Why are Bolton fans so fickle?

Mentioned this in the January transfers thread but thought it deserved its own thread.

Bolton fans on facebook and especially Twitter are ridiculously fickle. When we win they love everyone and we are the best team and manager in the world. As soon as we lose a game they completely flip. 

For example, there has been a growing campaign against Dacres Cogley for the last few weeks, not sure why as he is generally been decent for us. He has played every game practically but all of a sudden he is the worst player in the team which he if very far from. Williams on the other side gets the same, loved one week and hated the next.

The worst one though has to be from Saturday, as soon as Evatt took off Dion and brought on Forrester, twitter went into meltdown, Evatt should be sacked, utterly ridiculous! 

Have our fans always been this bad or is it just the usual keyboard warriors being dicks online? Is it an age thing? Us older fans have seen us in all 4 divisions and don't seem to get as wound up as the younger fans who may have caught the tail end of our Premiership days and expect better.

I'm old enough to have seen it all before.
Younger supporters have always been fickle, and don't cope well with any kind of adversity. The internet age has added to this attitude tenfold. All supporters moan. I know I do, but for the 90 plus minutes of the game the team gets my full support.
The world is full of drama queens. Look at Liverpool. Second in the league, and playing great football this season, peppered a poor manure team, but failed to get over the line. It happens.
But they get this.

                       
Let's have a little perspective.

People are fickle full stop.

It isn't just football they are fickle about.

Most people are generally speaking sheep, and follow the crowd - anyone who doesn't follow the crowd is automatically wrong, weird, out of touch or whatever phrase people choose to use.

People also don't like being wrong and more often than not carry grudges.

That's simply how life is.

You join in and think like everyone else if you want to be accepted or you stick to your beliefs and principles and are cast aside.

The older and more mentally mature you get the more likely you can step away from the crowd to some degree.

I'm not a crowd follower and look how popular I am on here for instance!!!

It's just so much easier and certainly far more secure being in the majority with everyone else than stand against it like I sometimes do when I know they are wrong.

But what's the point of having a brain if you don't use it?

Social media - and believing everything as gospel you read on it - seems to have helped people become brainwashed - people believe what they see on there and never bother to check the facts out for themselves - look at the QAnon thing for instance - alien reptile peado ruling group that can only be defeated by Donald Trump - I mean wtf???

Ok that's a bit extreme but nearly everyone I know under the age of 50 are glued to their phones and all seem to read social media.

Seems most want to post something, so they more often than not simply follow the crowd - that is how it works.

I remember as a young lad in the Lever End chanting 'Ridding out, Lofthouse in'. 

Not much later we were chanting 'Lofthouse out'..........

Once you let the mob mentality take hold, you're done. I have a remarkable gift.

I'm able to annoy every member of my family, of all political persuasions, in one afternoon.

I'm immensely proud of that. Roll on Christmas dinner, where my plant based meal will, once again, put everyone's backs up, meaning they're already on the back foot, as I begin to pontificate at great length about the world and its woes.
We've got a flat earther coming this year.  He's even part of a society for like minded people.Talk about manna from heaven.
I've been warned to behave. The countdown is on.

No doubt I'll be banished to the man cave by teatime. Job done.

A flat earther? I didn't realise you and WS63 were related 

Norpig wrote:A flat earther? I didn't realise you and WS63 were related 

Blimey. I've just checked, and the guy is a member of The Flat Earth Society. Yes, it's a thing.
A new boyfriend of one of the girls in the family it seems. Lord knows why they'd want him to meet me.Doesn't care for vegans or veggies either I'm told.
Christmas day is looking better by the hour.
I'm carving.

boltonbonce wrote:
Blimey. I've just checked, and the guy is a member of The Flat Earth Society. Yes, it's a thing.
A new boyfriend of one of the girls in the family it seems. Lord knows why they'd want him to meet me.Doesn't care for vegans or veggies either I'm told.
Christmas day is looking better by the hour.
I'm carving.

Can you livestream it? Would be better than the Christmas Day telly offerings 

Norpig wrote:
Can you livestream it? Would be better than the Christmas Day telly offerings 

If only. I'm hoping he's a Trump supporter as well.

boltonbonce wrote:I remember as a young lad in the Lever End chanting 'Ridding out, Lofthouse in'. 

