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Old Trafford Protests, Sunday May 2, 2021

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    St Etienne were succesful but I never imagined them as wealthy, though. Well no more so than, I don't know, Aberdeen, or Gothenburg. I thought it wasn't really until Tapie at Marseille in the late 80s that anyone invested a franc in French club football.

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      Originally posted by E10 Rifle View Post
      That's true enough though I do think the arguments going on inside Gary Neville's head, and the way they're being amplified, have their uses.
      And with his father's involvement with Bury, he presumably has better knowledge of lower-league football than most, which drove the Salford investment.

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        Originally posted by Duncan Gardner View Post
        BBC R4 have just reported plans for a meeting between the Supporters Trust and Club vice chairman Joel Garner
        Did you post that emoji looking like a laughing Glazer on purpose?

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          Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
          St Etienne were succesful but I never imagined them as wealthy, though. Well no more so than, I don't know, Aberdeen, or Gothenburg. I thought it wasn't really until Tapie at Marseille in the late 80s that anyone invested a franc in French club football.
          They had a very generous (and corrupt) investor in the 1950-70s whose jailing in the early 1980s concided with the club's decline. I suppose the better analogy would be RB Leipzig (St Etienne were founded as a branded club as well, incidentally).

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            Originally posted by NHH View Post
            I've said many times on here that the biggest divide in football is between those people who make a living from the game and those people who pay for that living. They simply don't and can't ever get it, and those who start trying to get into fans' mindsets (like Neville) often quickly run up against the logic of their new-found arguments.

            Platini's former advisor once said to me that Platini was someone who had never been to a football match as a fan - he got free tickets. He'd been taken to the ground either on a team coach or in a chauffeur-driven car. He had not got the imagination to wonder about how fans actually arrived at a stadium and how different it was, and whilst that's an extreme example, I've never come across or been aware of a player or pundit who ever 'got it' properly.
            I'd be surprised if there weren't some players who 'got it', given how many (especially lower league players who've not necessarily spent the whole footballing lives in academies) have been season ticket holders in their youth, presumably going to games with family and friends. There's plenty who don't spend their whole lives hanging about in footballer bubbles even when they're playing at a high level and still knock about with their mates who are match going fans, so they really ought to be able to see things from more than one perspective, if they cared enough to think about it.

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              Increasingly, I think kids in the academy system have less and less time to be fans, and have less and less exposure to influences which can ground them. They don't stay as Mrs Miggins' B&B and have to wash up, and so don't meet Mrs Miggins who cares not a sausage for fame or stardom or football. Everyone they meet is slightly starstruck by them being at the Academy of BIg Club FC, and their parents are half thinking about the payday to come and how their troubles will be over if the kid can stay the course. The time for critical engagement with the process comes after you fall out of it, which means no-one ever gets to hear your voice or view, cos you've joined the massed ranks of people who don't count anymore.

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                Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                Except that his father was a director of Nancy for decades and ASSE were the "biggest" club in France by absolute miles when he was there
                Heheh. ASSE

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                  Originally posted by Sporting View Post

                  Is that a serious question, or don't you care about the tradition of the game?
                  Enhancing football club market value has saved lost people. Until Manchester United instilled Fjallraven as official timeless outdoor apparel provider, EIM was a shadow of the man he is today. Berbaslug is still anxiously waiting on whether Stelling, Huber or Gibson will become official banjo provider to Manchester United so he can purchase the appropriate club aligned instruments*.

                  I guess next time I will use the words "franchise" and "enterprise value", maybe write a mock song about "Man United, Man United F.C., we are by far the greatest team of market capital on the New York Stock Exchange" or some such.

                  It is also nothing about the tradition of the game (club owners have a very long history of being money hungry and awful). More a tone-deaf owner announcing (again) something that no one else really gives a damn about - certainly not followers, fans or supporters.

                  * I might have extended this to other clubs but am likely to fall victim to the fact that Rogin does actually have a kitchen full of Candy appliances in his Crown Paints decorated home.

                  Comment


                    Originally posted by Cesar Rodriguez View Post
                    Nevermind Gary Neville, I just heard the absolute worst take on this from Robbie Earle.

