Help! My beloved football team have been relegated - (2026)

A couple of years ago I wrote here about the extraordinary sight of grown men with tattoos and shaved heads being in tears on national television: “Big, burly, old-school, non-metropolitan-elite ‘manly’ men – that don’t cry over anything, except football.”

Back then, I was referring to Sunderland and Hartlepool United fans, whose teams had been relegated – Sunderland from the Premier League, Hartlepool from the entire Football League.

Little was I to know, dear reader, that the misty-eyed grown man this week would be me. And, I struggle with why it matters so much when we know it shouldn’t.

Huddersfield fans might fit the above stereotype. Fulham’s faithful, the alleged “Tarquins” of south-west London, not so much. You know you’ve made assumptions about each group of relegated fans already.

I knew it was coming

Except that I’m not sure either was actually in tears this week in that stunned made-for-TV, invasive way that lingering cameras love. We both knew our teams were dropping out of the Premier League, long before the maths confirmed it.

The feeling is actually numbness: we’ve been through Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s five stages of grief already: denial, anger, bargaining (“if only”), depression* and acceptance.

Three managers, no away win, the worst defence in the top five leagues of Europe; an expensive defender who got injured for months putting on his football boots; team-mates fighting on the pitch over a penalty and off it in a yoga class; a player arrested at the training ground; the cancellation of a team-bonding go-karting day because of insurance costs – all make the excitement of that heady play-off day last May when 40,000 of us in white did indeed cry (with promotion joy) at Wembley Stadium a distant memory.

It was a different story last season

Misery compounds misery. Where did that happiness go? Last season, when Fulham went 23 games undefeated, I navigated an otherwise stressful little period of my life on a virtual dopamine drip.

Each victory gave a surge of pleasure that made us crave the next. This season, winning just four times, I have a dopamine hangover: the slump after the massive high.

Plus, laughter is one of the best ways of stimulating endorphins. In the absence of joy at on-field success, then gallows humour becomes the norm in the stands. Cue resignation.

Look, I know that Bill Shankly’s “Some people think football is a matter of life and death, I assure you it’s more serious than that” is not supposed to be taken at face value, but… I appear to be stuck on that *fourth stage.

If anyone can help me move on, then all advice is welcome. “Support Chelsea” and “get a life” will get you banned from reading again.

Twitter: @stefanohat