Not much later we were chanting 'Lofthouse out'..........

Once you let the mob mentality take hold, you're done. I have a remarkable gift.

I'm able to annoy every member of my family, of all political persuasions, in one afternoon.

I'm immensely proud of that. Roll on Christmas dinner, where my plant based meal will, once again, put everyone's backs up, meaning they're already on the back foot, as I begin to pontificate at great length about the world and its woes.
We've got a flat earther coming this year.  He's even part of a society for like minded people.Talk about manna from heaven.
I've been warned to behave. The countdown is on.

No doubt I'll be banished to the man cave by teatime. Job done.

People basically take up a fixed position on something or other and then dig in and defend them - they then seem to somehow freeze into that position for life - take for instance the political beliefs of many on here are already entrenched for life, even though the world and everything in it constantly changes and flows in many different directions over time.

Wanderlust tells lies rather than admit that he was wrong about anything, W63 denies what the science quite clearly shows rather than face the truth for instance.  

Why though???

That's the bit I can't understand?

Why not simply accept that facts have simply proved the opinion you once held  of something being true was simply wrong?

Wanderlust and W63 certainly aren't unique, they are just like most people really, who refuse to accept that things are fluid and change over time.

They become trapped in their thinking and views on the world.

I've mention this following bit before but I'll say it again...

When I was growing up, going through my teenage years and entering my adulthood, I remember my father moaning how bad society had got but I couldn't see what he was talking about - it was ok by me but this was the only world I'd lived in at the time.

A generation later I see what my dad was saying because the world had moved on from 'my' world and was that now of my daughters time - she sees little  wrong in it because it is the only world she has lived in.

No doubt when she is my age her world would have change but her children would see nothing wrong because it has now become their world of norms, manners and behaviour, etc, etc.

My point being that points of reference either become redundant or frozen in a time that no longer exists, or that you need to constantly update them to be able to understand the way things now are.

It's just stupid and pig headed to believe for a lifetime that all things Tory are bad and all things Labour good (or visa-versa), that's just childish and obviously wrong - yet people do - several of whom post on here!

People seem to have become more gullible and easier to manipulate these days to me which just so happens to coincide with the popularity of social medium - funny that don't you think!

It's much easier for them to believe what they are fed rather than think for themselves - simply block the voices you don't want to hear and listen only to those who say the things you do want to hear.

We get what we deserve as the saying goes.

Norpig wrote:
Can you livestream it? Would be better than the Christmas Day telly offerings 

If only this guy was still alive. I'd have loved to have met him. I'd have invited 63 along as an interpreter.

I think that some fans are fickle because they don't understand that the game of football is itself fickle and they build up expectations around the idea that a good team will always win.
As soon as the team has a patch of poor form, they look for scapegoats. This is what I posted on WW amid the hysteria following the Bristol match:

Obviously folk are focusing on the defensive errors and the sending off and rightly point out that these things can happen. Nothing is certain in football and it doesn't matter how good a team is, you can always lose to a freak goal, a slip at a crucial moment a la Gerard, an unexpected worldy in the top bins, a lucky deflection, a bad refereeing decision or other stuff that is out of your control.
For me, the concern is more about what we've done with the ball going forward over the last couple of games - the bit we can control - and I think the standard has slipped slightly from the good run we were on, especially under the pressure that Pompey applied. When the quality of movement and passing that we are capable of isn't there, it causes a momentum shift and encourages the opposition to be bolder. If Dion had slotted that rebound against Pompey it could have been a completely different game for example.
We've not been at our imperious best recently and I don't know whether that's because teams have worked out how to pressurise us or a lack of confidence or overconfidence or tiredness or something else, but I suspect it's psychological in some way, because we know we can play better and on occasions create some beautiful flowing moves.
Whatever the reason, I don't want to blame this player, that player, the ref or the manager because it doesn't help in the long run. All I'm hoping for is that the team finds a return to form and starts putting together strong performances again - and if we do that, we've every chance of getting back to winning ways and renewing our push for promotion. Focus on getting what we can control right and there'll be no complaints from me.

