English Premiership Questions

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve got soccer fever after the World Cup. I drifted away from the sport in 1999 because that year I hurt my left knee, making me too slow to play high school soccer, and the US had gotten their asses reamed at the World Cup en France. Now I can bring myself to watch soccer again, and I’m remembering how much I loved it. I want to continue my fanship after the World Cup, and I know how bad MLS is on the world’s scale [my friend from Yugoslavia showed me a European magazine where their standings and results got approximately one third of a column on a four column page of results from around the world] so I’ve decided that the Premiership would be fun to follow. I chose them over leagues of other countries primarily because I can get the most information on them in English. So…

What team shuld I root for? I’m thinking about Leeds United, I originally checked them out because I knew about The Who’s Live at Leeds album, and they seem like a good group of guys. Among their players is Robbie Keane, who I automatically liked after that goal against Germany. I think I"ll root for them, unless as it turns out they’re a bunch of dirty jerks with a scumbag owner.

What are the big rivalries? I only know one (Man United-Liverpool, it was in a Rick Reilly column). What are some other big grudge matches?

Just tell me stuff that I should know in general about the league. I figure I can start following them next season because when I go to college I’ll have high speed Internet, so I can watch gamecasts over the web. Thanks for telling me what you know.

2

Leeds are perennial challengers but never good enough to actually win the league. They spent millions last year and are now under huge pressure from shareholders to reduce their debt. Keane is likely to stay, but other names like Viduka, Dacourt, Kelly, Duberry, Bowyer and potentially Ferdinand may be sold. They also have the worst off-field disciplinary problems in the Premier League; Bowyer and striker Alan Smith were controversially cleared of a racist assault on a student outside a nightclub. While the chairman, Peter Ridsdale has said the right things, the manager, David O’Leary, has irritated many with his steadfast refusal to acknowledge any shortcomings in his players. It’s all someone else’s fault, on or off the pitch, and usually the referee’s. He’s becoming as intensely unlikeable as Alex Ferguson, IMHO.

The big rivalries are usually geographical. A basic list:
[ul][li]Manchester United vs Liverpool[/li][li]Manchester United vs Manchester City[/li][li]Manchester United vs Leeds United[/li][li]Liverpool vs Everton[/li][li]Arsenal vs Tottenham[/li][li]Newcastle vs Sunderland vs Middlesbrough (all three)[/li][li]Leeds vs Chelsea (down to 1970s history)[/li][li]Aston Villa vs West Bromwich Albion vs Birmingham (potentially this season)[/ul][/li]As for ‘stuff in general’, can you be more specific?

3

Minor correction to Crusoe’s post, it was Jonathan Woodgate who was arrested for racial assault (along with Lee Bowyer), not Alan Smith. But Smith is a thug too. Hate to break it to ya BKB but you’ve picked the dirtiest team in the Premiership to support.

And there aren’t actually webcasts of Premiership games, are there?

4

Duh me. Woodgate, of course. Smith is a little psychopath but he wasn’t involved.

You should be able to get live radio broadcasts over the internet, but I don’t know of any live TV, as ruadh says.

5

Pick a team to root for that has a regular derby as part of the season. Derbies make for excellent games to get all worked up about. As Tommy Smyth said today during the broadcast of the Senegal v Sweeden game, you can throw the form book out the window in a derby. :slight_smile:
I root for Leicester City, who unfortunately have gotten what they deserve and been sent down to the First Division for the coming year. I started rooting for them when they picked up some marginal goalkeeper named Kasey Keller. :wink: He moved on, in a stupid move, to Rayo Vallecano a few years ago, but I still like Foxes. Let’s hope they make it back to the big dance next year!
Want to have real fun? Root for Southhampton. You’ll never be worried about winning the League, but you’ll constantly be on the edge of your seat right to the last game hoping that relegation is staved off for one more year! :wink:
Then, there is the cool uniform concept. This would be like rooting for the Yankees because pinstripes are so tradition laden and look so good. Or you could pick up a team based on the home park they play in; I just love the camera view at White Hart Lane, looking damn near straight down at the touch line.

I wish we could import the passion for the game you find at any premiership ground. What a great atmosphere it must be in person. I hope to find out some day soon!

6

I dunno, when I played soccer I was a bit of a thug [I had more yellow cards than our coach could remember a forward getting for our school, I probably had more than anyone else on the freshman team] and I do like guys who aren’t afraid to be aggressive. Though the racial incident does seem horrible, can you give me a link to the story on it? I liked what I read about Fowler, Mills and Ferdinand, too [with Ferdinand on the team it seems a bit odd those guys would make a race-based assault]. Plus, I’m a fan of the New York Giants and Washington Capitals, I’m all too used to teams coming close but then failing.

