Ten Years of Misery (1 Viewer)

I was thinking tonight about how since we've been relegated our seasons have tended to follow a similar pattern — starting well, fading around new year, before relegation form takes root and we barely survive. Thinking about it I decided to draw up some charts to show our league position over the course of the season, points accumulated, managers arriving / departing etc.

Here's my first pass. Obviously this season isn't finished so we can't draw any deeper conclusions from that (!) but one thing is clear: we're a pretty rubbish Championship side and have been for many, many years. In fact I think it's fair to say we're lucky to still be in the division given how many seasons have seen us dip into the relegation zone only to somehow scrape through.

Thoughts?

There are only two anomalous seasons out of the whole bunch — ‘03–‘04, which let's face it really only picked up once McAllister left, and ‘05–‘06 — when Mickey Adams had Dennis Wise in the team. Hard to imagine that those were good times.

By the way, the point tally bars would hit the top of each graph if we scored maximum points (138 over the course of a season), so you can imagine a promotion-winning team would have the bars not far from the top by the end of the season.

rob9872 said:

Anychance of getting one on top of the other? Not all the managers and points tally, just the plotted points in different colours with a key - easier to draw some conclusions (although we'll obviously still be rubbish!) Tyia

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I'm thinking of making an interactive one so you can compare any arbitrary number of seasons. I'll probably work on that tomorrow, as I'm shattered now.

derbyskyblue said:

You must be in middle management.

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Who, me? Not sure what you mean by that...

If I were to draw any analysis from what I've charted, it'd be this:

In our first couple of seasons after relegation our squad was still strong relative to the rest of the league — particularly in 01-02 when we had the likes of Chippo, Hadji, Thompson, Carsley (the first time around!) and Hughes in the team. And yet the same problem is seen in every season — complete lack of consistency and very sporadic form. Both seasons had good potential for at least a play-offs challenge, and both were completely undermined by poor runs of form right at the end of the season.

In subsequent seasons the lack of form is endemic, and if anything you can look at the early season good form as anomalies rather than an indication of our true level of performance. The zig-zagging we see over the course of 06-07, 07-08 and 08-09 is really just us ‘settling’ like a bouncing ball finally coming to rest, as other teams around us find their true form and the gaps in points between play-off contenders, mid-table and relegation form become apparent. Both 09-10 and this season so far have been marked by ‘false dawn’ runs of form being interrupted by a succession of poor results, so in actual fact they're not so different from the three seasons prior.

Think about when we've actually had good runs of results over the past five years. How many of those were because we were playing consistently attractive, competent football, and how many of those were games where you'd have booed the team off had it not been for the fact we were on the positive end of the final score? None of these runs of form were because we were ever challengers. They were, in fact, statistical anomalies — the luck of the game — and the sad truth is that for most of the past decade we have been a lower-half Championship side in performance and stature. Whilst they've been a depressing ten years, in some ways you could look at this and conclude we're actually quite lucky to not have slipped out into League One.

If I were a member of the board and saw these charts I'd want to know what steps I could take to prevent falling into the same pattern. We've all bemoaned managers not being given a fair chance (I personally sit on the fence with Boothroyd, but living in London I'm certainly not going to spend £100 to travel up and watch us play unentertaining, long ball football) and that's probably going to be a big part of the inconsistency. But what about the squad? In compiling these graphs I saw the names of our goalscorers over the years and it brought home just how much the squad has changed in that time. Almost every season has seen significant changes in personnel in every area of the team from front line to back four. Let's not get too hung up on why that team has changed — we'd probably already be in administration if Best, Fox, Dann et al hadn't been sold — but it's something the board needs to pay consideration to if they want to make good on their intentions to get us back into the fight.

Sorry — I got confused there — I'd meant to say Safri (Hadji had already gone before the season started, you're right). Safri was a hard-working, tough-tackling dude, and I still remember that awesome free kick he scored against Sheff Weds (possibly the season before we went down?).

I sent the charts to Leonard Brody via Twitter and he said he'll show it to the board. Not sure what (if any) good it'll do, but at least it'll give them a clear picture of just how rubbish we've been!

Well, there have been sparkles of brightness in amongst them — knocking Manure out of the FA Cup, beating Blackburn 4-1 and getting to face off against Chelsea (a match in which we really didn't play too badly, considering the opposition). Just all too few...

ccfcway said:

must have missed that Man Utd FA Cup game

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Ah, it was the League Cup. Oops.

You could say the same of anyone who chooses to spend their saturday afternoons at The Ricoh, frankly.