How the Mighty Are Fallen

[Mike]

Sven Goran Eriksson former England and Manchester City Manager is now in charge of Notts County for the next five years. He has an ambitious 10 year plan to take the club to the Premier League. Good luck with that one. I wonder if he is still being paid by the FA and Man City. . . .

[BarcelonAl]

He's going to be Director of Football...and when someone tells me exactly what one of those does, I'll get back to you!

In fairness, Notts County have a long history, being one of the football league's original members. They also have the somewhat weird claim to fame of being the reason why Italian side Juventus wear a black and white stripped strip.

This is from the all knowing Wikipedia:

The Italian football club Juventus F.C. derived its famous black-and-white striped kits from Notts County. Juventus have played in black and white striped shirts, with white shorts, sometimes black shorts since 1903. Originally, they played in pink shirts with a black tie, which only occurred due to the wrong shirts being sent to them, the father of one of the players made the earliest shirts, but continual washing faded the colour so much that in 1903 the club sought to replace them. Juventus asked one of their team members, Englishman John Savage, if he had any contacts in England who could supply new shirts in a colour that would better withstand the elements. He had a friend who lived in Nottingham, who being a Notts County supporter, shipped out the black and white striped shirts to Turin.

Expecting them to be in the Premier League is a bit of a long-shot, but who knows, stranger things have happened! Actually no, the idea is ludicrous, but let's let Sven dream!

[Andy]

I believe that Notts County are the oldest professional club in the world and in four years will be 150 years old. From what I have read, the owners' aims are to get the club into the Championship by that time. Al, I have to be honest and say that if they are willing to splash the cash, which they appear to be through securing Sven, then the idea isn't ludicrous. My reasons for this are -

1) Burnley - Only a last-day win over Leyton Orient as recently as 1987 saved Burnley from becoming the first of the Football League's 12 founders since Accrington to drop out of the league.
2) Wigan - In February 1995, local millionaire and owner of JJB Sports Dave Whelan purchased the club, which was then playing in the Third Division (fourth tier), and stated his ambition to take the club to the Premier League, a statement which was widely ridiculed at the time. 10 years later Wigan were playing Premier League football.
3) Bolton - 1988 - played in the old fourth division.
4) Notts County - in 1992, just 17 years ago, County were in the top tier of English football and missed the Premiership by one year.
5) If you look at some of the clubs that have made it there you wonder how they managed it e.g. Swindon, Barnsley, Bradford, Norwich, Wimbledon, Oldham, etc. Blackburn won it through financial backing and were relegated two years later.

A few million on the right players here and there and they could easily go up this year - let's face it, money wins every time in a 15 year career and a few grand extra a week would tempt me down a division. From that perspective, I don't think getting into the Championship will be that hard but getting into the Premiership will be difficult and will require a lot of financial backing and staying there will require even more, especially on the infastructure of the club. They seem to have big plans and I can see a big name manager - possibly David Platt - going there as he and Sven have a lot of links. I actually think it is a good move by Sven, he gets to retire gracefully but still retain his place in the spotlight which he obviously craves. Plus, he gets to bump up his passport stickers and really develop a 'project'. In fact, when you look at it, he has the chance to sculpt a club entirely from the bottom which would actually be a rather cool thing to do.