An Interesting Read

This was quoted from a Leeds Fans Forum and was put up on the England Fans site. I know he is a Leeds fan and is having a bit of a rant but it's an interesting read with some valid points:</p>

</p>

Can't be arsed getting into any in depth discussion so if anyone wants to disagree, thats up to them, its just my opinion but one thing I will tell you is if we stay up, if we go down, if we go down and never come up again or if we ever back into The Premiership, I couldn't really give a **** at this moment in time.

I have spent this season watching the game that my old man introduced me to around 1974 and the game which most of my life has revolved around since then and I have realised that I don't even particularly like it anymore. I can't remember the last time I left a game involving Leeds and was bouncing with happiness and got back to the pub and everyone was in a top mood - even after one of our rare wins. I can't remember the last time I sat in the ground and had a laugh with my mates without worrying about upsetting someone or other. I can't remember the last time I went to an away game and wasn't treated like someone on the run from MI5. I can't remember the last time I watched a game on Sky and thought &quot;wow, what a game&quot; and I certainly can't remember the last time I saw any of the England &quot;superstars&quot; who earn more in a month than a lot of us will earn in 10/15 years pull on that England jersey and do us proud (well, I think it might have been 5-1 Germany in 2001 but might be wrong) and I can't remember I saw a game when I didn't think &quot;****ing cheating, soft ****&quot; every 2 minutes when a player went over like he'd been shot by a Japanese sniper.

Everyone is banging on about a protest or about carrying on at the ground but I have seen the deterioration of the game we all knew and loved to the point of it having no resemblance at all to what it was so why the **** should I go jumping up and down screaming when from the chairman down through the manager down to the players right down to the stewards/bar staff, nobody gives a **** about us?

Money, money and more money, nothing else matters. **** the lower half of the Premiership, **** the Championship and certainly **** the other 2 divisions which I don't even know their name anymore - how can Division 3 be Division 1? It's all about qualifying for the Champions League for the top 5 teams and it's all about television money for the also rans and paying obscene wages to obscene players for everyone. Ask a scum fan about the FA Cup and he'd say he would want to win it every year, ask a scum director and he'd say it would be nice as long as it didn't detract from the Champions League.

The next TV deal is so ****ing obscene it is unreal. If we want England to compete then why the **** are we making 20 clubs so ****ing rich and so reliant on foreigners and letting the rest of the country go to the wall? Why the **** don't the Government get involved and stop this? They're quick enough to jump in and stop companies like BT/British Gas or the supermarkets or the brewers having too much of a stranglehold so why the **** do they let 5/6 football clubs dictate what happens to the other 86 or so? There should be a salary cap per club, there should be some kind of system in place to ENSURE the best young players have the chance to play for the smaller clubs and not simply snapped up, stuck to rot in the reserves for 5 years and then cast aside cos they didn't make the grade just so some other club didn't have the opportunity of having them.

Most players in the top 2 or 3 leagues now can actually retire when they finish playing football - ****ing RETIRE! These are players that might not have ever played in the top flight, never played in Europe and sure as Hell never played for their country yet they can ****ing retire - players like Hunter, Giles, Madeley, Clarke, Jimmy Case, Ian Callaghan, Peter Osgood, Stan Bowles, Frank Worthington, Tony Currie, Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Moore etc etc etc - dozens of genuine world class players who finished the game and then had to start selling insurance, running a pub or opening ****ing shops in their home towns just to get by must sit and shake their heads in disgust everytime they hear of another crazy transfer deal or another story in the press about someone wanting &pound;125k a WEEK or they're off - ****ers like Lee Hendrie earning a million plus a year!!! It makes me want to ****ing .

Just watched the League Cup Final and yeah, not a bad game but come on, who the **** can relate to any of them? Relate to them? I can't even pronounce half their ****ing names. Imagine this lot going into a pub in London tonight and sharing the win with the fans - the fans are kept as far from the players as possible - players are untouchable and the fans are lepers - you'll never ever see players sitting chatting to fans in pubs now like they used to - I've even heard of players walking out of a place if a fan dares walk up and ask for a pic or an autograph. I also know for a fact that Stephen Gerrard went to a kids event at Crewe (PAID for by the boot manufacturers) and he didn't sign a single autograph or have a single picture with any of the kids afterwards, in out like the ****ing SAS - I know that cos I was in a meeting when a senior official from Crewe told us about it and how nobody could even get close to Gerrard apart from his entourage - at a ****ing KIDS football &quot;clinic&quot;.

