Seen a few Newcastle fans slagging off Villa's crowds. This attitude of 'our attendances are better than yours' has to change in English football if fans want any power back. It was fine when games were £2 on the gate but not now, supporters deserve to see something back from their money, some sort of accountability for poor performance. This attitude of turning up out of 'loyalty' is just giving people like Lerner and Ashley licence to take the piss.
At a certain point around 1992, the relationship stopped being "club and supporters" and became "club and customers".
We stopped being an integral part of the clubs, it became a business relationship, and that meant them treating us no different to the way M&S treat their shoppers. This whole thing was entirely of their making.
if people don't turn up week in week out to watch a load of offensive shit, then that's a direct result of them changing the relationship, with all the enormous price inflation that meant.
They can't have it both ways.
Newcastle's gate income for 2013 was circa £28m. The increase in the new tv deal was worth approximately the same, so in effect the club could play in an empty stadium and, financially, be no worse off than the previous year due to the hike in tv cash. In the past the fans mattered because a club couldn't run without the cash on the gate. If your gates crashed and fans boycotted for whatever reason the chairmen had to act or they couldn't pay the bills. Fans mattered, their opinions and feelings mattered.
Now that Sky pump in billions the folk who continue to turn up week after week don't matter any more. If gates dropped by 50% then the net effect is negligible to the accounts, the clubs can get by quite happily treating the loyal fans like shit because the chairmen are not totally reliant on gate income any more. Cunts like Ashley and Lerner can get away with it because the game's fundamentally changed. It's barely a sport any more it's just an exercise in making money. Fuck it.
I'm not sure that's true tbh. If fan attendances dropped significantly, I don't think TV revenues would be as high as they wouldn't want to broadcast empty stadiums across the world. Equally, less club tat would get sold domestically and abroad.
Getting fan buy-in, en masse, to a) believe the above and b) care enough about the club actually achieving something beyond the trophy of 8th place is a different story. A story which means that the fans effectively have as little power as you've described.
IMO.
