The Search for Success

Top level football is all about success we are told – but what exactly is success? Is it - to use that awful word - ‘silverware’? Because if that’s the case it’s available only to the very few.

Take the premier league clubs for instance. There are 18 of them - competing for what? Four pieces of silverware at best – the Premiership, the FA Cup, the Carling Cup and either the European Champions League trophy or the UEFA Cup. Unless, that is, one club manages to win more than one of these coveted prizes – and with Chelsea having nearly all the money, plus Peter Kenyon, that cannot be discounted.

What this means is that in any season if success is measured by ‘silverware’, 4 clubs at the very most can be successful, so it follows that 14 at least will be unsuccessful.

Of course there are varying degrees of success and failure. Winning the Premiership, for instance, is coveted above the Carling Cup, which in turn is less prestigious than the FA Cup, and as far as most people are concerned, the European Champions League trophy trumps everything. As for the ‘failures’, a mid-table position is infinitely preferable to a bottom three finish and the dreaded trapdoor – even for a club which at the dawn of the season may have cherished aspirations to get into Europe.

But it shouldn’t, or rather it mustn’t, be reduced to such over-simplification, because for the majority of clubs all that produces is unrealistic expectations and pressure. Pressure to spend more than you earn in pursuit of the unattainable. Inflated transfer fees. Unjustifiable wages. Premature sackings. And at worst, financial disaster. Remember Leeds United?

Fortunately, there is an alternative. A more realistic approach which has the added advantage that it makes genuine success accessible to all. It’s rooted in the recognition that each club, like the people in it (that includes the directors and fans as well as the players, manager, coaching staff etc) is different. And because the people are different and the circumstances are different, it is not unreasonable to insist that the expectations should be different. In short, what constitutes success in any club at any given stage in its development will be - indeed must be - unique to that club. For Wigan, it is at this time almost certainly 15th place, or anything above. For Newcastle or Arsenal, it might be getting all their players fit.

And for Chelsea, it may be the Premiership, or the double, or the treble, or even the quadrouble.

After all, they do have nearly all the money. Plus Peter Kenyon. And not forgetting Jose Mourinho.