Southampton and Charlton’s Demise Is Nothing New

St Mary’s Sta­dium will host League One foot­ball next season

Sheffield Wednes­day, QPR, Man­ches­ter City, Wim­ble­don (aka MK Dons), Leeds, Old­ham, Not­ting­ham For­est, Swin­don, Leices­ter, Barns­ley, Brad­ford. Soon to be joined by another two and prob­a­bly three in Charl­ton, Southamp­ton and Nor­wich. All these clubs have tasted the sweet nec­tar of life in the Pre­mier League only to later sup at the worka­day bit­ter­ness of League One. In Bradford’s case, even League Two.

If Nor­wich go down, as seems likely, that’s 14 teams who have played against the best and slipped to the third tier of Eng­lish foot­ball in the last 17 years. In a game full of star­tling sta­tis­tics, that seems pretty mind-boggling. It might hearten fans of Saints and Addicks that a decent por­tion of those teams have at least made it back to the Cham­pi­onship. Indeed, this time last year Leices­ter were belly-up and now they are like a horny young salmon, leap­ing back upstream to play with the big­ger boys and girls once more.

In a sense, this shows the out­stand­ing strength in depth of the Eng­lish leagues. Unlikely teams includ­ing Brad­ford, Swin­don, Hull, Stoke, Wigan and Read­ing all made huge strides in the last decade and a half to reach the top of the moun­tain. Yet it does not take much to find your­self back at base camp in double-quick time.

It can be put down to poor money man­age­ment. It can be blamed on care­less­ness and poor decision-making. But the shock­ing thing this year is that two clubs who have often been held up as excel­lent exam­ples of how a medium-sized club should be man­aged are either already down or sim­ply wait­ing for the trap door to open.

When Sheffield Wednes­day, Man City, QPR, Leices­ter and Leeds fell into League One, the struc­ture at the clubs was poor and all of them had dealt inad­e­quately with the money the EPL gave them. But Charl­ton and Nor­wich do not seem to fall into this cat­e­gory. Charl­ton have clev­erly devel­oped a fan­base from all over Kent and steadily improved a sta­dium that was derelict 20 years ago. Nor­wich had more than their fair share of prob­lems in the board­room in the 90s, but they have a city ded­i­cated to the team, a real sense of com­mu­nity and Delia Smith pro­vid­ing heart and soul as well.

For those two clubs, the short term might be unpalat­able, but the feel­ing is that the long term might be rosy. They are sen­si­ble clubs. If they cut costs, appoint the right man­agers and keep expec­ta­tions sen­si­ble, they could return a stronger unit, like Leices­ter appear to be doing.

Southamp­ton, though, could be a dif­fer­ent story. Not so long ago they had a new sta­dium, Gor­don Stra­chan had taken them to the Cup Final and they were the lat­est in a long line of clubs hop­ing to break into the top six of the EPL. Now the money is gone. The sta­dium is not being filled. The stars of their youth sys­tem have almost all been sold in an effort to bal­ance the books. Rumours of a takeover notwith­stand­ing, it seems likely that Andrew Sur­man and Adam Lal­lana will now have to be sold as well.

Around this time of year a lot of pun­dits make long faces and say it’s a shame for this team or that team to go down. They are say­ing it about New­cas­tle now, but is it a shame when clubs the size of Southamp­ton are rel­e­gated to League One? Would we pre­fer to see the smaller clubs, like Don­caster or Black­pool, get rel­e­gated, to keep the sta­tus quo?

I don’t think so. I think it’s a healthy sit­u­a­tion that big clubs occa­sion­ally taste life in the bot­tom half of the Foot­ball League. It’s good for foot­ball that so-called small teams like Peter­bor­ough can play at Cham­pi­onship level.

With dreams of win­ning the Pre­mier League unre­al­is­tic for fans of all clubs except per­haps five — six at a push — the dream has per­haps been down­shifted to glory in the Cham­pi­onship and a chance to merely get in the ring with the big boys.

The dif­fer­ence this sea­son com­pared to oth­ers is that three clubs who have all played at the top level within the last four years are (prob­a­bly) head­ing down. Not only should that be a les­son to clubs cur­rently happy in the Pre­mier League, it should be a warn­ing. There are at least half-a-dozen Pre­mier League clubs who could be fac­ing the same cri­sis as Southamp­ton in three or four years time.

Tagged as: Championship, charlton, football finances, League One, Leeds, leicester, norwich, QPR, relegation, saints, southamtpn