Centre-back to right-back to central midfielder to centre-back to other centre-back to left-back to goalkeeper to centre-back to right-back to central midfielder to the same centre-back who started with the ball 30 seconds and most of a paragraph ago. Welcome to football, more expensive and more… err fun than ever before?
Scientific research – my own poor memory plus some social media trawling – suggests that Bolton Wanderers were the first supporters to sing “Sideways and backwards, everywhere we go” back in January 2025. Which proves either that Bolton is a vibrant hub of supporter imagination or that their fans are merely the grumpiest.
Now it is the viral hit of 2026. I have heard Tottenham supporters sing it at Burnley, Southampton supporters towards Tonda Eckert, Leicester fans at Wrexham before Marti Cifuentes was sacked, Forest fans in Braga at Sean Dyche, Huddersfield to manager Lee Grant. There are more: Bristol City, Birmingham City, Charlton Athletic a couple of seasons ago.
It strikes as a distinctly modern phenomenon to chant about your own team being bad or unwatchable. I don’t know when it started exactly, but the roots are in growing sarcasm: “How shit must you be, we’re winning away?”, “You’re going down with the [insert name of own club]”, “We’ve scored a goal, we’ve scored a goal, we’ve scored a goal”.
“Sideways and backwards” is a little different, because it is the first one that focuses not on the team being poor – although that is clearly part of it – but on the style of football being boring and unadventurous. Still, play this football when your team is trailing and witness how the chant rises in volume and ferocity.
It is an accusation of managerial cowardice: you do not dare to take risks and so you don’t deserve to manage our club. It is typically reserved for managers under huge pressure after failing to impose their style. In the vast majority of examples above, that manager was quickly sacked.
The reason for the chant’s virality is obvious. Twenty years ago, a sarcastic barb might be restricted to one club or even one section of a crowd once only. Social media preserves and multiplies them because they are a) recorded on phones and b) widely shared because they become popular on large fan accounts.
Before you know it, 75 clubs in the 92 are singing “Putting on a show” and you are sick of waking up in the middle of the night with it in your head.
“Sideways and backwards, everywhere we go…”The chant of 2026 already pic.twitter.com/JsocbFFDxp
— Football Chants (@FootyFansChants) January 3, 2026Again, “Sideways and backwards” is unique. It is a protest against a growing style of football that is aesthetically grim. Entire minutes pass by with the ball barely changing hands between two teams and neither entering the opposition penalty area. It is like watching a video on loop, a glitch in the sport.
Football is at its most entertaining when it contains surprise. A 15-pass, 45-second move that literally ends up back where it started is the antidote to entertainment.
Supporters are not thick; they know about baiting a press and waiting for a lapse in concentration. They know that it might make sense in certain circumstances. It is just that it is not fun to watch.
When this style of football is successful, you will get few arguments. But it is the combination of safe passing and very little end product that irks the most, particularly in lower leagues where often the best chance of success is to take chances and play direct.
Watching Newport County pass it amongst themselves towards the bottom of League Two under David Hughes, before inevitably making a catastrophic mistake, was one of my great moments of 2024-25.
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Another important point: football invited this form of mutiny. The only times I have heard “Sideways and backwards” live have been from visiting supporters, who have spent an inordinate sum of time, effort and money (the latter increasing all the time) to watch their team. If you charge people more for the same product and that product then becomes lethargic and listless, do not expect them to cheerlead it.
Like every football chant – I am looking at you “Football in a library” – we will soon reach the point of weary overuse. It will get misused for a team just being bad at football. Some wag will have to come up with a new ditty (“Fans just wanna have fun” to the Cyndi Lauper hit, or something) and we will do the same cycle again.
But, for now, “Sideways and backwards” is the football song of 2026. People are tired of controlled possession with no purpose. They are tired of head coaches telling them things in post-match interviews that have been disproven by what they just watched. They are tired of going here, there and everywhere in England just to go sideways and backwards before they leave.
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