They say if you’re bottom at Christmas you go down

In the history of the Premiership, only one club has survived after being bottom of the league going into the St Stephen’s Day fixtures, and even then it was the fewest points a team has ever stayed up with. Depending on the result of Tuesday’s derby match, it’ll either be Blackburn Rovers or Bolton Wanderers occupying last place next weekend.

That’s not the kind of cool 2011 political fad of ‘occupying’, by the way, the kind Cambridge Defend Education would do because they think someone might disagree with them or that Ed Miliband would support – I mean a different kind of occupying. The bad kind of occupying.

I was in Blackburn last weekend and morale is low. For us Rovers fans, times are bleak. History is against us. The graphs do not make good reading. The team is managed by Steve Kean, a man who seems to have some noble ideas (he likes flowing, attacking football) that arguably pay off to some extent (only six teams have scored more goals), but who, ultimately, is not a football manager. His tactics don’t work. He’s awful at interviews. When faced with criticism, he claims that those against him are part of the 1%. He looks a bit like a waxwork of Brad Friedel, who played for Rovers when they were good, that has melted.

About a year ago, the decision to give Kean a job he is not capable of, against the will of most fans, was made by the select group of owners who bankroll the club. They have not only shown little idea how to run a football club, but have also driven out anyone who did. Yet they are brimming full of fancy ideas of what the manager should do. “Sign Ronaldinho!” they said, “Get David Beckham to come to Blackburn! Then everything will be better!”

Of course, in the real world, these players were never likely to sign for us – nor, in fact, would our problems have been solved if they were (although that might be an allegorical blog post for another time).

There might have been a good victory recently, but that was more a reflection of the quality of the team rather than any tactical masterstrokes. Especially against Swansea. It doesn’t change anything.

Blackburn fans have begun to embrace what seems to be the inevitable. We’ll be bottom at Christmas. We’ll be relegated and the manager will finally go. Then the owners might pull out, but without top-flight status and appearing to have only a small fan base to tap into, the club will struggle to attract new investors. The success of the 1990s and 2000s will look like a blip. We’ll be back where we spent most of the 20th century: the lower leagues.

Opposition.

The graphs don’t make good reading for Labour supporters either. Ed Miliband might encompass some noble values, but they’re not ones delivering results. Labour may have won Feltham and Heston this week, but that is more a reflection of the quality of candidate and hard work of members than a victory for the leader. Especially as we won it at the last General Election. The party polls do not look good (6 points behind in today’s ICM) and Miliband’s personal polling is even worse: half of all voters think he has no good qualities.

I don’t wish to labour the point, so I’ll let you stretch the rest of the analogy as far as you wish, allowing for political leanings and football allegiances.

Blackburn Rovers fans are in revolt; they want the manager gone. Many have been saying that for a long time now. It’s come to Christmas though, and it looks too late.

The Labour Party is not in revolt, though many have been calling for Ed Miliband to go for a long time now. For Labour, the festive season is not yet here. But it will come. And we can’t be bottom at Christmas.