Middle Class opposition to "Conspicious Consumption"

[Tipsychubbs]

Fight evil with evil and make sure you're just that bit more evil? Join the herd and head in the prevailing direction? See no evil, hear no evil, speak not at all unless it is to apologise for evil? Turn a blind eye? Cross the street? Keep your head down? Go with the flow? And so on.

When it comes to money everything is the thin end of a bigger wedge. The end game here is a European super league that will have the same teams locked in forever because they are exponentially richer than the rest of football combined. If that's what you want then just keep going along to get along. Criticise idealists all you want but at lest they slow the descent to naked vulgarity and on the way down we get to enjoy those sporting moments that stick in our memory. Believe me, if the money men you forgive so easily could get away with it they would much rather extract our money in return for nothing at all. And as soon as you given them an inch that's the direction they head in.

What exactly is it that these clubs have done to make them evil? What wrong/crime am I supposed to be forgiving? Automatically being rich with cash makes you evil by default? This is the snobbish attitude I'm talking about. And I'll believe the super league idea when I see it.

[gunnerrrrr]

There are some seriously bitter replies in this thread.

The top 10 clubs in Europe for the last 20 years, more often than not, have been the most richest. So a few new teams enter this elite circle....so what?

Let's be honest' the Real Madrids, Barcelonas, Man Uniteds etc have all had immense spending power, look through their histories and I think it will be fair to say that they have not all exactly been true football fairness ideologies.

I mean everyone raves about Mourhinio, yet every club he has gone to has been the strongest at that time in terms of spending powers in the respective club leagues.....yet this rarely gets mentioned.

Sport is built on a fair competive basis, yet I struggle to find a league in the world where financial clout does not effect the balance of this fairness......and again I am talking back decades upon decades.

Let's stop sucking lemons and try ourselves to use whatever abilities we have within this club to reach our summit...perhaps than we will see our manager and players battling again with their hearts and that is the most any fan of any club can ask for.

[Xhaka Can’t]

No one is saying we should not make full use of our resources. In fact it is our unwillingness to do that that pisses me off more.

[KSE Comedy Club]

And still, people cannot see the difference between being rich and having unlimited funds with no consequences.

[Xhaka Can’t]

I think they do see it, they'd have to be incredibly stupid not to.

[Özim]

I think you'd have to be incredibly stupid not to realise that we're getting played by the board as well, our policies are despicable in all honesty. Other clubs fans seem to get much better value for money than our lot and yet's it's considered OK...if football isn't about people coming in and spending lots, it's not about business either....you can't have it both ways.

If you want football as it should be then profit shouldn't be the primary aim and sugar daddies shouldn't be allowed, it seems like making a large profit every year is "OK" in a general sense, but spending big amounts of money isn't, kinda odd.

Would you rather pay less and get a better product, or pay more and get an inferior one? I would have thought that's easy to answer.

[Letters]

Missing the point as always.

Sport, competition. When it's massively skewed in favour of a couple of competitors in detriment to the rest then the sport and competition is diminished. The achievement is diminished.

Outside of sport and competition, people can do what the fuck they want with their money. Can't they? Or at least they can do what they want with half of it after the government has taken a big chunk.

Spot on.

Football is a sport. Well, it used to be.
Now it's pretty much all about who has the richest owner. Chelsea won the title when they did because they had the richest owner. All their subsequent achievements are a direct result of that. Now City have the richest owner and now they've 'won' the title. That and all subsequent 'achievements' are tarnished by how they achieved it.

To be fair that's pretty much the only way of achieving success at the top level of football these days.
And that's not City's fault, or Chelsea's.
But don't expect me to like how the sport I once loved has gone.

And yes yes, there have always been haves and have nots. Success and money in football have always been related to a degree. But never have the differences between the haves and have nots been so massive, never have the amounts of money been so obscene.

City spent 114% of their income on wages last year. Just on wages. Forget all the transfer fees and other expenses. They recorded the biggest loss in football history. And they're champions. Well done them . What a great 'achievement'.

[Özim]

Surely love for football has got to do with the club you support, other clubs are an irrelevance if you're happy with what's happening at the club. People make excuses about how it's other clubs that are the problem, I'd point to the bizarre happenings in the last 6 years as a significant reason for the loss of interest...I've certainly lost interest, mainly because nothing seems to really change and we're seeing a board who are happy as things are and a manager who alos feels that way.

Is it enjoyable to see a repeat of pretty much the same rubbish every season, is it fun to watch other clubs sign players whilst you sell your best players whilst not replacing them adequately, is it fun having a manager who refuses to acknowledge his team defficiencies and praises them at every turn, is it fun to see similar problems with the team season after season? I think not.

[Letters]

If you want football as it should be then profit shouldn't be the primary aim and sugar daddies shouldn't be allowed, it seems like making a large profit every year is "OK" in a general sense, but spending big amounts of money isn't, kinda odd.

I'm not sure anyone on here thinks Arsenal making a huge profit every year at the expense of spending more in the transfer market is 'OK'. We all agree that we should be using our resources better to be more competitive.
If they're using that profit to pay off the stadium debt quicker, looking longer term, then I guess that's not such a terrible thing although I do think we've been far too cautious.

But yes, football shouldn't be about who has the most money, who spends the most or who makes the most profit.
The playing field will never be completely level. Arsenal have a bigger ground than, say, Barnet. We're going to attract more fans, more sponsors, more prize and TV money. You can't do anything about that although you can make the differences less between the PL and 'the rest', you can make the CL for champions only as it should be to stop a little group of teams forming in each league with far more money than 'the rest' and maybe you can do something about the ridiculous player salaries. It's all got way out of hand and unless people en masse stop going to games, stop subscribing to Sky, stop buying the merchandise, stop watching then there's no reason any of it will change.
I go to Arsenal because dad wants to keep going and it's an important part of our relationship. If he didn't want to keep going then I'd stop (although I have to say I do enjoy it at times, there were some great moments last season). As for football in general I'm pretty much done with it. I pretty much never watch non-Arsenal games these days.

[Niall_Quinn]

What exactly is it that these clubs have done to make them evil? What wrong/crime am I supposed to be forgiving? Automatically being rich with cash makes you evil by default? This is the snobbish attitude I'm talking about. And I'll believe the super league idea when I see it.

Evil as in the opposite of good, as a figure of speech and not in a religious sense. For example, "See no evil...", is not a religious statement. There's precisely nothing snobbish about being opposed to the degradation of traditional sport and the rise of commercialism posing as sport. The "I'll believe it when I see it", statement is a further indication of complacency. Basically your argument is to let a few people decide how the game will develop and then accept their decision as inevitability. And to be quiet as it all unfolds. Fine, but why is it snobbery to refuse this silence? It's really odd all the various claims coming out from those who believe dumping as much money as it takes to achieve an objective constitutes sport in it's traditional sense. I hear I am a snob, bitter, jealous, a racist even. All I'm saying is, in my opinion, it's a bad place the game is heading and that's a shame in my eyes because it's a game I have grown up with and loved as far back as my memories go. You want me to place the victory of clubs run by the endlessly wealthy in the same context as the achievements of clubs who operated on at least a somewhat level playing field? I refuse, what of it?