The Entitled Fans

The Internet is the centre of so many people’s lives. Anyone, should they wish to, has a public voice and a means by which to be heard (read) – forums, message boards, blogs, podcasts, twitter and Facebook. "What do you think? Tell us!". I know what you are thinking, as a blogger should you really be going down this path? But stick with me....

Old media is playing catch up, the consumers of media now create content. Phone-ins no longer need 90 minutes of callers when they can read out emails and tweets. The emails and tweets become a generator of calls and tweets and emails. Local newspapers can write articles that comprise a couple of lines of often mis-spelt text and a page of tweets. Our thoughts, hope and dreams, hates and loves shared even wider, to be rated or slated.

As society is changing, so is football. An ever expensive business that means clubs increasingly have customers rather than fans. Whether we like it or not there is an increasing number of football fans who are as much consumers and customers as supporters and fans. With ticket prices reaching, what for many people are, unsustainable levels, an increasing number of people attend expecting some semblance of value for money – a notion that very few clubs a season will ever deliver on, or on a consistent basis. Nothing exemplifies this more than the misguided notion that as a customer you are entitled to a refund if the performance is poor and the defeat is heavy.

 A sense of fan entitlement is rising in football and whilst many campaigns are worthy of wider support – Twenty’s Plenty and challenging the disregard to supporters with TV match scheduling as examples – there is a much whinier, whinging group who seek complaint at every opportunity. More prevalent amongst “supporters” of the Big 6, or those who perceive their club should be, these ungrateful, spoilt children have a sense of entitlement and severe lack of perspective that does them a bigger disservice than they are willing to acknowledge. These Veruca Salts or Violet Botts want to "scweam and scweam until they’re sick".

Sadly, you can see this starting to perpetuate United's fanbase. We all want success, we all yearn for cup runs, cup finals, promotions and titles, to bring the good times and big games back to the Lane, but this is more than that. Worse than that.  Fans sitting back waiting to be entertained - like the emperors in the Coliseum. 

There has been comment on social media and on the phone-ins recently about the atmosphere at the Lane. The fact is we have gone quiet. People sat waiting for it to happen, with impatient expectation. And when the goal doesn't come, or a mistake is made, you hear the muttering and the groans. The second, third, fourth mistakes greeted with ever louder groans. I wasn't at the Birmingham game, but those who were there commented it was like a morgue at times. The Preston game on Saturday wasn't helped by half the crowd being caught up in Freshers gridlock at kick off, but did we ever really get going once the ground filled? The usual groups at the back of the Kop made their effort, but it never really reverberated around the ground.

Even when we were all over a team for 60 minutes it felt quiet. We expect a lot of effort on the pitch and they (the players) got nothing back when they delivered. The quality of football and style of play we are trying to deliver deserves it.

Attendances are down on last season. Matchday pricing and the midweek red button will both have an impact I am sure, as will the fact that away followings are down as well. Despite these factors we still have strong numbers, so the volume should still be good.

This entitlement and passive support - until there is an issue - then breeds on social media. There is a tendency in some tweets I have seen to focus on the fact we have been on a "run" of one point from a home and away game. Since when is two games a run of games? Particularly when it includes one okay performance that we should have got at least point from - but didn't and another where initial dominance of possession wasn't translated into goal opportunities, we faded and found ourselves holding on for a point. The latter one of those games where everyone has a stinker - rare, but they do happen. But for some people this was panic stations, this was the start of "the rot". The reality is it was four wins in six and sixth in the table.

All sense of perspective is lost. The need to comment in the immediacy of the final whistle, or in this case midway through a second half with United 2-0 up, leaves little time for rationalisation. Comments that were previously kept within the privacy of friends and family are now out on public display.

There appears to be a reluctance to pause and think before hitting ‘send’ or ‘tweet’, a pause that might have more value than the words that have been typed. If this was the reaction when we went 2-0 up, I can only assume the patchy 3G coverage in the Lane thankfully deprived us of the thoughts at 2-2.

This is not a call for Ultra groups, choreographed displays, or singing sections. It isn't necessarily about singing songs. This is just a call for some perspective, for fans to get behind the team and encourage them. Bramall Lane rocking is a place few clubs would want to visit, how many times have opposition managers commented on it? We are in a much stronger position than many would have expected even after winning the League One title 16 months ago. Yes, we didn't kick on last season as we might have hoped, after a great start, but we are putting together a similar platform this season.

The table below shows the position at the same stage last season, there are many similarities with this in that we are fourth and two points off the lead, but this season is more open and the gaps are smaller. Just two points separate us in fourth and Blackburn in twelfth. The margins are small and everything points to a competitive league with a team that finds consistency pulling away from the rest.

I recently saw the graph below on twitter from a Wednesday fan, (stick with me!) Peter Loehmann. It showed that over the last 14 years the proportion of teams in the Top 6 of the Championship each week that are still there at season end. Whilst that wasn't the case for us last season and we were in the other 50%, then there must be a chance this season.

