Ok, so let’s get things straight once and for all as we face the final ten games of this relentlessly demanding season.
Two questions. Do we want to stay in the Championship a second longer than is necessary? Secondly, are we happy to continue abusing our own manager and players with so much at stake over the final weeks of the season?If the answers to both question are not a resounding NO on both occasions, then you should really take a hard look at yourself.
Whether you think it is right or not that manager and players have got the hump with the Boleyn fans over booing, the reality is that they have. Big Sam is even claiming (in his Evening Standard column) that our players are actually “frightened” of playing at home.
The damage that is causing is obvious to anyone casting an eye over the league table. We have given away 21 points at home. Reading have conceded 20 and Southampton 12. Such fine margins will dictate who goes up.
My view is that a debate on whether players, who live in a financial bubble with some being paid in one week what fans earn in a year, should feel this way, is pointless.
Yes, they should be able to handle such pressure and do their job. But the reality is different. There‘s also a valid discussion to be had over our style of play, but not now.
The time has come for hostilities and booing to end. The greater objective is too important. If we stay in this division one more season, the financial implications are devastating, reading David Sullivan’s interview with Iain Dale recently over our financial situation should have left nobody in any doubt.
Our debts, overall funding, quality of squad and ability to attract players depends on us winning promotion this season. Sullivan’s comments about exactly where we are, made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach. The debt does not seem to being cut significantly, it’s being managed and the owners are funding the promotion chase.
This club could change forever more if we cannot get back into the Premier League and take our share of the vast wealth being generated there.
So for a matter of about six weeks before the season ends, surely we should give every ounce of support we can muster to this team. There’s no point in berating Sam over tactics at this stage, he isn’t going to change and does not have the creative ability in the squad to do so anyway, in my view.
And if the players are using the booing at home as an excuse, then we should make sure that problem is no longer an issue. Fans maintain they have every right to express a view, and they have, even if I wish people would think first. But for six weeks, can we have a truce?
I am led to believe that the players were upset with the crowd reaction after the Palace draw, and that they were not afforded greater credit for their performances in three previous matches with ten men, in particular the win at Blackpool.
I also understand that Big Sam has a group of fans who sit behind the home dug-out area who are not slow to let him know what they feel. He’s big enough and ugly enough to handle that, it is not harming the performance on the pitch.
It was evident during the Watford game that players were turning to the crowd appealing for more noise and support, Abdoulaye Faye, Ricardo Vaz Te and Mark Noble all turned to different areas of the ground urging more support, in desperation at times.
I feel that the booing has been blown up out of all proportion anyway. But it has become an issue because the players have made it so. And I don’t take kindly to a Spurs-supporting pal who asks me now if I‘m booing my team. Enough is enough.
So let’s just give it a rest for the greater good of the club. People are entitled to their opinions, we pay good money for tickets and are in an age that demands for instant success, so patience is getting shorter from fans who have still not really got over the disgrace of last season.
But I also believe players have pointed out that it is fine for the crowd to bawl out Bubbles before the game, but that when the game starts the stadium falls silent. Faye - and now Danny Collins - for example, have experienced something very different at Stoke.
We have six weeks to put things right, to give the manager and players the platform they want to perform, then there can be no excuses. Too many players have left this club over recent years and complained about the fans here, let’s take away that final excuse this season.
The manager and players are quick to highlight the different atmosphere they believe that emanates from the away support. Nearly 5,000 were at Leeds to see an undistinguished game, but a vital point and a battling performance.
It was never going to be pretty, no game against a Neil Warnock side ever is. But standing watching Leeds score with seven minutes left, I did wonder what the reaction would have been had that happened at the Boleyn.
But the away fans just got on with things and kept pushing the players on, to be rewarded with Collins’ equaliser. In isolation, a point at Elland Road is a good one, it’s never been our happiest hunting ground.
I notice Warnock was complaining (not a surprise) about a perceived foul by Carlton Cole in the build-up to Collins’ equaliser. But he was strangely quiet about Michael Brown’s clear two-handed offence in the box in the first half.
Warnock was given loud and deserved dogs’ abuse by the visiting fans, who found themselves conveniently placed almost behind the home dug-out. Carlos Tevez’s name hammered Warnock’s ears.
The former Sheffield United boss turned and gave us a smile and a wiggle of his bum at the end, at least he can take and give out stick. There’s no point is asking why our fragile players cannot do the same.
Sadly, away wins by Southampton and Reading left us that bit further away from the top two places in the league.
But Sam and the players interviewed afterward were determinedly positive. That has to be the only reaction, because negativity at this stage achieves nothing when you are ten games from the end of the season.
What we have to do now is go on the sort of run that has taken Reading ahead of us. Sam is still talking of 90 points to be sure, so maybe seven more wins and a draw or two will reach that target.
That is not impossible. Reading have to visit us, Southampton and Birmingham in their final nine games, plus matches against Blackpool, Leeds and Brighton. If they win that lot, they deserve to go up.
Southampton play Hull, Blackpool, Reading and Middlesbrough. So there is scope for them to slip up as well.
So negative talk of us blowing it should end. There is still almost a third of the season left in six frantic weeks. As fans we should put all our complaints to one side and give this great club the best possible chance to win promotion. The alternative does not bear thinking about.
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