And now it gets personal…
Giles Smith’s mid-week article on the official site makes a pertinent point about John Barnes’ claim, in a newspaper, that we charge children £50 on matchdays. Barnes is an idiot who never bothered to check his facts, but his original article passed editorial control because it confirmed the general media demonisation of Chelsea. It’s a type of lazy opinionising we expect from tabloid pundits, but when we see a kind of collective cultural consensus is being engineered by supposedly intelligent and serious writers against us, we need to respond. Though we should not get over-sensitive. Success automatically brings envy, which begets hatred. And there is a certain satisfaction to be enjoyed in watching our opponents’ apoplectic blatherings, a sure sign of their impotence in the face of our virility. Hatred breeds irrational behaviour, and the sheer hypocritical madness of much that is said and written against the club is actually quite funny.
I became acutely aware of this recently when browsing the influential Normblog, the opinion site of Norman Geras, who is the Professor Emeritus at Manchester University and a Manchester United season ticket holder. As a fellow supporter of broadly liberal values, I have over the years come to rely on his and other like-minded blogs to find an enlightened take on many contemporary political issues. Imagine my surprise then, when I saw a link on his site to an article in the Daily Telegraph he was favourably promoting. The article, by Michael Henderson, signifies something a little more sinister than the usual tabloid stirring.
Here’s a sample: “Chelsea are loathed with greater intensity, by more people, than any club in the history of English football”. Really? I seem to remember going to games in the mid-90s when both sets of fans would join in anti-Manchester United songs as a boringly regular ritual. I don’t think that happens with us does it? Here’s another: “Chelsea are loathed because they have spent half-a-billion pounds to keep internationals in gravy”. Is that why we’re hated? Because we pay big salaries? Or this: “If referees or opponents get in their way, their fans can always fire off death threats”. Yes, some maniacs can, just like the maniacs at every other club. But these are not fans in any accepted sense of that word. And we have never actually been implicated in any actual deaths, unlike so-called fans of other clubs. But look at this: “Proper football clubs want to be successful but they feel a responsibility to the game at large … Chelsea are not interested in anything so opaque”. Well, I think you’ll find Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal did a lot more to engineer the modern era than us, with its obsession with money and accumulation of power. It was, after all, Manchester United who became the only club in history to consider themselves bigger than the FA Cup and the age-old football traditions it represents.
But here’s the clue to the real problem: “their supporters … present such a disagreeable spectacle”. Now it gets personal. We are a “disagreeable spectacle”. That’s me and my mates who have supported our team through 40 years of often crappy football. Ordinary working guys, all of us. That’s all those local families with their kids who colour the stands every home game. That’s all those welcome new fans we have who identify by nationality with players like Michael Essien and Didier Drogba. The workers of the world. How revealing of this journalist’s true instincts, and of his supporters in academia. Doesn’t it say so much more about them than the object of their hate? Should there be any doubt that the irrational has surfaced to an alarming degree in supposedly cultivated men, look at how the article describes Chelsea supporters: “an odd compound of ample-buttocked ‘A3 Men’ and ‘Showbiz Charlies’, many of whom couldn’t tell a goal-post from the groundsman’s cat”. He’s describing the kind of fake fan that Roy Keane targeted at Manchester United as the “prawn sandwich” brigade. Could we have a clearer picture of the self-loathing at the heart of such bile?
- Posted at 10:11 AM · Permalink · Print · 1914 views · Last indexed by Google on the 16th May 2008
- Tags: Arsenal, Chelsea, Giles Smith, John Barnes, Liverpool, Manchester United, Michael Henderson, Norman Geras, Roy Keane
What a great post, thanks DannyBrod. I am one of those supporters who for 35 years has supported the team through the thin and anorexic times. For some time I’ve been aware of the snobbery emanating from the 4th estate. What qualifies these people to write such wild untruths is patently related to a sub-text that reads “we hate the working class”. For me, in the MHL, the average fan spans the whole gamut of intelligence from the monosyllabic grunting specimen to the philosophical academic. The key point is that at Stamford Bridge all these people are equal, all have the same aspirations for the team and whilst opinions on the rights and wrongs of 4-4-3 against 4-4-2, or whether Geremi is a good right back or Glen Johnson should be bought back, will always differ, the academic differential becomes null and void whether in the ground or the pub afterwards. Sure, some of the people I talk to would struggle to hold a normal conversation with anything other than someone of a similar IQ, but at football we all operate on an equal level. That’s the beauty and uniting spirit of the game. To criticise Chelsea fans above any others not only insults us, but fans of other teams as well, because they are exactly the same as us, united in their passion and desire for their team.
