I work in Andover, and although there seems to be a lot of Man U, Arsenal and Spurs fans up there, there are also a lot of Saints fans too. A couple of mates of mine are newcastle fans,but their kids are Saints fans,one goes to games with his grandad,and the other one drags his dad along to St Marys,who behaves like any Saints fan,abusing the ref when dodgy decisions go against us.
I dislike Man U as I dislike Ferguson, Rio, Vidic, Evra, Nani, Carrick, Scholes, Rooney,Hernandez, Giggs etc etc
Why on earth would we want to hate Fulham? They're like the lovable club that always finishes mid-table and never really does anything. On a side note my autocorrect tried to correct' Fulham' to 'shameful'. Oh dear.
Unless a certain resident of Sandbanks has left for the England job come next season, then this question is a very, very easy one.
I hate Man Utd for their fans. I met a fair few of the "proper" fans when I was in uni in Leeds (actually from Manchester and went to games), and they were alright, the ones I hate are the ones who probably couldn't even point out Manchester on a map and only support them because they turned on the TV when they were younger and saw that Utd were winning and chose them to support. The amount of times I have had conversations with these type of people and I've said something along the lines of "O'Shea is ****, not good enough to play for a club like Man Utd" and I've had responses like "well wtf do you know you support Southampton" or "you'd love him at your **** team" makes me really dislike them.
Well that's the majority of football fans I'm afraid. Most of them take more of a casual interest, support a top team simply because they win a lot, never attend matches and disregard any teams who don't play in the Champions League. It's not right to hate them just because they're not as into the sport as you are. People have a right to not be that interested in football.
Well that is all well and good if they are like that, unfortunately they are not and think they know more about football than other people simply because they support a top club. They sit at home in their blow up Man Utd chair they bought at Argos and think they are some top pundit when all they do is just regurgitate what the pundits on TV say and pass it off as their own opinion.
My housemate is from India and he supports Man Utd. He's never seen them play, or even been to Manchester for that matter, but he discusses their results with me and moans when they play crap. This doesn't annoy me, because I accept that it's perfectly fine to take a casual interest in football like he does. However, when Chelsea beat Barcelona last week, he came home moaning because he'd been supporting Barcelona (for the same lame reason that everyone else does) and he even referred to them as "we". "I can't believe we lost to Chelsea", he said. This annoyed me a little bit, because he claims to be a United fan (albeit a casual one) and I certainly don't think he has earned the right to refer to both teams as "we". There are millions of annoying football fans in this country who constantly rave about Barcelona and Messi and clog up my Facebook feed every time they score, but most of them don't go as far as referring to them as "we". I'm getting worried that we're going to end up with millions of "hardcore" Barcelona supporters who have never even been to Spain, let alone Barcelona. Man Utd I don't mind, but **** Barcelona.
I wanted Barcelona to win, and tbh whenever I watch a game on TV there is one team I would rather want to win than the other. I wouldn't go as far as referring to them as "we" but I watch a lot of European football too and have a team I follow in Spain, Italy, France and Germany, would I say I support them? Probably not but then we get into the debate of the difference between someone who supports a team and follows a team. As I said before the reason I dislike Urd is because of the large quantity of fans who think they are some kind of genius for supporting them, and laud it over other people who support smaller teams
There is one line you could pursue, but it does run a risk, and that's to ask... what's all this WE business..? It's THEY who do it and YOU just watch. Of course, he could retort with... well, for You and Saints it's the same. And strictly, he's right. But you have a much deeper emotional connection. BTW, does he have a love of cricket..? That's the really big game in India.
For me, I think it's acceptable to refer to your team as "we" if you contribute to them in some way (buying tickets, merchandise etc.). If you really support a team, you surely have, at the very least, a small item of merchandise in your bedroom. I accept that many people can't attend games due to financial or geographical restraints, so I hate when people criticise those who don't go to games, but surely a decent Man Utd fan would have a shirt or mug or something. Then again, I see people walking around in Barcelona shirts and think to myself "what a knob". Yeah he's always talking to me about cricket as if I have a clue what he's going on about. That's a sport I've never been into and probably never will be.
I'm with you on this, I really love it when we beat Spurs. Also, when younger at Uni, it seemed that every spurs fan I met was a nob, where as the Gunners I met were all ok.
88 minutes on the clock. Saints 2 Spurs 0. Harry on the touchline, twitching like he's never twiched before. I can dream I guess.
Just been watching Spurs v Blackburn. They're having one of their best seasons, as far I can remember, and have a chance to qualifying for the CL (for what the second time?) and they can't fill their ground and the atmosphere is dead. I actually have been warming to then recently as at least there been some semblance to success and stlye to justify the swagger; albeit through their benefactors dosh... who are strangely never mentioned
