Lower league tropes

ThisTinpotLeague

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My absolute favourite thing about supporting a lower league team is the complete freedom to chat utter shit and never be called up on it. Sometimes it all goes a bit too far and Bristol City spend £1.5m (reminder: five Matty Taylors) on a player like Callum O'Dowda who they presumably have not seen play. Even then, O'Dowda never actually plays for Bristol City (why would he?) and their charmingly optimistic fans refuse to acknowledge the idea that they might have fallen for a wind up.

I love this forum because it's shown me that I'm not the only one who talks utter nonsense about football. In fact, this forum has so much nonsense that trends have emerged. In this, my love letter to the lower league discourse, I'm going to celebrate the most common examples of us all talking shit. If the good people of Britain can vote for Brexit then surely we can muster up some sort of system to automatically ban anyone who perpetuates these utter myths:

This league is shit this year. It must be if we are X in the table.
A runaway favourite for number one. Absolutely guaranteed to be said by any supporter of a team in the lower half of the division every single season, except this season they mean it and it's true. Terrible.

Our goalkeeper is the best in this league, and possibly the league above
I'm wary of mentioning anything that might just be old-fashioned bias, but the goalkeeper trope deserves a mention because it is totally universal (we all have the best keeper in this league) and utterly unrelated to the actual skill of your goalkeeper. A classic case in point is Swindon, where the resident clown fish is so bad that rival players freely admit they exploit him and his own manager says that he gets distracted by 'crowd noise', and yet their fans have managed to hype him up to such an extent that other fans just end up agreeing without really thinking about it.

If anyone can think of any I have missed, please share. Otherwise I'll just start looking through the stuff Northampton fans post and I'm bound to find a few updates.
 

Murphy

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August after pre-season: If this lot can click and manage to stay fit, we could end up around the play-offs come the end of the season.

May: Relegated.
 

Bobbin'

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'If this manager stays, we're down'

Said supporters of 12 different clubs.
 

Indian Dan

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Then there are the fans that follow their club so closely that they think they won L2 last year when they actually finished 3rd.
 
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LordJord

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Its typical 'insert every lower league club' we always do it the hard way.
 

Jockney

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1) "If we play like we did on/at ________, I have no doubt we will win."

2) After losing when you expected to win: "They wanted it more than us," "They outfought/outmuscled us."

3) "We sold _____ for £2m which means we have £2m to spend in January" or "We're not spending beyond our means. We bought the fella for £600k and put him on £5k wages but you have to remember that two years ago we sold _____ for £700k!"

4) More generally, the chairman/owners are to blame for a bad run of form or a poor season despite continually meeting the ever-shifting expectations of the average fan: "I will be forever grateful for John Smith for buying out our £100m debt, for building us a new state-of-the-art academy and for doubling our average attendance in the space of five years, but it's a fucking disgrace that we can't compete with [insert club here] for a player I've never actually seen play!"
 

Bobbin'

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1) "If we play like we did on/at ________, I have no doubt we will win."

2) After losing when you expected to win: "They wanted it more than us," "They outfought/outmuscled us."

3) "We sold _____ for £2m which means we have £2m to spend in January" or "We're not spending beyond our means. We bought the fella for £600k and put him on £5k wages but you have to remember that two years ago we sold _____ for £700k!"

4) More generally, the chairman/owners are to blame for a bad run of form or a poor season despite continually meeting the ever-shifting expectations of the average fan: "I will be forever grateful for John Smith for buying out our £100m debt, for building us a new state-of-the-art academy and for doubling our average attendance in the space of five years, but it's a fucking disgrace that we can't compete with [insert club here] for a player I've never actually seen play!"

Couldn't agree more with number 1. Another variation of it is 'if we play to our potential, we will win'.
 

Jockney

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Couldn't agree more with number 1. Another variation of it is 'if we play to our potential, we will win'.

No in-between with most supporters (including myself at the best of times). A few wins and you're untouchable, a few losses and you'll never win again. Unless you're average two points a game, or are otherwise well clear at the top, there really isn't any claim to be had that you're that much better than any side in this league.
 

valefan16

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'I expect him to play Premier League football' when a young kid has come into your first team and not been shit.

Before three years down the line playing Premier League Football... the Evo Stick Premier League!
 

Murphy

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One of my favourite lower league tropes is when a journeyman turns up on the opposition team. Always used to love it when Kevin Ellison or Efe Sodje turned up with Rotherham/Morecambe and Bury. It's like seeing an old relative every year :lol:
 

TrinidadsNumberOne

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Managers that constantly bemoan the budget rather than embrace the challenge as well like our former manager who is never getting another job in professional football again.

Also there was an embarrassing high concentration of Crewe fans who think that any good Academy product is a Championship standard player. Matt Tootle literally sums this one up, such a limited defender but cos he played the passion card half our fans thought he was at least a Championship level player!
 

EricSabin

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I like when if you play a team who haven't won in a while, you always get a shedload of fans saying "They haven't won in 8? Ah Christ they'll win today then we always end those sort of runs for other teams"
 

TrinidadsNumberOne

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Lower league fans that categorically deny they're selling clubs, they're the worst.

If Liverpool can't keep Luis Suarez and Manchester United can't keep Cristiano Ronaldo what hope do you have of keeping your half-decent youth prospect?
 

Agombar stool

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the amount of lower league fans that blame referees for their team's ineptitude seems to be pretty high.
 

joethegill

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Fans writing off players who sign for their rivals because of a 3 game loan spell with their club 5 years ago.
 

TimeyWimey

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The filtering down of Sky Sports style 'pundit talk' and in depth analysis of a performance to lower league fans. It makes for the worst radio of all time when Radio Stoke dedicate 5 minutes to 'fans in the stand' talking about whether we should play 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-1-3-2 or 4-1-1-2-2. It's all clueless bullshit.
 

Muzzle

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teams coming down from the Championship ...' with our squad, we should piss this league....' finish mid table
 

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