Football Fan Hypocrisy
August 22, 2009 5 Comments
Having reviewed my recent posts on football I’ve made the following observations:
14th August – Season’s Greeting – I moan about how apathetic I’m feeling towards the new football season, and have a general sense of dread about Liverpool’s chances (certainly implicit when I was writing it, even if it’s not actually stated).
15th August – Piss Poor Punditry – I’m so incensed by pundits writing off Liverpool’s chances of winning the league that I write an impromptu rant in which I basically call them morons.
16th August – Spurs 2 Liverpool 1 – A match report describing a very poor Liverpool performance, and how depressed it made me feel. I single out Glenn Hoddle and Jamie Redknapp for ridicule, for saying that Spurs have better players on the bench than Liverpool do.
I can’t help but feel that I’m at least a slight hypocrite, but as a football fan, I think you have to be. Football is very much a tribal thing; you’re allowed to criticise your team, but nobody else is. However, I do always try and maintain as much objectivity as I can when talking about football; I think you just end up sounding like an idiot if you don’t. This post is my attempt to acknowledge that I may not have been entirely successful in my task.
So, having thought about it, how do I actually feel about Liverpool’s chances in the league this season? The simple answer is, I’m not sure. Football is almost impossible to predict, because, incredibly, the team with the strongest 11 players don’t always win every match. As much as pundits wind me up with their monochrome soundbites, I do feel a bit sorry for them. They are asked to give absolute opinions on topics that don’t have definitive answers.
Despite having pretty much the same squad that finished second, and played so well, last season, I can’t help but agree with many pundits and say that the squad seems a bit weak. I just don’t quite understand why I think that.
To quote a great man: ‘Football’s a funny old game, Saint.’
About sherby57
Why hasn’t Benitez bought more than one striker / creative player / match winner? Is it not obvious to all fans that this is what is needed at the club…?
Is Harry Krishna a pseudonym for Harry Kewell?
The goings on behind the scenes at Anfield are a mystery to all Liverpool fans I think. It’s not clear how much money, if any, that Benitez has to spend, or who he has tried to buy. The purchase of Johnson, which has been questioned by some in the press, looks clearly to be done as an additional deadlock-breaker, if not as an actual match winner (if there is a difference between the two). That deal was weird in itself, as £7million of the £17m price tag was written off by Portsmouth for money owed on Crouch. With the fee for Aquilani apparently being paid in £5millionish instalments, and over £30million in revenue being brought in for Alonso and others, then it seems that we haven’t actually spent anything!
Benitez is now in a position where to improve any particular position in his squad then he will have to spend big, and it appears he has no money. Hopefully, being broke is all a ploy and a big signing (Silva?) is being lined up before the end of the transfer window. In reality, I fear we are skint, as Hicks and Gillette try and manage the massive debts they’ve run up on the club.
As a United fan, I cannot tolerate anyone slagging them off, but I do it on a routine basis whenever they’re playing rubbish.
Take the Burnley match as an example – I was livid come the end of the game, and I was shouting abuse at the radio. I don’t think it’s really hypocrisy, it’s more just being a football fan. When it’s in your blood and you love it so much, you lose perspective. I can be a little too ‘passionate’ when it comes to enforcing my views upon my kin, and it has been known to get their backs up a little too much on several occasions. I know I need to calm it down a little, and that I can come off a little Wengerish at times when I experience selective vision. But it’s what football fans do. We’re not just supporters, we’re fanatics.
I pretty much dislike Liverpool, the incessant whining and moaning of their fans, the “we’re going to win the season yet again” and the “we’ve won it five times!” (despite only winning it once in the past quarter of a century) nonsense, but I love their passion, their blind loyalty, and their sheer devotion to what they know deep down is an utterly lost cause.
All for a round ball being kicked a bunch of blokes. I love it. Screw hypocrisy!
I certainly appreciate a United fan leaving such a considered comment on a Liverpool fans blog lol. You are to be commended sir.
I’ll happily admit to being biased, but I try my hardest to be magnanimous even when I really don’t want to be. There’s nothing worse than trying to have a conversation with a fan from another club who is so blinkered that, actually, you can’t have a conversation. We’ve all been in that situation and found it beyond frustrating; it’s something that I don’t want to perpetuate.
There are good fans and bad fans for every club, and we tend to see the worst in the clubs we don’t tend to like. I suspect that most clubs have a similar ratio of ‘good’ to ‘bad’ fans, with their status at the time exacerbating how annoying they might be.
I’m not a huge fan of the ‘we’ve won it five times’ chant personally – it was fine for the season subsequent to winning the cup, but I believe you have to move on and look toward the future. My take on Liverpool fans saying ‘we’re going to win the league this year’ is that its more of a hopeful prayer than whining or moaning. It’s easy to forget, after a prolonged period of success, just how large the desire to win the league actually is.
I covered some of these points previously in my post: http://poursomegravyonme.co.uk/2009/05/16/it-is-now/ which I wrote directly after United clinched the league in May. I watched the 0-0 draw with Arsenal with obvious hope of a Manchester United loss, that was sadly (for me) not to come. The only other thing I remember from the match was the incessant singing of Liverpool-based songs from the United fans that left me feeling somewhat bemused….I’m guessing we had them worried…..
WE’RE GOING TO WIN THE LEAGUE THIS YEAR!!!! lol
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