Before you start I beg your understanding, I am in the company of two masters here........
I have been bemoaning the standard, or at least the vociferous vocality of our support at Anfield. I have pondered its’ reasons at some length. (as you might discover).
It may of course just be due to the location of my seat in the “Moan Stand" This, you see, overlooks the visitors.
People will argue, and indeed do so, that my view is distorted because my seat is much nearer the away support than our most exuberant supporters in the Kop. Maybe so.
Is it because we have little to get excited about?
Again perhaps so, but the problem, assuming it to be a problem, does not seem to be an issue in the “big†games, they being; United, the derby, Chelsea (a more recent phenomenon), and perhaps Arsenal. That’s four home games in the Premiership that the crowd will be guaranteed to be up for. So what is the issue with the remaining fixtures?
We have plenty to play for; the last few years have shown that. We crave being crowned Premiership Champions, so it is certainly not a case of familiarity breeding contempt.
We had our chance to be blasé and complacent in the seventies when we only had to turn up to beat teams week in week out, we weren’t.... it was noisy, very noisy. The reality is there is probably more to get excited about today than there was, added to which the price for success, or failure, has never been so high.
Is it because of a seated Kop?
Now, perhaps we are getting a little nearer the truth of the matter.
Pre Taylor report the Kop had a capacity of around 27,000; it now has a capacity of just less than 16,500, ten thousand people less might just make a difference. However, it is not only the reduction of numbers that the seating has affected.
It is argued, quite reasonably, that seating has and still is, changing the whole demographic profile of the modern football fan.
The whole point of the Taylor report was to find out what went wrong and knowing what that was, how to make football stadia safer places for us to be, we of all people need no reminding .
Most clubs converted terraces into all seater stands, some though were too long in the tooth, or impractical to do so, therefore a crop of new stadiums arose. These new and improved facilities attracted people who previously looked on the whole experience as rather uncivilised.
Women, for instance, have increased in numbers from the early nineties to present day, there was an unexplained dip in the graph during the mid-nineties, but their numbers are increasing again.
The 2001 fan survey carried out by Leicester University showed that female supporters now accounted for 14% of all season ticket sales in the premier league. At Leicester this was a staggering 26%.
That does not tell the whole story though, a lot of those women, unsurprisingly, are also mothers, supporting another statistic, family attendance at matches is also on the increase, for the same reasons - the customer friendly surroundings and facilities.
I used the word "customer" there consciously, as that is what we are now, the marketing men have made sure of that.
We used to be the great unwashed, the masses that turned up every week and did not question how or why it was - it had always been that way.
This brings me on to more observations regarding demographics, the marketing men, and a better standard of living , are changing the profile of the average supporter into a middle class, middle management type of being. In the 2001 Premier League survey reports that over 25% of season ticket holders were earning in excess of £30,000. There will be a north – south divide , but rest assured we are catching up rapidly, and it’s still proportional.
It’s funny to look back on those old news reels of nearly 100,000 (men) throwing their cloth caps in the air when we scored, how many of them would have been in the top quartiles of earners?
Unfortunately the lower earners struggle with £600 a year (£32 a match) plus the added costs of travel and a few pints.
Oh I forgot to mention in the demographic stats - we are getting older too apparently.
Is this suggested demise in volume wit and originality, because our habits have changed? We are, after all, creatures of habit.
I always used to meet the mates and my brother for a pint or two before the game,
That however, was in the good old days when you could hear peas in whistles rattling all over the country at three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. Sky Sports smashed our habit to oblivion and we very rarely do now. I do know however we are a lot more subdued without a beer or two. I am sure we are not alone.
Let me take you back to the Kop in late sixties through the seventies.
Kop season tickets were not that common, and tickets were not pre-sold, so to queue up, two to three hours before a game was not unusual. When you pushed your way through to your spec, where you found your own little Kop community. You looked down through the gloom onto an emerald green pitch that even on a dull day it always seemed brightly illuminated.
On a wet winters day steam emitted from the 27,000 bodies that were crammed in to that famous mound. Mix that with the smoke of half a ton of Park Drive, Sovereign, Players No.6 and Woodies and you had your own smog micro-climate. The smell was fantastic, ale, cigarettes, sweat, all finished off with a whiff of urine.