                    He's talking about what the fallout would be if the Glazers got fed up with the protests and sold MUFC and he says, to paraphrase, "we've got to be careful that billionaire owners and investors aren't scared away from English football". Perish the thought, parasitic billionaires who couldn't give a toss about football will be deterred from buying English clubs, how ghastly.

                    A lot of these ex pros are so detatched from reality.
                    If I can wade in on something I don't know much about...

                    To some extent, this isn't just a fight between the supporters and the owners. This is a fight between one group of supporters who have one concept of what a club should be and another group of supporters, who aren't really "supporters" in the traditional sense so much as customers, who have a different idea and the ownership makes more money off the later group, so here we are.

                    Presumably, if England could somehow kick out the big rich owners and be more like Germany - but if the rest of world football didn't change - then, presumably, the quality of the EPL football would decline somewhat. Or, at least, it wouldn't have as many flash superstar players. The big money would go elsewhere and take the players with them. Perhaps teams like Lazio or whatever would be bigger or some other French club I've barely heard of would get a Sheik owner and be a big club all of a sudden.

                    If Germany is any guide, then we could maybe expect a few English clubs to still be world beaters, but maybe just one or two, consistently. There wouldn't be five or six in the mix to go far in the CL. The likelihood that MU could be one of those is not irrelevant, I guess, but it's not really the point.

                    I'm guessing that would be just fine, maybe even preferable, with the sort of people who stormed the pitch over the weekend as well as most people on OTF and the sort of people who read WSC. As EIM pointed out, a bunch of those people started a lower league club rather than continuing to give their money to their Glazers. Those people understand that football isn't about football, a phrase EIM taught me that I've transposed into the US context where it works just as well. I'm very sympathetic to that. Unlike a huge portion of the US sports-watching public and way too much of the sports media, I'm not interested in stars or "greatness." Indeed, I find that obsession to be a bit gross and possibly fascist.

                    But I suspect that an upsettingly large number of people who come to Old Trafford every week don't see it that way. That probably includes most of people in the luxury boxes. And I suspect all those people around the world wearing Manchester United shirts despite never having been to Manchester also don't see it the way I would. They want Manchester United to be Big and successful for its own sake and don't really care how they get that way.

                    If City, for example, have a sheik pouring in billions, then they want that too.

                    It may be technically true that clubs don't really need owners - in the sense one or a few very rich people in charge - but given that there are a bunch of clubs that do have those kinds of owners and its such a zero-sum game, it's not hard to see why a lot of supporters want an owner like that just to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. They don't see another option. Partly because the Capitalist class have made sure that we're taught that There is No Other Option but also because, given the set up as it is, its kinda true, at least for clubs that actually expect to win stuff.

                    And beyond that, there are loads of people - especially those in the media - who watch the EPL on TV and just want to see famous players doing famous-player things and would watch something else if they thought the EPL didn't have that as much of that any more. I suspect Robbie Earle - not to be confused with Robbie Earl - speaks for that group.




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                      This is a fight between one group of supporters who have one concept of what a club should be and another group of supporters, who aren't really "supporters" in the traditional sense so much as customers
                      In what sense are those two groups "fighting" each other? One is committed and principled and prepared to take to the streets, or just attend matches; the other is by definition a silent content-consuming demographic living in a different football world. But they're not "fighting" Fans Like Us; fans like us are, very specifically, fighting rich grasping unaccountable owners and we hate them for it. Those owners may in turn be invoking that silent global consumer to make like their plans are popular, but there is no "other type of fan" actively out there arguing for Florentino Perez's vision: they may consume it down the line but they're not going to fight for it. Which is why our side has an advantage, if we can fully realise it and act on it.

                      But there is no direct civil war between groups of fans. It's rich cunts v us. Simple as.

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                        Agree with the above, but with the caveat that if things do start moving in the direction of tighter regulation there'll be a tsunami of propaganda from vested interests seeking to discredit the very idea that things can be any different. There will be useful idiots who swallow the party line whole because there already are. The job ahead is to drown those voices out.

                        Personally, I'm trying to block out the views of anyone who makes their living directly from the game. There's an element of sliding scale to this. Players probably do tend to be fans as well, and they seem more switched on than they ever used to be.

