'The club was at its lowest ebb but has the ambition to get back': Tranmere hope FA Cup return marks new dawn
It's a common Premier League problem but how does a non-league club desperate to get back into the top divisions balance the romance of the FA Cup with a desperation to re-enter the Football League? Patrick Boyland went to Tranmere Rovers to find out
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Your support makes all the difference.The FA Cup returns this weekend, but while romantic tales of giant-killings abound, the reality is often starkly different for clubs looking to make strides in the lower leagues.
One such case is Tranmere Rovers, who, after being drawn away to League One Peterborough in the first round, must now seek to balance their participation in the competition with an attempt to return to the Football League after a hurtful three-season absence.
"The FA Cup is fantastic- an experience you can't buy and a break from the pressure of the league," Tranmere owner Mark Palios tells The Independent. "But for me, the most important thing without a shadow of a doubt is getting promotion back into the Football League. Having said that you appreciate that the fans enjoy a cup run and that's all part and parcel of continuing to build the momentum around the club."
Palios' words suggest potential for disconnect between the aspirations of supporters who wish to see their team strive for cup success and those of owners who seek to privilege continual progression on and off the field. Yet his desire to climb the footballing pyramid is something also shared by Tranmere supporter Matt Jones, who also covers the club for the Liverpool Echo. "It is exciting game," Jones says. "You just want Tranmere to go there and give a good account of themselves.
"Lincoln showed last year that you can get to the quarter-finals and still go up. I'd like to think Tranmere would get to the Third Round, draw a big team, get a payday and get out of it as then it's not disrupting the season too much. But the league has to be the priority. If they don't go up this season then that has to be classed as a failure."
Whereas once a place in the early stages of the FA Cup was a virtual guarantee, Tranmere's current status means the club now start in the qualifying rounds of the competition. It serves to underline the remarkable fall that saw Rovers go from reaching the final of the League Cup in 2000 and competing for Premier League promotion to relegation from the Football League in 2015. A variety of reasons are put forward by Palios and Jones in an attempt to explain the decline, yet both speak of significant underinvestment towards the end of former chairman Peter Johnson's reign.
"If you're trying to sell a business, you don't invest in it," Palios says. "As a consequence of continual underinvestment you get a club in a position that ours was in. That shows in the fabric of the club and in the lack of ambition that was there." Jones, meanwhile, refers back to a warning from Ronnie Moore during the Liverpudlian's time at the helm. "I remember having a press conference with Ronnie in the 2013-14 season and he said it was inevitable that the club would get relegated because of the amount of money they were spending."
With the club teetering of the brink of relegation from League Two and burdened by debt, Palios, a former Rovers player known for his time as chief executive of the Football Association, stepped in to save the day. Tranmere, though, dropped out of the Football League that same season. "The negative atmsophere was difficult to arrest, but the fans have stayed with the club," Palios recalls. "The club was at its lowest ebb but it still has the ambition now to get back. The key thing here is to have the attitude that we're a league club but without the arrogance. We have to earn the right to play in the Football League and we accept that."
Under the savvy 64-year-old, Tranmere have since made important strides off the pitch, with the state-of-the-art Solar Campus training complex opening earlier this year. Progress on the field has been slower, however, as the club narrowly missed out on promotion in the play-off final against Forest Green Rovers. That disappointment, though, has not stopped Palios from dreaming big when it comes to Tranmere's future. "My main aim is to get back into the Football League. Over five years I would expect us to be back in League One and if we're not then I would be disappointed. Does it have the potential to be a Premier League Club? Yes it does.
"When I came here the local MP Frank Field said to me that there used to be two hubs on the Wirral. One was Cammell Laird shipyard, the other was Tranmere Rovers. Cammell Laird has seen something of a resurgence over the last decade- now it's our turn."
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