If you wanted to be where they sang loudest and longest you headed towards the area behind the goal about a third of the way back, and put up with risking the odd broken rib.
You rarely saw a woman on the Kop, but when you did you also saw a smiling man behind her. Those who did go tended to be thought of, probably very unfairly as a bit "frisky".
There was a natural “churn†in the Kop crowd. When you got too old for standing, singing and being pushed around, you were eventually pensioned off and headed to the stands. The odour changed less urine, more cigars. That then kept the Kop generally a young mans domain.
Let’s jump forward again to post seating with this vastly reduced Kop.
The Kops first seated tenants, would have been far more reflective of the young male profile of pre-seated days. Unfortunately one of the problems they had from day one was ganging together with like minded souls they were fractionalised, and divided into small groups. Starting songs here and there, not everyone who had seats in the middle wanted to be a vocalist anymore.
Today those young men are now twelve years older so if you were mid thirties when you first clutched your "new" Kop ticket that means you are now not far away from fifty (that is not very old of course), but getting older.
So the Kop is aging, that natural churn is not there now, you don’t move on to the stands, because..... you are in the stands, as you get older you tend not to get as excited, you don’t enjoy it any the less, but everything is far more sedate.
Not only is it getting older it is becoming more female. One of the aspects helping to hold back the aging process was the allocation of dad’s and lad’s seats…
Crikey!! What was I thinking of?...... Parent and child seats It might hold back the ageing , but it does not help the singing, and shouting particularly, apart from the soprano bits I suppose.
Let me make one or two generalisations, assumptions, if you like, on the profile of a vocal supporter
1 Male
2 Aged 17-35
3 In a group of like minded people, generally not with family
4 Likes a pint
5 Not averse to a bit of industrial language
6 Manual worker, unemployed, student, or possibly CO level office worker.
I mentioned at the start about the perceived volume of the away supporters. Someone did quite rightly point out that the phenomena of away supporters being seen as more vocal than the home supporters is common throughout the Premier League Clubs. You only have to listen to our own travelling fans on TV.
The answer I suggest is in the probable general profile of the away supporter, on a day out.
1 Male
2 Aged 17-35
3 In a group of like minded people, generally not with family
4 Likes a pint
5 Not averse to a bit of industrial language
6 Manual worker, unemployed, student, or possibly CO level office worker
Let me say this I don’t say any of the changes are bad, most are for the better, however if we want to save part of our heritage, the match atmosphere, something needs to change, I don't know what, but think about this.
I was at the St. Etienne game, that was held to be the European night at Anfield and it was loud, but I have never heard anything as loud as the Chelsea semi, never. Several other big Euro nights over the last few years have not been far off the Chelsea game either.
The FA cup games are better too, even when playing smaller teams.
The difference is now when the crowd do get decide to get loud it comes from all four corners of the ground, not just the massed ranks of a 27,000 capacity Kop as was historically the case.
What makes the difference between the supporters at cup games to those at home league games?
Only this week Sir Alex Ferguson has been critical of Uniteds home fans, something that would be considered unimaginable at Anfield.
In the same week Chris Bascombe pointed out that even Newcastle supporters, with their self perpetuating reputation are not at the races (Blaydon or otherwise) when it comes to atmosphere at most matches.
The focus of this has been on season ticket holders, partly because that is a constant for stats, secondly it represents the majority. That does not mean to be dismissive of the none season ticket holders……indeed are they part of the answer to the cup game conundrum? Is it in fact us season ticket holders that are holding things back?
Whatever the reasons, whatever the result, it is still a magical experience for supporters making their first visit, This cynical old writer has seen touching evidence of that within a few days of writing.
No doubt when I made my first visit there were old hands saying it was not what it used to be, times change.
So the upshot is, our support isn't "fucking shit" , it is way better than most, perhaps just different from what it used to be, but when the chips are down.........................
Whatever they go on to achieve under Jose Mourinho, Chelsea and their billionaire owner learnt last night that there are some things money cannot buy. Four famous Scousers once sang that it can't buy you love, but add to that the type of passion that was required to propel Liverpool into their first European Cup final since 1985. Mourinho had shaken his head when asked whether the Kop could be the opposition's twelfth man, but instead they proved to be Liverpool's ninth, tenth and eleventh, inspiring players such as Djimi Traore and Igor Biscan to play like the immortals that they might now become.
