By Bob Banks
We live in a world where global conflicts, economic hardship and pandemics have made anxiety the new flu. You might think optimism is in very short supply.
Wrong.
Just go into any pub near a football ground before the first match of the season.
All of the emptiness, frustration and anger that hung over the heads of the drawn, morose, put-upon supporters of 76 of the 92 Premier/EFL clubs just three months earlier has gone- and replaced with credulity-stretching positivity and cheery projections of clearly laughable ambitions.
Harsh? Well, the club has new- admittedly inexpensive- signings, a likely swishy new shape and a handful of friendly wins against teams whose main stand is a grass space behind a single metal rail.
Yes, suddenly it’s “top two or play-offs at least”.
Why do we do this to ourselves?
At the beginning of the 2024-25 season, the Ipsos computer ran 10,000 scenarios of how the Championship season would pan out. Cardiff City were bottom in 46 per cent of them. That’s 4,600 times.
However, pooh-poohing the predictor, we Bluebirds’supporters- the previous seasons’ last two fixtures(Middlesbrough 1-4, Rotherham 2-5) fading into the warm August amnesia of the new term- predictably returned to softly kissing the forehead of that most fickle of mistresses, hope.
At the October International break, after nine club games (almost 20 per cent of the season), where were those hopes? Rock bottom- like the City. Five points (one in the first seven), minus 14 goal difference and managerless.
Of course, Bulut has long gone and the computer’s algorithmic conditions that previously, cruelly, imprisoned us at the bottom have changed. I’m sure, with that to factor, the errant computer would change its clearly biased pre-season view.
So, stripped of new technology, where would we logically expect to end up?
Despite the above few paragraphs, this piece is not really about the current fortunes of the club. It’s about a football fan’s expectations. Our individual expectations, right across the football family. Unreasonable, unscientific, unfeasible expectations.
In fairness to all fans, their ultra positivity can at least in part be influenced by dud info which, in turn, is fuelled by the mutual back-slapping that exists between every club and its local media. Sports reporters must fill acres of space online, and in-paper, about the local football club- and few have achieved career longevity by slagging the club off that they write about in print. So they tend to be shy in their criticism and generous in their praise and, in doing so, help to create amore artificial culture of stability and wellbeing around a club – and an enhanced optimism about a new season- than is necessarily the case in reality.
Sports reporting is, of course, full of banal descriptive metaphors, hyperbole and euphemisms. For example, one thing you hear/read quite often in the media is that a failing club is a “sleeping giant”. This unlikely metaphor can rear its ugly head pre-season, or when a new player, owner or manager comes in. It’s often quoted to indicate how their latest singings, shiny business plan or “plans for investment”will rekindle former “glories”.
Often fans seem comfortable with this “sleeping giant” metaphor, sharing with the issuer a matching rear-view blindness; they comfortably partner the credulity-stretching concept that their club’s current misfortunes are temporaryand that their proud history indicates a much higher status than they currently enjoy. With the rosiest of tinted glasses, they remember the “good old” days, those spikes of success in a soft-focus recall, that stand out against the mildewed morass of most seasons. They convince themselves that those days are more representative of the club’s historical performanceand that they are about to return.
So, brushing aside the horsefeathers, what are the real likelihoods of a club delivering? Who really are the superclubs? Who are those who are genuinely “entitled”? Who are the true “sleeping giants”- and who are destined to remain “dormant dormice”?
Well, Arsenal and, perhaps surprisingly for many, especially our legions of younger readers, Everton are certainly superclubs. Why? Well, looking at the history of the “topflight”- that is, the old Division One, and since 1992 the Premier League, in the seasons from 1888-89 to 2024-25, Everton have made it their home for an incredible 122 seasons (out of a possible 126). Arsenal have done this for 108 seasons- but the Gunners hold the record for the most consecutive appearances at the highest level, at 99. Other “Superclubs”? Well Liverpool have 110 seasons at the top (61 consecutive since winning promotion in 1961) and Aston Villa go one better at 111 seasons - but, of course, only six currently consecutively, since bouncing back to the Premier League in 2018-19.
I hope you’ll agree those totals represent a pretty damn good record for each of the clubs concerned.
Also enjoying topflight longevity are Manchester United (100); Manchester City (96); Newcastle United (93); Tottenham Hotspur (90) and Chelsea (90).
