Why the Championship is where Millwall belong (From News Shopper)

Why the Championship is where Millwall belong

1:27pm Tuesday 24th January 2012 in Millwall

LIONS columnist MATT LITTLE this week explains why history proves Millwall are perfectly entitled to be considered as a Championship club.

JANUARY is a time when football fans get excited over who their respective clubs will or won’t be buying or selling.

Millwall fans are no different, although I would imagine our excitement is probably a bit more tempered than say your average Manchester City or Crawley Town fan on the transfers in front.

Our record signing is still Paul Goddard at £800,000, made when Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister (just) and not a film.

We can only watch as our Championship rivals speculate over spending a few million on players before paying them another million or so a year in wages.

Perhaps it’s this transfer dreaming and our precarious position in the league which has caused some among our support to develop an inferiority complex.

A few on Millwall’s most popular online forum House of Fun have questioned whether we even belong in the exalted company of the likes of Hull City.

It has even been mooted relegation would be the football Gods’ way of kindly dumping us back among the likes of Yeovil and Hartlepool.

Yet if you look at the statistical facts, then the Lions do deserve their place in the Championship, certainly more so than the likes of Reading, Brighton, Watford, Peterborough and Doncaster, who have spent most of their histories in the lower leagues.

And just as much as the likes of Bristol City, Hull City, Barnsley, Cardiff City and even dear old Crystal Palace.

Ah, yes, Crystal Palace.

The Eagles have spent nearly as many seasons in the third tier of English football as us, a dirty little secret they conveniently forget when trying to belittle us.

Considering that unlike us they weren’t pioneers of professional football in the south, haven’t reached four FA Cup semi-finals, or even played in a proper European competition, I would argue that their snobbery is quite misguided – being as it is based on only a dozen, mostly disastrous, top flight seasons.

Charlton can afford to be the most arrogant of south London fans, having spent the greatest number of seasons in the top tier, 26 in all, and having won the FA Cup in 1947.

However, even this would be an absurd kind of arrogance, considering the 59 seasons they’ve spent outside the top tier, most of it treading water, and some of it as downtrodden, homeless transients.

Anyway, this is Millwall’s 37th season at this level, but more telling is our average league position and average attendance since joining the Football League in 1920.

In layman’s terms our average statistical position is 20th in the Championship.

Furthermore, we are the 40th best supported club in England, that is to say a Championship standard club, albeit a small one.

Crystal Palace and Charlton are only a few places above us in both of those lists and historically are no more than mid-table Championship clubs, a lower mid-table club in the case of Palace.

Yet they both have very grand aspirations, while we doth our cap and act as if we should be grateful to even be here.

I’m not saying we should be demanding big money signings or a promotion push to the Premier League, but we do need to stop moping.

Thank God the players haven’t adopted the same attitude as some of the fans.

To their eternal credit they have come out fighting after the 6-0 thumping they got against Birmingham City.

A superb 3-1 win away at Barnsley showed the character of the players and hopefully the cup game against Southampton can see us continue this mini purple patch.

The team have nothing to lose really, but a win will boost confidence further ahead of a massive match against fellow strugglers Watford.

Our players believe they are good enough for the Championship and I think it is about time all of us fans did too.

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