You also made a very good point about how the current footballing climate came to be so money-oriented. Well perhaps wankers like Henderson should delve into the development of the game since the inception of the PL and the CL. Real Madrid, for example, have been funded by the local authority for many years now as a matter of local pride and Sir RedNose of Salford has always moaned about this. Manure FC have to operate as a business, yet Real Madrid would have gone to the wall years ago if they’d tried to fund their Galactico policy whilst operating under normal business governance. Not that Manure are guilt-free… as you rightfully state they are one of the key drivers for the way of the current game. Are they really kidding us that The Theatre of Nightmares could have been developed on gate receipts and shirt sales alone… or was the money generated from whoring themselves to The City and riding the bareback tiger of the free market economy and generous profit seeking shareholders? Yes, we maybe a plaything or faux sex-kitten replacement for an obscenely rich Russian, but I’d take that over the Bates-Motel style despotic leadership Killer Ken gave us. And what’s the morally more acceptable, City Whore or Plaything for a (albeit young) Sugar Daddy. It’ll be interesting to see how the press treat the Arabian Republic of Liverpool when the takeover goes through? Will the tired and unfunny references to “Chelski” in such diseased organs as Football365 (brain cells?) be replaced with Liver-Al-Pool or the like. Probably not, because they aren’t winners like us.
And by the way, great to see the high pitched dog maddening whinging Liverpool draw my other most hated team, the diving cheats of Barcelona. Beauty vs The Beast… nah… more like Swamp Thing vs Frankenstein.
Excellent stuff Danny. Are you regular at Harry’s Place then?
Henderson is a despicable snob, as anybody who reads his cricket writing will be aware. Geras, for one, should know better.
As anybody with half a brain knows, Chelsea fans are, in the main, no different from any other - all are drawn from a similar pool, with similar hopes and ambitions for their club, and the same willingness to turn a blind eye to their club’s particular failings.
One of the weirdest things about being in our current position is seeing how Liverpool and Man Utd fans wear their blind worship of success with such pride, whereas when I was at school they were all despised as glory supporters.
Yes great article Danny, and also a superb reply Tony.
Just like to add quickly with regard the Liverpoo takeover situation. Some of the Scouse blogs have the cheek to think that Chelsea and it’s supporters will be shitting themselves with all the money they’ll have to spend. Well here’s some news for you lot, “Money doesn’t guarantee success”
and no guessing where that pearl of wisdom eminated from!
Lets be honest what decent footballer wants to live in Liverpoo.
I rest my case your honour! which is a phrase most Scousers should be familiar with ;)
Love your response Tony, particularly the last line.
I’ve written and posted an article on this subject but the kind of populist nonsense that was posted in the Telegraph reflects a genuine feeling amoungst Arsenal and United fans that no-one outside their previous monoploy should be allowed to win. I’ll never forget listening to 606 one evening on the way home from a game (prior to to the Abramovich era) and hearing a Utd supporter ringing in to complain about their poor form; “I didn’t buy a season ticket to watch them lose” she said. I genuinely believe that this is the kind of attitude that exists at both Arsenal and Utd and it is almost righteous indignation that drives most of the antichelsea sentiment. Its all so unfair!!!!
Thanks for the comments guys. And, yes, Peter, I am a regular at Harry’s place. In fact, the genesis of my post was a personal sense of shock (and, I have to confess, hurt) at Geras linking to the article in the first place. He’s fucking Emeritus Professor at Manchester University for goddsake! But then, as we used to say in the far off 70s, scratch a liberal and you get a fascist.
…Especially if the liberal is a Marxist.
Isn’t Brownie at HP a Liverpool supporter? Interesting to see how he justifies the Sheikh thing.
Giles Smith is producing some good stuff these days, combating this lazy, ‘truthiness’ masquerading as journalism - shame nobody outside CFC is going to read it.
PeterH, I saw a Manc on the Guardian site the other day claim that Manchester United’s moral superiority was defined by the fact they booed Ferguson last season cos they were bored ‘and we expect to be entertained, unlike you who lot who just expect to win’.
Talk about spoilt, arrogant, head-in-the-cloud, ungrateful, ugly petulance.
They might be able to tell us a thing or two about what they demand by way of entertainment, but we could teach them a hell of a lot more about what it means to be a supporter.
Peter,
You understood perfectly the relevance of that comment. The reality is that, on match days, its still true that 70-80% of the crowd at SB are supporters, not spectators. Comments from the likes of that muppet on 606 neatly demonstrate that your average Utd or Arsenal fan has spent so many years gorging on a diet of success that they now feel that winning something every year is not a bonus that occasionally comes alog once in a while and is something to be cherished but a necessary requirement of continued support and a basic right.
Sorry to be a bit late on this, but there’s a minor detail that’s been missed. Barnes is actually right.
When the family section is sold out (at £15) and you can’t get two seats together in the East Upper at £24 then you have to hope for MHL or Shed Lower at £45 for kids, else it’s £48 (+£1.50 of course) in most other places. And CFC will happily insist that a child has to pay £60 if all you have left is West Upper.
Unlikely you might think? Well last season we had to pay £325.50 for 4 adults and 3 kids in Shed Lower and this Boxing Day I’m taking my dad (OAP) and brother to West Upper for £184.50.
I do like Giles Smith’s pieces recently, but in this case he’s embarassingly wrong and it’s been going on for a long while.