Postcards from Mars: How not to deal with Leicester City’s relegation
Despite his previous stint as TFW transfer guru going horribly wrong when Leicester City actually signed one of his suggestions, Big Strong Leicester Boy Ric Flair is back - and he’s not happy.
Have you ever woken up standing on a stool, in the pitch black, in the downstairs shoe cupboard, clutching a raw jacket potato that you've bitten a chunk out of? Well I have. I'm renowned for it. The truth is: you have as well, it's just been dressed up differently.
Leicester City have sleepwalked into the Championship from a position that should have been nigh on impossible, but here we are. Record breakers and defying science once again.
While each fan is left to try and deal with relegation in their own way, knowing the likelihood that our club will front up in public and offer the fanbase a modicum of comfort is more unlikely than our demise itself. At the time of writing, our extremely secretive club appears to have enforced or at least requested a social media blackout from our players and the anger and hurt continues to build.
Should this be that difficult to deal with? I mean this is my fifth relegation since I've supported Leicester, surely it's just something I should have learnt to tolerate and accept.
Maybe it’s the stage I'm at now in life. I'm 39 and although I still occasionally drink until I can't see past the end of my nose, Leicester take up a lot of my thoughts, from the moment I wake up, until the moment I waddle off to bed each night.
Tapestry of life
I look back to previous relegations and panic. I suddenly realise I'm no longer a kid, I should be a sensible middle-aged man, lead by example to my young children, instead of picking bits of skin off my thumbs in desperation and moaning I'm going bald through stress from this nut job of a football club. Grow up pal, this is the tapestry of life. Bollocks.
If I close my eyes I can still feel the silk of the Mitre Ultimax Premier League football, the best ball ever made. I used to go down Cannon Sports in Hinckley and sniff them, they were magical. You can't turn it on and off when you like - if football is your passion then shit like the last few days is going to really sting. I feel like I've stuck my head in a nest of bullet ants.
This is why fans sometimes overstep the mark. Football clubs are desperate to take advantage of people who'll spend thousands year in, year out following their team but want to make it as sanitised as possible in order to curb any possibility that these same fans who live and breathe their team might let emotion get the better of them in the midst of failure and oblivion.
I can't even contemplate next season yet. Thinking of possible transfer targets used to be my bread and butter. But I feel sick. They've spoilt it.
We've just over two months to completely rebuild this club, there's going to need to be a turnover in and out collectively of more than 20 players, we need a whole new management team and other staff, we have a truly horrifying injury problem spanning the best part of 3 seasons now and the root cause analysis of our failings that should have been well underway weeks ago regardless of whether we stayed up or not, is being held by two of the very people who ought to be front of the queue under scrutiny.
Everything's pointing to us still being asleep as a football club. It breaks my heart.
Beans on toast
I'll go absolutely berserk at the first article published this summer saying that Leicester have to sell players before they can consider bringing any new players in. It's like I'm on the gravity wheel up the local fair and it won't stop, I feel sick again.
That's brought back horrible memories actually: never do a cross country run, wolf down a load of beans on toast and then go on the gravity wheel. I can still smell it now.
There's no point me even delving into what's gone wrong, it's all been said countless times already. Some of us have been shouting it from podcasts, twitter handles, extremely well-thought-out articles, banners in the stands and all sorts for months, but instead we will wait for the internal review from Messrs Rudkin and Mses Whelan. Like waiting for a postcard from Mars.
The Championship'll be a laugh though, won't it. I don't know why it's riling me this much, whether it's the thought of Don Goodman or Peter Beagrie on commentaries, the heinous numbers and lettering used by EFL clubs or the paranoia of us being the Billy Big Shot who's had to return to their home town with their tail between their legs after years of living the high life, but it stinks and I hate it.
Does Colin Murray still present the highlights show on Quest? Or are we now on to some other salt of the earth like Dean Gaffney?
Marked and measured
I realise much of this will sound and read like entitlement, I'd like to think it isn't. However, this brings me to my final point on my journey through despair. If our ownership, King Power under the stewardship of Khun Top, remain committed and unflinching in their ambition and long term plans for Leicester City to be a sustainable Premier League Football Club, I can't help but feel shattered.
If a football club can get promoted, perform the greatest of great escapes, produce the single biggest sporting achievement in modern history the season after, by winning the best domestic league title in world football, reach the latter stages of the Champions League, be pound for pound one of the best teams in the Premier League again a few years later for two consecutive seasons, culminating in another first in our history, the FA Cup, and then nose dive out of the top division all in less then a decade, then what's the point?
The standards which have been set and the stature and footing we'd worked so damn hard for, making us the envy of nearly everyone around us? That’s what makes this so difficult to stomach. It's why I hold those in charge to account and do not accept this couldn't have been prevented. The fall has been too hard, too quick, too negligent.
There's a famous saying: "we're here for a good time, not a long time". Meanwhile, our fans are now back facing the real possibility that we're here for a long time and not necessarily a good time.
We'll be back one day, but it'll never be the same. Our lives are marked and measured by the relegations we endure.
11, 18, 20, 24, 39…
We really did it, didn't we?
