Having watched football from a cold and distant perspective these past few weeks, certain trends in the modern game astound me.
|
As referees get fitter and more expertly coached and scrutinised, more and more games are being ruined by players being sent off for things they didn't do. Why?
And the more educated the fans become through 24-hour-a-day sports channels offering in-depth analysis from 40 experts and 40 camera angles, the less many seem to know and the louder they want to shout it.
Like Victoria Beckham promoting a new single, we've all been hyped out of our mind.
Back-room problems, injuries, dips of form, superior play from our opponents, and Lady Luck taking a holiday are no longer acceptable excuses for losing matches.
Paying £27 for a seat, and £40 for a replica shirt makes some fans believe they have bought the divine right to be at number one. And to stay there.
At first I found this new breed funny. A cross between Violet Elizabeth and Kevin The Teenager. It was summed up when Spurs went 2-0 behind at Charlton in last season's FA Cup and Tottenham fans chanted "Graham Out," only to change their tune 10 minutes later to "We're on the march with Graham's Army," after their heroes took a 3-2 lead.
But this increasing desire to loudly panic like a juvenile when his Clearasil tube dries up reached ludicrous proportions when Manchester United fans called for Alex Ferguson's head towards the end of last year.
The words of one motormouth on BBC's Five Live still ring in my ears: "His head's gone. The players know he's leaving and he's lost their respect. We should move him upstairs now and bring in Martin O'Neill before this season falls apart."
It's this bizarre assumption that the more money a fan gives to his club the better equipped he is to see what's going wrong and loudly diagnose the perfect solution that is getting beyond a joke.
Look at Liverpool. The stick stand-in boss Phil Thompson has taken from outsiders is understandable because there is no better sight than a big club sinking like a sack of cement. But for this man to be criticised as he has been by some of his own, on TV and radio phone-ins, beggars belief.
Any Liverpool fan who felt last year's treble was a guarantee of this year's Premiership was deluding himself on a criminal scale. Even with Gerard Houllier in charge, to be two points off the top and in the second phase of the Champions League in January would have been seen as progresss. To be in that position with a deputy in charge for three months, having endured such an appalling patch of bad form, is a great achievement.
Unless of course you happen to be one of a new breed who believes paying £27 gives you the right to demand perfection every game.
Someone who believes the best way to help your team reach perfection is to single out young, honest, local lads like Jamie Carragher and Danny Murphy and bawl obscenities at them, simply because your squad's inadequacies have been sussed out by mediocre opposition and the manager is not around to sort it out.The cheering of Murphy when he was substituted last Saturday was possibly the most shameful sound I have heard in 38 years of visiting Anfield. Which made his goal against United on Tuesday one of the sweetest I have ever seen.
Fans have every right to criticise their club however they want. But singling out good players who are having a bad patch and hounding them off the pitch, or demanding the head of a good manager who has made a couple of bad decisions, should be an alien concept to anyone who loves their team.
For seven long years under Bill Shankly I watched Liverpool win nothing. Yet I can't remember any player getting singled out for mass vocal criticism. Was it because, in those pre-Thatcher days, we only paid four shillings to enter the ground so didn't believe we'd bought a divine free-market right to success?
Or was it that more people realised that the first responsibility of a supporter is to support. To pull your team to pieces in private, but while they're out on the pitch to save your moans for the soggy pies and even soggier trousers?
'Appier days indeed.
|
* Kop Talk publishes select items from Britain's best read that we think may interest supporters.