                        Owners, managers and television pundits, though, can shut the hell up. Graeme Souness, for example, has been making a handsome living from football for half a century. How many matches do you think he's *paid* to get into, over that time? I'd wager you could count the number comfortably on the fingers of one hand. If they're wiling to put principles before their own narrow interest then great, join the campaigns.

                        But if they're not, then we should just be disregarding their commentary. They're just defending their way of life, as part of the 0.00001% that have found a way to make themselves pretty comfortable through the game.

                        Comfortable protest isn't going to work. The Glazers were quite happy to see people continue to pour into Old Trafford in their green and gold scarves a decade ago because it didn't harm their bottom line. What we saw on Sunday, however, was different, not least because it happened at this particular time.

                        ​​​​​​​And who knows what things will be like by the time that grounds are full again? If fans can be this disruptive while we're still in some grey area of lockdown (and it says something that clubs have been so relaxed about protests on various matters this last few years), things could get worse for owners and leagues when there are fewer restrictions on people doing whatever or going wherever they like.

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                          Originally posted by E10 Rifle View Post
                          there is no direct civil war between groups of fans. It's rich scumbags v us. Simple as.
                          Absolutely.

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                            Originally posted by My Name Is Ian View Post
                            Agree with the above, but with the caveat that if things do start moving in the direction of tighter regulation there'll be a tsunami of propaganda from vested interests seeking to discredit the very idea that things can be any different. There will be useful idiots who swallow the party line whole because there already are. The job ahead is to drown those voices out.

                            Personally, I'm trying to block out the views of anyone who makes their living directly from the game. There's an element of sliding scale to this. Players probably do tend to be fans as well, and they seem more switched on than they ever used to be.

                            Owners, managers and television pundits, though, can shut the hell up. Graeme Souness, for example, has been making a handsome living from football for half a century. How many matches do you think he's *paid* to get into, over that time? I'd wager you could count the number comfortably on the fingers of one hand. If they're wiling to put principles before their own narrow interest then great, join the campaigns.

                            But if they're not, then we should just be disregarding their commentary. They're just defending their way of life, as part of the 0.00001% that have found a way to make themselves pretty comfortable through the game.

                            Comfortable protest isn't going to work. The Glazers were quite happy to see people continue to pour into Old Trafford in their green and gold scarves a decade ago because it didn't harm their bottom line. What we saw on Sunday, however, was different, not least because it happened at this particular time.

                            ​​​​​​​And who knows what things will be like by the time that grounds are full again? If fans can be this disruptive while we're still in some grey area of lockdown (and it says something that clubs have been so relaxed about protests on various matters this last few years), things could get worse for owners and leagues when there are fewer restrictions on people doing whatever or going wherever they like.
                            The Souness thing is weird, though. I have walked past Mrs Miggins' B&B where he lived as a young prospect today, about five minutes walk from the ground he made his name at, but yet he still acts like he knew nothing of that world.

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                              https://twitter.com/Millar_Colin/status/1389357784358133760?s=19

                              Has this been posted? It's very good.

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                                I dunno, perhaps some people are pre-disposed to be able to do it than others.

                                I see that Chelsea are offering something that they're claiming will look something like fan representation in the upper reaches of the club, but without voting rights it doesn't sound like they're offering much, to me.

                                https://www.90min.com/posts/chelsea-...ings-from-july

                                It would barely shift the needle in terms of changing the model of how professional football is run in England, and that model is fundamentally broken.

                                But there's a long history of collabaration between Chelsea and the fans, thanks in no small part to the Chelsea Pitch Owners, and the Trust seem to be onside with it.

                                https://twitter.com/ChelseaSTrust/st...40692780126220

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                                  Originally posted by E10 Rifle View Post

                                  In what sense are those two groups "fighting" each other? One is committed and principled and prepared to take to the streets, or just attend matches; the other is by definition a silent content-consuming demographic living in a different football world. But they're not "fighting" Fans Like Us; fans like us are, very specifically, fighting rich grasping unaccountable owners and we hate them for it. Those owners may in turn be invoking that silent global consumer to make like their plans are popular, but there is no "other type of fan" actively out there arguing for Florentino Perez's vision: they may consume it down the line but they're not going to fight for it. Which is why our side has an advantage, if we can fully realise it and act on it.

