THE “NEW BREED” OF FANS
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

Back in the 1960s Everton’s then manager, Harry Catterick, introduced into the first team a young local player named Colin Harvey. The youngster had a hesitant start and sometimes looked way out of his depth and got roundly barracked for it. After a few games someone scratched deep into the paintwork of Harry’s car the words, “Drop Harvey.” The youngster was persevered with and eventually matured into one of the club’s and the game’s greatest ever midfield players. Later in the same decade Catterick chose local sixteen years old centre forward Joe Royle in place of idolised Alex Young. The manager was verbally abused and then physically attacked by a couple of fans. Royle scored on his debut and developed into a powerful and much-loved striker in a long tradition of Everton number nines. In the 80s inexperienced Howard Kendall was appointed manager and quickly found himself at the wrong end of the table, crowds diminished, the team got booed and someone organised a leaflet drop urging Howard’s dismissal. Kendall went on to become the club’s greatest ever manager. There are many other examples. Every club has them.

These memories came back as I waited for friends to show up in the pub before the Manchester City home game. The catalyst was leaning against the bar, a red-faced obese man full of alcohol, wreathed in a cloud of nicotine, a multiplicity of chins raging against David Moyes, Keith Wyness, Bill Kenwright, Ian Ross, the ticket office, the club store and Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. He exuded the kind of spittle-dribbling hatred you associate with full-moon psychopaths, his aura as ugly as his voice and his unfortunate face. Eventually the pub manager tired of his behaviour and threw him and his two adolescent hoodies out. By that time he had simply become an insistent loudmouth bore and his propelled exit drew loud cheers from everyone else who tired of his whining paranoid muck, his knowledge of football barely a thimble full. If you have one of these nutcases sitting near your season ticket seat you have my deepest sympathy. I can afford to be relatively smug because fortunately my friends and the fans near me really know the game and its limitations, acknowledge realities, argue opinions and STILL have no wish to be part of a faintly disgusting claque of self-appointed “working-class” heroes. For which read: yo-yos with an inferiority complex and a relatively new lunatic illusion about “Celebrity Fan” status.

All of which got me thinking about that kind of mentality and its neuroses – or, if you like, psychoses. You couldn’t help shaking your head and wondering briefly at the red-faced man’s unhappy, inadequate existence. What makes for such distraught mental mayhem? And all for a game of football, for what should be an escapist hobby, a healthy spectacle and a few hours away from the rigours of daily life. Of course it doesn’t make much sense and never has. I doubt if it ever will, human nature being what it is. It just leaves you determined your company will never include that sort of social oddity. Do not think I exaggerate the paranoia, as we shall see.

From the examples I quote you can see there’s nothing new about these people. They’re all cut from the same genetic cloth. In earlier times they would have been members of a lynch mob or onlookers at a public execution. In football they’ve always been there in different guises and with different emphases, all of it dependent on whatever psychic mess swirls between their ears. The common factor they share is an almost joyless existence, a near-complete absence of a sense of humour in a gang of dessicated curmudgeons. To which you can add constant denigration of playing fortunes and administrative matters no matter what successes they may bring. The modern version of nutter for instance is greatly affected by the structure of ownership and administration of the game, as brilliantly described by writer David Conn and others (see book reviews here). I have made my own opinions clear on that subject and won’t repeat them; in any case they probably coincide with your own. Almost all fans I have met deeply despise the Premier League set-up, players’ agents, the PLC and the G14 Group. But such perfectly justified feelings have led to a dangerous incoherent frustration amongst a small number of idiotic fans that could easily take us in rapid reverse back to the bad old days, this time with a more distorted development. At such times the very worst instincts can take over as overwhelmingly as they did in the unlamented 70s and 80s. We all know perfectly well where that could lead.

We fans have no more excuses. We cannot plead ignorance or surprise. We have the experience and we have the tragic, even lethal, precedents. We are reminded of it at every away game when we are surrounded by a police force verging on military occupation levels, cameras whirring, dogs snapping, helicopters hovering Orwell-1984-style, police vans lurking, riot shields and CS gas at the ready. You would have to be blind and/or wilfully ignorant not to take note and be disgusted that we have come to this. And much as I loathe the police approach it has to be said they wouldn’t be there in the first place if there wasn’t justified fear of what would happen if they WEREN’T there. Sadly, all it does is satisfy the existence of the worst kind of thug and his uniformed equivalent.

