The Drop

Every year around this time throughout Europe sportswriters and commentators and fans start talking about The Drop.  Relegation and promotion (or, I guess, promotion and relegation if your glass is half full) are features of almost every professional soccer league in the world not in the U.S. or Australia.

Rather ironic, since relegation is the most democratic, or Darwinian, of all sporting concepts. Each year in one or two or three of the clubs that finish in the bottom of the standings of a league will be relegated to the next division down, and the same number of clubs will be promoted, either by virtue of their finish in their league during the regular season or by a playoff, to the next higher division. So while clubs in, say, China will (theoretically) rise or fall each year on their own merits, those in the U.S. are among the few that are always safely ensconced in the highest professional division of the sport.

Because of the way professional sports teams developed in the United States, with a small number of clubs owned usually by one individual or entity, promotion and relegation never took hold here. In Europe, however, with its thousands of soccer teams and stronger local and regional ties, it was a natural development.

In recent years, the relegation battle, at least in England, is much more interesting than the fight for the championship of the Premier League. While the same two or three teams fight it out for the crown every year, several more are sucked into the abyss that is the desperate attempt to avoid the drop.

This year the races to the championship and to relegation are both shaping up to be interesting, thanks to the lack of a dominating club at the top and many middling to miserable ones at the other end of the spectrum. But while one of the usual suspects (either Man United or Arsenal) are likely to win the crown, nine or ten clubs, within six points of each other, are capable of playing badly enough over the last eight or nine matches of the season to warrant relegation.

Unfortunately for me and other Blackburn fans, one of those clubs that could face The Drop is the Rovers.  In the top ten and looking good just a few weeks ago, Rovers have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or at least a draw, on several occasions recently, including two weeks ago when they conceded a penalty in the last minute to lose 3-2 to Fulham, and last week when they had to come from two goals down at home to register a draw with Blackpool. Speculation has gone from wondering whether the club will be able to challenge for a Europa League spot to whether they will be playing in the Premier League next season.

I have to admit, though, that whether it's the glass-half-empty Rover fan, the masochist, or the republican (yes, little "r" republican) in me, I relish the fight to dodge The Drop. Nothing more energizes a fan base than supporting your club to survive to fight another day. And, I have to admit, I always relish the opportunity to chirp when a "Big Club" (like Newcastle two seasons ago) goes down.

How cool would it be to get to see an American pro team (insert team name here -- mine would be the Cowboys or the Yankees) struggle to maintain top flight status? Can you imagine the glee if Jerry Jones was faced with the prospect of a half-filled billion dollar stadium while his Cowboys play some semi-pro team from Waco?

I'll be there on Saturday morning, biting my nails and hoping the Rovers can pick up three or even one point against Arsenal (yeah, right) that would go a long way to avoiding The Drop. But I'll be pulling just as hard for West Ham and Birmingham (two self-proclaimed "Big Clubs") to lose and sink a little farther toward oblivion. What could be more American?

The Damned Rovers?

Cindy and I watched the movie "The Damned United" this weekend and I couldn't help but draw an analogy between the topic of the movie -- Brian Clough's brief, unsuccessful reign as manager of Leeds United in 1974 -- and the current situation that my Blackburn Rovers find themselves in.

To make a long story short, Clough was a young, brash, self-confident manger in England who led lowly Derby (that's pronounced "Darby" for all you American readers) County from the depths of the second division to the championship of Division One in England (what is now called the Premier League) in two short years. Along the way he first admired and then came to loathe the manager of Leeds United, Don Revie, who was an "old school" manger (read: his players played hard, arguably dirty, soccer).

Clough had a habit of buying the rights to players without the approval of the Chairman of Derby and, at least according the to admittedly fictionalized movie account depicted in The Damned United, became more arrogant in his dealings with the Chairman after his initial success. Ultimately, he submitted his resignation to the Board in an attempted power play to leverage his running of the club without the Chairman's involvement. Unfortunately for him, the resignation was accepted.

After a brief stint at a lower division club in Brighton, Clough was offered the manager's position at Leeds. Revie had accepted the job as England's manager and the club targeted Clough as his replacement.
Clough's reign at Leeds lasted exactly 44 days, but during that time he managed to alienate its board, the media, Revie, and most importantly his players. Whether Clough was right or not (and the movie suggests that he was) it was hardly the way to start a relationship when he supposedly told his players (who had won the first division championship in 1973-74, the year before Clough led Derby to the title, and the FA Cup the year before that) that they could "all throw [their] medals in the bin because they were not fairly won."

Brian Clough leading Leeds onto the pitch before the 1974 FA Charity Shield match. 

Predictably, the players did not play hard for Clough and he was ousted after less than a month and a half in charge.

The comparison to Blackburn is that this week its new owners sacked their manager, Sam Allardyce. While many Rovers fans were not admirers of Allardyce, they were almost unanimously surprised by his firing since Rovers were mid-table at the time -- a standing about as good as most fans expect given the club's limited resources. There was talk of a protest by fans before the match this past Saturday against West Ham and many have speculated that the firing, the reasons given for it (essentially, lack of ambition and an unattractive style of play), and the expectations that the club's new owners have all demonstrate that they are naive at best and will endanger the club's Premier League life at worst.

I suspect that just as Clough failed to appreciate how his words and attitude would affects his new players at Leeds and their desire to play well for him, so too Allardyce may have overestimated the weight his belief in his own managerial style and abilities would have with Rovers' new owners when compared to how his message was delivered.

Sam Allardyce, cutting a somewhat less dashing figure than Clough.

