Teams You've Liked and Detested at Different Times

[1974ddr]

Oh yes, the policing at Anfield back in the day. Scope for a whole new thread there. Cavalry charges across the park were de rigueur, I think someone had seen Charge Of The Light Brigade and fancied starting a Merseyside Police re-enactment society in the style of of the Sealed Knot. They also had those long metal-tipped hardwood batons- I remember seeing one of Liverpool's finest smashing a boy of maybe ten or eleven across the back with one, presumably because he was sitting on the shoulders of an older lad, probably his brother I imagine. There was a crowd of over 50,000 that day, and this was in a packed Anfield Rd end where I don't suppose the kid could see much. Still, 'beat first ask questions later' seemed to be the order of the day. I haven't been to Anfield for years, but hopefully things have improved.

[Sits]

Wolves. As a boy in the 70s I was an Ipswich fan, and grew to hate Wolves because they had some annoying wins against Town. John Richards springs to mind as a key irritant. Of course they were good, and so was he.

Then in the 90s I had a boss who was from Wolverhampton and absolutely loved them, especially Steve Bull. I started to get the vibe and have sort of liked them ever since. Nuno’s side, despite the agent angle, have been a likeable addition to the Prem.

[Bored Of Education]

The "detested" thing I can understand about Chelsea, it's the "liked" I can't understand (from non-Chelsea people anyway).

[ale]

Like big clubs not winning stuff. Detest when they win stuff. The trade off obviously being one or more is always going to be winning stuff. Grew up watching Liverpool mid 70s to late 80s and was gutted when Arsenal won the title at Anfield. Enjoyed watching Forest interrupt that era of success though. The first one after years of failure always hurts- Arsenal 1989 Man Utd 1993 Chelsea 2005 Man City 2012 Liverpool 2020. Becomes easier to accept after that. As long as list never includes Spurs.

[Satchmo Distel]

Spurs are usually the least dislikeable of the BRCs but Mourinho is making that harder.

[Bored Of Education]

Bloody hell, that's quite something, I have never thought of Spurs as a BRC any more than, say, Everton.

[Satchmo Distel]

Spurs are the 9th richest club in the world, Everton 19th (Forbes list, June 2020). Forbes claims that Spurs' operating income has more than trebled since 2013-14.

[danielmak]

I posted some of this in the CL 19-20 thread (or maybe a thread only dedicated to the final). I started following PSG in 2000. Then when they were purchased by billionaires my interest in the team changed. I don't live in Paris so following a team via satellite, streams, or DVD/HD file trades isn't the same as having to make a decision about a team when you live in the city and follow the team. I'm sure Chelsea and City fans have had to make choices about their teams given their ownership groups. I continued to follow PSG even after the purchase of various Serie A stars to combat losing the league to Montpellier. That lost title ramped up even more spending since PSG thought they had sepnt enough to purchase the title. But after the next loss a few seasons later (OM, I think) and truly massive spend, I stopped watching Ligue 1. I will root for PSG against other teams that buy their leagues (Bayern, Juve, Realcelona), but I stopped paying attention to league matches. I guess buying global awareness pays off in most instances and doesn't in others. On the whole, I'm sure PSG gained 500 fans for every fan lost.

I never liked Brazil because since I started being able to watch enough football regularly, they have always been a team that is marketed as jogo bonito but really a bunch of hatchet men. However, after Tite took over they started to play a more expansive game. Still, I can't say I love the team now but I don't know if I hate this side.

[EIM]

Spurs are usually the least dislikeable of the BRCs but Mourinho is making that harder.

Spurs aren't a BRC. They're neither B nor R. MWC.

[Jah Womble]

Any team placed ninth-wealthiest/most-supported in the entire world has to be considered ‘big’. (It isn’t down to recent success, if that’s the thinking: Newcastle are a big club and haven’t won Jack since the 1960s.)

But it’s not a debate I’d really consider entering into unless I were anticipating the school bell ringing.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Wealthiest and most supported are of course no longer a straight correlation. I wouldn't mind betting Corinthians and Flamengo in Brazil both have more supporters domestically than the entire "worldwide fan base" claimed for all but a handful of the usual Champions League suspects, but obviously financially now would be dwarfed by Norwich City.

[Ray de Galles]

I used to hate Palace. Well, hate is too strong a word as I just found them a pointless, nothing club who screwed around with their colours, nickname and badge in a way I found egregious. They also had the most inaccessible major ground in London, apart from Spurs maybe but at least White Hart Lane always had a great atmosphere while Selhurst was flat and lifeless.

