What's the difference between Birmingham City and West Brom?
TheMonkeyMan: The difference between the two sets of fans is the expectation levels. Our expectation levels are higher than the Buggies fan's, understandably so in my opinion as we had established ourselves in the Premier league.
We spent 4 consecutive seasons there, not a 1 season fling, and we threw it away through a combination of Board tightness, 1 or 2 Brucey errors, and getting shafted by some of the players. The Jan transfer window in 2006 was the start of all this, we needed to invest in 1 or 2 decent additions to try and get to safety, we ended up getting Sutton, DJC and Martin 'Handball' Latka.
The board effectively 'gave up' our Prem status then, and despite all their waffle, they still haven't learnt from their 'mistakes' and they never will as was shown in the 2007/2008 season. We have thrown away being an established Prem club whereas the Baggies have never established themselves - that is the essential difference.
Tilton1875: When have West Brom as a club ever said to the fans
"We are gonna do this"
"We have plenty of room on our wage bill for some top class players"
When Albion get promoted they say nothing and usually do nothing!!!!!!
At least then the fans can't be bitter.
Last time we went down it was also on the NEVER AGAIN stance and rent a quotes from the club's hierachy. Also the failed embarrassment of a takeover and the engineering of the exit of a manager who in the main was popular.
How many statements from our board this time?
TOO MANY!!!!
Yet again is NEVER AGAIN and all the transfer talk being whipped up by them.
The on pitch protest had been coming for a long time and yes some idiots broke the goals but you will always get the idiot minority that will sabotage a protest.
Albion fans have nothing to be bitter about because they dont feel like the club lies to them.
So lets not start throwing mud around.
Ryan23: Albion fans seem happy to see their team pass the ball around all nice and pretty but get relegated again and again. More the fool them. We get angry because our owners have pots of money, unlike Albion's, and promise us things they don't deliver and seem happy to be a yo yo club when we had the chance to push on in 2005. How long until Albion fans wake up and start realising Jeremy Peace is just a version of Gold and Sullivan in disguise? Wait and see what happens when they struggle next season and bottle it because of the pressure we dealt with.
Baughman: A large proportion of us Bluenoses regard our board with suspicion for whatever reasons. I don't get that impression of the Albion fans. This cannot help.
Quark: To me the answers are simple.
1. Our board over promise and under deliver
2. Our board treat's its fans like rubbish
3. Our board promises big signings and sign no one
4 ALBION'S DON'T
Thats why their fans took it so well, they weren't promised the earth.
Spjc52: I think us Blues fans have just been bitter since the summer of 2004 when we really should have pushed on to get a European spot which, at the time, was not out of our grasp by any stretch of the imagination.
Albion have never been in this position so have never experienced being let down in this way.
Jazzy786: The main reason we behave differently is because of the way our board treats us. Constantly, our board moans at us supporters and compares the club to eg. Derby and the number of ST holders etc expecting us to keep our end of the bargain blindly but penny pinching at every opportunity and treating us with contempt and as idiots.
They are happy to see us yoyo between the top two leagues and have no ambition as long as they make the money. There is little or no support for the manager in the transfer market as they would love to sell up and leave at the first opportunity. We, the supporters are fed up with the false promises and frustrated and dismayed at the boards on and off the field antics. We know while this board is in charge the chances of us realising our dreams are virtually zilch. The only good thing I could probably say with the present regime is we are financially sound. Let's hope being in the prem we can attract a mega rich billionaire buyer.