But the mechanics of mob actions aren’t always as obvious as a physical confrontation. There are as many variations as there are differences in human behaviour. These days lunacy spreads as fast as raw data conveyed through improved communications technology. In some respects all it does is increase the rate of the former without any gain in common sense. Easily-impressed peons will always trot along in its wake via the mobile phone or the internet. They can and do increase tribal hatred exponentially. In the end the lunatic who scratched his neurotic hate into Harry Catterick’s car and the spittle-dribbler in the pub occupy the same deluded crackpot world of manic-depressives with an axe to grind. All football clubs suffer from them. Just below them both are the insane adolescent cowards who organised or were part of planned ambushes on visiting Millwall and Manchester United fans or who invent racist songs. There isn’t much difference between any of them; in fact they actually deserve each other and probably find their way into each other’s company in due course, or were part of it at one time anyway. Meanwhile, the vast majority of footy fans try to get on with the straightforward business of their daily lives and enjoy what they can of what’s left of the game spectacle.

Hovering in the background are the kind of barrow boys and spivs the game’s new structure has encouraged. We all know they exist INSIDE the game, but it is time too to acknowledge their existence amongst the “new breed” of fans. These are the cheats and liars who make money out of innocent fans by deceiving them, by operating a false altruistic façade every bit as hypocritical as the “reasoning” of players’ agents, by manufacturing propaganda and lies which benefit only them – even if is only to build cheap notoriety. Small wonder this kind of venomous paranoia eventually concludes that everyone’s against them, that everyone – incredibly, even David Moyes – is in on a conspiracy to deprive them of their very own counterfeit self-righteousness and five minutes of fame. Of course this goes way beyond mere justified criticism of this or that administrative or ownership function. By the time behaviour develops to that level of insanity why be surprised when the alleged conspiracy involves virtually everybody outside the twisted nerves of its manufacturers? Why be surprised when David Moyes motivates a remarkable turnaround in form, gets a well-deserved Manager of the Month Award and the loonies can’t even say, “Well done”? When current targets move on you can safely assume the same nonsense will be levelled at anyone who takes their place. Hatred is like that. It is self perpetuating. It always needs more hate to feed off. Ultimately it is deadly dangerous as well as fatuous.

Do not think I exaggerate. Some years ago Manchester City were owned by the late Peter Swales. In the early years he borrowed and spent a lot of money on players transfers. City had limited success. But eventually Swales ran out of steam and managers, the club faltered and he was overtaken by a growing tide of venom which then developed into outright organised hatred. It all came to a head when a fan invaded his sick elderly mother’s hospital and actually got to her bedside before being dragged off, I hope to a life time in an asylum. That is the logical conclusion to the kind of behaviour I have described. Afterwards, Swales, rightly sickened by the experience, sold out to former player Francis Lee, a fans’ “messiah.” City went into freefall and ended up in the old Third Division. You couldn’t help thinking that the tiny number of extremist fans who manufactured that hatred deserved the club’s temporary demise. And all for a game of football.

The fact is authentic disagreement does not need to be strident. Nor does it require the self-promotion of individuals. It is possible to be determined without being a red-faced ale-house prat. It needs sensible organisation, articulation and a reasonable measure of common sense. Which by its nature is usually subdued and prosaic, but if deeply felt and persistent is much more effective. The problem for nutters of course is that there is no “glory” in that. And for the spivs and barrow boys no money either since full transparency exposes their hypocrisy. Usually those who preach sensationalism are much, much worse than their victims in every respect. You are unlikely, for instance, to pay much attention to a self-styled “fan” who’s an agent himself or who never attends a match or who sells half-arsed sensationalist information to tabloids or who sells fifth-rate shabby goods or who lies to you about how much money he or she makes out of it all or is a tenth rate Rachman landlord from west Wirral. Somebody who rants on about the state of footy affairs and behaves thusly can’t realistically expect to be taken seriously. The mind boggles at the affect such riffraff would have if they ever had genuine responsibility in running a darts team let alone any first class football club. In no time the club would be the kind of wreckage associated with “Animal Farm.”

And even more relevant, it aids the club’s rivals and drives away interest from possible investors. I mean, if YOU were an investor would you want anything to do with any club or sport that had whingeing curmudgeonly “fans” like those I have described? Quite rightly you wouldn’t touch it with a lengthy barge pole. Why would anyone want to put themselves through all that nonsense? What for? To see the cycle repeated ad infinitum? Money-wise, football is already regarded as an investment-dog-with-fleas. When fans behave like a gang of poisoned dopes all they succeed in doing is confirm the worst instincts of non-footy people. And of course rivals use it and revel in it in time-dishonoured fashion.

