How to lose friends and alienate people

[Corporal_Jones]

You talk about things like history but thats not all you have to take into account. If you have been to Doncaster recently or lived nearby you would realise that Doncaster on the whole is on the up not just the football team, while Oldham if anything is on the wane as a town. So there is no reason why they cant become a bigger club than us.

 

There may be truth in what you are saying, but there is not necessarily any connection between the state of a town and the success of its football club. For example, whn Liverpool were Europe's top club in the 1980s, the city was one of the most run down and unemployment-blighted places in the country. I do recognise that it was a different game then in many ways and that now that admission prices have soared people are more careful about where and how they spend their money.

 

The more that it is casually accepted by Latics fans that historically smaller clubs are set to sail past us and that there is nothing to be done about it, the more it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In some ways it already has.

 

We would do well to remember that the opening shots in the revising of the plan based around the new stadium have already been fired with Simon Corney's recent questioning of whether both Latics fans and the town as a whole really wants a club capable of surviving IN THIS DIVISION. This is the first time things have ever been stated in such terms. I wasn't surprised-I always did predict that the new stadium plan would become one geared towards enabling the club to survive at lower division level.

 

Note for morons: This does not mean that I do not realise that the club is making efforts to build a squad capable of gaining promotion. Nor does it mean that the plan based around the stadium could not be revised to help guarantee second-tier survival if it was somehow achieved. However, if promotion is not achieved within the next few years nothing is so sure as that the stadium project will be revised downwards, if only because crowds will fall further as the town and, sadly, a significant percentage of the club's fanbase gives up the ghost.

[Corporal_Jones]

I don't think we are in awe of these clubs (and these clubs include Doncaster), more a feeling of jealousy because we are unfortunate to be within 15 miles of 3 Premiership clubs (effectively 2) and 3 league clubs who impinge on our catchment area. What we have to do is be judicious in our financial dealings to compensate.

 

KEEP THE FAITH

 

 

 

Until recently we had no problem in regularly attracting significantly bigger crowds than small clubs with less local competition.

 

I am, in any case, dubious as to how many Oldhamers actually attend the matches of any of these Premiership clubs. Most ManUre fans in the town, in my experience, seem to watch from the armchair and the barstool, while the same could be said of City fans to a lesser extent. As for Bolton, I have never once heard of an Oldhamer who has chosen Bolton as the club to watch. Why would he or she? Unlike with Manchester, there is no noticeable ex-Bolton population in the town who would have had their football loyalties passed down from older relatives, while for most of the football-aware lifetime of anybody over twenty-five Bolton were no more successful or glamorous than Latics. I've even heard the argument extended to take in all the north-west Premiership clubs. There may be a few Oldhamers whose loyalties lie with Liverpool due to childhood glory-seeking in the eighties, but, as with Manure today, I doubt that many of these regularly make the journey to Anfield. There will be few, if any, Everton glory-seekers, though, while the idea of anybody in Oldham randomly choosing to follow Wigan is laughable.

 

The whole thing is merely an excuse for continuing unambition and failure.