Hey ! I went to a St Johnstone vs. Rangers game about three months ago on a very wet and windy Wednesday night on the fringes of Perth. It was…memorable. The quality was something I won’t forget easily… <shakes head in disbelief>…
I live 400 yards from Highbury Stadium but support Lincoln City. 
Mind you, great street cred when the cab driver asks if I supprt the Arsenal. 
I live about two or three miles from Highbury and support Oldham Athletic. No credibility at all.
Hah! Luxury! You should try being an Alloa Athletic supporter! 
Oldham have been in the Premiership/old first division. Lincoln have never been close. Everybody knows Lincoln are crap all the time. Oldham are only crap some of the time. My team is worse than yours, so there. Nah nah nah 
The Clawman – All my life I’ve wanted to meet an Alloa Athletic supporter ! I just don’t get the name: I have this romantic notion that one day a group of South Sea’s Islanders somehow ended up being blown into the northern hemisphere and started a town and footie team. The name just seems slightly to cheerful for genuiine Scots…
Have no idea what Alloa is like but I have to say I drove through Forfar and to see that ground right next (I mean right next: No trees, nuffin) to the North Sea made me wince. I tell ya, you don’t play football in Forfar, you survive football.
Hello London_Calling! Sadly, Alloa is more your typical post-industrial wasteland rather than a geographically displaced tropical paradise. Used to be a big beer town but has gone from nine breweries to one (small one at that) in the space of thirty years.
The team are doing well though - they’ve cut their cloth so to speak. They remain part-time, with the ambition to be the best part-time team in Scotland. They won the Second Division a couple of years ago, got relegated again, but are now back in Division One. Should be an interesting season.
Our star player up until last season was a guy called Willie Irvine (played for Hibs at one point). He was/is a prison officer, and had once been held hostage in a prison riot. In one of those “likes and dislikes” questionnaires that footballers get asked to fill out, he answered the Scottish Sun’s question “What is your greatest fear?” with the immortal “Masked men with knives!”. Which I thought was pretty cool…
Can you be sure the “masked men with knives” isn’t season ticket holders wanting their money back ?
You could support Raith Rovers in Scotland. For no other reason than…
They had the best commentary mistake I can remember:
an English commentator said (after a unsuspected win):
"They’ll be dancing on the streets of Raith tonight…"
(All the better if you know there is no place in Scotland called Raith - they play out of Kirkcaldy)
Bit of bandwagonning at work there is all, mate. Never, ever let me hear you imply that Liverpool are “the Catholic team” on Merseyside. No hun fans at my school thankyouverymuch.
hmm… everton I didn’t imply Liverpool are the “catholic” team, I was talking about United. United may have been the “catholic” team a long time ago but they’re not now.
Also bandwaggoning suggests supporting a team because they are successful no? People seem to forget that before the advent of the Premiership, United didn’t win anything for like 24 years (cept the occasional FA cup). United’s support in Ireland goes back decades, it’s not a recent thing.
ruadh maybe it’s not reciprocal anymore (I had a feeling it used to be anyway - ask some older Celtic fans)
I don’t really understand the ABU mentality. They are a good team, so what? In 5 years they’ll probably be shit again. It’s not like they buy in big names all the time - ok they have some big names but a lot of their players either come from Manchester (Giggs, Scholes, Butt) or were discovered and nurtured by the United youth system.
sigh, this is all a debate for another thread I suppose.
Personally, for me the ABU mentality is about Manchester United’s success or the players (even Roy Keane isn’t quite the figure of loathing I would imagine him to be) but about two things: Sir Alex Ferguson and a section of the United fans.
Ferguson is a bitter, bitter man unable to accept criticism of himself or his team. He has done more to alienate me than any other factor. I’m starting to feel the same about David O’Leary’s apparent refusal to acknowledge criticism.
Secondly, a section of the fans are the obvious glory-seeking types, and as a fan of a club struggling to survive on low attendances while part-time fans in the town spend their money on Manchester United shirts while proclaiming themselves ‘the world’s greatest fans’ grates unbelievably. I actually have nothing against the genuine fans, and think United usually play attractive, attacking football with (mostly) quality players.
I could see Arsenal attracting the same “ABA” mentality from (non-Spurs) fans if they continue to be successful, although Wenger’s relative calmness and lack of sniping may lessen the attitude a little.
Sorry. That first line should read:
I probably shouldn’t have bothered saying ‘Personally, for me…’ either. Redundant language man strikes again!