Oliver Kay, The Times
VQ
I have been bemoaning the standard, or at least the vociferous vocality of our support at Anfield. I have pondered its’ reasons at some length. (as you might discover).
It may of course just be due to the location of my seat in the “Moan Stand" This, you see, overlooks the visitors.
People will argue, and indeed do so, that my view is distorted because my seat is much nearer the away support than our most exuberant supporters in the Kop. Maybe so.
Is it because we have little to get excited about?
Again perhaps so, but the problem, assuming it to be a problem, does not seem to be an issue in the “big†games, they being; United, the derby, Chelsea (a more recent phenomenon), and perhaps Arsenal. That’s four home games in the Premiership that the crowd will be guaranteed to be up for. So what is the issue with the remaining fixtures?
We have plenty to play for; the last few years have shown that. We crave being crowned Premiership Champions, so it is certainly not a case of familiarity breeding contempt.
We had our chance to be blasé and complacent in the seventies when we only had to turn up to beat teams week in week out, we weren’t.... it was noisy, very noisy. The reality is there is probably more to get excited about today than there was, added to which the price for success, or failure, has never been so high.
Is it because of a seated Kop?
Now, perhaps we are getting a little nearer the truth of the matter.
Pre Taylor report the Kop had a capacity of around 27,000; it now has a capacity of just less than 16,500, ten thousand people less might just make a difference. However, it is not only the reduction of numbers that the seating has affected.
It is argued, quite reasonably, that seating has and still is, changing the whole demographic profile of the modern football fan.
The whole point of the Taylor report was to find out what went wrong and knowing what that was, how to make football stadia safer places for us to be, we of all people need no reminding .
Most clubs converted terraces into all seater stands, some though were too long in the tooth, or impractical to do so, therefore a crop of new stadiums arose. These new and improved facilities attracted people who previously looked on the whole experience as rather uncivilised.
Women, for instance, have increased in numbers from the early nineties to present day, there was an unexplained dip in the graph during the mid-nineties, but their numbers are increasing again.
The 2001 fan survey carried out by Leicester University showed that female supporters now accounted for 14% of all season ticket sales in the premier league. At Leicester this was a staggering 26%.
That does not tell the whole story though, a lot of those women, unsurprisingly, are also mothers, supporting another statistic, family attendance at matches is also on the increase, for the same reasons - the customer friendly surroundings and facilities.
I used the word "customer" there consciously, as that is what we are now, the marketing men have made sure of that.
We used to be the great unwashed, the masses that turned up every week and did not question how or why it was - it had always been that way.
This brings me on to more observations regarding demographics, the marketing men, and a better standard of living , are changing the profile of the average supporter into a middle class, middle management type of being. In the 2001 Premier League survey reports that over 25% of season ticket holders were earning in excess of £30,000. There will be a north – south divide , but rest assured we are catching up rapidly, and it’s still proportional.
It’s funny to look back on those old news reels of nearly 100,000 (men) throwing their cloth caps in the air when we scored, how many of them would have been in the top quartiles of earners?
Unfortunately the lower earners struggle with £600 a year (£32 a match) plus the added costs of travel and a few pints.
Oh I forgot to mention in the demographic stats - we are getting older too apparently.
Is this suggested demise in volume wit and originality, because our habits have changed? We are, after all, creatures of habit.
I always used to meet the mates and my brother for a pint or two before the game,
That however, was in the good old days when you could hear peas in whistles rattling all over the country at three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. Sky Sports smashed our habit to oblivion and we very rarely do now. I do know however we are a lot more subdued without a beer or two. I am sure we are not alone.
Let me take you back to the Kop in late sixties through the seventies.
Kop season tickets were not that common, and tickets were not pre-sold, so to queue up, two to three hours before a game was not unusual. When you pushed your way through to your spec, where you found your own little Kop community. You looked down through the gloom onto an emerald green pitch that even on a dull day it always seemed brightly illuminated.
On a wet winters day steam emitted from the 27,000 bodies that were crammed in to that famous mound. Mix that with the smoke of half a ton of Park Drive, Sovereign, Players No.6 and Woodies and you had your own smog micro-climate. The smell was fantastic, ale, cigarettes, sweat, all finished off with a whiff of urine.
If you wanted to be where they sang loudest and longest you headed towards the area behind the goal about a third of the way back, and put up with risking the odd broken rib.
