Peterborough United: 'Season of Vengeance' - Div 3 2020-21

[Uros Predic]

Shrugs. Whatever. It's paid for and the club is in the black. Whether you like it isn't relevant.

To whether it's paid for or not, not it isn't. But anyone making a list of shit identikit out of town stadiums isn't going to bear those factors in mind are they. And so, like almost all new builds (especially lower league ones) it ticks every box of the criteria.

Similarly, when it comes to football stadiums, whether I like it or not as a place to visit, is of much more relevance to me, than whether it's fully paid for or not.

[Patrick Thistle]

Well this feels like it is precisely the point I was making about people's commentary on other clubs so thanks for chipping in as a.drive by illustration.

[Uros Predic]

I disagree. Thinking a club's ground is shit, identikit or out-of-town isn't a failure to show a lack of solidarity with fans of said club. You can be glad a traditional football club has found a way to stay in existence by moving ground, but also think that ground is unappealing.

(This may actually have been your point, but it was hard to tell as it was easier to interpret as a bit of whataboutery).

(Either way) I think, that's a significantly removed step to revelling in a club's misfortune, which is much more connected to the fans' experience.

[Nefertiti2]

This is a really interesting thread. Oxford United fans have quite a lot to contribute in terms of Ill-gotten success - the heady days of First Division football and winning the League Cup were paid for by The Daily Mirror pension fund. We have the shittiest out of town stadium of them all- Grenoble Road- named after dodgy landlord turned billionaire Firoz Kassam who bought the club. Sold the manor ground and kept the money fir himself

Then we’ve been starved, had extraordinary management teams- we still remember Ramon Diaz who Kassam apparently met in Monaco, then dumped and locked out of the ground. Eventually he sold the club to some chancers but kept the ground and we've rented it ever since- we’ve since had the return of Jim Smith who got us relegated to the conference and are now owned by some Thai businessmen who are always about to invest vast sums to build a new stadium bring the Oxford brand to the world.

and we take particular delight in Swindon doing badly.

there are a number of people here who are glad to see Oxford lose because of their manager (connected to events that happened nearly twenty years ago.)

Being a Football fan means being partisan. We know our own stories and don’t really care about other people’s. Sometimes we manage to get our version told and heard, as AFC Wimbledon fans do. But you still want your narrative and get irritated when the media big up the Dons Derby- or whatever it might be this week.

We can admire Shrewsbury for being debt free and still dislike your ground, or think your team are over physical ( as they were on my only visit- had a nice pint beforehand though)

Sydney Opera House was a hugely expensive construction which many consider a waste of money. It’s also an iconic piece of architecture-one of the best known buildings of the 20th century. No-one who sees it compares it to other Opera Houses that came in on time and under budget.

Football is where the elegance and the fairness of a game with a simple rule book meets the system which rewards winning at any cost. You can have Lionel Messi and Arsene Wenger or Ched and Steve Evans. As Oxford fans know there are three sides to every question. Perhaps that's the beauty of it.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Surely everything is football is "connected to events that happened" much longer than 20 years ago? KR's shithousery is much more recent.

(Shrews types, I'd take pride in people's hating your stadium, as we did with Plough Lane back in the day with much less good reason)

[Nefertiti2]

Surely everything is football is "connected to events that happened" much longer than 20 years ago? KR's shithousery is much more recent.

(Shrews types, I'd take pride in people's hating your stadium, as we did with Plough Lane back in the day with much less good reason)

That's my point-it depends which events you want to remember- or forget.

[Patrick Thistle]

(Either way) I think, that's a significantly removed step to revelling in a club's misfortune, which is much more connected to the fans' experience.

Just for clarity nobody was revelling in anyone else's misfortune. Nobody said "Fuck Swindon". It got turned into a thing about not showing solidarity with other fans. Even when the distinction was made between clubs and fans.

[Patrick Thistle]

Good context Nefertiti2 - for me Oxford were undeserving winners of the last game of football I attended before lockdown so I think we are honours even in how we feel about each others teams

[tee rex]

I like and respect all the contributors on this, so I don't want to make it a bigger or pettier deal than it is. (And I retract the Bolton sideswipe, I accept their case is not the same). But anyway ...