Nowadays I find them quite a likable club, their fans have made the ground one of the liveliest in the top tier and they were one of the few clubs whose support made a strong critical statement about Cardiff's rebrand (possibly because they'd experienced something similar in the past). I also like Roy Hodgson as a coach & person and Zaha is one of my favourite current PL players to watch. They even have some nice kits.

Conversely, I used to have a soft spot for Millwall and generally always enjoyed a visit to The Den as an away fan or just as a neutral. Had I not already had strong links with Wimbledon when having to choose a club to regularly watch in 2012 then Millwall might have been the one I took my son to. I'm incredibly glad now that that wasn't the case as it wouldn't have been possible to overlook the racism of a significant section of their fans and the club's recent appalling response to the booing of their players taking the knee.

When I was originally going to respond to this thread I was going to say how I loved Cardiff City but hate Tan United but I now see Bored has already made that point. My feelings towards Swansea have made a corresponding 180 degree switch. I once endured a near-sleepless night when they won the D2 play-off final a year after Cardiff lost it but now I'm genuinely warmed by any success they have.

[ale]

Bloody hell, that's quite something, I have never thought of Spurs as a BRC any more than, say, Everton.

Never have any sympathy for Spurs or Everton being left behind in a competition they helped devise for their benefit. They just misunderstood/mismanaged how it would play out.

[ale]

Spurs aren't a BRC. They're neither B nor R. MWC.

BRC itself seems outdated. Wearing blue since 2013 is way to go. Last year excepted. And probably this year.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Just had a quick skim of this thread.

Agree with ad hoc re West Germany '82 vs Germany now of course. The antics of the 1982 team, from the stitch up with Austria to eliminate Algeria, to the GBH by Schumacher on Battiston and loads else beside, were all the more difficult for me to stomach by dint of my living in Germany at the time (gap year job in West Berlin), surrounded by smug German fans. I think I was as pleased/relieved by Italy's win in the final (despite not particularly liking Italy) as I have been by the result of any WC match ever.

Ironic to see Bored mention a dislike of Leeds dating from the 2002 FA Cup match with Cardiff. I can assure Bored that that is thoroughly mirrored on my part re Cardiff. My nephew, as mild and harmless a young lad as you can imagine, was with the travelling Leeds support that day and reported the extremely threatening and unpleasant atmosphere he was subjected to by sections of the home fans and the bad treatment at the hands of the host club and local police. And as for the antics of that utter fucking scumbag Sam Hamman, words fail me.

Specifics aside, as an armchair fan rather than someone with roots in fan culture, I find my attitudes to other clubs vary hugely depending on their personnel from time to time - players are part of that, and managers an even bigger part. To give an example, whilst Man U have tended to be my main object of negative sentiment over the years in line with my support for Leeds, I barely feel that at all now, because OGS seems like a good bloke and above all Rashford is a sodding hero. It's gone so far that i didn't even feel any schadenfreude at their Sheff Utd result the other day. Conversely, whilst I normally have nothing against WBA, I would say that, Leeds's fortunes aside, their relegation is the thing I now want more than anything else from this year's PL because I detest Allardyce with an absolute passion.

[My Name Is Ian]

I was born a few years too late for the Revie era, so when I was growing up Leeds were just Northern Millwall, a club whose supporters would occasionally smash up a town centre or away end. Birmingham fell into that category for me, too.

I guess this was reinforced throughout my twenties. There were a couple of BNP members playing for a team in the same league that I was playing in and they both supported Leeds and when we moved down to Brighton in 2006, the abusive guy in the flat below ours supported them, too.

But I've got to know some great Leeds supporters on social media pretty well, and I guess my empathy glands just went into overdrive. I wouldn't say I "like" them, but they are the one club whose own supporters have won me over. And Belsa is *enormous* fun.

Leeds are kind of an exception for me, though, because they've gone up in my estimation, when almost every other club has gone dow. I went through a phase of admiring, if not quite liking, Millwall, but that got blown out the water a couple of months ago, for example. And Coventry City have a very vocal dickish element who really put me off writing about them. But it's not far off an endless list, these days.

[Bored Of Education]

Ironic to see Bored mention a dislike of Leeds dating from the 2002 FA Cup match with Cardiff. I can assure Bored that that is thoroughly mirrored on my part re Cardiff. My nephew, as mild and harmless a young lad as you can imagine, was with the travelling Leeds support that day and reported the extremely threatening and unpleasant atmosphere he was subjected to by sections of the home fans and the bad treatment at the hands of the host club and local police. And as for the antics of that utter fucking scumbag Sam Hamman, words fail me.

