Re: What Is Everyone Reading At the Moment?
newyorktiger said:
[Yeah Ready - the book is semi-autobiographical.. He was that person for the most part, and did attend Arsenal games growing up.
BTW I don't think there was much wrong with the gentrification of English Football - What happened in the '80's (hooligans) was a disgrace. Shame ticket prices are so expensive.
I have vivid memories of attending a Wolves v West Brom match at Molineux (in Wolverhampton) on a few years ago. They are bitter rivals, and are neighbours (similarities to Collingwood & Richmond) and the hatred is a lot more intense. I caught the train from London, and was going to meet a local friend who was just outside the gate. The problem was that everyone who got off the train was a West Brom fan, and I got caught in a serious police escort to the ground.. Towards the end I just had to drift away...
Happy to say that I am a Wolves Fan (Gold & Black)!!
The exorbitant ticket prices are a disgrace but merely a symptom of what has/is going wrong with the game. Basically the game is now not a pasttime or a subject of (passionate) interest but a product to be consumed.
Hornby of course isn't to blame for this, but his book came out in 1992 in the midst of several events which changed the way the game was run/perceived. This list is not exhaustive but especially important are the Hillsborough disaster/Taylor report, England's run to the semi-finals of Italia '90 (made it acceptable to follow the national side again), the Premier League breakaway from the Football League (facilitated of course by the Football Association by way of threat from the Big Five (Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and, er, Spurs and Everton) and the TV deal with Sky in 1992 (since twice renewed). All these forces combined to make football a trendy product to be consumed, and a product that money could be made out of like never before.
Unfortunately there are now signs that a saturation point is being reached, particularly with the ridiculous amount of football now on TV in the UK. The collapse of the ludicrous ITV Digital proposal a few years ago (they thought they could make money by televising the lower divisions in direct competition with the top flight) made the plight of many lower division clubs even worse because they had budgeted for an ITV Digital windfall only to see the whole thing go belly-up. Meanwhile attendances have peaked and are now on a downward slope. Only three clubs (Manchester United, Arsenal and Blackburn Rovers) have won the title since 1992 and clubs like Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday have learned about unsustainable spending the hard way. It's little wonder attendances are falling when so few sides are a genuine chance of winning and the rest are scrabbling around to stay out of debt. The gulf between the lower division clubs and the top flight is the widest it's ever been. The Bournemouth chairman recently bemoaned that Burnley beat Liverpool in the FA Cup third round because a tie against Burnley meant Bournemouth lost out on stg. 250,000 they would have got from a televised tie against Liverpool. In any case why would your new fans/consumers want to watch you play Liverpool when your sole aim in the tie is not to win but to get 250,000 quid to keep you afloat for another season? Better to get stuffed 4-0 by a big club in the fourth round than fluke your way through to the quarter-finals by drawing lower-division opponents. This is the view my club, Brentford, have right now and with the debts we have I can see why. But while it makes sense in the head if does nothing for the heart. And the more fairweather consumers who are turned off by the lacklustre product on offer, the less of the traditional supporter base you can rely on to get you through hard times because so many of them have been priced out of and/or alienated from the game.
As for hooliganism, which has been going on since the late '60s (or 1930s if you're talking Millwall), it's a social problem that has always cut across class lines. You see less of it these days because it rarely happens inside grounds, but it's still a weekly proposition. When England or English clubs go to the continent the policing is disorganised and things get out of hand very quickly. While many working class people have been priced out, there are still plenty of others -- homeowners, small businesspeople, white-collar workers, family men -- where butter wouldn't melt in their mouth most days but they go on the rampage on match day. They were always there and still are; unfortunately, hooliganism is something that isn't going away.
Going to a Black Country derby, btw, wouldn't have been something you would have done if you were faint of heart!
