I agree, I grew up in Leicestershire and my dad is from Leicester (played for them as a kid) and took me from day one. I went all in the championship/league one days every week and don't so much get so much now I don't live there and actually watch Sheff Utd a fair bit with mates local to me. In the same way as you do, if/when I have kids and live in Sheffield, if they want to support the Sheffield Utd I'd rather that than Leicester as realistically they'd go more. To me it should be your local team
TBH I couldn't care less if somebody thought they were a better fan than me because they spent more at the matches, it'd make no difference to my day. I handed over two grand to Manchester Royal Children's Hospital a few months ago, I'm not going around pretending I'm a better charity giver than the guy who gives an hour of his time to raising money every week. I couldn't give a **** what a pack of nofaces on a forum called me if I was Matth, you do what you want and what you can do, not what others decide makes you a fan.
It's a daft debate, football is forever changing and so are fans. We support our teams in our own way.
You clearly didn't see us play last Sunday then, and Not a chance of me supporting any other club, I'm a Manchester United fan.
Matth spend his life constantly crawling the internet for any information he can find on Utd as well as his post match YouTube video. Dedicated fan IMO.
My favorite type of Man U supporters ( for a laugh anyways and there's one on here at least ) ) , are the ones , when it comes to football , think there's Manchester and it's bordered entirely by England .
Exactly mate. There are people who go every home and away game. I go to most home games and about 6 away games these days.
Lived in Haringey for several years. Spurs were the local team. Never seemed to occur to most kids back then to support anything other than a local club.
Pretty soon we're all going to be enjoying the season after a few games and there will be a ****ing international along to **** it all up.
This is definitely the difference. Sky TV brought football into your house wherever you are. Easy to support United while living in Maidstone (for instance) as it's right there on the television. You don't have to go anywhere. As Luv says, it's a very different world football wise and so is the football fan. The reason I'm not all happy clappy with plastic United 'fans' is that I can't stand being called one, just because I happen to have supported my local team for forty years of my existence, and I can't stand them saying to me that they support United, just like me. Because they ****ing don't. If that upsets people, tough.
I see it in black and white terms. If you couldn't hear the crowd cheering from your back garden, then you have no business supporting that team. I lived and grew up approximately a mile from White Hart Lane, and used to kick the ball against our back wall, imagining I was scoring the winning goal, most Saturdays (if I wasn't taken to the match by my uncle). I realise that I have probably condemned most of you to being little more than plastics, but what can I say? Sorry? Of course, I now live miles and miles away from N.17, but that doesn't matter. It matters where you lived when you first began supporting your team. Note to all Southerners: there is absolutely no excuse for any of you who claim to support either United or 'Pool. You are glory-hunting plastics, and it serves you right that those two teams are now ****e. Please respect my opinions, and resist any temptation to wum me. Thanks.
So we're all agreed then people can just support whoever they want without having to beg for approval from 'real fans'?