Oh I still love the
game, but at the top level it's not a game any more, it's a business.
We're not fans of a club any more, we're customers of a business which, like most businesses, have made it increasingly clear they value profit over everything else. The club treat as customers and, worse, they know they have a monopoly over us in the sense that we can't go down the road and start giving Spurs our custom. We're Arsenal fans, we're customers who can only use one supplier. All we can do (and what many are doing, myself included) is withdraw our custom. But there are enough mugs out there to take our place, or have been. How long that will remain is questionable.
There's little passion in the ground these days, Arsenal have relentlessly marketed themselves at the middle class fan (the silly prices, Club Level) and that's what they've got. The tradional support have long since been priced out.
People have mentioned us being little bit shit and not playing great football. Those are undoubtedly factors in my ennui with football but in the mid nineties the football was far worse but there was one major difference - it was still a sport, we still felt connected to the club. Yes, they were a bit rubbish but they were
our rubbish - we felt they cared, we felt they'd run through walls for us and the club. Yes, they got good wages but not such silly money that they had no connection with us fans. Cole's infamous "I nearly swerved off the road" neatly sums up the modern footballer's complete lack of self-awareness and connection with the average fan.
I'll never forget the day I met Ian Wright when dad and me picked up our Bond certificates. I was completely star-struck. It was all I could do to blurt out "you're king of the world, you are!"
Now. Meh. I'm not the least bit bothered about meeting any of them. They couldn't give a shit about us*, why should we care about them?
(* - I think Jack is a rare counter-example but most of the rest of them...they'd be off the moment the right person waves a big enough cheque at them)
IMO the rot started when Sky got involved. They promised us a 'whole new ball-game', they certainly delivered that. And then UEFA expanded the European Cup into the 'Champions' League. Then, as success in football became increasinly correlated with money, the billionaires got involved and started buying up all the major trophies.
UEFA's half-arsed 'financial fair play' policy is far too little, too late and pretty much unenforceable.
In brief: Balls to it. Balls to it all.
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Originally Posted by fakeyank
