A friend of mine asked me to help compile a New Year playlist for a party he’d been asked to DJ at. We’d both dabbled with the the wheels of steel back in the day but he’s back in-demand after a twenty-five-year hiatus following a successful run out at a PTA school disco a few weeks ago.

Way back when, I played an enjoyable set of carefully selected pop remixes at a flat warming party. It was more conservative than my taste, but I’d just read Bill Brewster’s book How to DJ Properly about orientating your set towards the women present because they’re always the first to dance. Plus, I didn’t want to upset the hosts with my indulgent musical fantasies. The room stayed full and everyone looked happy, there wasn’t space for a dance floor, but a few people nodded their heads in appreciation. It was hardly Aphex Twin, but as sets go, it was one of my most successful.

In the corner were a couple of blokes who smirked at me and laughed at my selections. They turned out to be the next DJs on. This was in the days of superstar DJs; as soon as they took over, they slammed on some achingly fashionable epic trance, which was particularly du jour back then. It stank the place out and the room emptied before they had a chance to select a second tune. I like obscure big room bangers as much as the next person, but it was a valuable lesson in the importance of matching your music to the vibe.

We’re all grown up now, so the vibe for my friend’s New Year party was parents, teenagers and kids (specifically farmers, according to his Whatsapp message). The playlist needed to straddle the generations, with enough treats to show you’re on the side of the guests. As much as we might retain fantasies of wowing people by dropping that unnamed white label you got from Massive Records that time, it needed to be something a bit more immediate.

I was quite happy with my eventual selections; accessible, familiar, but not too obvious. The Chi-Lites’ Are You My Woman sat alongside Janelle Monae’s Q.U.E.E.N, Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood with Welcome To The Cheap Seats by the Wonderstuff. 

I was particularly pleased to include a couple modern smashers for the younger generation; Montell Jordan’s This Is How We Do It and I Got Five On It by the Luniz. Great, until you remember they’re thirty years old and the demographic they’d land with would be approaching or in their fifties.

It turns out that the nineties were a long time ago, plenty of time to remodel and reshape its legacy. Every generation engages in a form of cultural Marxism when they reach middle-age. Currently, Generation X are in control of the means of production, so fashions, music and culture has re-orientated towards a time when they were young, hedonistic and carefree. 

Sure, the nineties had their moments, but it wasn’t quite the utopia that it’s sometimes portrayed to be. Take that decade at The Manor as an example; if you were there then you’ll remember an insouciant second tier rollercoaster of Joey Beauchamp, Matt Elliott, Paul Moody, 1996 and all that. If you weren’t, then most likely that’s how it’ll have been re-told to you.

And yet, in our eight second tier seasons during that decade, our average finishing position was 17^th, we won less than a third of our games with an aggregate goal difference of -68, only once did we deliver a positive goal difference and our average crowd was 6,400. We won seven FA Cup games and for most of that time had workaday managers in Brian Horton and Denis Smith who were regularly criticised for their underwhelming performances.

Once we started to slide down the divisions, it took half a decade to find our footing again. After that, for the best part of two decades, we’ve been punching below or at our weight. As a result, the expectation that we should be winning every game has been normalised and we expect our managers to be transformative and inspiring so that we can achieve great things together.

There are some differences, in the 1990s we stayed in the division despite our situation; we were able to unite as a group of fans against a common foe, first Robert Maxwell and then the mess of debt he left behind. In 2025, we are succeeding because of our situation with relative stability and progressive plans for the future. Perhaps as a result we’re demanding more or perhaps we’ve been re-engineered to expect more.

Every now and then I’ll be walking along the street and catch a waft of a particularly pungent brand of cigarette that reminds me of The Manor when everyone smoked in the stands. It transports me back to another time. Returning to the Championship has resurrected similar buried feelings from a quarter of a century ago, including the deep satisfaction you get from an undeserved point at somewhere like Preston. 

Ruben Rodrigues’ goal was an analogous reminder of the gratifying nature of this kind of game. Preston playing out the back like a proper modern team, Rodrigues, alert to his opportunity, intercepting the ball and passing it into the back of the net. It was like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Arc when Indiana Jones is faced by a swordsman who tries to intimidate him with his fancy swashbuckling. Before he completes his routine, Jones draws a gun and shoots him dead. If you were to apply the dubious science of football to Rodrigues’ goal, you’d say that Preston showed all the technical nous of the swordsman but we benefitted from the simpler resolution of Jones’ gun.

It wasn’t dissimilar to the mistake those DJs made all those years ago either. You have to play to the crowd you have, not the one you want. We might harbour ambitions of playing a brand of exquisitely orchestrated football and competing with the best, but there is just as much gratification in addressing the issue in front of you in the simplest way possible.

I agree with Gary Rowett, the point and nature of the performance, not least the dogged defensive display, was perhaps more satisfying than the wins we’ve had over Christmas. You can see why he seems to be the first manager who has embraced Sam Long for his strengths rather than find ways to replace him because of his weaknesses. He’s just the kind of player that suits his more practical sensibilities. For all the tactical debates, stylistic conundrums and transfer speculation, what’s most important is that when you get to the heart of the squad you find that it has a heart.

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