Fan engagement stalls after fans’ extreme demands

The government has come up with a new plan to improve fan integration. For too long, it has been decided, everyday fans have been cut out from the men and women at the top, and they are now treated as just customers. Not people who have an emotional, spiritual and well established relationship with the institution, but those who will pay their money, sit down and shut up.

Of course, the Conservative government is motivated mainly helping out the everyday man and woman. Those with straightforward interests and passions. You can see that when they say they aim to cut the top rate of tax, and when they lower corporation tax. When they open up home ownership to the kind of average family, earning £60,000 a year between them, it is obvious that they are in tune with what is going on across Britain. They just get the needs of the British public, rather than the effete Islington flaneur, Jeremy Corbyn.

The government’s plan means that fans will be consulted twice a year on major issues, and the financial matters of the club. Obviously, by meeting and discussing these topics, the clubs will therefore feel compelled to act in the best interests of the fans. This is not in dispute. It is a fantastic achievement. However, there are claims from some supporters that these measures could go further, in club-specific ways. It is here that conflict can emerge. Yahoo sports can reveal the major points of contention:

Arsenal

Arsenal fans made two key demands which other, established clubs have not been able to agree to. While Arsenal fans demanded that all stadium restaurants served continental brunch menu items for early kick offs, and biodynamic wine, it wasn’t this which caused the disagreement. The changes that were opposed were altogether more radical.

The first was an insistence that the Premier League title be radically rethought. Instead of just a standard August to May season, an equally prestigious title would be given to the leading team judged by other metrics. One, obviously, was the team which had the most points in the calendar year, something which fans believed was a conspiracy to avoid recognising Arsenal as the very best team of the year. The other was to give a title to the team which stayed at the top of the league for the most days of the year. Arsene Wenger announced he was strongly in favour of both these moves, but other clubs and fans rejected it on the basis of, ‘missing the point of how league tables work.’

It was also believed that a potential suggestion from Arsenal, that the Golden Boot award be renamed the Olivier Giroud award, was abandoned at an early stage.

Manchester United

There were also problems with some of the suggestions from United. There was one from the club, and another from the fans which were unacceptable to the other parties in the league.

The very first was that the fans insisted that there is no other player to ever “get” a club quite as much as Rafael “got” United. It was for this achievement that they demanded a statue of Rafael be erected outside the football museum in Preston, and for a Rafael “getting” award to be issued annually to the player who most “got” their team. This soon caused rancour between sides when it became evident that the most accurate definition of “getting” a club could not be separated from a poorly performing player who ran a lot, started fights, and was generally gobby.

The second problem was that the club had suggested that the Glazers and Alex Ferguson should be recognised for their triumphant legacy, gifting United an incredible base for David Moyes, Louis van Gaal and Edward Woodward to work with. With their vast turnover and squad of Champions left behind, the club argued that never before did so many, the United fans, owe so much, their season ticket prices and then some, to so few, Ferguson, the Glazers, and David Gill. This suggestion was rejected out of hand, not because of all the obvious damage these people have done to United, but because actually, owners like FSG, Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov are even better, so there.

Liverpool

There was one bone of contention for Liverpool and the rest of the league, but it was the one which caused by far the most disagreement and opprobrium. Liverpool fans bizarrely but insistently refused to deal with the government’s fan engagement process until all documents were available in Rioplatense Spanish, the kind of Spanish that Luis Suarez learned as he grew up in Uruguay. It appears that as Liverpool fans took the defence of Suarez so seriously after he racially abused Patrice Evra, that they had long since stopped speaking English, and taking up this dialect. Talks very suddenly broke down when one of the Liverpool fans repeatedly said something, ‘deeply offensive’. After this meeting, the concept of dignity was seen heading to a room with a lock, carrying a bottle of whisky and a Derringer.