7

This is Bowyer’s version of the story.

It doesn’t mention that it also involved team-mate Michael Duberry being caught perjuring himself to defend Woodgate and Bowyer in court. He admitted it but was never imprisoned, and this disillusioned a lot of observers. The alleged attackers were acquitted due to a lack of identification evidence. The Asian student involved launched a civil suit in December last year, but I don’t know what’s become of it.

I think you have to remember that a lot of players are basically young lads, often without the greatest education in the world, suddenly given lots of money, opportunities for heavy drinking and treated like celebrities. That’s not to excuse their behaviour, but to partially explain why they might act so badly off the pitch.

Leeds have traditionally been known as a dirty team (based on their vicious tactics in the 1970s) and although they’re not exactly the worst in the world they’re still known for having poor off-field discipline. Mills and Smith are known for their poor temper on the pitch, although international duty seems to have mellowed Mills slightly.

You could try following Manchester City; a very popular team (in terms of fan support) with a recent history of being the poor cousin to city rivals United. Lately they’ve been up and down through relegation and promotion but may be an interesting attacking side to watch this season as they’ve been promoted back to the Premier League.

8

I’m an unofficial Arsenal fan, because they were the best team in FIFA: Road to World Cup '98. What can I say–it stuck. Nowadays I’m fueled less by love for Arsenal than by hatred for Manchester United. Why? Just because.

9

[rabid fan] The sky is blue, the clouds are white, thats why God’s a Wednesdayite [/rabid fan]

Oh, you want to support a Premiership team… The way things are going, Wednesday won’t be back there for a long time. :frowning:

Please don’t pick Leeds United, AKA the ‘white sh*te’. They’re a bunch of thugs (that’s only partially a personal bias talking). Please don’t be a glory-hunting Man U supporter. Apart from that, I don’t care :wink:

I’d suggest picking a small team. West Brom, maybe, but they probably won’t be in the Prem for long. Bolton, perhaps? Sam Allardyce did very well last season and they’ve made a couple of good signings. Not a bad time to be a Bolton fan.

If you really can’t decide, watch a few games. Very often, a team might just pick you. It could be because of great play, or fighting spirit , or even a silly reason like good shirts or good fans or something like that, and then they’ll be your team for life (eg, see the Leicester supporter **DSYoung ** above).

I’d also suggest giving the Spanish Primera Liga a look.

  • Salil.
10

Leeds were disliked in the '70’s because their manager had his team play up to the edge of the rules using any method to gain advantage, including intimidating referees and provoking the opposition, and Manchester United with Roy Keane have refined the art all too well.

but Leeds were also the most proffessionally organised, they were the first to keep records and assessments of opposing players, keeping dietry and training records of their own team.

There were hardly any worse than many other teams of the time, Liverpool could swing a mean boot, as could several others.

Perhaps the only team that played with any real football ethics at all was Nottingham Forest, whose manager was known to swap players of his team who played in a mean spirited way.

As for a couple of Leeds players getting drunk and behaving badly, hmmphh, like no other stories exist about other teams and their thuggish players ?

Doesn’t make it right, just doesn’t make it all that unusual.

As for playing dirty, well its pretty well known in the Premiership that kicking Smith when the ref is looking elsewhere will provoke him into doing something stupid and the subsequent sending off will provide an advantage.
Says something about other teams in the premiership methinks.

Note that Leeds United’s disciplinary record on the field of play, while not great, is not particularly worse than the rest of the clubs, I think Leeds are around fifth worst but there are plenty of others aiming to outstrip that.

As for off-field, well these pale into absolute insignificance when compared to the likes of Maradona whose herculean drugs and sex excesses would have made Freddie Mercury seem like an innocent schoolboy.

Leeds are pretty much a young side with a lot to learn about life, they are maturing slowly, but when you look around at say Tony Adams, Paul Gascoigne and others then it is obvious that there is a problem about young men with ego boosting adulation and large amounts of cash, unfortunately the feeding frenzy of our scandal driven shit wipes that are sold as newspapers really do not give a toss, just so long as they can fill their pages by exarcerbating an already bad situation.

Just wait until West Bromwich and Birmingham start up their first premiership season following promotion, these clubs are already known to the police for their highly organised and violent fans, I’d say tere is going to be a resurgence of serious trouble at certain games.

What it all boils down to is that for many supporters, they do not pick the team to support, they either inherit the club or something unknown and uncontrolled within them makes the decision, thus you get Liverpool fans in London, or Leeds fans in Glasgow(yes! really!)

If something instinctive says to you that you should support Leeds then be true to it and do so, and if that doesn’t grab you then another club will, its not something that can be explained.

