Expectation Inflation

Part of being a real English football supporter is having unrealistic expectation for your team's performance in the coming season. In the quiet of night as he lays on his bed contemplating potential transfers and waiting for sleep, a little voice whispers into the ear of every true fan: 'your club deserves better.' I say this not to ridicule English fans, but to commiserate with them. Whatever it is that bears this mental virus has infected me too.

This mania manifests itself in one of two ways. One is to be laughably optimistic about your team's chances. Although this relies on a healthy dose of myopia, it is the more pleasant way to deal with the problem. The second, more common way, is to see every missed pass, every conceded goal, every loss, and every season that does not end in promotion as an epic disappointment that has dire personal consequences. The more experienced practitioners will leverage this bad humour into a bitter sense of injustice which can, with care, protect them from the need to ever say anything remotely positive about the progress if their football club ever again.

Only one club will with the Blue Square South this year. One other club will win the playoffs for the second promotion berth. This means that out of the 22 clubs competing in the league, only 9% of them will have supporters satisfied with their lot. 81% of us are facing disappointment and heartbreak, yet the long odds do not sway us from doing the sensible thing: staying at home in the warm and dry confines of our sitting rooms. Each winter you will see us on the terraces in the cold and the rain cheering on our mid-table teams, taking confidence in the fact that they have not been mathematically eliminated yet. We are clearly nuts.

The good news for me and my fellow Bath City fans, though, is that it is plainly obvious that our club is a real dark horse. With a solid, experienced defense and several rumours of the manager signing a striker soon (hopefully), City have every chance of making the playoffs, even with our limited budget. If we go into the playoffs with a bit of form, we just might get that promotion spot and find ourselves in the Conference National. Or so I think. Don't you? Of course we will.