Allardyce, although admittedly somewhat successful in a previous managerial stint at Bolton and in keeping Rovers afloat, seems (inordinately) impressed with his own managerial ability, which to the casual observer is exclusively comprised of one-note football built around long balls and set pieces. To his credit, his players did seem to genuinely like playing for him. But the players weren't footing the bill.

This is pure, unsupported conjecture on my part, but one can easily imagine Allardyce communicating with his new bosses in a manner that was both self-congratulatory and condescending in informing them of his previous work, what their priorities should be (almost exclusively Premier League survival), and how they should go about achieving them (leaving him alone and letting him manage the club the way he wanted to).

Like Clough, Allardyce entered a new situation in his job and probably thought that the way he had handled such a relationship in the past would be good enough -- particularly since it was his way. You should always consider before speaking to any audience not only the message but how it ought to be conveyed. Particularly if your job is on the line. And if you're a manager, it always is, isn't it?

An Inexplicable Obsession

I am a Blackburn Rovers fan.

Whenever I meet someone from England who is not a Blackburn fan, I usually get the same reaction when I tell them that I support the Rovers: "Blackburn? Why?"

The Rovers are not a fashionable club to follow, at least not these days. Admittedly, I started rooting for the Blue and White in their second heyday, following their first (and, truth be told, likely only) Premier League championship in 1995. But I wasn't a bandwagon jumper, actually not throwing my support behind the club until it was on the decline, in 1997. Only two years later they were relegated and I stuck with them, proof of my stubbornness or stupidity.

It was not a decision that was made lightly. I began following the Premier League around 1996, a time coinciding with my beginning to coach my son's rec soccer team and with ESPN2's broadcasts of some Premier League games. I decided to follow one team, and set a few rules in choosing which one it would be. I wanted to root for a team that had enjoyed some success but was not one of the mega-teams. And I wanted to feel a connection with not just the team but its supporters.

Options for viewing soccer, and following foreign leagues, were much more antiquated 15 years ago than they are now, so the tools at my disposal to help figure out what team I would call my own were limited. I relied on the occasional match on ESPN2 and message boards and email lists on the Internet to help make my choice. For a time, I joined email lists of fans of Newcastle, Liverpool, and Blackburn.

All three were moderately successful in the '90's and had some promise of future success. Liverpool had enjoyed a long spell as the best club in England in the '70's and '80's and Newcastle had a strong fan base and fanatical following. Rovers had been the best team in England in the late 1800's and had enjoyed a revival under steel magnate and local boy made good Jack Walker, who had purchased the club in the early '90's and quickly steered it (or bought its way, depending on how you looked at it) from the Second Division to the Premier League and then champions in a remarkably short period of time.

I quickly struck Newcastle off of the list, finding their fans to be boorish and unintelligent. The Liverpool supporters were smarter but had an air of entitlement that I found off-putting. The Rovers fans, however, were smart, funny, and had a certain "us against the world" attitude that fit with my predisposition to root for the underdog (a trait I believe I share with many West Virginians).

My support for Rovers was cemented by two other factors: their fantastic blue and white halves, a kit that I think is the best looking soccer shirt in the world, and a 7-2 thrashing of Sheffield Wednesday on a Monday afternoon that still may be the most dazzling soccer game I've ever watched.

That was 13 years ago and it is still the most goals I've ever seen the Rovers score in a match. There have been some very low points along the way, including relegation in 1999 and two season in what was then called the First Division. As hard as it was to follow a club in the Premier League then, it was nothing compared to the wasteland that was news, let alone match highlights or live games, regarding First Division teams.

Rovers tried a number of miserably unsuitable managers while stumbling into and then through the wilderness before a savior arrived: Graham Souness. Although his departure from the club, inevitable for almost any professional team, was unpleasant, there is no doubt in my mind that Souness was the right man at the right time to lead Blackburn back to the Premier League, which he did in a season and a half.

During the first year back, Rovers reached their high point since I've followed them, winning the League Cup final 2-1 over Tottenham Hotspur at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. I still have the video tape of that win, and pull it out and watch every so often.

Since then, Rovers have mostly struggled in the Premier League, although they did enjoy a spell in the top half of the league for a time under manager Mark Hughes, one of the heroes of the League Cup win. Hughes, however, bolted for the filthy lucre offered by Manchester City (he's since been fired there and was recently hired by Fulham, which employs Americans Clint Dempsey and Eddie Johnson) and were very nearly demoted again after a disastrous start to the next season under Paul Ince.

The past two years have been marked by mediocrity and dull play, due in part to the current manager, Sam Allardyce, a coach whose tactics and demeanor would be difficult for the most ardent supporter to warm to, and in part to the financial cost of "facing the drop" to the First Division (now called the "Championship") which makes survival in the Premiership the main goal for all but a handful of clubs.

Things are better from the standpoint of getting to watch Rovers live on FSC and ESPN2 these days when they play one of the "big clubs". But I can't say that I often enjoy the experience. That's part of being a true fan, particularly a fan of a perpetual underdog. And, unlike in baseball (I'm a lifelong Tigers and Cubs fan) or football (ahem, Lions?) at least professional soccer offers several different avenues, through cup competitions, for a team to shine even when the season isn't going all that well (Portsmouth were in the FA Cup final last year while slogging through a miserable league campaign that saw them practically relegated by Christmas).

The preseason hasn't gone well at all for Rovers this year, and I fear that survival may be an accomplishment rather than just a goal in 2010-11. But I'll be watching. Through thick and (mostly) thin, I'm a Rovers fan.