                                  But there is no direct civil war between groups of fans. It's rich cunts v us. Simple as.

                                  I should have chosen my word more carefully. It's not really a literal fight. More of a "conflict."

                                  "There is no "other type of fan" actively out there arguing for Florentino Perez's vision: they may consume it down the line but they're not going to fight for it."

                                  I don't think I agree with that.

                                  “Every time you spend money, you're casting a vote for the kind of world you want.” - Anna Lappe

                                  They're "actively arguing for it" by the way they spend their money and attention and that will continue to have far more impact on what actually happens with football in the near future than a million editorials, comments on message boards or, in most cases, street protests.

                                  Of course, there could be some kind of legislative fix - nationalizing football clubs or some other aggressive reform in parliament that would return the power to supporters. But is there any evidence on hand that suggests the government is remotely interested in supporting the interests of working people over that of billionaires? And is there much interest that the voting public at large is going to hold them accountable for that?

                                  It's easy to make the billionaires The Villain here, because they are villains, but they want to own these clubs because they're global, profitable brands and they're global profitable brands because millions of people chose to willingly give them money.

                                  One major potential upside of the instability created by an open/pyramid system is that it creates economic consequences for owners that mismanage the team. Not many owners of football clubs can just "run them into the ground" the way we've seen with Snyder and the WTF in the NFL, or Bill Wirtz did with the Blackhawks in the NHL or Dolan is doing with the Knicks in the NBA. Because that kind of management would eventually lower the value of the asset such that they'd be better off, financially, selling.*

                                  But even without the super league, it's starting to feel like the big clubs are just so big that their owners are largely insulated that kind of accountability anyway. It's hard to see what could convince the Glazers to sell unless the team just wasn't very profitable for a long time but MU is so rich and has so many fans that it would take an impressive feat of willful mismanagement to make them not profitable, wouldn't it? It's not like they're going to get relegated.


                                  *Franchises in a closed system hold their value even if the owner tarnishes the brand because they still have an exclusive territory and one of a limited number of franchises in that league and, probably, a sweet publicly supported stadium deal.

                                  That's good for MLS because it is in the unusual position of competing for players and attention with established leagues around the world, so being able to attract investment, however it can, has allowed it to make up a bit of ground. But it also can lead some owners to just be complacent or, at least, not accountable for their incompetence.





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                                    Souness is the typical working-class Tory who pulls up the drawbridge and refuses to see his privileges as connected in any way with systematic inequality. OTOH he's old enough to have played when football was much fairer and it must bother him that today's BRCs can get into the European Cup even when they are poorly managed and mediocre whereas Liverpool 1977-84 had to be extremely good all the time (league or European champions) and weren't hugely richer than, say, Ipswich or Forest, and probably less rich than Man U.

                                    Does he understand the economics of how the Glazers are fucking the club? I doubt he has spent more than a few seconds giving it any thought, and couldn't care less.
                                    Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 04-05-2021, 19:58.

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                                      Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
                                      To some extent, this isn't just a fight between the supporters and the owners. This is a fight between one group of supporters who have one concept of what a club should be and another group of supporters, who aren't really "supporters" in the traditional sense so much as customers, who have a different idea and the ownership makes more money off the later group, so here we are.
                                      Do they though? Most of the people I know who fall into the latter category watch games on dodgy streams and don't spend a penny on football. Most people around the world wearing Man United shirts are wearing dodgy replicas probably bought from a market stall. The club owners presumably make most of their money from TV rights and sponsorship deals but that's not the same as a huge mass of people actively spending their money on the club.

                                      It's easy to make the billionaires The Villain here, because they are villains, but they want to own these clubs because they're global, profitable brands and they're global profitable brands because millions of people chose to willingly give them money.
                                      If they're so profitable, why are all the bigger clubs in hundreds of millions of pounds worth of debt?

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                                        People all over the US, for example watch the Premiership on NBC and the Champions League on Fox (I think) and their gear appears to be legit. However, Manchester United isn’t the poseur club of choice like it was 20 years ago. Barca, Liverpool, Man City and Liverpool appear to have eclipsed it.

