Dropping a division, with highly paid players, can be catastrophic and the support can vanish as quickly as it appeared. Blackpool look like a club that could eventually go out of the league and Wigan aren't far behind with Portsmouth another example of how quickly things can change. We got away with the great escape, last season, and must do it again ........ the consequences can be immense. There are some big clubs, such as Forest, Wolves, Blackburn, Derby,etc, who are all struggling to 'come back'. We don't have enough keen young local lads to want to stick around if we were playing in the 2nd division. The likes of Defoe, AJ & Alvarez would be wanting to leave and we could struggle. The Palace game is as big as the derby in my opinion.
While I accept your general point about the catastrophe of relegation, I don't think you can compare Blackpool to Sunderland. Blackpool's all time low was in 1983 when they finished 21st in the old div 4 and it took them until 2010 to get into the premier league, thanks to Ian Holloway. Blackpool are owned by the Oyston family. They and their directors basically pocketed all the premier league millions, as they saw this as payback time for all the years they'd kept the club afloat. They didn't invest a penny of that money in the team and sold off any decent players they had when it started to go tits up ( Charlie Adam, Matt Phillips, David Vaughan). Remember also that even in the prem their capacity was only 16,000. Now they'll just go back to where they came from, just like Wigan
That's why I didn't ..... I was actually comparing them to Hull Hull have a family who are at odds with much of the support and that's never healthy for a club. We've all seen what happened at Portsmouth, Blackburn and to some degree Newcastle. It's a dangerous situation and simply pot luck who you get. Short attracts a fair bit of flak but we could have someone much worse.
Blackpool historically the bigger of the two clubs...Hull closer to the likes of Hartlepool and Darlington in the order of merit...