Very reasonable. We've had a couple of poor games at the wrong time. Everyone had a bad day at the office, but we move on. If I'd been offered our position now at the start of the season I'd have taken it.
Let's see what we're made of.

Have you actually ever played football?

I've asked you this before.

Serious question because you simply seem to have no idea of how the game is from a player perspective.

Your answer to anything always seems to revolve about mental issues - unsurprisingly you state it yet again in your post above...

...or a lack of confidence or overconfidence or tiredness or something else, but I suspect it's psychological in some way...

...but football, particularly professional football, is more to do with working as a unit, working to a formula and being as strong as the weakest link in it.

Evatt wants to play possession football from the back and his mantra is to pass the ball up and down from side to side until the opposition becomes fatigued late into the game.

For that to work takes endless practice drills, so to know where to be on the pitch at anyone time during every type of match situations, which in turn means you also have confidence in knowing where your team mates are also, so as to attack or defend knowing you are doing so as a team rather than random undisciplined individuals like park footballers.

It's a high risk, high reward strategy and at third tier level we have third tier players performing it so, errors (forced or unforced) can and do occur.

For a fraction of a second Santos lost concentration, lost the ball, fouled and duly got sent off - would the Rovers player have run full pelt to get to Santos if we played the long ball over the top more often, I suggest he probably wouldn't have.  He ran because their team analysis would have shown we always attempt to play the ball out from those positions.

And fwiw Santos did not slip as you have attempted to make out over on ww, he simply miscontrolled the ball which was rightly passed to him (you also blame Toal for passing it to Santos but he clearly made the correct pass to a player - Santos - who was in plenty of space with time to control the ball and pass it on himself).  All this can be clearly seen on the highlights reel.

Why do you constantly make things up?

Evatt did what he'd drilled the players to do in this situation namely hooked off a striker, put on a defender in Santos place with the intention of keeping things tight and going after the game with 15 minutes to go (probably now about 10 minutes to go these days with the increase in extra time played this season).  So a player short will obvious effect how well we can attack and still defend against 11 players yet you simply haven't taken that into account on your analysis have you?

And it certainly isn't an insignificant factor to contend with is it?

What compounded the situation was the second goal almost immediately following the restart of the game before the team had settled into the game again.

Shit happens - that's all it is.

From then on it is as much a strength of stamina as well as character to come from two down with half the match to go (and now with your top scorer out the game) - and to be fair we did get halfway there.

Would we have got closer if we had had the extra two day rest instead of playing Portsmouth on the Monday instead of the Saturday (we only made two changes to the starting eleven remember)?

Maybe, who knows?

It's about the opposition too, it's pretty well known how Evatt wants his team to be and how we play it from the back - teams now deliberately try to force the errors we sometimes make - as I've said already, would the Rovers player have run full pelt towards Santos if we played the longball more often - probably not I would suggest, he ran because their analysis would clearly show he/the team always attempts to play the ball out from such positions - my point being the opposition is deliberately looking to stopping us play 'our game' - we don't play the tippy tappy stuff in isolation, some teams prepare and deal with it better than other teams.

Most fans - including some who post on here - simply don't understand football from the playing perspective of a drilled team, working to a system and sometimes sacrificing their own game for the benefit of the team as a whole.

And we also tend to judge and compare from what we see on TV.  Premier players play the game at a higher level and with better quality and technical skills than our players do, they are simply better athletes and technically more skilful than what we have - we have to accept that the odd lapse or error IS the norm for players at our level.  They are on the pitch because they are the best we currently have at the club and no doubt sometimes play when injured or not fully fit because we can't replace them with better from what players we have in our squad.

You frequently remind me of the saying 'you know the price of everything but the value of nothing', you seem to watch a match and comment on it but simply don't seem to fully understand what you have seen or why they did what they did.