We all know ownership and administration of our national game changed for the disastrous worse with the introduction of the Premier League and profits-driven right-wing forms of corporate organisation. Since then the whole shooting-box has rotted quickly to the point where the fans are shelling out for nothing more than increased wages for players and profits for those – including rogue fans – who can gouge a bottom line. Much of it now languishes in the kind of institutional corruption introduced by all governments since 1980. Which, if you miss the point, is entirely legal, as the Glazer family proved at Manchester United. The law has been rigged to suit. It won’t be changed by fickle fans yelling obscenities or firing the water pistols of phoney self-righteousness, even less by the kind of fans’ corruption I have described.

Only recently have we seen some tentative moves in the corridors of power to redress the balance. It is miniscule, but it is at least a start and it must be developed at the level of European Union legislation or it will die an early isolated death. Fortunately there are still some men and women of integrity in the executive branch of government. But they are small in number and hindered by the kind of right-wing culture and fans’ lunacy noted above. What we don’t need is a tiny gang of foul-mouthed, self-glorifying cheap spivs masquerading as fans who wouldn’t be out of place selling second-hand knock-off gear in Great Homer Street. Or, for that matter, sending death threats to the Glazers or excreta through the post or implying the nonsense of, “I’m werkn class me. I don’t do manners. That’s how I know I’m werkn class, like.” The logical if insane conclusion is what happened to Peter Swales’ sick aged mother. Beyond that we end up in organised violence or we have another Heysel. I repeat, we have no more excuses. We know the possibilities of manufactured hatred.

In the long run the game will change because it HAS to, or die. Monopolist right-wing methods have been tried and have failed. By now even the Establishment have realised the only profits in the game are related to external functions such as selling shares at the “right moment” (which almost automatically means illegal insider trading or lies), or small businesses in stadium surroundings (even then, usually only on a match day) or in developments related to new stadia or the game’s popularity. The game itself produces nothing and if it went out of existence tomorrow it would be missed, historically speaking, as much as Ancient Roman gladiator games. That is, not at all. Human nature would devise an alternative leisure diversion. The waters would ripple, then close over, and then become still as though the game had never existed. That is the way of things.

If the game does die the “new breed” of fans will have played out their small-minded function. They can move on to other psychoses such as “Rollerball” or manning a barrow in Great Homer Street Market or sliding into ranting alcoholic obscurity in one of County Road’s seedy pubs. There’s never any point arguing with these people because for them life exists only in the single dimension of their own actions and delusions. As great and good pastor Bonhoffer once said, “I stopped arguing with the Nazis when they became too stupid to argue with.” In the end, that’s why the pub manager threw out the red-faced obese man and everyone cheered. But you couldn’t expect the ejected one to understand it as he hit the pavement. Nutters are like that, not so much insensitive as insensible. And thick with it.

The REALITY is we at Everton are just beginning to emerge from a phase every bit as dour as that endured by, for instance, Manchester United in pre-Alex Ferguson days and indeed during his earliest naïve managerial efforts. Many other clubs have gone through the same thing since the professional game was born. Nor is it peculiar to football. Another REALITY is that all the alternatives promoted by nutters as worthwhile examples to follow – Leeds United, Southampton, Charlton, Ipswich, Newcastle, even Sunderland or Portsmouth – have come and gone in various stages of disarray while we have still managed to stay the course and produced some genuine promise of revival. But there is absolutely no guarantee it can continue because that simply isn’t the way professional team sports work. We could easily slip back again. Ask Newcastle, ask Arsenal, ask Manchester United with all their resources. Like every other club outside that small group at the top we are living hand-to-mouth. They will experience the same thing if and when they fall from grace too. Nobody, but NOBODY, has ever continually dominated the game. There’s nothing new about the cycle, only that the new structure has reduced the number of clubs who can expect a serious challenge at the top. When we were at the top – so long ago now we can scarcely recall the time – I don’t remember anyone complaining about clubs with a monopoly on money. Maybe John Moores was a figment of the imagination. Doubtless the same lunatics who whine at every opportunity now would be the first to kiss the arse of the next East European hoodlum to show up waving laundered dollars, especially if said hood allowed them a share of transient “glory” or, gawd forbid, some kind of say in how the club is run.

In the meantime the rest of us get what enjoyment we can from the game. Judging by the crowd’s reaction during and after the City and Blackburn games that’s still quite a lot. And for the time being it is very satisfying after the nightmare start to the season we endured. (13/02/06)

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