Apologies as, as I had already mentioned Cardiff, I didn't go into their side of things that day. Yes, Hammam's walkabout was a bit of cuntery typical of the man as were his general pronouncements about the game. As far as your nephew is concerned, I can quite imagine that it was a souring experience for him. Indeed, although I took my son at a similar age to NP, he was in the home end obviously and I would never have recommended anyone taking kids to the away end at NP if you were supporters with a reputation of your own - Millwall, Swansea, Leeds etc. For a start, there was the fact that the Leeds supporters were sharing the Grange End with the Cardiff City supporters (including, for the only time, me) with nothing but a fence and some coppers inbetween. That led to intimidation and threats (from both sides, to be fair). I suppose it was a difference of perceptions. The way it was reported afterwards ,it was like the Battle of Ninian Park whereas, as someone who took part in the pitch invasion, well, amble, there (correctly towards the players), it was a section of Cardiff twats who went towards the Leeds supporters but stopped at the couple of police with dogs that were there and did that arms wide apart gesturing so beloved of herbert twats and that was it. As someone who had been at a lot of Cardiff matches home and away and on the receiving end of some very targeted and close range threats thought that it was pretty tame posturing but I wasn't an 11 year old lad and I can quite imagine it being extremely threatening and unpleasant. I did get the feeling that Leeds hyped it up as they were trying to deflect from their own issues at the time and, I remember, O'Leary being particularly sanctimonious before and after the game. This is not to take away that Cardiff, of course, had a particularly malign hooligan element and, indeed, ownership at that time (and, to a degree, since in both respects).

[3 Colours Red]

And Coventry City have a very vocal dickish element who really put me off writing about them.

I quit a retro gaming messageboard because of the increasingly unhinged posts and erratic behaviour of one of the admins who was an extremely vocal Coventry fan. He tried to palm it off as being pissed off about SISU which may be understandable if he wasn't posting semi-coherent rambles about every subject under the sun.

[Patrick Thistle]

The away section in Ninian Park is the only ground where I've had coins thrown at me. A teenage girl near us was hit in the eye.

For a long time I rejoiced at Cardiff's failure. The irony is that getting to know Cardiff fans since the Redbirds fiasco means I've seen them a lot more in the last 4-5 years than on the previous 20 years I lived in Cardiff and I feel more ambivalent about them.

[Patrick Thistle]

Although an example of a complete turnaround. Back when I used to watch Inter Cardiff in the League of Wales in the late 90s Barry were bossing the league and generally were disliked in the way TNS are now. They had money and arrogance in buckets.

If you'd told me then that 20 years later I'd travel to Northern Ireland to watch them in a European tie and would pay to have my name printed into the weave of the home shirt I would have considered that highly unlikely.

[Sporting]

The away section in Ninian Park is the only ground where I've had coins thrown at me. A teenage girl near us was hit in the eye.

For a long time I rejoiced at Cardiff's failure. The irony is that getting to know Cardiff fans since the Redbirds fiasco means I've seen them a lot more in the last 4-5 years than on the previous 20 years I lived in Cardiff and I feel more ambivalent about them.

I was at a Manchester derby where darts were thrown.

Not funny.

[VillanoXIV]

Having spent a lot of time reading up about local football history, I always had a sympathy for teams like Clyde and Airdrie who despite being our “rivals” (certainly before I was going, they were)!are ultimately in the same boat as Thistle, struggling for column inches against the Old Firm and generally have a positive impact on their communities.

That said, Clyde’s continued employmemt of David Goodwillie and Ally Love means I can’t look on them with anything but absolute contempt these days and watching us play them makes me feel physically sick.

[Snake Plissken]

I've had to think on this one but I reckon Blackpool. I started following Clarets in 1991, so there was a massive rivalry and race to get out of Division Four, culminating in a couple of rollicking derbies that Blackpool always seemed to get the better of.

Since then, they had the rise up and that season in the Premier League where their fans were clearly just having a blast and the team were entertaining before the various shenanigans with Owen Oyston and the plummet back down. I totally respected their supporters' decision to no longer go to games and put money in the pockets of cunts. They seem to have some light at the end of the tunnel now, so good luck to them.

[Satchmo Distel]

That Clyde pair seem very sinister.

[Ray de Galles]

Having spent a lot of time reading up about local football history, I always had a sympathy for teams like Clyde and Airdrie who despite being our “rivals” (certainly before I was going, they were)!are ultimately in the same boat as Thistle, struggling for column inches against the Old Firm and generally have a positive impact on their communities.

That said, Clyde’s continued employmemt of David Goodwillie and Ally Love means I can’t look on them with anything but absolute contempt these days and watching us play them makes me feel physically sick.

Wouldn't Airdrie and (to a lesser extent) Clyde's adventures in franchising make them difficult to sympathise with anyway?