Clubs obviously have to succeed at other clubs' expense. That's just the nature of a league table. Some advantages are inevitable, like population and crowd size. But there are unfair advantages too, and it's fair to point them out. Swindon Town last season paid (by L2 standards) a high fee for e.g. Eoin Doyle and high wages. This was money other clubs didn't have, and it turns out Swindon didn't either. But it got them promoted at the very same time that they were facing serious financial trouble, possible administration. The club's behaviour was rewarded, and now the reward has gone. Since 4 clubs have to be relegated, I'm fine with Swindon being one of them, and though of course we can feel sympathy for their supporters, I can't see why another group of fans should be miserable in their place.

Beyond that, I didn't need to add "better still, drop out of the league", that was excessive bile, but I would certainly have no problem with them going into administration. And if that is the path to new and more responsible - even law-abiding - ownership, it would actually be the best outcome for Swindon's fans too. And, you know, football.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Dropping out of the league isn't the end of the world either. Though there is a bit of a problem with academy funding. So put some money away for a rainy day transition fund.

[Nesta]

(Shrews types, I'd take pride in people's hating your stadium, as we did with Plough Lane back in the day with much less good reason)

This. If I took it to heart every time someone slagged off Selhurst Park, then by jiminy I'd be a bitter and misanthropic man in my middle age.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I have lots of criticisms of Selhurst, but the one that always threw me was when people complained it was impossible to get there. Like, no, it's really easy, you silly buggers. There are LOADS of public transport options.

[Nesta]

I assume people mean by car. Don't go there by car.

[DCI Harry Batt]

(We used to go by car, from Crawley / Horsham, for a few years from 91, and it was a piece of piss, tbh. But we had a blue badge holder with us which helped with parking.)

[Nesta]

I have some thoughts, but really they would take the thread down a nightmarishly boring tangent ("Weekend traffic flows on the A23 and A235 (Brighton Road), a case study")

[Satchmo Distel]

Are the four relegated sides going to be the correct ones (i.e. definitely the worst teams)?

[Ray de Galles]

Aren't they always (apart from points deductions, obvs)?

Also, we don't know who they are yet.

[NHH]

When I was working at Supporters Direct, some of the most switched-on fans who knew all about their plight were Swindon fans. One of them once said to me in 2004 that they kind of wished Swindon would go bust so they could start again as a fan-owned club and a clean slate.

The problem is that I'm struggling to think of a fanbase who have become majority political savvy and aware about this sort of stuff; it's like a union recognition situation in which lots of the potential recruits only realise just how important the union is when the factory is about to close. So, whilst Swindon fans can be observed somewhat peevishly in this light, so can every single club bar a handful, frankly.

To continue that analogy though, that's where good union organisers make a big difference - they persuade workers to sign up before the shit hits the fan.

I think the task of politicising / educating fans about this sort of stuff is much harder because it's not as important as your wages. Many people actively resist the politicisation as football is what they do for fun, not where they continue the class struggle at the weekend.

And many of the organisers at clubs haven't been as up to the task as they need to be. But then nor have they ever been trained; national fans groups have consistently felt that training club-based activists isn't needed - I think they've kind of thought that such people would emerge with street-honed skills of their own accord, just as they did in the day.

[Ray de Galles]

I assume people mean by car. Don't go there by car.

I always go to Selhurst by public transport and while there are certainly multiple options to do so they are all an arsearche. This is even bearing in that I've usually lived in South-West London or just south-west of London.

Actually that's probably the problem, it's always difficult to move across South London because the transport system that side of the river consists of "spokes" to move in and out of the centre of the city rather than around the "rim of the wheel" as it were.

The really strange thing about Selhurst is that wherever you are in London it seems to be a minimum of an hour and two transport changes away, even from the next street I imagine. It's like it's in some kind of temporal warp.

Still, at least it's not as difficult to get to as White Hart Lane or it's successor.

[Kevin S]

Anyway, really pleased for Salop and the management team.

The worst ever start in the history of the Club, an incredible run midway through the season and then the turmoil of a mass Covid outbreak (21 players) and the 4 month illness of Cotterill.

Arron Wilbraham needs a special pat on the back. The rookeist, of rookies, what a job he's done. Remarkable what we achieved really.