You rarely saw a woman on the Kop, but when you did you also saw a smiling man behind her. Those who did go tended to be thought of, probably very unfairly as a bit "frisky".
There was a natural “churn†in the Kop crowd. When you got too old for standing, singing and being pushed around, you were eventually pensioned off and headed to the stands. The odour changed less urine, more cigars. That then kept the Kop generally a young mans domain.
Let’s jump forward again to post seating with this vastly reduced Kop.
The Kops first seated tenants, would have been far more reflective of the young male profile of pre-seated days. Unfortunately one of the problems they had from day one was ganging together with like minded souls they were fractionalised, and divided into small groups. Starting songs here and there, not everyone who had seats in the middle wanted to be a vocalist anymore.
Today those young men are now twelve years older so if you were mid thirties when you first clutched your "new" Kop ticket that means you are now not far away from fifty (that is not very old of course), but getting older.
So the Kop is aging, that natural churn is not there now, you don’t move on to the stands, because..... you are in the stands, as you get older you tend not to get as excited, you don’t enjoy it any the less, but everything is far more sedate.
Not only is it getting older it is becoming more female. One of the aspects helping to hold back the aging process was the allocation of dad’s and lad’s seats…
Crikey!! What was I thinking of?...... Parent and child seats It might hold back the ageing , but it does not help the singing, and shouting particularly, apart from the soprano bits I suppose.
Let me make one or two generalisations, assumptions, if you like, on the profile of a vocal supporter
1 Male
2 Aged 17-35
3 In a group of like minded people, generally not with family
4 Likes a pint
5 Not averse to a bit of industrial language
6 Manual worker, unemployed, student, or possibly CO level office worker.
I mentioned at the start about the perceived volume of the away supporters. Someone did quite rightly point out that the phenomena of away supporters being seen as more vocal than the home supporters is common throughout the Premier League Clubs. You only have to listen to our own travelling fans on TV.
The answer I suggest is in the probable general profile of the away supporter, on a day out.
1 Male
2 Aged 17-35
3 In a group of like minded people, generally not with family
4 Likes a pint
5 Not averse to a bit of industrial language
6 Manual worker, unemployed, student, or possibly CO level office worker
Let me say this I don’t say any of the changes are bad, most are for the better, however if we want to save part of our heritage, the match atmosphere, something needs to change, I don't know what, but think about this.
I was at the St. Etienne game, that was held to be the European night at Anfield and it was loud, but I have never heard anything as loud as the Chelsea semi, never. Several other big Euro nights over the last few years have not been far off the Chelsea game either.
The FA cup games are better too, even when playing smaller teams.
The difference is now when the crowd do get decide to get loud it comes from all four corners of the ground, not just the massed ranks of a 27,000 capacity Kop as was historically the case.
What makes the difference between the supporters at cup games to those at home league games?
Only this week Sir Alex Ferguson has been critical of Uniteds home fans, something that would be considered unimaginable at Anfield.
In the same week Chris Bascombe pointed out that even Newcastle supporters, with their self perpetuating reputation are not at the races (Blaydon or otherwise) when it comes to atmosphere at most matches.
The focus of this has been on season ticket holders, partly because that is a constant for stats, secondly it represents the majority. That does not mean to be dismissive of the none season ticket holders……indeed are they part of the answer to the cup game conundrum? Is it in fact us season ticket holders that are holding things back?
Whatever the reasons, whatever the result, it is still a magical experience for supporters making their first visit, This cynical old writer has seen touching evidence of that within a few days of writing.
No doubt when I made my first visit there were old hands saying it was not what it used to be, times change.
So the upshot is, our support isn't "fucking shit" , it is way better than most, perhaps just different from what it used to be, but when the chips are down.........................
Whatever they go on to achieve under Jose Mourinho, Chelsea and their billionaire owner learnt last night that there are some things money cannot buy. Four famous Scousers once sang that it can't buy you love, but add to that the type of passion that was required to propel Liverpool into their first European Cup final since 1985. Mourinho had shaken his head when asked whether the Kop could be the opposition's twelfth man, but instead they proved to be Liverpool's ninth, tenth and eleventh, inspiring players such as Djimi Traore and Igor Biscan to play like the immortals that they might now become.
Oliver Kay, The Times
VQ