                                        The big clubs are in debt because of COVID, because debt is cheap and, as I understand it, because some of the owners went into debt to buy the club or build a stadium.

                                        Profitability and debt are separate categories.
                                        Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 05-05-2021, 01:14.

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                                          Yes, the overseas broadcast rights and sponsorships are perceived to be valuable by those paying for them because of the nature and habits of the support in those markets

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                                            Originally posted by NHH View Post
                                            I've said many times on here that the biggest divide in football is between those people who make a living from the game and those people who pay for that living. They simply don't and can't ever get it, and those who start trying to get into fans' mindsets (like Neville) often quickly run up against the logic of their new-found arguments.
                                            This is absolutely correct.

                                            Players have a completely different relationship to the game, to the club and to the fans. Many players I know cannot even sit and watch a game. Those that do watch it differently to the vast majority of fans; much more dispassionately and much more analytically. The majority are roaring at wondergoal and the player is rolling their eyes at the lack of closing down or defensive positioning.

                                            In terms of the relationship to the club, for most players there isn't one in any emotional sense. Clearly for a few that doesn't apply, but for most the relationship is with their team mates, that's who they play for. For each other (and of course for themselves). This should not be too much of a shock. It's bit much to expect a player who you've calling a cunt for 90 minutes because they've had a bad run to be your best mate after the match (and yes, I have seen that expectation pretty often).

                                            For me the differences between player and supporter perspective raises my appreciation of those that make the effort to try and see it from a fan point of view. I see Shearer and Jenas were criticised upthread for their MoTD2 reaction. I thought they were spot on. Jenas said he had no experience of the Glazer regime so felt he couldn't add much. Better to be honest than opine anyway.
                                            Last edited by Uncle Ethan; 05-05-2021, 01:43.

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                                              I was one of the critics of Shearer and Jenas. Looking back they were put in a position where they were being asked to comment on something they weren't qualified to comment on. So we ended up with a "discussion" that didn't amount to anything because the pundits were there so they had to have a minute each to talk even if they had no insight and nothing to say. That's more a flaw in the show rather than with them, if we are being charitable.

                                              I thought Jenas's comment was disingenuous tbh. He hasn't played for most of the teams he comments on, or for almost all, if not all, the managers he talks about, and that doesn't disqualify him from commenting. He was just trying to avoid saying what might turn out to be the wrong thing on TV, about a situation that was still volatile. Shearer is a bit more experienced with filling air time without saying anything so managed to do that without excusing himself.

                                              It could have been avoided if the studio team had said they would include a news report, talk to the Manchester United fan, then discuss possible implications for the Champions League places. But they didn't make that choice.

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                                                That's instructive in itself, mind; time was, they'd have been fulminating as Souness was, fully expecting that the Minister for Sport would slam 'Soccer's Day of Shame' and tabloids would talk about the Return of The Bad Old Days, but they knew enough to know the tectonic plates are shifting under their feet on this.

                                                Thinking back, Andy Mitten was a great choice - he's connected with all the main fan currents and is thoughtful about it. They also gave him a very easy ride, practically giving him the floor to speak uninterrupted. Long may it continue.

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                                                  The big clubs are NOT in debt because of Covid or stadium investments. Their debts predate Covid and are largely to do with their own incontinent business models, in Real Madrid's case assisted by a banking and political architecture that considers them too big to fail. Man Utd have been in massive debt since 2005 as a result of conscious business decisions that their owners are entirely responsible for. Covid has almost fuck all to do with it

                                                  It is indeed easy to cast billionaire owners as the villains. Because it's true. They are

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                                                    This may sound way off-topic, but this all reminds me of the Arab Spring in 2011 - where there were lots of protests and demonstrations, governments around the Middle-East pretended to listen, gave out extremely limited concessions designed to demonstrate democracy of a sort, then went back to fucking over the populace. Ony the uprising in Tunisia has seen a transition to some form of democraic governance.

                                                    These cunts will not give up control willingly - and any of them that state that they are 'The People's Club' should be called out on it immediately.

                                                    Carry on.

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