Right. As I say, perfectly professional.
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He can't take the hint imo. Poor guy. He's been here so long and always thought he had a job for life. the thought of having to leave is difficult for him to take.
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the problem with the performances this season is that they're the same performances we've seen for the last 2 season. just abysmal shockingly bad efforts where everyone looks like they've been on the lash the night before....although this season they seemed to have taken their sh*t to a completely new level.
I thought Ramsey vs Watford was pretty low but the West Brom defending took it even further.
The issue now is that we don't seem capable of raising our game to grind out the required wins for 4th place (or even 5th) everyone has given up.
We've always been to pick ourselves out and get the results needed...remember when we got 26 from 30 points in the last 10 games to nail Spurs on the last game of the season. No Chance of this team doing anything like that.
At this rate our best chance of Europe would be no have a tackle free last few games and try and get the Fail Play spot.
It's time for someone new. Someone young, fresh, determined and with new ideas. Wenger doesn't have the tactically know how for today's game or a willingness to even try something different.
Not sure what the issue is...board just have to be brave and firm and let him know they would like to go in a different direction.
True, but the majority of the people who would blame the fans are the same people who routinely denigrated the fans who have held the view that Wenger needed to go. They criticized their intellect, their social background, their maturity and even their mothers. Some of them were told they needed a new hobby.
So these same people are now faced with a choice; admit they were wrong and that the people they disparaged so viciously were right, or blame them again. Unsurprisingly many will choose to do the latter as they aren't big enough to do the former.
Yes, yes, but this idea that football fans 'deserve' something, or are in some way different to consumers of any other product, service or entertainment, is just a bit silly. If they don't want Wenger at the club and if they don't renew in sufficient numbers, he'll be gone. But turning up every week and moaning about what they're watching is a bit silly.
You know as well as I do that a chap who walks away now may never get his ST back, so why should he walk away based on Wenger when the change he so desperately wants may be just around the corner?
I know chaps who absolutely hate Wenger but have been going since late 70s or early 80s, a similar vintage to you. I won’t resort to clichés such as it being in their blood or whatever but it is an absolutely massive part of their lives and will always be.
The current decline of Wenger should not impact that.
Silly? Perhaps so, but then so much about football is silly so we can dismiss that.
I'm terribly glad you didn't mention nonsense like it 'being in their blood', because we know, do we not, that supporting a club is a hobby; an occasionally emotional hobby, sometimes rooted in tribalism, sometimes driven by a sense of place or belonging, but still a hobby. Blokes who go to Middlesrough for a league game on a Tuesday night aren't doing anything for the club, they're going because they enjoy the experience (and possibly because they are social and sexual failures, but anyway). It is an entirely selfish matter and an entirely objective judgement. If you don't like it, don't go.
He is being selfish, of course, although which of us would resign from a job which paid that handsomely where we were allowed to pretty much set and adjust our own targets, accountable to no-one.
So while I have nothing left for him but contempt, in mitigation his bosses have been negligent for allowing him the licence which would bring out the greed in many of us. In other words, they have failed to save him from himself.
Yeah, he was once a very good manager but he has chosen money and self-delusion over being remembered for what he once achieved. Whenever he now deems fit to abdicate from his throne, "It's too late, baby, now it's too late...."
Hang on, maybe he's going to resign at the end of the season. How do we know he's not? All we have in hard evidence is that he has said he will manage at Arsenal or somewhere else next season and that Sir Chips said he appreciates that some fans are unhappy but they will reach a mutual decision for the long term future of the club.
And yet these fans demand the service they feel they have paid for in the form of results and trophies and whatnot, don't they? They feel they are entitled to value for money based on what they pay. The fact that they're too stupid to realise that the club can only charge what the market will bear and - as long as they keep coming back - that's whatever the club likes does not alter the fact that the market is still operating around them.
They are the anomaly and - as long as they keep behaving anomalously - they'll get what they deserve.
On one hand you are insisting that market rules apply, and fans are just stupid versions of customers for coming back, but if those customers demand value for money, as customers do in every other business you lampoon this as absurd. Can't have it both ways, imo.
Perhaps a way to understand it is to recognise that the football club holds a monopoly over supporters of that football club.
