Rochdale

Dale hopefully will be back sometime soon.

Second time I was linesman was at Spotland.Little old lady told me she'd been asked to be secretary and she loved it.Told me the hadn't expected to get re elected yet again so staff had been laid off but against all the odds the got re elected for the umpteenth time so she was holding the fort.
Their programme was a duplicated effort not the usual glossy version.Manager was Peter Madden who was eventually replaced by Jimmy Greenhoff.

As others have said, it will be extremely difficult for them to get back up. There are a lot of well-run, ex-league sides down there these days. We were incredibly fortunate that we won that shootout. Who knows what might have happened if we hadn’t.

Whilst I feel sympathy for their supporters, I'm more of the opinion that there is now an established fifth division. As others have said, there are now plenty of ex-Football league clubs in the National League and, as we know, it is a challenge to get out of, unless you can get things right on and off the field.

With the demise of Bury, Oldham in the 5th tier and now Rochdale, it may be a consequence of the draw of the Premier league clubs in the region, but ironically, it was another club from the region, Stockport, that had suffered years in the wilderness that put Rochdale down.

No, apparently some monkeys hung in Hartlepool though.

Amazing ride back up the divisions when you think about it for a club really no bigger than we are.

I’m in the minority here I think, but I disagree.
Unless it becomes EFL league 3 it should remain as is. It is still “non-league” and fewer promotion slots reflect that.

It's a shame when any club loses its league status but Rochdale is a particularly badly supported team. In their entire 102 years they have never averaged even 9,000 and they haven't averaged 4,000 since 1972.
It will be difficult for them to return but even more poorly supported but equally historic clubs like Halifax have managed it, though they couldn't hold on to their recovered status for very long.
It is Hartlepool's relegation, in only their second season back in the league, which I find more disappointing; particularly as they are a fairly local team to me and looked like they were going to get out of trouble after Askey's first seven unbeaten matches in charge.

Agree Dr. F.
Rochdale have achieved way over what they should have done on their fanbase but they have had an awful last 3 seasons. Covid really sucked everything away from their budget. Really sad that they’ve lost their league place but looking at what’s happened over the past 10 years or so the northern clubs seem to have been hit badly. Hartlepool have lost their place twice as have York. This season Morecambe, Accrington look likely to lose there League 1 place and the clubs in the greater Manchester area have all had bad times esp the north of Manchester clubs, Rochdale, Oldham and Bury have gone out of the league.  And it’s taken Stockport a holiday in NLN and over 10 years to get back.  Too many PL clubs perhaps or something else?

Now and again when we have threads about signing players esp in the windows some say it’s easier to get the loans and signings if we were in the north west. I guess it might be but but would be a lot harder in many other ways. The big PL clubs in these areas monopolise all the football and suck all the attendances away from the lower league clubs.

I hope Rochdale can come back quickly and I suppose with Wrexham going up it will help the clubs to be more of a par without the Hollywood money bags!!

UTG!