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It was a friend at another newspaper who provided some perspective when my team, Aston Villa, were relegated from the Premier League three years ago.
“As long as the club’s still going, you still turn up, watch your team and they probably win more than they used to,” he said. “They just play against different teams.”
Put like that it did not sound too bad and it is a conversation I have since thought back to when witnessing the utter desperation of those fans of clubs involved in Premier League relegation and promotion battles.
This is the time of year when the Premier League is billed as football’s Promised Land. Fall out of it and you will be told your club is doomed, that it is some way no longer relevant and that football will no longer be the same again.
Fail to get up and the doom merchants will be predicting all your club’s best players will leave, that there is no way they can keep meeting Financial Fair Play requirements and that it’s only going to get harder next season.
What the marketing men forget to tell you all is that promotion can also be the prelude to 10 months of watching your team get hammered by all of the top six, seeing the manager who took you up get sacked and quickly realising that the signings that seemed so exciting in the summer are being paid to keep out the players who genuinely care.
There is no doubt that it is getting harder and harder to remain competitive outside the Premier League’s top six, even though Wolverhampton Wanderers have proved it can be done with two victories against Manchester United and an FA Cup semi-final appearance.
Fulham, Cardiff City and Huddersfield Town have lost all of their games against the big six and are heading for the Championship. The change in the distribution of the overseas broadcasting rights will make it even harder for the have-nots to survive in future.
The relative unpredictability of English football was a large part of what made the Premier League so captivating, but the genuine shocks are becoming less frequent.
Days out at Old Trafford, Anfield and the Emirates are all well and good, but turning up in the knowledge that defeat is just about inevitable starts to wear thin. As does the hope that your team might scrape a goalless draw or lucky victory by putting 10 men behind the ball and hoping one shot on target might be enough.
Of course, it is not always a grind. Burnley qualified for Europe last season, the Wolves party was only halted by Watford, who are now in an FA Cup final and continue to progress.
But there are Fulham fans who may feel some degree of relief that they have been put out of their misery. The Cottagers were the great entertainers of last season’s Championship, but there is no room for fun at the bottom end of the Premier League.
There are also West Ham United supporters wondering just what £100million has bought them. The Hammers are in 11th place and didn’t manage a run in either the Carabao Cup or FA Cup. So where is the excitement?
Whether or not Villa can hang on to Jack Grealish or Derby County can keep Mason Mount on loan for another year will depend on whether or not either club can get up through the play-offs.
Norwich City, however, have provided the a reminder that the name on the back of the shirt will never be bigger than the crest on the front, having sold James Maddison to Leicester City last summer.
Maddison’s departure was followed by a dreadful start to the season during which Norwich won just one of the first six League games. But the club kept faith with head coach Daniel Farke and now stand on the brink of promotion.
Whereas, given the odd exception, the final Premier League table will often represent the wage bills of all the participants, the order of the Championship is not so reflective of size of club’s budgets. For Norwich and possibly Sheffield United this season, read Cardiff City last term and Huddersfield Town the season before that.
It is why relegation from the top flight does not have to be as bad as it might feel at the time and promotion is no guarantee of happiness. A trip to Rotherham might even provide a night to remember, just ask the Villa fans who watched Grealish win the game for their 10 men last week.
Good weekend for
Aston Villa. Dean Smith’s side became the first Villa team to record eight successive League victories since 1975. The last Villa side to do that, under Ron Saunders, achieved promotion from the second tier and Smith’s men are now firmly in the Championship play-off picture.
Bad weekend for
Public displays of affection. Burnley’s Ashley Barnes was booked for kissing Cardiff City defender Joe Bennett, while Leeds United player Ezgjan Alioski appeared to be upset my getting a peck from team-mate Pontus Jansson. Romance in football is officially dead.
Moment of the weekend
Lucas Moura beckoned for his baby son to be passed down the rows of seats to celebrate him becoming the first player to score a hat-trick at Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium. It was a moment he will never forget.
Relegation from the Premier League is no longer the disappointment it once was for supporters