In order to be a fashionable team in the lower divisions (and let’s face it, any team gets fashionable status conferred on them automatically with promotion to the Premiership) you have got to be either:
a. ) A once big team. It takes years for people to work out that they are no longer famous and therefore unfashionable
b.) A small team with a chairman with a big wallet and a willingness to spend all of it to get his team into the Premiership (or Nationwide League, if the Chairman of a non-league side) and thus attain fashionability automatically. Even if this fails, just the amounts of money spent and big names attracted to the club will usually do the job!
c.) A combination of a & b
Most readers will have their ideas which teams fall into which categories and which don’t fall into any at all. The Gills, I regret to say, fall into the latter category. There was a brief flirtation with fashionability during the 'giantkilling' FA Cup run of 1999-2000, but this didn’t last as we ‘only’ achieved promotion to the First Division for the first time in our history - not very glamorous!
So, can the Gills ever become fashionable? I think we can safely say ‘no’ to that one, unless we beat Manchester United in the Cup Final (and even then Mark Lawrenson would be putting it down to Man U having a bad day) and get promotion to the Premiership by 20 clear points. We must resign ourselves to being unfashionable and therefore being a long way down the queue when the televised fixtures are handed out.
But is this such a bad thing? Look at what happens when you start splashing money around on big name players. Recent stories have proved time and time again that, to a footballer with a clever agent, a contract only binds the club to any terms. The club has to cover the ever-increasing wage bill by increasing the ticket cost to the supporters and by spending more money on building a new, larger stadium to hold all the extra fans the club needs to pay the wages of the footballers and the builders! All the associated costs start to rise as well: merchandise, programmes, and the half-time cup of Bovril.
If the club has achieved fashionability, then there will be takers to fill the seats vacated by the (often long-time) supporters who have been priced out of the ground. If the club has not yet achieved its goal of being one of these elite fashion icons, then it is at a dangerous point where there may not be new supporters to replace the disillusioned ones who have voted with their feet and things start to suffer.
Once you – the Chairman - have achieved your intended goal, the real work starts. It’s all very well spending a fortune on foreign imports and (not yet past their best) Premiership players to get your team into the upper echelons of English football but once you are there, you need to spend even more money to stay there. Every time a player comes to negotiate a new contract his agent will point out the invaluable contribution that his player (his player, note!) made to that triumphant promotion campaign and that if the club doesn’t double his wages immediately and give him other perks to be decided upon, then there are a number of other clubs that are prepared to do just that. Once you give in to your star, 25 goals a season, striker, then you are at the thin end of the wedge, as every other member of the squad thinks they are just as valuable.
So your wage bill starts to spiral out of control and you are looking to finishing in the top 6 and getting a run in as many cup competitions as possible to keep everything ticking over.
But your team’s form is not too good – too many players with too much money and not enough hunger for the game – and so you sack the manager because your players are more of an asset that the man who moulded a team of journeymen and some expensive imports into the team that won promotion.
In order to rescue things you need to employ a big name manager, as you figure that he will be better at dealing with the star players. When you get your man (at terms that make you wince) he starts by firing all the back room staff and installing his own men, selling all the younger and less talented players off, cheap, and then demanding a huge transfer budget to replace them with more expensive stars.
At the end of the season, the unthinkable has happened and your big name manager has failed to keep your team in the top division. He then leaves, as he must keep his status as a big name. Most of the team’s star players immediately slap in transfer requests, as it won’t do their value any good to be playing in the Nationwide League. So you are faced with the prospect of a 30,000-seat stadium and an average crowd of 12,000, no stars, no manager and a greatly reduced income.
The vultures are circling and you have to accept low bids for your best players in order to keep the cash flow going and paying the (Premiership) wages of your remaining players. At this stage, you need to decide whether to spend again and risk going through the whole vicious circle again, accept your lesser status and learn to live with First division football (which you can’t afford to do as the running costs are still the same), or sell the club for whatever you can get and leave it to some other poor fool!
You resign the chairmanship and sell the club and retire to your hideaway in paradise, a wiser and richer man. And the whole performance starts again with the new owner!
I must admit, I don’t think I want Premiership status at that sort of cost. And if you think that I am exaggerating – well, maybe I am, a bit!