Mirror.co.uk Top 10: Things For Birmingham and Reading fans to look forward to next season

By Dan Silver 12/05/2008

A distraught Blues fan

In the wake of yesterday’s euphoria, it’s easy to forget the pain and suffering that thousands of others suffered this weekend.

But enough of the poor ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ viewers; let’s instead spare a thought for Birmingham and Reading fans.

Having suffered page after page of pictures depicting delirious Man United and Fulham fans celebrating their Premier League success this morning, they could do with cheering up. Which is why Mirror.co.uk has come up with this Top 10 list of things to look forward to next season.

1) You won’t have to watch Cristiano Ronaldo tear your back four a new one for at least another year. And even if you draw Man United in the Cup, it will more than likely be Frazier Campbell scoring the winner, rather than the Portuguese winker.

2) You still get to play Derby, though. So that’s your first six points towards promotion in the bag, then.

3) All the frustration and anger caused by your useless, over-the-hill-but-still-vastly-overpaid Premier League rejects will soon be somebody else’s problem when they sign for West Brom / Stoke / Hull / Bristol City / Crystal Palace / Watford (delete where applicable).

4) Your lack of televised Sunday afternoon games means that you’ll once again be able to devote your day of rest to traditional English pastimes like big Sunday lunches, attending village fetes and rowing with your wife in the biscuit aisle of Sainsburys.

5) You might get Blackpool away at the beginning or end of the season, in which case you can pretend you’re going on holiday by consuming your own bodyweight in booze and candy floss before regurgitating the lot on the downswing of the Pepsi Max Big One. Don’t bother going in the winter, though: it’s crap.

6) Not only will ticket prices be cheaper, but there’ll also be less people in the ground, so you should be able to get home in time for the new series of ‘X Factor’. Result!

7) You’ll be able to go to the City Ground and swap ‘remember when we were a big club?’ stories with equally bitter Forest fans.

8) You won’t have to sit through 50 minutes of Kevin Keegan-approved boring big four action in order to see 25 seconds of highlights from your team’s game on Match Of The Day. In fact you won’t have to watch the show at all, as you won’t be on it.

9) You can make ‘there but for the grace of God’-style pronouncements to your mates as news comes through on the radio of Stoke’s hapless keeper picking Arsenal’s ninth goal out of the back of his net. While you’re on your way back from Barnsley…

10) And hopefully you’ll remember what it feels like to win some games. Unless you ‘do a Leeds’, in which case what you’re feeling now will seem like a Cup Final win in comparison… Have a great summer!