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You know what’s wrong with your club? Lack of investment, that’s what. The chairman, gawd bless ‘im, is well-intentioned and all. But he just doesn’t put in enough green these days, does he? All those other teams, the ones traditionally just above or below yours in the table, they’ve overtaken and/or moved off into the distance. They’ve been invested in, you see. Their owners and chairmen are willing to pour in the big money in order to achieve things, in order to keep their promises.

Your club’s chairman just doesn’t seem interested anymore. It’s time he looked to sell to someone with more readies. One of those Middle Eastern consortia should do the trick, or a Russian multi-billionaire.

It’s not just fans that have noticed this, though. Upon leaving – and indeed managing – Nottingham Forest, former England manager Steve McClaren indicated his disgruntlement at a lack of investment by the Forest board, albeit not in those exact words. Okay, so he remains a respected coach even as his management credentials are disappearing down die Toilette, but he can’t possibly be expected to coach his way out of a bind. What kind of a sport is this?!

Yes, lack of investment is a blight on the modern game alright. Or rather, the term “lack of investment” is a blight on the modern game, he said predictably reverting to stubborn traditionalist type with an unnecessarily self-referential flourish.

The flair ends there, I’m afraid, for this is a bog-standard rant about modern football and the mouth-breathers that follow it, myself included. But not you, obviously.

Let’s begin by defending McClaren. I’m sure he was, upon his appointment at Forest, given assurances about “investment”. If that’s the case then his post-departure comments were entirely fair. A promise is a promise, and if one’s job relies upon the fulfilment of a promise it’s wise to walk away before being judged against phantom spending.

But his use of the phrase “lack of investment” (I think he actually used that phrase, or something similar), echoes the whining and bitching of supporters up and down the country. And they’re not being judged against anything, except in their overly partisan d*ckswinging with fans of other clubs.

The arguments we have with our terrace foes – my club’s bigger, our chairman’s richer, our striker scores more – are utterly futile. They rely on hard facts and those hard facts are, largely, changed only by administering generous servings of money. I think that’s why so many fans become so resentful when their club’s board, owner or chairman is deemed to be overseeing a lack of investment: by stunting a club’s progress, those holding the pursestrings are putting fans in a position of weakness when it comes to bar-room debate.

Delusion is an ugly word but it’s the only one that adequately describes the affliction that leads to fans fully expecting glory in spite of (a) reality and (b) the existence and similar ambitions of other clubs. It all comes down to unrealistic expectations, and that, Tom, is what really grinds my gears.

Naturally there are genuine cases of “lack of investment”, just as there will be in any walk of life. Some clubs are wrongly allowed to fester like a mediocre business, ticking along without making any impact when a little bit of a cash injection might be just the ticket – this only applies when the money is there, which goes without saying. In such cases it’s human nature to complain, but our collective understanding of these situations should probably be more nuanced than it is. Such matters are rarely simple.

To a certain extent, I think demanding investment was more acceptable once upon a time – or at least less ridiculous. In years gone by, a calculated gamble in the transfer market or on wages might turn a useful team into champions, or win it promotion, or take it to the cup final. It was an ambitious shot at an attainable glory compared to today’s indiscriminate lobbing of notes into a black hole in some vain attempt to topple the now established order. We’re asking our clubs to urinate into the wind.

As ever, we’re guilty of mis-diagnosing the importance of football. Football is not just a game – it matters. It wields enormous power politically, socially, economically and – most importantly – culturally. In a nutshell, it is what we do. Come rain or shine, Premier League or Sunday League, we’re out there on the terrace or the touchline engaging in the world’s finest, most influential, most beautiful pastime.

Results and league tables are often mere distractions from our enjoyment of the game, in my opinion. What makes football special is not the outcome of the admittedly brilliant sport taking place on the field, but the cultural indulgences and social interactions that happen away from it. If your enjoyment of those is spoiled in any way by a perceived lack of investment (with the exception of the possibility of extinction otherwise) by your club – whatever the level – then I’m sorry, but I believe you’re taking it all too seriously.

Tags: Fans, Money, Supporters