Today we hear from Andrew Mathewson – STAR Board member
Never say never.
But I think we can now say that a place in the play-offs looks most unlikely. The mid-week draw at Luton, with Barnsley winning at Huddersfield, means that getting into the top six is now a very tall order, to say the least.
It’s a funny old game, as Jimmy Greaves used to say on the telly. We’ve had our best season for a few years, since the 2016/167 play-off year. But despite that, many fans will be feeling hollow at this point. The season promised more and not to make the play offs after sitting in the top six for most of the season can only be disappointing.
The time for a proper season retrospective will be when it’s all over. But, please, let’s remember the positives not just the disappointment that we feel now. This has been a good season overall. Not perhaps the great season we’d been hoping for, but a good season all the same.
What many are feeling now underlines the fundamental failings of the proposed European Super League. Following a football team is about the highs and lows of changing fortunes. The European Super League, with its permanent core members, would not have been a sporting competition but a branch of the global entertainment industry. It was ill-conceived and rightly met an early end.
Let’s not kid ourselves that the status quo is how football should be run. There are still massive and growing disparities in wealth and the Premier League and Champions League embed the privileged position of a few teams. The greedy six may not be forming a new exclusive competition just yet, but their appetites for power and money are undimmed. Throw in the uncertainty about how we come out of the Covid restrictions and the future looks precarious. It’s clear that the time is ripe for a fundamental review of how football is governed, for the fans at all levels, not the owners of the few at the top of the tree. STAR welcomes the launch on 19 April of the Government’s Fan-led Review into football governance.
But in the meantime we need some performances to lift the spirits as the season draws to a close, and there’s no better place to start than in the game against Swansea. Last season when they came here on the last day it seemed they had no chance of the play-offs but somehow a big win and a big defeat for Forest squeezed them in. Never say never! Come on URZ!