Sorry for the rant of all rants but I am sick and tired of people on heresoundging down fans for not going anymore or for accepting Bates/Wise or whatever shafting us - football has been shafting fans for ****ing years and maybe lads like me aren't just sitting back and accepting it, maybe lads like me are just at the point when we just do not give a **** anymore.

Bought 4 tickets for 4 gigs in the next 2 weeks or so and have spent less than &pound;30 on all 4 - why the **** did we allow football to become so expensive? Fans made their bed, now its too late to start ****ing moaning about it.



</p>

 

Not happy is he ?

But he's right.

 

There's a lot of truth in that. Sadly.

n/t

 

RE: Not happy is he ?

He certainly isn't.

Just thought I'd put his post on here and see what people thought.

 

Re: An Interesting Read nt

 

Do you think he'd have made such a rant

If Leeds were still one of the premiership top 5? Or is he just a sore loser?

 

For me money is spoiling it for normal fans who supported the gamne years ago

I went to Nou Camp last week for the Liverpool game (the other half is a l'pool fan), top experience but the ticket was €140. The same seat for a non Champions league game is €70. What I can't figure is if Champions league qualification gives clubs so much money, why do they need to charge more for a ticket ? It can only be greed.

It brought it home to me when we realised that for the 2004 final of the European Cup (Portugal V Greece) we paid 50% less for our tickets ! Sometimes I wonder how we would afford the away games in the Prem should we ever get there again, 50 odd quid a ticket at Spurs, Chelsea and Arsenal.

 

Some good points

but I I'll bet a pound to a piece of ***** he was not ****ing complaining when ****ingl**ds had aspirations of the top ****ing 6</p>

 

exactly that..

ask the fella 6 years ago and he wouldnt have cared a toss ....

although he has some good points about the game in general im not going to start crying over his leeds in trouble moans

 

It's worse than greed - it's stupidity and inflation

If one club was alone was amassing a fortune in the quantities now dealt in football, and the rest weren't, you'd genuinely see a club getting richer and richer. As so many of the elite are now pressuring their fans for more money, you actually just have hyper inflation, and the players wallets get fatter. It's like house prices - the clubs feel richer because the money they are trading in reflects bigger sums - but actually nobody is any better off, and it is pricing the fans out of the game.

 

RE: Some good points

Exactly!

Another Leeds fan went on the England forum saying they were paying £10 less to see them play Milan and the likes in the Champions League to what they are paying now!

 

Some good points although he wouldn't be saying that if they were still in the Premier.

I do wonder though how anyone not brought up on the game would ever get into it….all this talk about Beckham boosting the games profile in the US is rubbish.

 

I agree with most of that, but

what would he be saying if Leeds were a member of the 5/6 clubs that he's complaining about?

 

A bit rich really

A Leeds fan complaining about how players wages are too much.</p>

Just remind me again how much they were paying Seth Johnson...</p>

And as for fans being treated like animals at away matches are LUFC fans blameless there as well?</p>

I echo what everyone so far has said about whether he would still be complaining if they were in the top 5 in the country. He started in 1974 - well so did I, but my team were in Division 4 then whereas his mob were clogging their way to trophies, it must have been so hard to follow a team like that with all their success, bribery and cheating. Funny how they are only complaining now isn't it? B*ll*cks to the lot of 'em, I personally hope it gets a lot worse for them before it gets any better.</p>

 

Doubtful

I think it's how he sees the decline of the football club he loves and the attitude of those running it that has polarised his opinion so. Wonder if any other fans of any other clubs feel similar ?

 

RE: Doubtful

the voice of the disafected... when your team is going down the pan its always worse i guess... still its hard to feel sorry for him even if he does make some good points about football in general.

 

load a craap

Things were always better in the old days weren't they? 1970s, I went to elland road (once) to see a pitch fight on the pitch between fans and then saw a bus turned over and 36 cars in a row pass me with their windscreens smashed out. The reds were in the bottom league and the next week I saw us draw with Hartlepool 0-0 without a single shot on target. Must've been about 3000 there.

 

soz but what you say just doesn't add up

Tickets were 140 Euro and yet you were still prepared to pay that - as were 90,000 others. The game isn't overpriced.

 

English supporters are ripped off

Just compare the prices charged here with Germany or Italy

A couple of years ago I just happened to be in Turin at the time Juventus were playing Newcastle in the champions league.

My Italian mate got me a ticket for 10 euros. I was in the next enclosure to the Geordies who had paid £40 for theirs.