As a customer I generally know when I go into a shop that what I purchase will fulfil my expectations. If it doesn’t then I can of course get my money back. If I attend a concert and the performer doesn’t turn up then, again, I should expect to get my money back. That ability to define a transaction and the two-way process of money in relation to it more-or-less defines what a customer is. But in sport we know that the “transaction” is not as simple as that; and when the object of our adoration (e.g. Aston Villa) fails to deliver according to the social (almost unspoken) contract that binds the fan to the team, then we generally moan and blame and throw a few curses, but we don’t (or rarely) actually seek to get our money back for the bad showing. Even when that has been happening for as long as five years!
Therefore, football supporters are not customers; we are supporters, and “supporting” means that we not only add our voices to the occasion (you might be thrown out of a shop if you did that!) but the money we lay out is meant to (well, well) support the club and help raise it to the station we expect of it.
I’ve written all that because (over time) I’ve seen on some forums an explicit acceptance by fans that they are “customers” of the club they follow. In my opinion such fans have only encouraged the disconnect that has evolved between fans and club at Villa Park, particularly over the last 10 years. The club was never founded on that basis (its basis was as a club!) and in reality the relationship is largely an emotive and experiential one (almost spiritual, as Bill Shankley would attest) and not singularly related towards the idea of purchasing an object.
Over the years, professional football players have argued, “Well, cinema stars get huge incomes, so why not us as well?” And the footballers won their argument. Even though 60 years ago a top footballer still got substantially above the national average wage, with the bonus of extra payments from testimonial matches (and, it is said, a mysterious banknote left in their shoe after a match if they’ve done well), they felt done by. Playing one or two football matches per week deserved more than twenty quid, they said, the poor dears. Ron Wylie (a servant of the club for 45 years, intially as a player) is reported as saying that “soon we had sixty quid in our pay-packets and we didn’t know what to do with it!”
Well, I’m not saying they were altogether wrong in their demands, but the result of that arguably began the chasm that often exists between supporters and players today. It has been a creeping process, and certainly since the start of the greater influx of overseas players following 1996, the divide exists despite all the artificial attempts to ‘bridge that gap’.
So, by stealth, our beautiful game has been hijacked by the money people, and we have been persuaded that more professionals are needed at all levels of the football club. However, “professionalism” and marketability tend to mean bigger financial outlays: but do they produce worthwhile results often enough? If we were to take the case of Mr. Tom Fox, then the answer is an unequivocal ‘no’, I suggest.
In my view, Remi Garde highlighted exactly what’s been missing. He was referring to the players when he said there’s something wrong with the players’ attitude on the pitch, but you could say that attitude has been wrong from the top down. Especially when the top brass regard the fans as customers and have used questionnable methods to keep those “customers” in order on match days.
As in 1968-69, the time has come for a total re-vamp. Forty-six years ago plus the club’s officers and fans worked as one to re-establish this great club. The academy was re-energised and we saw great players emerging from the youth ranks. The ‘all for one’ energy succeeded to the extent that the club became one of the few British winners of the European Cup only 10 years after they had left the third tier. Then a certain person (who was still a hero to many because of that 1968-69 re-generation) manoeuvred a situation that actually helped (intentional or not) to further a disconnect between fans and the club.
In my view it’s that spirit of 1968-69 we need to revert to if Aston Villa is to get back to its proper footing in a year that sees us having reached 20 years since the club won a trophy. But how to achieve that now when the fans do not have any shareholding? As mere customers I suppose we have to wait to see what happens next – but should we do more as supporters?
This link provides an interesting report on 'the Review of the Club' that has been undertaken. A white-wash you might say? Are the players the main fault?
No comments:
Post a Comment