All football fans are fickle end of. We’ve played poorly in a couple of games and been punished but we’re not even half way through the season yet so where’s the problem? Sluffy as usual over analyses everything whilst others just make silly and unconnected personal remarks. Me, I just watch the game, comment on what I see on a couple of forums and never do social media so whatever is said  I don’t miss thankfully. 🥱

Whitesince63 wrote:All football fans are fickle end of. We’ve played poorly in a couple of games and been punished but we’re not even half way through the season yet so where’s the problem? Sluffy as usual over analyses everything whilst others just make silly and unconnected personal remarks. Me, I just watch the game, comment on what I see on a couple of forums and never do social media so whatever is said  I don’t miss thankfully. 🥱

Don't you realise that forums like here and ww ARE social media sites?

And if over analysing is simply saying there is more to football than it being a 'mental outlook' as to how good or bad we play, then yes I must be over analysing it then - because professional football is a lot more than just 'feeling' mentally good or bad about themselves on the day!

You even agreed with me only a few days ago about this - had you forgotten - you even said more or less chunks of what I've said above which you now accuse me of overthinking about???

Whitesince63 wrote:Like you Sluffy, I don’t accept this mental bollocks. Against Pompey I’d say we were better than them in the first half, even after Dions miss which clearly and understandably affected him. It wasn’t just any old miss was it? Then conceding with almost the last kick of the half must have been a real gut punch to the whole team. Obviously at half time Evatt drilled into them that they must play it out from the back as instructed to do without ever taking account of Pompey’s more physical attitude. Just as obviously their manager had drilled into his players to close us down even more, which they did right from the whistle. 

And it is people who are fickle, and those that are, are fickle about a great deal more than just football...

...you know like completely agreeing with me one day and then telling me I'm over analysing exactly the same thing just a few days later...???

If you want to see it that way Sluffy that’s fine and agreeing with certain things you said isn’t as unusual as you make out actually but when talking about football why do you have to involve other things when you refer to people. That’s what I mean by over analysing. Just stick to the subject instead of going off at a tangent.

Whitesince63 wrote:If you want to see it that way Sluffy that’s fine and agreeing with certain things you said isn’t as unusual as you make out actually but when talking about football why do you have to involve other things when you refer to people. That’s what I mean by over analysing. Just stick to the subject instead of going off at a tangent.

I do see it that way 63 because that's what it was!

I also never said or even inferred it was unusual for people to agree with me (I've no idea were you got that idea from?) but I'm quite prepared to stand my ground against the rest when I know I'm right - for example Anderson had not raped and pillaged the club, PPE contracts were awarded honestly and legally by civil servants and not by Tory politicians to their mates, Sue Gray would report honestly and not partake in a cover up, etc, etc, etc.

And I do refer to people and things when I use them as examples of what I am saying - Wanderlust has shown himself many times on here to be anti-Tory and pro-Labour and you have often stated that you don't believe the experts about leaving the EU and the science behind the current man made global warming.

I see nothing at all wrong in referencing the lies or stupidity that people have posted on here - that everybody has previously seen and knows about, to underline the current point I wish to make.

And fwiw I didn't even do that in the post above you seem to be taking me to task for?

I simply asked a question once again to Wanderlust if he actually played football because he certainly doesn't seem to be able to express any views on the game from a playing perspective and instead does so totally from a spectator point of view - as he clearly seems to lack an understanding of what is actually happening and why it is.

His theme - if you care to read again what he copiously writes, is that in his view all the failings seem to be down to mental issues - they are not, as I tried to explain in my reply to him above.

I've tried to highlight that the more you have an active involvement in the game the more you can see and understand what is going on from a higher and higher level within it, for instance - A park kickabout simply is not the same as pub league organised participation, which is again not the same as semi-professional football, etc, etc, is the point I was making in respect of how much (or little) you can understand the game from experiencing it from the 'inside' of it, so to speak.

I thought that was fair comment by me even if apparently you did not.

Not sure the PPE argument stands up now Sluffy after what's come out in the last day or two.

Crumbs Sluffy, when people are in a hole they usually stop digging but you go for a bloody excavator. The threads about fickle fans can’t you just stick to that and post something relative instead of continually regurgitating your moans from other threads?

Norpig wrote:Not sure the PPE argument stands up now Sluffy after what's come out in the last day or two.

Sorry but you (and millions of others) don't understand the nuances of PPE and the Mone case.

