Nostalgia: the footballing future that cannot happen

Being a fan is guided by past experience and future expectation – but is nostalgia a malign influence on how we think about football?

Oh, the video shop! A trove of plastic oblongs sitting on shelves and arranged by exotic-sounding genres. A place of tattered carpets, popcorn and blurbs. A place of numbers – 2 days, 3 days, 5 days, 7 days – and, although we tend to forget about it, a place of rank disappointment. No two ways about it: I hold a deep nostalgia for that world despite its many inefficiencies.

You entered Blockbusters wanting to rent Space Jam, but with all four cassettes already jammed into the video players of other customers, you end up taking home Shiloh, a boring family drama about a boy and his dog because it’s the only other film available in the NEW RELEASES section. Frustrated, you do not endlessly re-watch. You are not kind. You do not rewind.

But we do, all of us, rewind the tape of memory, cycling through the Technicolour of the video shop, Saturday morning cartoons, football on concrete, Robot Wars, penny sweets and even the whining of dial-up – Brrrrzzzt… brrrreeooop... bzzz… ba-ding, ba-ding, ba-ding – until the phone rang, and silence.

Comforting though it is, nostalgia conceals as much irritation and faffing as it reveals happy memories tinted with sepia-gold. If football fans are nostalgic, then there is no subject that so perfectly engages our in-built longing for the good old days than the football club we support and its everchanging cast list. Just as we misremember the past with video shops, we do the same with managers, matches and players.

As a Sheffield United fan, I know there is a certain profile commonly understood to be a ‘Sheffield United-type’ manager. Based on the waning shadows of Dave Bassett and Neil Warnock – that is to say, man-managers who can relate to a historically working-class club – there is a distinct perception that my club must be led by someone possessing a hyper-specific personality and/or roots in the city. It’s a sentiment that goes beyond emotion – nostalgia, untrammelled, unfiltered.

How profound is that influence? And does it extend beyond fandom, bleeding into the biggest of boardroom decisions?

The Ex…

Almost every manager and player arrives with a prefix: the former, the one-time, the ex-. Football is obsessed with the past lives of its protagonists. That is not surprising. The best characters have flaws and strengths, and we interpret their actions based both on their history and their perceived future.

Sometimes that history is intrinsically linked to one team. Certain football clubs appear to seek out that link with greater fervour than others. As a case in point, my team have hired seven different Sheffield-type managers (either from Sheffield, a fan, or an ex-United or Wednesday player) in the last 13 appointments, or nine from 15 if you count Chris Morgan’s two interim spells. We are not unique.

How about Peterborough United, with Darren Ferguson and Grant McCann returning for multiple stints? Oxford had a fan in Des Buckingham, Coventry had a former manager in Mark Robins and until Tuesday, Tranmere had a former player in Nigel Adkins. Today, there are no fewer than 19 managers working in the EFL with a previous link to the club they’re now leading.

1. Accrington Stanley – John Doolan (former player)

2. Cambridge – Mark Bonner (former manager, now director of football)

3. Cambridge – Neil Harris (former manager)

4. Chesterfield – Paul Cook (former manager)

5. Crewe – Lee Bell (former player)

6. Derby County – John Eustace (former player)

7. Doncaster – Grant McCann (former manager)

8. Harrogate – Simon Weaver (former player)

9. Morecambe – Derek Adams (former manager)

10. Peterborough – Darren Ferguson (former player and manager)

11. Reading - Noel Hunt (former player)

12. Rotherham – Steve Evans (former manager)

13. Sheffield United – Chris Wilder (former player and manager)

14. Stevenage – Alex Revell (former player and manager)

15. Stockport – Dave Challinor (former player)

16. Tranmere - Nigel Adkins (former player)

17. Walsall – Matt Sadler (former player)

18. Watford – Tom Cleverley (former player)

19. West Bromwich Albion – Tony Mowbray (former manager)

20. Wigan – Shaun Maloney (former player)

The Expectation…

The past can be a crutch. But I’m cautious about extrapolating too many firm conclusions from shaky evidence. It’s hardly surprising that some managers, many of whom played for multiple clubs, once played for the club they now manage.

Still, this season, more than 1 in 7 managers are working in the same role for the same employer as they had done in the past. And around 30% of EFL managers have either managed or played for their current club in the past. Is that down to past success? Is that down to the good relationships built up in a previous stint? Does nostalgia have a part to play?

There is an accepted logic that new managers should buy into a club’s culture. Sometimes that culture is specific to geography, history or certain socioeconomic considerations. But all the time, that culture is unseeable, untouchable, and to a great extent, unknowable. Culture is a feeling. You can’t measure it.

