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.