Having said that, Ipswich are bound to score against us a week Tuesday.

In case it's not been picked up, Ipswich aren't scoring again until August.

[Artificial Hipster]

Firstly, I can't recall if I disparaged the new ground or not but I've certainly lamented the loss of Gay Meadow on here whilst knowing nothing of the reasons behind the move so, apologies to Shrews fans if I've ever come across as yet another 'know nowt' critic of your new place on here as I can well imagine they became very tiresome, very quickly.

As for football grudges though, with the obvious exceptions of Milton Keynes and the clubs who do little beyond paying lip service to challenge racism within their fan base it's all just pantomime isn't it? My big pantomime grudge is Notts County on account of the Munto era coinciding with them successfully challenging Rochdale for the League Two title. Not only did we have to put up with the sight of hundreds of their fans wearing masks to honour the man setting the division alight with his goals on account of playing at least two divisions below his natural level due to fleeing the scene of the fatal car accident he caused. We had star capture Kaspar Schmeichel's histrionics delaying a penalty at Spotland by at least 5 minutes (I hate goalkeepers who act the wanker at penalties) and responding to the abuse he received from the crowd by giving the Loadsamoney gesture and spending the rest of the game patting an imaginary wallet in his shorts. Most depressingly we had to endure a defeat at Meadow Lane which effectively sealed the title for Notts with (amusingly mis-spelt) banners in the crowd mocking our manager Keith Hill's proclamations that at least we could at least boast that our success was deserved and above-board.

Because the club and its fans were both blighted by the Munto era I think I can say that pretty much every single Rochdale fan has been hugely amused by Notts' subsequent slide down the divisions and inability to bounce straight back into the Football League. A similar sense of schadenfreude accompanied the travails of Stockport and Chesterfield, both of whom enjoined ill-gotten promotions at Rochdale's expense, and whose trajectories since then have perfectly exemplified Ray's point on the other page about fans of well-run clubs being ultimately better off. Do I have any real grudge against fans of any of those clubs though? Of course I don't. And would fans of my own club have acted any differently than those simply enjoying the ride, heedless to the consequences, and could we/they have really been blamed if we hadn't?

Well some would but many wouldn't. The philosophy of doing things properly both on and off the pitch which Hill preached has been one that Rochdale fans have long embraced (we've had bitter experience of wrong 'uns in charge in the past), particularly as it has meant we have been able to preach self-righteously while jeering, 'told you so's' at our neighbours from down the road. The conclusion to the sorry saga at Bury was predicted at the very beginning of an epic thread on the Rochdale messageboard at least 5 years before it happened with warnings issued that if fans didn't take a stand in the way we would if what was happening at Gigg was happening at Spotland, things were only ever going to end one way. The worst of Daleys are pleased it did. I hope I'm right in saying that's a minority though. Now, a recent upturn in performances notwithstanding, the virtual terraces at Spotland today are a place not only of great frustration that the tactics of a stubborn manager are failing to get the results of which the players at his disposal are capable, but much more than this they are an arena of simmering discontent about worrying goings on behind the scenes and of talk of furious activity, plotting and planning as to how to best effect the changes necessary to secure the future of the club. I don't pretend to understand fully what the issues with the current leadership are but I have every confidence, knowing who is involved in the rebel movement, that those issues will be resolved to the good of the club.

And that's me. I've never bought much more than the most basic package of fandom, even when that included the commitment of owning a season ticket. I went to the games, cheered when we were winning, for the most part shrugged my shoulders when we were losing and then went home. Certainly a bad result has affected my mood from time to time but really only ever on those occasions where hope was superseded first by expectation and then by disappointment and I'd been a Rochdale fan for many years before being introduced to those strange and unwanted bedfellows. My guess would be that I'm not that untypical. The Rochdale messageboard for example has, I don't know, maybe 30-40 active and vocal users which is only a very small percentage of those attending games. For most people football serves the purpose of providing an escape from life's other worries, it's not meant to become the worry. Victories will always be cheered. From time to time events on the pitch and in the boardroom will lead to one group of fans or another becoming tainted by association. For the most part they won't deserve it. For the most part nor will they really care.

