Scream for me, Nottingham!
30/09/05 | by Luke Chant

So here we are, 11 games into a season I never thought would happen, seemingly building some kind of mid-table respectability at last. “Mid-table respectability!” I hear you splutter as you drench your self in hot tea/cold beer. Well, what do we deserve? A season spent barely avoiding relegation followed by a season getting slowly, painfully relegated should tell us that we’re, well, crap. It’s hard to accept, but were in this division because of that very fact. 

I was watching the result come through at half time on Sky Sports News with my Brentford supporting friend (“Don’t diss League One, it’s our home!”) and began to say “I hate us losing to s**t teams” before cutting myself off and realising the correct statement should be “I hate us being a s**t team”. And I do. 

Many fans my age (early 20s) remember us being at Wembley every other season (Zenith Data Systems Cup Final, anyone…), somewhere near the top of the old First Division with half our team in the England squad, with the ability to laugh at the Arsenal/Man Utd/Leeds “fans” at school because we had more European Cups than them. And the Mansfield fans obviously. But it’s hard to laugh when you’ve fallen so far.

Like so many of us, I started the season with great optimism, quietly impressed with Megson’s signings and quite happy with the victory over Huddersfield. Like so many of us, I got carried away thinking it was going to be an easy season. And like so many of us I was given a very rude awakening when we gave up at home trailing to a solitary Scunthorpe goal (I was the guy repeating “f**king Scunthorpe” all the way to the Southbank, in case you were wondering).

It’s going to be far from easy. It’s going to take some grit, as well as some decent passing, to get us out of this league and closer to where we belong, and Gary Megson can do grit. Hey, he’s not my favourite, but he had the balls to take this poisoned chalice of a job and he actually seems to care, unlike certain managers. We could harp on about the chairman, previous manager’s faults, the sale/early dismissal of players who are now full internationals, or even the excessive cost of tickets for a league where some clubs let you in for next to nothing. But now that Megson has proved he’s not another Kinnear (in that he actually knows something about football) it’s time to get behind whatever team he chooses. 

It has struck me that we’re far too quiet as supporters. Nothing is worse than being watching your team slump to a 1-0 defeat with the feeling that the crowd could have made a difference. We need some new songs as much as we need another decent striker. What’s the point in singing about hating Derby when it looks like we won’t be playing them for some time? Loud as we might shout, they can’t hear us!

They might be earning in a month what I make in a year but even footballers need a little encouragement. With the biggest support in the division, we should be working our vocal chords a little harder. Get to it. Do it for Cloughie.