Reebok Trotter wrote: NickFazer wrote:I didn't go to the match for ages, missed almost all of the noughties. When I decided to get a season ticket again I made myself some promises
1 Its only a game, like any fan I want my team to win and I love the atmosphere especially at away games but if we lose or play crap then I moan like fuck until I get to the car and then forget about it.
2 I refuse to let it run my weekend or evening if we lose and buzz off it all week if we win.
3 The money ain't my problem - If someone is willing to pay these dicks 20 grand a week then thats their decision but don't come moaning to me when your skint. The debt, I didn't borrow it, I didn't spend it and [thank fuck] I don't have to pay it back so Eddie that's your problem.
This football club has some difficult times ahead and things may well get worse before they get better but some of us have been here before and remember the thrill of fighting our way back up the divisions. For those that are too young to remember when we really were shit then times like these will test your faith and your patience but unless you know the dark days you never really appreciate the good ones.
Despite the efforts of this owner and board Bolton Wanderers will survive, as long there are a hardcore of fans to support it, you only had to see Coventry City fans at Arsenal tonight to see the passion that even "unfashionable" clubs command.
So when we have lost 7-1 or Zat Knight has cost us the game, just tell yourself its only a game, now who've we got next week, QPR away, piece of piss.
It's posts like this that restore my faith in football. It's easy to call it a day when things are going wrong but it's fans like Nick who sum it up perfectly for me.
Loyalty to your club is a wonderful thing and necessary for them to go in the direction you want even though It can be very hard to keep summoning the will to go when times are bad and there's only a few hundred or a few thousand of us there.
BUT there's something I think Nick and RT aren't taking into account here.
First and foremost fans are paying CUSTOMERS who have a RIGHT to expect value for their money. Football is now an incredibly expensive form of 'entertainment' and is becoming even more so when compared to other ways of spending several hours (including travel, parking, getting in and out of the stadium etc) of what should be LEISURE time, in other words a period of time in which you relax and enjoy yourself.
In the 21st Century the attitude 'Real fans go to every game and hand over hundreds or thousands of pounds of their own hard earned money no matter how rubbish the product is every year without question and everyone else is a plastic piece of contemptible rubbish' no longer flies or it shouldn't.
It's that precise mentality that allows clubs to laugh in our faces and think of us as mugs who are no more than walking ATM's to them. Sometimes the only way forward, the only way to show your love for your club is to withhold that money and stay away. The balance sheet and their wallets are all that matters to chairmen. managers and players today, it's been true for a very long time but before Sky bought the game lock stock and barrel it wasn't quite so blatantly obvious. Football wasn't all that expensive compared to going to the pub for a couple with your mates or going out with the kids to the cinema or other ways of spending your disposable income. Now it's a ruinously expensive thing compared to almost every other leisure activity and frankly we DESERVE to be given something of value in return and treated as people not mugs who'll swallow all the crap and pay to watch some dire junk from people on weekly wages bigger than most of our annual salaries.
I love Bolton Wanderers, I've followed them for more than thirty five years and I stayed away only once, in 2009 when I decided what was going on under Megson was wrong for my club and I refused to help fund an ongoing disaster. I'm not quite there again yet but it's getting closer. I'll be at the game tomorrow and if we lose but fight well and perform well I'll be happy but if we play as badly as we did against Reading, if the players show so little spirit and Dougie's master plan of not changing anything doesn't work then I'll be teetering on refusing to renew my season ticket for only the second time since I personally paid for my first in 1985. I don't belittle the absolute die-hards who say we MUST carry on going no matter what but I do pity them. They are being stupid, admirably loyal yes but stupid because that very loyalty is what allows Phil and the rest of his cronies to keep making such a dreadful hash of things while drawing six figure salaries that WE help to pay for.
I was there in Division 4, I put money into the club through things like the lifeline and I chucked money in the buckets that were being waved around in the car park where Normid were allowed to build their supermarket because we were too broke to keep all of Burnden Park AND pay the bills which were nothing compared to today's so I don't have any qualms about claiming 'real fan' status. Like breadman I've been there done that but the way things are going now I can't justify continuing to chuck good money into a crap product. And right now our product is so crap calling it football is probably a violation of The Sale of Goods Act 1979 and Trading Standards Office rules about making dishonest statements concerning your goods or services.