One Red Seat said:
I think I am going to go with the approach many of you have mentioned....I am going to watch some games and see if any team jumps out to me and "chooses me" as someone referenced. I just don't want to latch on to the Brewers or Padres of the EPL. I don't need to jump on board with the favorite(s) but I would like to have a reasonable chance to win in any given year.
Ok, you don't get it. But that's alright because you're new to it and lots of vacuous windbags have been pimping their teams instead of explaining it clearly.
Every year, there are three (maybe four) teams with a chance to win. Out of twenty. None of the other sixteen or seventeen have a snowball's chance in hell of "winning" the League. If you are not a fan of Man United, Manchester City or Chelsea...and sometimes a fourth club, but not always ... you aren't "winning" jack or shit. So, if you want a "reasonable chance to win every year", you must choose one of those three clubs.
Now, the noisy contingents of Arsenal, Liverpool and even Tottenham fans will quibble with that assessment. But they're noisy windbags with selective memories. Arsenal and Liverpool used to be in that top group, but aren't anymore and haven't been for a decade or more. Tottenham never was, and as such, their fans tend to be a bit more realistic about their lot in life - spoiler for one of the "big clubs", as well as a place where great players develop into world class talents before departing for Real Madrid.
But outside those six...you are rooting for the Brewers or Padres. No one else (sans Blackburn, who are now in the equivalent of AA) has ever won the league. No one else has really gotten close without it slipping away, like there's banana peels on the pitch or something. And no one ever will break this cycle of dominance. The money disparity is to great, the rules built to keep the rich super-rich and the not-as-rich, well, not as rich.
The slim chance of "winning" is to catch fire in a Cup competition or to excel in the Europa League (the poor cousin of the big clubs European Championship tournament) and to try and steal a "top four" finish from one of the behemoths. That's a "winning" season - finishing fourth or winning a tournament that the big clubs use to get their uber-talented teenagers match experience. No, the goal of the majority of the EPL is simply to survive, to avoid relegation and to David a couple of the Goliaths on any given Saturday.
I'm sure the Chelsea, Man United or Manchester City contingents will be happy to welcome a new "winner" to the bandwagon, especially if you buy a shirt or two and help them avoid FFP fines for their profligate spending. The chasers will tell you "this is the year!" and dispute the idea they are losers without a chance of winning...but scoreboard. They're losers, without a chance of actually winning.
So, these are your choices: 1) Super-club with no soul, a bloated bandwagon and a Yankee like history (excepting City, who are just filthy rich with Qatari oil money and human rights abuses); 2) The second tier of wannabes and delusional chasers who think they're in tier 1 and will make a lot of noise about "competing" for titles while winning nothing; or 3) rooting for a club that will never, ever, ever "win" anything.
Like you, I got into EPL action without a team. And eventually, I found my team. They don't win much (after January) because the owner is a profiteering scumbag who sells the best players in January of every year and dreams of owning a shitty Scottish Premier League team. Our fanbase is large, and largely populated with extremely corpulent gents with excessive tattoos and an accent that could choke a water buffalo. Our uniforms - another silly thing soccer fans are way too into - look like someone raided a Foot Locker and took the employee bin clothing. The team captain looks a bit like Bob Ross and Dan Shaughnessy had a love child.
Rooting for this team is painful; because the owner is cheap and an asshole, long losing streaks happen every year, some with increasingly improbable outcomes that seem designed to sap a fan's will to live. They will never, ever, ever win anything because they aren't very talented and if they got close, the owner would sell the best player and funnel that money to Scotland or into his shitty "real" business.
Yet...there's something to being a Newcastle fan. Maybe it's the shared camaraderie of rooting for a hopeless loser. Maybe it's the bizarre ways they find to lose games. Perhaps it is the joy of watching Fat Geordies do Fat Geordie things. Perhaps it is the incomprehensible accents of the fans bemoaning the latest indignity.
Rooting for Newcastle is like rooting for the Red Sox when they were in the midst of the 86 year old drought; you're just waiting for something to go wrong, for the inevitable collapse, for the latest indignity to roll off the assembly line. It is...weirdly fun. We win by existing. We win by spoiling other team's fun. We win by staying up.
If you want to WIN...the pickings are slim (and slimy - all of those super clubs are packed to the gills with pretentious shitheads). If you want to have fun and enjoy the game, find a proper club and enjoy the losing. That's how life works - you're poor, you don't win, you die. Have fun with it.