11

Of course, you could always skip the Premiership entirely and start hanging out at Flanagan’s in Bethesda with the Washington D.C. Celtic Supporters Club. The football’s not as good, but the fans are the best in the world.

12

I could be biased but, to my mind, there is no doubt - you should support Manchester United. For the following reasons:

  • it will be easy to find out information about them, they’ve even got their own cable TV channel - MUTV. MUTV show all United games about half an hour after they finish (I don’t know if you can get it in the US but I think you can get it in Japan, Korea etc so it’s possible)

  • there’s a good chance they might actually win something

  • they are good to watch. They play attractive attacking (Brazilian-style) football

  • all United fans are automatically Celtic fans as well so you get two teams for the price of one (buy one, get one free)

  • they have great players:

Barthez - France international goalkeeper
Beckham, Butt, Scholes, Neville - England internationals
Keane - Ireland international (kind of)
Van Nistelroy - Holland international
Veron - Argentina international
Giggs - Wales international (the finest winger in the world IMO)

  • next season could be good - City have been promoted so there’ll be a derby. Also they didn’t win anything last season - the last time they didn’t win anything in a season, they came back the following season and won the treble - league, cup and european cup

  • they are the best football team in the world (sorry I did say I was biased, but I do actually come from Manchester so I’m allowed to be)

13

I’m actually curious about this. My one and only trip to Old Trafford, I was introduced to everyone I met in the pub as “a Celtic supporter” and to a man they all proclaimed their affection for Celtic. In my life I’ve only met one Man U fan who didn’t at least prefer Celtic to Rangers. Is there some historical link between the clubs that I’m not aware of, or what?

14

Thanks for putting into words what I was feeling, casdave. I was just doing a check to make sure Leeds wasn’t the British equivalent of the Dallas Cowboys in the 70s. The Celtic fans club sounds pretty good, once I’m settled in I just may check it out. I don’t want to root for Man U because I don’t want to be a bandwagoner.

15

ruadh

It’s a weird thing. I’m not entirely sure of the reason for the link myself. It’s possible that United used to be, to a small extent, the “catholic” team and City the “protestant” team (although this division doesn’t exist at all in Manchester now).

It could also have something to do with the early success of both teams - Celtic were the first British team to win the european cup (in 1967), United were the first English team to do it (in 1968).

There’s also the Irish influence. Most Irish people seem to support either Liverpool and Celtic or United and Celtic. (Back in the 50s and 60s Ireland didn’t really have any good football teams). There are huge numbers of people in Liverpool and Manchester of Irish descent - many (most?) of the kids in my school had Irish names and Irish relatives.

I thought it was fairly reciprocal ie Celtic fans also support United (but you would know more about this than me).

I know that in the United shop you can buy Celtic shirts etc and you’ll often see people in the crowd (United fans) wearing Celtic tops. United and Celtic play each other pretty regularly in friendlies, testimonial games etc. (I think United won 3-0 the last time they met).

There’s also the Rod Stewart song “You’re in my heart” which contains the line:

“You’re Celtic, United and baby I’ve decided
you’re the best football team I’ve ever seen”

Rod Stewart is (I believe) a Celtic fan and a United fan.

To sum up, I don’t really know the true reason but, when I was a kid growing up in Manchester, all my friends at school and every other United fan I knew was also a Celtic fan. And we took almost as keen an interest in Celtic’s games as we did in United’s games. I’ll dig out my book on United history and see if it says anything in there.

It’s true that most English people don’t show much interest in Scottish football but United fans are kinda the exception to this rule.

16

Fraid not, most Celtic fans have jumped on the ABU bandwagon as well.

Nope. Last time we met you guys was in the Ryan Giggs testimonial, which Celtic won 4-3. Previous to that was the Tom Boyd testimonial, which you won 2-0. And I think we’ve won most of the recent ones prior to that, at least I seem to remember hearing that the Boyd testimonial was the first time Ferguson had beaten Celtic as a United manager.

Anyway, thanks for the info.

17

Let me try a couple analogs in American sports: Support Manchester United if you’re a Yankees fan who doesn’t live in NY, or a Cowboys fan who doesn’t live in Dallas, or a Lakers fan who doesn’t live in LA. ManU is the team for bandwagoneers.

I’ve followed Arsenal since the days of Malcolm Macdonald, win, lose, or draw. Unfortunately, becoming a fan isn’t a rational choice, so I’m at a loss to give you any further advice.

BTW, a lot of people say that there’s a rivalry between Tottenham and Arsenal, but calling it a rivalry assumes that it’s competitive, and until the Totts start winning a few, well…frankly, the Gunners have bigger fish to fry!

18

ABU?

19

Anything But United

20

Ah. I am familiar with that feeling. Thanks.