Blog written by tractorboykent
Published: 25th March 2024 11:43
It started with boos at the end of the QPR home game. Since then there have been a steady flow of churlish criticism of bad results and performances – despite the extreme rarity of both. Some ‘fans’ seem to seriously think that we should be walking this league.
Apparently Kieran McKenna DOESN'T know exactly what we need. On here and on Facebook he’s been accused of ‘formulaic game management’ and of picking defenders who are ‘mentally weak’ and ‘like ‘rabbits in headlights.’
McKenna himself, as context for our record in our first season back in the Championship, has occasionally included in his press interviews the fact that we are a ‘promoted team’ - it makes you wonder if this is his very low-key way of reminding these critics of some rather obvious context. If so, he pays them rather too much respect in my view.
It’s a game of opinions, of course, but we shouldn’t forget that, like most clubs, we have our fair share of idiot fans. Right now some comments are off the scale of idiocy.
We have lost nine league games in the last 84. Fact. Despite returning to a level at which we had previously abjectly failed (none of us need a long memory to recall 2018/19), we have been consistently top four all season.
The briefest of looks at squad value lays bare the fact that we have no right whatsoever to be keeping company with the other three. According to Transfermarkt.co.uk, the top three estimated squad values in the Championship are Leicester at £191.8m, Leeds with £171.1m and Southampton at £167.1m. And Town? Seventeenth at £40.1m
Yet for some that’s not enough. For those League One opposition fans who last season described some of us as arrogant, maybe this is vindication. Or maybe we have picked up some ‘fans’ who have not been around for the last two decades of mediocrity and whose interest is limited to watching on TV and expecting Premier League football. A new sack of £100m cash will no doubt bolster their sense of entitlement that it’s coming.
But we are entitled to nothing. Whatever has been – and will be - achieved has been through hard work. Fortunately, the vast majority of Town fans recognise that.
We see that McKenna and his staff have created a juggernaut of technical excellence, fitness and togetherness on the pitch whilst, off of it, Mark Ashton and his team have developed an exemplary business a million miles away from what he inherited when he and Mike O’Leary arrived.
We see that, despite some fans choosing to regularly criticise Luke Woolfenden, he’s a home grown 25 year old who has developed to regularly stand firm at League One and Championship levels.
We see that McKenna himself has racked up less than 130 games as a manager and yet has already surpassed the achievements of so many of his Town predecessors with decades of experience.
We see all of this because it’s very clear to see. Anything’s possible from here. A top two finish is the ambition (not the dream) and it’s very feasible.
I’ve read some moaners who say that anything below top two is disastrous but really a top six finish would be extraordinary given where we have come from (as has been said many times, few of us would have dreamt of it last August).
I’m not a ‘happy clapper’ with low standards and ambitions; I say this as a long-term supporter, who well remembers both the highs and lows of the play-offs, a realist.
Fortunately, realists are the majority of each week’s sell-out crowds – the rest need to take a moment and get a grip.