From Matthew Turvey of the Express and Star.
Protest? Sadly they don’t care what we think
Friday 4th May 2012, 7:21AM BST.
Planned protests throw the spectre of an ugly game to come at the weekend. Matthew Turvey asks if protests are productive, or merely a waste of time, energy, and anger.
With the last home game coming this weekend, much focus has turned to, and will continue to turn to, the future of Alex McLeish.
With Aston Villa offering a short and anodyne statement regarding the short term situation at the club, many people have tried reading into it to get some insight into what is going on.
Is Alex McLeish staying? Is he going? Is the statement meant to infer “Here’s only here till the end of the season” or “We are fully supporting the man in charge”?
The dreaded “vote of confidence” has usually pre-empted the sacking of manager who have suffered with poor form so, to that end, Villa fans looking for some belief that change is coming will be reading that.
However, that is the problem with any of these unclear statements – they get subjectively validated. People will read what they want and be none the wiser. The reality is that the only people who know definitively what is happening to McLeish is the board and, as we well know, they are far from communicative.
Their decision to not make a clear cut statement may come to backfire though as the Tottenham Hotspur promises, even if it doesn’t deliver, a toxic atmosphere.
Many fans who I know personally have said they are going to leave their kids at home for the game, as they don’t want them exposed to what is being planned.
Such a statement may sound overly dramatic, but it is pretty clear that the residual tension and anger towards the former Birmingham boss has been percolating.
Those who have sat back for the most part of the season have been quiet because they believed things would change, but the statement infers to them that McLeish may be going nowhere. These people may well be patient, but such a statement, as subjective as their reading of it is, is acting like a straw that broke the camels back.
After all, there is a solid argument for why the team shouldn’t be disrupted at present with Villa’s confidence in a very fragile state. However, if change doesn’t happen, many fans have serious concerns as to how the club may develop under another season of McLeish’s stewardship.
Maybe giving the man from Barrhead money will make next season better than this, if McLeish stays on, but few people want to even try that option even though, in reality, the control of our club, since it was delisted from the stock market, is very limited.
Sure, we can protest. We can make a lot of noise and show, in no uncertain terms, that we are not happy with the manager. We can do the same for the CEO and the owner if we like but, when it comes down to it, if a stubborn man wants to hold his nerve and is willing to live with the financial ramifications, there is nothing else that fans can do.
Yes, they can stop buying season tickets and, yes, this will have a financial impact on the revenue that Randy Lerner can realise for the club, both as its own entity or as a method of making money for the American dollar billionaire.
The reality is, as much as fans can be angry, that season ticket sales (and matchday revenue as a whole) comprises far less of a portion of revenue compared to days goneby. In an era where corporate sponsorship is the new money maker, we’ve seen clubs like Manchester United put sponsors on their training kit.
That’s right. Not on the shirts their players wear to play in the Premier League, but on the club’s training kit, and we are not talking about small sums either.
The same thing that made the Premier League one of the most exciting leagues in the world because of its ability to attract great players – money – is the same thing that is killing all of our collective passions.
We have to consider that the game as we know it – the game we all own ever since our first time kicking a tin can in the street – is gone in real terms. Sure, there are still 11 players playing against 11. Goals still count for one point each, and there are still yellow and red cards.
In real terms, if you don’t care to look deeper, then you could fool yourself to think it is the same game you or I play on a Saturday and Sunday mornings in parks and fields up and down the country.
You could think that the same honest, working man’s game is alive and kicking but, sadly, you’d be wrong. It may look the same, it may well play the same (mostly), but it is a bastardised relation of that game, with money as the new God.
It isn’t the same game when massive players used to kick wingers in the air and get nothing more than a wagged finger. It isn’t the same game where pitches resembled bogs and marshes, even at the very top level.
Some may laud the change as progress, as a stride forwards in quality and watchability, whilst others, dulled by their inability of their club to compete, have become bored with the new, castrated, non working-class sport.
But if clubs in the present climate take more notice of a corporate sponsor pulling their deal than what the fans think, can we really consider football our game any more?
Something to think about if the protests go ahead. Shout louder if you want. The sad reality is that Randy, in his stubbornness, probably doesn’t care what you think. Well unless you’re the owner of Genting.
You’re not, are you?
Read more:
http://www.expressandstar.com/sport/aston-villa-fc/2012/05/04/protest-sadly-they-dont-care-what-we-think/#ixzz1tsizVU66
