you shut your face with your measured thoughtful . . . thoughts! this here is the intrawebz, we overreact and we especiall overreact when it's someone we dislike anyway! rawr!
andrew mangan is far from a fan of xhaka and even he and stillman have been on xhaka's side on this issue (at least on twitter that i have seen). i haven't seen it but, if i am reading those comments right, the rage-fanning appears to be from neville?
Seriously? Your idea of being a supporter is to wish that your club ends the longest streak of consecutive top-flight seasons (96)?
I don't understand this response to @NorthBank ? We should all be rooting for relegation because the club attempted to join/form the Super League?
I didn't think he deserved a serious response seeing he went all "top red" on me My serious response is seeing the ownership decided to treat this like any business, fans should treat it like any brand. In response to @DaPrince84 I have no real interest in 8th vs 5th place discussion/expectation. I did that for 20 years. In any view it's quite poor no much more than enhanced mook level content for the league with no real chance to win anything of consequence. I don't think the brand or narratives deserve greater investment than that YMMV
I've always been transparently dead against the Super League concept and Arsenal's, rather KSE's, interest in it. Luckily the public fan backlash caused them and other owners to come to their senses. I'm not naive enough to think that concept might not rear it's ugly head again, perhaps even under the UEFA umbrella, but for the time being it's a bullet dodged. Would like to hear your definition of "top red". Until then, I have a hard time imagining that my expression of incredulity over your wanting to see us relegated fits the definition. Yes my mileage DOES seem to vary. In fact I may be quite close to 180 degrees opposite to your view of football clubs and fan support as one can get. I see commercial marketing as an unfortunate necessity. But I've never liked or bought into Arsenal "branding" concepts. (note how many times I refer to our stadium as the Grove instead of it's branded alternative) And I follow a more traditional English concept of life-long support, rather than the more American concept of switching team allegiances like you might switch favorite flavors of ice cream. As a result, my commitment to Arsenal is deep, dedicated and evidently permanent. Players, coaches, owners, sponsors... they all come and go, in relative ephemerality. With any luck, what remains well beyond that, and with continuity, is the club, its history and its supporters. I don't exactly love KSE as owners but, from what I've heard, they don't rise to a level of abhorrence that would cause me to shelve or back-burner my active support for Arsenal. Were our owners instead KSA, even though that acronym is only one little vowel different, it would definitely give me major pause, concern, and reason to re-evaluate my position. But I'll be honest in saying that there's always a small amount of baseline dread within me that someday my club may be owned by someone more like MBS, err the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.
To be fair to Jitty, Arsenal has done everything in its power to look and sound like a brand as of late. Throwbacks, leisure lines, commemorative collectible special editions, runners and tennis shoes. Everything besides build a proper football team. Arteta has imo got some things right, like how shit the sporting culture was internally. But the team is disappointing. I think if Tomi had made it through the match we would have ground this one out. But thats hardly an excuse football especially in England s about having a squad.
I see my post above had a para missing - so I will have another go. Stan treated us just like customers, who would give our money and attention to his 'product' no matter what. That's why he was comfortable to be part of such a shitty move with no consultation. So I will treat the EPL accordingly. I watch the quality content and narratives that interest me. Klopp vs Pep. Best players of their era like KDB. Top young talent like ESR. I am not wasting more years watching bad quality content. I don't care if that doesn't meet some peoples definition of fandom, I hope Stan's investment turns to shit. It's what he deserves - no different to the glazers. He didn't chop anyone up with a bone saw or do a genocide, so at least you can say that in his favour
That is exactly what Stan relies on. Just like the Glazers. There is no consequence, because fans continue to guzzle up what they are served. We hold the power as consumers, but we don't use it. What you see as purity of fandom I see as gullible I do understand your view - many hold it.
Top reds are a superior form of Man U fan - for instance the kind who went around saying you couldn't withhold support of the team to protest the glazers.
