Swede dreams

Zero to heroes in the Swedish revolution

How can it happen, Sven Goran Eriksson at Meadow Lane. Our Notts County correspondent Richard Medley thinks they’ve got what they deserved.

As a Notts County season ticket holder since 1986, I’ve witnessed the ups, the downs, the even further downs, and absolute rock bottom despair.

Over the years we’ve been attacked by Oxford fans, we’ve left Field Mill after sixty minutes, and we’ve smugly laughed at Forest on Valentine’s Day.

I have never in my life had such a surreal summer as this. When I first saw the story in the Sun, I laughed my head off, quipped that no doubt Elvis was being lined up as our new club doctor, and got on with my day.

Despite all the pinching and smacking myself over the head with my girlfriends shoe, it appears, that against everything common sense will tell you, Sven Goran Eriksson is at Notts County. Surreal!

Deserved

For all the times that I’ve walked out of Meadow Lane on the last day of the season, looked at my now finished season ticket and swore never again would I neglect Tesco so inconsiderately.

For all the journeys to Macclesfield, Grimsby, and especially Wycombe to watch my beloved County surrender so abjectly before they’d even departed the team coach, I deserve this. This brief moment of optimism, this chink of light at the end of another rainy February afternoon in Nottingham, I deserve this.

There are about four and a half thousand of us. You’ll know us when you see us. We are the bemused guy at the bar. We’re the chap with the inane grin that looks like he’s just received a phone call from his wife, telling him he’s won the lottery, and is celebrating despite secretly wondering if she’s boarding a plane to Rio with the milkman, and his ticket.

Things like this don’t happen to my club. We’re 8/1 favourites to win the league, and we were a poor side last time out.

Shrewd

We’ve made some very astute signings even without the Sven factor. Former Shrew Ben Davies is a quality addition and Lee Hughes should score a hat-full in League 2.

Jon Thompson will finally be deployed in his best position at centre half and after the recruitment of Ricky Ravenhill and ex-Barnet skipper Neil Bishop to add some much needed bite to the middle of the park, we finally look like a squad that might be able to compete for a playoff place. That was before Sven.

Every morning I wake to Sky Sports News to see if Van Basten will be selling our hotdogs, or if we’ve beaten Spurs to Huntelaar. I know that sounds silly, and I’m dreaming…

Any minute now, I’m going to wake up and find that we have not, in fact, been taken over by a Middle-eastern consortium and they definitely haven’t appointed Sven Goran Eriksson to oversee our rise from obscurity.

We are the downtrodden, we are the suffering, and we are the desolate. As of July 22nd 2009, we ARE once again proud to be Notts County fans, we ARE back, and we’re just a little bit Swedish