The Best Fans in the World
September 9th 2008 05:08
Manchester City fans spout the same annoying, sometimes cringe-worthy nonsense because they still get 35,000 plus fans at their games despite the last 30 years being little more than a pantomime. It’s an understandable argument, but still one that’s completely lost on me.
Perhaps the best and most valid shout comes from those outstanding 5,377 fans who turned up at the horribly named Fitness First Stadium on the opening day of this season to watch Bournemouth’s 1-1 draw with Gillingham. Nothing particularly impressive in that I concede, but when you consider that Bournemouth’s biggest achievement in the last fifty years is reaching the quarter finals of the FA Cup in 1971 and they started this season in the football league’s lowest division on minus 17 points without any real hope of promotion, you start to realise what a true die-hard fan really is. And West Ham think they’ve got it bad.
But how exactly do we measure ‘best’?
The criteria we use in this ridiculous but nonetheless heated and popular debate is as subjective as the outcome itself. Do we simply go on the number of fans? In which case, Manchester United are unrivalled. Or do we look at the volume of fans during the leaner times? That may well bring City back to the top. Here’s a thought. Why don’t we take the mean number of fans over the last fifty years, divide it by the number of trophies, add 10,000 for each division you drop from the Premier League, then subtract the number of executive boxes (times the number of fans able to sit in them)… wah, wah, wah! You see my point.
The truth is every club has its share of die-hard fans. Obviously, in the cases of Man United, Chelsea, Liverpool, etcetera, success also brings those infamous ‘glory hunting’ and ‘arm chair’ supporters, but it’s probably unfair for this to reflect negatively upon the real fans, who would be there trophies or not. Who’s to say that if Bournemouth miraculously staged a surge up the divisions on their way to Premier League glory, picking up the odd cup along the way, their attendances wouldn’t begin to ‘miraculously’ swell? I quite imagine they would.
The football fan is a curious creature and one not easily profiled. They differ from country to country, league to league, club to club, hell, even stand to stand and making generalisations is fraught with difficulties. What we can all be sure of is that every single club in the football league and beyond (big shout out to the non-league supporters) has a selection of fans that would lie down in the road, in their colours, and die for their team. Except maybe Newcastle United… their chubby supporters would probably still have their tops off. Eat that, Gabby Logan.
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Comment by The Toon Cryer
I once went out with a girl call Trish Logan, who is also a Geordie...and liked getting her top off.
Great waps! I was her number one fan!
Comment by paul hart mbe
Comment by Pooks667
Random Rantings
Oh er wait a minute....