Yes, well said. It's no different than telling someone that uses the Underground every day that they have no right to complain because they keep using it and paying for it.
It's nonsense and, as you said earlier, there is no comparison between someone who supports a football club and someone who chooses a product in a market economy, which is the parallel Burney is trying draw.
Your parallel with the tube is absurd. No-one goes on the tube for their amusement. They do it because they have to and there is in many cases no alternative. No-one needs to go to football. It is a leisure activity and nothing more. If people treat it as something more, more fool them.
I don't regard anyone who demands value for money as absurd. They are perfectly entitled to expect value for money, but only if they are prepared to use the other part of the customer's bargain and withdraw their custom if they don't get it. If they refuse to do that, they have no right to expect anything other than to get screwed.
As for your monopoly argument, it falls down on the basis that the monopoly is emotional and imposed purely by the customer on him- or herself. It's voluntary and imaginary, not imposed or real.
Now if you argued that the mere act of going to the football - that physical act of belonging - is actually what they're paying for, then you'd have a better case. However, if you accept that, then there is no way of defining what 'value for money' means in that context and thus no grounds for customer complaint as long as the club keeps letting them in.
It might well not be, as well. They could cycle, run, walk, take a bus or drive for that matter. Just as someone who supports a football club could choose another hobby or even support another club. But that doesn't really matter because the motivation isn't the point.
The point is that they have chosen to take the Underground or support a particular club because they want to, it makes their life better. So to suggest that they have no right to complain once they have taken that decision simply because they have other options is a nonsense.
This is madness. Suppose I choose to eat steak bought from Tesco, because I think eating steak makes my life better, but then find that the steak at Tesco is mass-produced, underhung, badly butchered rubbish; yet I continue to buy it and continue to moan about it and refuse to take my custom to a specialist butcher, or even to try the lamb. You would tell me I was a moron.
There is no elasticity of supply, though. We can't say "I'll come back in a years time please when you've debugged this iteration of the product" because there are only a limited number available. Most people aren't actually demanding trophies (though if they don't they get castigated by the pundosphere for accepting 'mediocrity'), but they are expecting the 11 massively-paid cùnts on the pitch to at least make some kind of effort. They should also expect a level of competence from the officials, with any technological help they may need, as with all other sports.
Yes. Yes you can. That's the point. There is no legal, moral or physical imperative making you go to the football. You can simply choose not to go because what you see on the pitch does not match what your expectations based on what you're paying. You just don't get to watch live games and save yourself plenty quid. Or you can go to another club like a lower-league team. :shrug:
Indeed, one could argue that, by not withdrawing your custom (and thus allowing the club to carry on with what it's doing with no financial penalty), the fans are actually perpetuating what they see as the problem. So, far from being victims in this situation, by failing to act decisively, they are complicit.
No, it's more like me complaining about my daughter's American Express bill; the bitterness and resentment felt is in no way intended to imply a refusal, of any kind, to settle up on time and in full and forever. As Williams suggests (rather knowingly, I thought, for him. He must be having one of his days), it is at most just talk as one is, fundamentally, committed and wouldn't actually have it any other way in any case.
One may only take your view if one isn't, or doesn't feel, duty-bound or responsible. It's about what you believe in; I kept my season tickets even though I haven't regularly attended in over twenty years and anyway was never going to be the sort of middle-aged dad to go to the football. No, it's because I believed my (inevitable) sons should go.
It's as Kevin Keegan told us, years ago; at the end of the day, London trendies often have better things to do with their money than go to the football. Fair enough, everyone must make that choice for themselves. But to banter off those who do pledge to do so, while putting on dog about how great Wenger or Özil are the while, and at the same time refusing to actually contribute to their wages is rather inseemly, in my view.
"Managing the football club", aside from matters pertaining to the team, don't you mean? Otherwise it's all the same thing, ain't it?
The club and team are clearly well-run, so therefore we're essentially judging whether He should stay or go based on acts of God, i.e. the outcome of football matches. Not very professional, imo.
Quite. So while it's sensible for the club to consider bums in seats as a priority, it's also perfectly reasonable and sensible for a supporter to return each year because of this love, while at the same time having every right to point out what he dislikes about his love. The idea that he should just shut up or leave and support another club is as puerile as it is naive.