Threads up for the final day... https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/arsenal-vs-everton-epl-22-may-2022.2120955/
I suspect Top Reds, and their equivalents at other clubs, are fans who grew up with the team, who began attending games in their teen years at the latest. For them the team and it’s success or failure are part of their and their communities identity. Most fans on this forum are on here because we don’t live in the community. We came to Arsenal for other reasons. Personally, I originally followed players, not teams. I landed on Arsenal because I followed Henry and when he came to Arsenal, I liked the way Wenger’s teams played. I have struggled the last few years to continue watching Arsenal because their offense has been dour, but there is still a potion of my personality that continues to follow players, particular young players with potential, so this year I’ve been more engaged than I have in years. I’m not particularly bothered about Stan’s attempt to join the Super League, I suspect it was an attempt to level the financial playing field. At the top level of most professional sports a significant majority of owners are in it for the money. So with the exception of oil money and the human rights issues that seem to be associated with it, I don’t see the Kroenke’s as either better or worse than the ownership at Crystal Palace or any other Premier League team not awash in oil money. There are very few owners at the top levels who are in it for the love of the game. There are no Franklin Mieulis any more. For those of you who don’t recognize the name, and I’m sure many of you don’t, he is a former owner of the Warriors, a team that I have followed for a lot longer than I have followed Arsenal. Many of those years were dry years, years the Warriors didn’t make the playoffs, but there was always something to follow from Don Nelson and Run TMC to World B Free. Unfortunately, it can’t all be about Silverware.
It's an attempt at cost control - the same reason FFP was attempted. I'd actually prefer the big teams bugger of to a super league. But it can't be done as a coup.
Bollocks. It was an attempt to make more money and enshrine the current big clubs as the permanent elite, forever and ever, amen. The likes of Florentino Perez don't want to have to deal with the thought of missing out on the CL like the occasional English power, which is why they're constantly seeking to formalize the existing caste system.
Yes but that is the whole point. Competing in europe has run away costs that almost no one can afford Juve, Milan, Inter - league has poor revenue, clubs have high debt "Big 6" - insane cost inflation, destabilising presence of oligarch/sovereign teams. This is why Chelsea and City were lukewarm on Superleague - it suited them not to join. Spain - Only Madrid is profitable. Barca financial basket case. Other clubs have no money. Germany - Bayern and BVB highly profitable - no financial imperative. PSG - unlimited money, seeking to rival the glamour teams for biggest names, driving inflation The whole point is to create a closed shop to stabilise costs, and counter the threat of Abu Dhabi, Saudi, Russian $$ Especially the interests of the American owners happen to coincide with Spain and italy here. Superleague represented another jump in values providing an exit. Instead the likes of Stan face rising costs against flat revenue. This is why they are all diversifying now - because the prospects for the football business suck.
That these yahoos can't spend less than they earn is their problem, not soccer's, not UEFA's, and certainly not the fans'. The idea that Juve should feel aggrieved because Serie A makes less than the Prem is disingenuous since Juve, Madrid, et al don't seem to care at all about the financial gaps between their leagues and the likes of Portugal, Netherlands, etc. Yet they still want a continental competition so as to claim themselves kings of the biggest mountain possible. Hell, a large part of the diminished appeal of the various domestic leagues is how monotonous they've become because of how the elite clubs dominate UEFA revenues. If anything, the payouts to the clubs should go down and the payouts to the leagues should go up, in an effort to increase competitive parity in the domestic leagues. Then more fans would care about the Bundesliga, etc. Then go back and restructure the European competitions to again improve chances of parity instead of simply maximizing revenue options for the biggest clubs. But that's the nature of problem: Too many people in powerful positions in soccer thinking the answer lies solely in finding more revenues, when in reality the product would be better served by tailoring the competitions differently and then learning to live within those budget realities. At what point is all of this truly about what's best for the game vs what's best for select businesses involved? How soon until they start messing with the game itself in pursuit of ever more money? Larger goals? Commercial breaks?
Just to be clear - I'm not defending them - they are scumbags and I hope Stan, the Glazers etc go bankrupt What obviously needs to happen is sensible salary caps, transfer reforms, fan stakeholdings, regulation - but none of that will happen. So unfortunately it is all our (i.e. fans) problem.