The need for instant success in football...modern phenomenon

Ian Bairds Ears

Ian Bairds Ears

Well-known member
Usually I would be a little patient watching them build a squad...hoping to push on as the season grows....but as the years go by I find myself demanding instant success . Instant highs....a lot more.
5 points from 6 games is triggering that in me .we've got a manager who I like a chairman whom I wouldn't swap despite some kinks on the road ...and a squad that could be swelled this week with decent additions.
Does anyone else feel their patience eroding in the same way...no one seems to want to wait for anything anymore....the kids get everything at the touch of a button....are we as adults the same now....lacking in patience...needing instant tangible success...
 
Championship sides nowadays seem to depend on players on loan from the PL. They go back at the end of the season, plus it's almost impossible to retain any exceptional home grown talent (they go into the 'big club stockpile', you might get them on loan from Chelsea if lucky). So the team building process goes back to square 1 every year.
 
I think it feels worse after years in the Championship when you see teams not much better than us, spending less, going up and staying up. You start to look at them and question why we can't make that leap. Look at Crystal Palace. I'm sure we beat them home and away the season they went up and yet here we are.

After years of watching the team, you know what a missed opportunity looks like to move up the table and when you see the same mistakes again it gets frustrating, doesn't it?

I think that I get more impatient with the players than management and it's all to do with the money. Gilded players who won loads of trophies in the late 90s now look like paupers compared to journeymen with no medals earning more and producing less.
 
I just think this impatience is also born out of frustration that football isn’t a level playing field anymore, it is driven by money and the ability for the richest clubs to effectively buy the league and starting to find the same half dozen clubs involved constantly in the premiership/championship yo-yo leaving everyone else stranded.
 
I’ll be really honest and am starting to quite like the Championship as it’s a ‘proper‘ footy league where on the whole most teams can beat another lots of the time . The Prem is effectively a matter of grinding out 38 points no matter what .

It’s not quite life for me as you’re constantly scrapping for the odd morsel that slips off the top table and my feeling is likely borne from our last time up there when I was frankly embarrassed at our team and club . If that’s success - stick it
 
We all mostly have our smart phones and high speed internet connections farting rumours and speculation at us, that must contribute to impatience when we see stuff constantly on social media and assume transfers are dragging. In days gone by it was all papers, ceefax and pub talk which spread info at a much slower pace.
 
People talk about the Championship being unpredictable- at the top I tend to disagree. Norwich and Watford back up, who would bet against West Brom and Fulham going up automatically? In essence, you are looking at a play off spot at best. Keep the majority of your squad together after relegation and it stands you in good stead ( Sheff Utd trying to prove this theory wrong!)

So there is urgent need and instant success required as the gap between relegated clubs and Championship clubs gets wider.

Look at our situation- spunked parachute payments and now, I’m afraid, trying to assemble a squad of free transfer players ( largely) with little hope of competing with the top 6 let alone the top two!
 
In football and in life I am afraid. People want the best watch, the best car, a forever home and want it all without being able to afford it and the Western way of life allows this and call excessive credit wealth.

My parents saved for everything they owned except the house and never used credit. I have been much the same way during my life.

My car is 18 years old and I love it, the watch I am wearing was a gift from work and the clothes I am wearing.. Dunno where they came from my wife buys them mostly. I do spend decent money on jeans and shirts but that's it.
 
The older I get, the more relaxed I am about where we are as a football club. I can't stand modern football, to me it's a mirror of society where those at the top have obscene wealth and will dictate where the crumbs trickle down to. Likes of Boro need to be there waiting for the crumbs to keep going. But hey-ho. I like the Championship, I love Boro, we are financially well run, we look good, bad indifferent usually in the same game. Where are we going? Not sure, but just sat enjoying the ride.......waiting.......waiting for footballs financial bubble to burst 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️
 
A couple of thoughts on this topic:

the_holgate_roof said:
I just think this impatience is also born out of frustration that football isn’t a level playing field anymore, it is driven by money and the ability for the richest clubs to effectively buy the league and starting to find the same half dozen clubs involved constantly in the premiership/championship yo-yo leaving everyone else stranded.
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Shouldn't that create more patience rather than less? If we know we're not playing on a level playing field, surely is more rational to accept it takes time to build a winning team than demand instant success?

Nosmo-King said:
People talk about the Championship being unpredictable- at the top I tend to disagree. Norwich and Watford back up, who would bet against West Brom and Fulham going up automatically? In essence, you are looking at a play off spot at best. Keep the majority of your squad together after relegation and it stands you in good stead ( Sheff Utd trying to prove this theory wrong!)
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Parachute payments talked last season and I think they will again this year, FUlham and the Baggies look a cut above. However, I think this is due to covid impacting everyone else's finances rather than parachute payments per se. Parachute payments haven't changed in the last couple of years after all.