Let's not take this for granted. Let's not assume that the players can produce these kinds of performances every week. They're going to need us to get behind them and they need us to lift them when energy is flagging. Teams come to Bramall lane to contain us. Be patient, keep perspective, we can make a difference. You never know we may convert some of those results we didn't get last season into better ones this and who knows where that might take us?

Falling for the Blades

In the last fortnight I have seen the question posed many times; Could the result at Gillingham be the equivalent of Crewe away last season? A turning point in this phase of our relationship? Colchester the Tuesday after saw some moments of joy, but there were concerns that this wasn't a long term, sustainable happiness. The fear that all wasn't quite right still, the fear that when the big date comes they will fail to turn up.

After the Colchester victory, charismatic full back and bearded cult hero John Brayford tweeted "The Blades train is coming". To which a fellow Blade replied "It's a bit fucking late". It is, but how many thought we would go to Bristol City and win? I know I didn't and I am someone who thought the gap between the two teams wasn't that great back on that first date in August.

Since then Blades fans have been green eyed monsters. Admiring glances cast towards the "quality" signings made by City and the clear impact they have had. Meanwhile, we added plenty of depth to the squad, but with a feeling that the match day eleven wasn't being greatly enhanced. Chopping and changing week in week out, our love had lost its identity. The over-arching commitment was there, but there just wasn't the association with what we saw, the things we hold dear. The commitment felt one way.

But on Valentine’s Day they delivered. The emotions swung again and even for the most hardened and pessimistic a happy ending to it all seems a possibility. But then you realise that it's just two dates with destiny and we need as many as 13 or 14 in the next 18…..Then a night in Nottingham ends well and you can see, or you hear of, the steely determination to make this work.

I want to believe we can replicate last season's run. I really do. Nearly 40 years of being a Blade reins in that hope. It's a form of self-preservation. Like a broken relationship that you will never walk away from. It is all about managing the potential disappointment. You still want and hope for the best, but you never expect it.

Football fans are the most loyal half of a relationship I can think of, in any aspect of life. You are in a marriage, often arranged, set upon you by parents or grandparents. Arranged but then secured in that moment when, clutching your Dad or Grandad's hand so tight, you see the floodlights, the expanse of green, and hear the buzz and the noise.Sometimes there is a choice, but those who have a choice tend to choose a partner more in the public eye. Yet for all this unstinting devotion, for all this commitment and financial expense, for the public disdain and contempt, what do we get back?

A roller coaster of emotion, varying results, fluctuating from success to failure knowing that success is relative; limited by finances and the ever expanding gap between top and the middle, never mind the bottom.

You travel every week to be treated like a criminal, with no other justification other than your chosen love. You are kettled and frogmarched, shoved and contained. You are warned and disrespected without provocation. You are not allowed to respond, to defend yourself, even in the most polite or respectful terms. Your words twisted, your intentions deliberately misconstrued. Barriers restrict your movements, young and old, fit and infirm equally discriminated against. Some fall, no official hand is offered to pick them up. You pick them up and help them along.

You pay extortionate amounts for just 90 minutes with your love, but pillars and posts often block your loving gaze. They test your levels of endurance, through enforced discomfort, but you still sing songs of devotion, until they become objects of your ire and pent up frustration.

You stand exposed to the wind and rain on open away ends like Gillingham, as the rain waters down the jug of milk by the burger van and further dilutes your tea or beer when bought. That is if you can pass the taste test and distinguish between the varying shades of brown liquids which are poured into plastic cups that barely shield your hand from the scalding liquid within.

You gorge on food that's fast, but a fast track to adult obesity. Carb loading, wallet emptying. Food that has a mark-up that would only make it appear reasonably priced to a person who lived in Zimbabwe under Mugabe.

We show our love by wearing our love's favoured colours, but every year that spectrum is expanded by new away kits, or even third kits required through conveniently inappropriate away colour selection. Hues chosen by the colour blind, or a fashionista who knows nothing of your years of devotion or the history and tradition. 

Being a lover of the Blades the potential upsides have been joyous. Dates in the less enervating cities of Leicester and Cardiff and in the dated town of Darlington have brought euphoria. Closer to home and visits to less salubrious parts of our home city somehow left us in rapture and bliss. But more often than not the big dates in the smoke have seen a failure to perform, a let-down, with an audience in tow. The pain more heartfelt and public.

The negative memories tarnish and always rise to the surface. They pin back your hope for a brighter future. They will mess up somewhere along the line and you will just accept it and return for more. 

As a London Blade tweeted to me this week, “You have to have the rain to have the rainbow”. But in the back of your head you just see rain. You dare not hope for the sun, because when will it come?

I do hope that we ride the love train and have a date with the Championship in August, I really do. Just forgive me if I don’t build my hopes up too much for now. I'll take it one week at a time. As much as I look forward, me and United have got history.