No real surprises there and I think all fans would accede those clubs mentioned to date are entitled to expect an upper-Prem finish and possibly some silverware.
Next in the Entitlement League are Sunderland, West Bromwich Albion and Bolton Wanderers. Then Blackburn Rovers, Derby County, Stoke City, Middlesborough and the two Sheffield clubs.
Yes, really.
Maybe they are harder to find, but, in fairness, they have spent 86, 81, 73, 72, 65, 62, 61, and 66 (Wednesday) and 63 (United) seasons at the top.
They may not have earned the modern-day levels of fan entitlement of the top nine teams but surely their fans can justify higher expectations of at least being in contention for honours- and soon- with a track record of averaging every other season in the top flight.
Now I know you are all eagerly asking “Where is Cardiff City in this League of Leagues?
The answer- 41st.
Since 1910, the Bluebirds have enjoyed 17 seasons in the top division, about 13 per cent of their competitive career.
Is that track record enough to make the City a “sleeping giant”with an entitlement of top league success? For a bit of fun let’s look further into our own “entitlement” to do better.
Firstly, let’s check out the company we keep in our long-termposition of 41st with a total of 17 top tier seasons.
We share our score of 17 seasons at the top with Luton Town. Above us, defunct Bury had 22. Below us, on 14, are both Watford and Wimbledon. And it’s probably worth remembering that we were on 15 before Wimbledon got started.
Yes, upwardly-mobile Brighton are behind us at 44th with 12 seasons at the top- but they are joined on 12 by Oldham, Bradford City and Grimsby Town. Not many slumbering leviathans there, really.
So Cardiff City sit higher than current Premiership clubs Brighton and Bournemouth (positions 48 and 51) but only 12 places above Accrington (Th’ Owd Reds), 17 above Darwen (who?) and 19 ahead of Glossop (really?). It’s probably worth mentioning here that eight of our 17 topflight seasons occurred between 1921-22 and 1928-29, so we’re not far off nine top level seasons in a century.
Since Cardiff City’s first appearance in the Southern League in 1910, (excluding war years, of course) I calculate we’ve spent 59 seasons in the second tier- our largest positional segment- and one making up more than half of the total of Cardiff’s league placings.
We’ve also been in the Championship 18 years of its 20-year existence and are the longest serving (that’s most years in) Championship team.
In all those years, our overall second tier average position is 11th place. That’s roughly an average of 12th BC (Before the Championship) and then around 9th since the Championship came into being. Only five times in this span have we held an automatic promotion place (the same number of relegated seasons) and only once won the second league.
This all indicates that Cardiff’s statistical home is between 9thand 11th in the second tier and that, despite the wrath of the fans, now departed Manager Erol Bulut delivered the standard Cardiff City season last term- give or take one place. He finished 12th. While no fan of Mr. Bulut, I’d certainly take that in an instant this year.
So, in conclusion, having watched the City from a desertedBob Bank in the eighties with a few thousand other stalwarts as they fumbled their way around the Fourth Division, is 11th, 12th or 13th in the Championship so bad?
For a start, we don’t go up and do what happened twice recently- come back down crestfallen. We don’t do what Southampton are doing this year. Or Sheffield United last year. We don’t get stuffed for a season and have to shed a squad and risk free-falling through the EFL.
Low ambition? Yes, maybe. But I like the Championship. The pint and the pies aren’t the best I’ve ever had, but at least I can get one, without much of a queue, alongside our brilliant, self-deprecating, beleaguered, de-leagured (does that work?) fellow fans.
Bluebirds- you are wonderful people.
So here’s the epilogue. While writing this piece, I stumbled upon musings within an online page of the National Library of Medicine entitled “What Is Unrealistic Optimism?”
It discussed positive illusions and almost took the state of Unrealistic Optimism to a near theological level. “We are interested in whether cognitive states that are unrealistically optimistic are belief states, whether they are false, and whether they are epistemically irrational.”
If you’re interested, it’s easy to find. And if you’re like me, 20,000 other Bluebirds and several million other football fans around the UK, you might recognise your reflected self, smiling back irrationally from the surface of a half-full, plastic pint of overpriced, under-flavoured beer next time you’re in the concourse waiting for August’s big kick-off.
That fulsome hope should last around ninety minutes- if you’re lucky.
But, listen- who would want it any other way?
Come on the Blues!