[Nefertiti2]

When I was working at Supporters Direct, some of the most switched-on fans who knew all about their plight were Swindon fans. One of them once said to me in 2004 that they kind of wished Swindon would go bust so they could start again as a fan-owned club and a clean slate.

The problem is that I'm struggling to think of a fanbase who have become majority political savvy and aware about this sort of stuff; it's like a union recognition situation in which lots of the potential recruits only realise just how important the union is when the factory is about to close. So, whilst Swindon fans can be observed somewhat peevishly in this light, so can every single club bar a handful, frankly.

To continue that analogy though, that's where good union organisers make a big difference - they persuade workers to sign up before the shit hits the fan.

I think the task of politicising / educating fans about this sort of stuff is much harder because it's not as important as your wages. Many people actively resist the politicisation as football is what they do for fun, not where they continue the class struggle at the weekend.

And many of the organisers at clubs haven't been as up to the task as they need to be. But then nor have they ever been trained; national fans groups have consistently felt that training club-based activists isn't needed - I think they've kind of thought that such people would emerge with street-honed skills of their own accord, just as they did in the day.

It's interesting that the acitivists at Oxford who fought to save the club were also the ones who backed Kassam as their favoured candidate. Maybe he was the best on offer. The club is still alive after all. it was certainly a very lucrative decision for him personally. but it has certainly meant future activism more difficult.

[NHH]

I wonder if the internet makes that easier - the ability of a person to pitch up as being the new messiah whilst being fundamentally a wrong 'un is much harder when fans have been educated more and are able to get information more easily. Fans have used the internet to very useful effect in this way, and so Kassam might have managed to escape more engaged scrutiny because it was before the internet went mainstream?

[San Bernardhinault]

My recollection (from back in the days I was a bit more engaged) is that Kassam escaped more serious scrutiny for a couple of unrelated reasons - the first was that Oxford really were on the brink. There was nowhere to play football and we needed a stadium (semi-)completed under whatever circumstances. When you have a choice between a flawed saviour and oblivion it’s easy to choose the flawed saviour.

The second reason was that so much of the criticism of Kassam was surrounded by, couched in, low-grade racism. The internet was already pretty active at that stage and when the people on the message boards (including a future executive director of Sunderland) who were attacking Kassam were hilariously calling him Firoz Kebab, it became very easy to ignore the criticism because you could assume that it was all based on racial animus. You wanted a reason to believe that the club’s saviour wasn’t as bad as he was made out to be and they gifted that reason up on a platter.

[My Name Is Ian]

I've been writing about this shit for fifteen years now, and Notts County and Coventry City fans were head and shoulders the worst. I don't know exactly why that was at Notts - the fans being the people who gave it away in the first place, desperation at the state they'd been in for years, the slowly dawning realisation that they'd been taken for mugs, who knows? - but a lifetime of sympathy came crashing down around my ears in a few weeks. I'm still kind of glad they're in the National League and going nowhere fast, but I can be petty like that. I wasn't previously aware that Kasper Schmeichel was such a dick.

At Coventry, I long suspected that the situation was party-politicised by the hedge fund, pretty early on. The atmosphere around that club was very, very different to any other that I saw. There were many more people who seemed to want to 'support' the hedge fund, and the amount of dunking they did on the council, the Supporters Trust, anybody who didn't come across as a total Tory (or at the very least anybody who wasn't in favour of the hedge fund getting what it wanted at the price that it wanted it, regardless of any other considerations), basically, was extraordinary. Plus, the biggest online club forum was (and so far as I know still is) was one of those dreadful, "I just want both sides to be heard" while consistently pushing the agenda of the hedge fund. It's certainly the club (outside the biggest, obviously) at which I came across the biggest number of complete dicks. Another soft spot ruined, but I can live with that.

Other clubs, I've always picked up a different vibe from, and as NHH alludes above, Swindon Town have always been one of those. Very switched on fans. I wonder whether the experience of 1990 might have been an influencing factor, there. Same with Northampton. Presumably that was the Brian Lomax effect. And sometimes they end up nothing like you expect. For everything horrible I've said about Crawley Town in the past, their supporters were always helpful when I needed any help with anything. One of them, who died suddenly a couple of years ago, told me some stories about Steve Evans that I can only really tell when I've had four or five pints, and that I certainly couldn't repeat on the internet.