Analysis (linked) shows that in the decade before Covid, 23.3% of newly relegated teams from the PL were promoted at the first time of asking. I think that's less than people would think and, without crunching the numbers myself, I'd think it would be a reduction on the previous decade. Of course, relegated teams are over-represented (they only make up 12.5% of the division after all), but they've always had a better chance of bouncing back that a team who was in lower mid-table the previous season. Furthermore, teams have had greater success at bouncing back from league one at the first time of asking, and parachute payments don't really come into that argument.

link

My thoughts on this is that fans have to show some consistency. We get stuck in the loop of demanding instant success in the Autumn and a long term plan in the Spring. We can't have both, so I'll go for the latter.
 
Dislike everything about the modern game too as mentioned in one of the posts above, I suppose apart from the obvious season for me the mid 70's onwards to 81 when we had an excellent team & then 86 for a few season I still look fondly at our lowest ebb with fondness, that we had low crowds, no money but togetherness on the terraces, those that went then stood by the team knowing where we had come from & the point we were at, we cut our cloth accordingly, I suppose what I'm saying as Laughing put it, just throw money at what you want, as much as you want in some cases, oh how I would love to go to football before the greed is good took a firm grip on our once beautiful game
 
Good post but the issue isn’t about fans patience, it’s about players patience as the days of players sticking around are gone. They all want to be in the prem and so every club knows that they are on borrowed time with their big names and failing to gain promotion can result in losing half your side.
 
zorro_mfc said:
Good post but the issue isn’t about fans patience, it’s about players patience as the days of players sticking around are gone. They all want to be in the prem and so every club knows that they are on borrowed time with their big names and failing to gain promotion can result in losing half your side.
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I sort of went off track a bit zorro, I wasn't having a go at fans, just the way football has changed so much with so much money thrown around & between 82-86 we had none, players who played for us if not would have been on the dole
 
I agree but my point was that I think this lack of patience in fans has always been there look at how the so called big clubs fans react if they go through a bad patch.

But this lack of patience in players is a relatively new thing. It really is all about the prem for some of them.
 
Zorro, the last thing I would do is have a pop at our fans, I've been guilty of missing large chunks of the Riverside where other Boro fans have never missed, sometimes writing something down & others reading it can read different
 
Ian Bairds Ears said:
Usually I would be a little patient watching them build a squad...hoping to push on as the season grows....but as the years go by I find myself demanding instant success . Instant highs....a lot more.
5 points from 6 games is triggering that in me .we've got a manager who I like a chairman whom I wouldn't swap despite some kinks on the road ...and a squad that could be swelled this week with decent additions.
Does anyone else feel their patience eroding in the same way...no one seems to want to wait for anything anymore....the kids get everything at the touch of a button....are we as adults the same now....lacking in patience...needing instant tangible success...
Click to expand...
It seems to be the way society has gone, 24 hour supermarkets open, 24 hour fast food and drive through's binge watching programme's as people can't wait for the next one, 24 instant banking. Emails, text messages and WhatsApp expecting an instant response. People queue up overnight to buy the latest phone, computer game or book, can't possibly wait a few hours or a couple of days.

I guess it all adds to us becoming impatience and develops and expectation of instant satisfaction/gratification which will spread across all areas of our life including football.

I guess there are many benefits as well as the downsides but we definitely need to be able to balance things better on the psychological impact.
 
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Anton_Berg said:
Championship sides nowadays seem to depend on players on loan from the PL. They go back at the end of the season, plus it's almost impossible to retain any exceptional home grown talent (they go into the 'big club stockpile', you might get them on loan from Chelsea if lucky). So the team building process goes back to square 1 every year.
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Club squads need to be limited in the Premier League. What amazes me is the number of players who get transferred from the likes of Chelsea and Liverpool for £10-15m despite them never looking like breaking into the first team.
 
Corco65 said:
It seems to be the way society has gone, 24 hour supermarkets open, 24 hour fast food and drive through's binge watching programme's as people can't wait for the next one, 24 instant banking. Emails, text messages and WhatsApp expecting an instant response. People queue up overnight to buy the latest phone, computer game or book, can't possibly wait a few hours or a couple of days.

I guess it all adds to us becoming impatience and develops and expectation of instant satisfaction/gratification which will spread across all areas of our life including football.

I guess there are many benefits as well as the downsides but we definitely need to be able to balance things better psychological impact.
Click to expand...
Thoughtful response
Corco65 said:
It seems to be the way society has gone, 24 hour supermarkets open, 24 hour fast food and drive through's binge watching programme's as people can't wait for the next one, 24 instant banking. Emails, text messages and WhatsApp expecting an instant response. People queue up overnight to buy the latest phone, computer game or book, can't possibly wait a few hours or a couple of days.

I guess it all adds to us becoming impatience and develops and expectation of instant satisfaction/gratification which will spread across all areas of our life including football.

I guess there are many benefits as well as the downsides but we definitely need to be able to balance things better psychological impact.
Click to expand...
I think that patience as a virtue is being eradicated from modern life you're right...our children will grow up with LESS ability to be content In their own skin....bhuddist style....I wish it were different...I truly do....
However back to the footie....I am working hard to have patience and expect less thereby being surprised when we achieve a modicum of success...being a boro fan has been amazing in my lifetime of supporting since 1977..... rollecoaster UTB....
 
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