What is measurable are those successful periods in a club’s recent past. The promotions. The nearly seasons. The steadfast defiance of the commentariat’s low expectations. Owners can easily identify and isolate a specific time in which that “culture” – writ large in success, higher attendances and greater matchday revenues – shone brightest. It then becomes simple and unimaginative to revert to the one person they believe can revive it. Familiarity might breed contempt, but distance allows for stories to be rewritten. And, after all, memories are just the embellished stories we tell ourselves to get through the day.

You can hear the retelling of the story in the words of Rotherham owner Tony Stewart, as he talked about the thought process behind the re-appointment of Steve Evans:

“…We’ve had two attempts at it now [Taylor and Richardson]. We need to get someone proven, someone tried and tested.’

I was thinking: ‘Why aren’t we getting Steve Evans in? He’s probably the best manager we’ve had and he never failed.’”

And Evans himself, speaking to journalists on returning to Rotherham United at the start of the season, said:

“The one thing I'd say to the fans is just give me a chance. It's my job to bring the Rotherham DNA back”

Today, Rotherham sit 15th in League One. And it seems to me that both owner and manager were referring to a footballing future that simply can't happen, a nostalgia for a past future or a future past. It’s muddled thinking. And nostalgia is muddling.

Chris Wilder was the messiah after a double promotion with Blades, then he left amidst the dark clouds of relegation into the Championship, becoming a very naughty boy. He was reappointed, at which point he became a failure for his inability to stop the Premier League rot. Now he’s the saviour again. Darren Ferguson and Derek Adams both delivered promotions for their current clubs - in the past. Today, Ferguson’s Posh have collapsed from play-off hopefuls to relegation scrappers. The league status of Derek Adams’ Morecambe teeters on a cliff edge (though this, to be fair, isn’t really his fault).

But it goes the other way, too. Alex Revell’s first spell at Stevenage ended in relegation or would have done if two other clubs hadn’t gone bust and saved them from falling into non-league. Today, he’s thriving in tough conditions despite Stevenage being backed by many for the drop – and this time, they won’t go down. Grant McCann’s Doncaster look good for promotion from League Two. Noel Hunt’s doing a solid job. Dave Challinor - the latest guest on the How Do You Manage? series - is a serial winner with Stockport.

None of this is a judgement on the managers themselves, nor am I suggesting that nostalgia is the single guiding factor in their appointments. But can we seriously suggest that nostalgia isn’t a factor? I think it is.

Change to stay the same

In football, a sport that drives to the full stop of its season-long sentence, nostalgia can be a malign influence. When things go badly, it is natural but not constructive to contrast the peak and the trough. To examine these things as being interrelated misses the point that they are not.

What was The Swansea Way? Something existed before, something existed at the time, and something exists now. Within that time, The Swansea Way was something. But you can’t pin it down. Michael Duff’s appointment at the start of last season represented a break from that something. It did not end well for Duff, and the club reverted to a Swansea-Way-ish appointment with Luke Williams. That did not end well either, as Williams was sacked a matter of weeks ago. Duff said at the time:

“I understand there is ‘The Swansea Way’ but there is more than one way to do it. Football changes. The Swansea Way was created 20 years ago.”

Of course, many football clubs, their owners and their supporters cling to a certain vision. Teams have tactical identities, or at least tactical aspirations. Those are, by degrees, a different consideration to the influence of nostalgia.

Whether a football club’s fortunes are getting worse or better, they often seem to change in order to stay the same. It’s nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, and it doesn’t only follow the relationship with an ex. We are nostalgic for futures that never came to pass. We even claim nostalgia held by other fans and transmogrify them into assumptions, desires and beliefs.

…He knows the league

…Bring whats-his-face in; he’s got three promotions out of this division

…He plays our way

…We should’ve hired him last time

…Give Warnock a call; he guarantees survival

George Elek has written about managers many times within these walls. I’m not trying to tread on his toes. Instead, I want to point out that nostalgia is a factor in fans’ responses to appointments, and therefore it tallies that owners account for this, consciously or otherwise, when hiring the next man or signing a player. Fan nostalgia might not be the reason for hiring or signing one individual over another – it won’t appear on any list of pros and cons – but it may play an influencing role in tipping a decision one way or the other.

And part of this, I think, goes back to the video shop. We can remember them as something wonderful and fun and exciting because, for a time, they were all of those things. But given there are no Blockbusters on UK high streets, it’s easy to parse the memory without consideration for the faff, fines and rewind buttons. Football has not disappeared and will not disappear any time soon, but we are prone to the same magical thinking.

A quirk of memory, chemistry and biology, nostalgia is a great way to remember the past and a bad way to think about the future. It’s also utterly unavoidable. You cannot take off the glasses; you cannot unremember; you cannot edit out the past. But it is possible, I think, to be conscious of how those warm urges of sentimental longing simply mask a desperate desire to win football matches in the here and now – and unfortunately, the past is never going to don the jersey and become a 20-goal-a-season striker.