To put it simply the hoo-ha created over PPE by the right wing nutters such as Maugham/Good Law Project focused on two things - the alleged corruption and cronyism in awarding the contracts and the illegality of the VIP lane.

It has now been proved many times over to various inquiry's and audits that the awarding of the contracts was done honestly by civil servants with no influence or input into the decisions by Ministers, MP's or anyone else.

Maugham/Good Law Project won on a very minor technicality that the VIP lane did not comply fully with EU advertising to tender time limits (the government reasonably argued that the time limits should have been suspended in the face of the global epidemic that was killing people) but the judge could only apply the law as it stood and thus ruled the VIP lane illegal in law on that sole basis.

The judge however blew the whole case out of the water and making the win an entirely pyrrhic victory by stating that the PPE contract would have been awarded to the company in question in any event whether it was received by the VIP lane or not (the bottom line being was it a company who could provide massive stocks of PPE from China immediately - which it could and nearly everyone else couldn't) and thus refused to award a 'remedy' (a remedy in legal terms is to put things right - but if the same result would have occurred whether by the illegal means (the VIP lane) or by the other routes (the non VIP lanes) then the end result is exactly the same and no 'harm' has taken place).

The effect of not awarding a remedy meant that Maugham/GLP could not claim their costs.

Maugham/GLP decided to appeal the decision and the Appeal Court Judge upheld the non award of a remedy and strongly implied that Maugham/GLP were attempting to manipulate the political system through use of the Judicial Review System and that such cases would be rejected in future - which basically killed off Maugham and GLP from that day onwards.

I've not visited their sites for ages but did take a peep the other day as to what propaganda they were trying to make out of Mone's 'denial' and had to laugh out loud when I fond that they were reduced to promoting (the utterly bonkers) Carol Vorderman video on the matter!

Mone's case has a third element to it in terms of Declaring an Interest (the following is from Parliament's own guide book which would directly apply to Baroness Mone).

Declaring interests
Declaration means drawing attention to registered or unregistered interests on almost any occasion when someone else might consider them to influence what you say or do.

You are required to declare your interests, if relevant, from the time of your election, even before you’ve submitted an entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. You are expected to declare a wide range of interests. They include not just registered interests but

the interests of partners and family members

past interests up to one year old

expected future interests

You must declare interests not just when speaking but, for example, when submitting questions and early day motions, when requesting adjournment debates or emergency debates, when joining a select committee and when adding names to early day motions and other motions. In these circumstances an [R] will be included against your name when it appears on the Order Paper. But you’re not expected to declare an interest when asking an oral question or a supplementary question in the Chamber, or when it would unduly delay the business of the House.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The Declaration is prior to the other two stages above, so the only question is would her not making such a declaration effect the outcome of the award?

On the basis of the Appeal Court Ruling and the inquiries into the awarding of all the other PPE contracts, I can't see how it could?

It would seem to me on the face of it that she has told some lies (she admits that herself) and must therefore face the appropriate sanctions in respect of those (maybe she will be 'defrocked' as a Baroness if they do that sort of thing?)

I'm out of my depth to know if her husband will face any sanctions for concealing he was the end beneficiary of the company that won the PPE contracts but I can't see how the contract could be effected as such.

The irony (as I pointed out at the time) was that if Mone had simply told the truth at the time there would be no story in all of this.

Mone and her husband may face some kind of knuckle rap and the company may be found to have broken its contract in terms of the quality of the goods it sold to the government but I can't see how legally Mone and her husband can be proved to have illegally been awarded the contract to benefit from - or in other words the awarding of the contract was done legally and without favour by the Civil Servants - the issue over legality precedes and may have ramifications beyond it if recovery action is taken.

So yes there is a lot of shit around this case BUT it doesn't actually pertain to the fact that the awarding of the contract was done honestly and fairly by the ones doing so AND there was NO government interference of them whilst doing so.

Unfortunately people only read the headlines and believe whatever shit they are fed.

And fwiw I hope Mone and her husband face the most severest sanctions available to them if as looks likely they tried to illegally play the system.

I don't like liars and thieves who ever they are.