OK, I have a few more questions about how the Premiership functions. I know there’s a 38 game season and the bottom 3 teams are sent down to the First Division while the top 3 come up. I see Leeds plays in 3 tournaments, the UEFA Cup, which I’m pretty sure is for teams who can’t play in the Champions League, the FA Cup, which I think are the playoffs for the Premiership, and the Worthington Cup, which I have no idea about. If you can fill in the blanks/correct any errors that’d be great. If there’s a Premiership for Dummies website that you can give me that would be even better.
You are correct about the Premier League championship and the promotion/relegation to/from the Football League First Division.
The FA Cup is an entirely separate cup competition, open to all amateur and professional sides in England. It has a number of qualifying rounds to reduce the number of amateur sides, with professional league clubs granted byes to the First Round Proper. Premier League clubs are granted byes to the Third Round Proper.
The Worthington Cup is the current name for the League Cup (Worthington are the sponsor). This is another entirely separate cup competition open only to professional league clubs. It has diminished greatly in popularity, and IIRC the prize no longer involves the Holy Financial Grail of a place in a European cup competition. As a result many Premier League clubs do not wish to take part any more, and many play teams made up of their reserve and youth players to avoid tiring their first-team players.
The winner of the Premier League gets a place in the UEFA Champions League, which is the most prestigious European cup competition (and therefore the one with the greatest TV revenues and prize money) due to the presence of theoretically the most successful clubs. A weighting system is used to grant clubs from leagues that have produced more successful clubs in past European cup competitions byes to later rounds (thus weeding out, say, the Latvian champions and ensuring that the, say, Italian champions are present and attracting TV viewers).
European cup competitions are constantly changing. Additional places in the Champions League are also available to each country, but I’m buggered if I can remember what the criteria are now beyond the national weightings mentioned above. The UEFA Cup is traditionally open to league runners-up and domestic cup winners, and is thus less attractive to advertisers. The European Cup Winners Cup was yet another, and I’m not even sure if it still exists. Then there’s the Intertoto Cup, created to enable TV revenue all year round by playing it in the summer (with the prize being a place in the UEFA Cup) – nobody cares about that one.
If you want to avoid bandwagonning, the three teams to avoid in England (in order of leperdom) would be 1. Man U (sorry Jojo), 2. Arsenal, 3. Liverpool. In Scotland, the Glasgow behemoths Celtic and Rangers would apply.
It’s easy enough for any fan to make a case saying “support my team 'cos I do”, and all the minnows mentioned so far would have an ironic cachet. If I was recommending you to back a team it would have to avoid the more conspicuous negatives such as savage fans or thuggish players; it would also have to have some chance of winning a trophy one day. Another factor would be to pick a team with a reasonable stadium (assuming you might want to attend a home game at some stage), and since most of our clubs are pretty old it would be a waste not to pick one with at least some romance in its past.
My own team (Everton) would’ve been perfect in the '80s but we won’t be winning any more trophies in the immediate future I fear. Manchester City would be a fine choice if you’re a total masochist. Leicester do have a certain harmless mediocrity about them. Maybe Newcastle then, or Aston Villa?
[sup]btw, **Crusoe** don't forget that Welsh clubs play in the FA Cup too - they won't like to be overlooked in Cardiff.[/sup]To add to what Crusoe wrote, promotion between divisions follows this format: The teams in the first two places at the end of the season go up automatically with the next 8 teams (in 3rd through 10th place) entering the playoffs (I think it is 8 teams, but it could be 4). The winner of the playoffs then gets promoted. For some teams, aiming to get in the playoffs is what the season is all about and then getting to the playoff final is almost like the cup final.
AFAICR, the top three teams in the UK Premiership get into the “Champions League” and compete against the best teams in Europe. Also, there are EUFA cup places avavailable for teams which finish in the top 6 or 7 (or something like that) of the league. Much of who gets to play in which European competition depends on who wins what. For example, if a team wins the league and the cup, the runners up will generally get to play in Europe because the winners of the cup will go into the Champions league (which is a more prestigous competition).
I’m sure I’ve prolly got some of that mixed up, but someone more knowledgable than me will be along to straighten it all out.
Rick
This reminds me of an error made by a commentator during the Holland-Yugoslavia game in France 98. Holland get a free kick, Ivica Kralj shouts something to his defenders and the commentator announces: “And if you speak Yugoslavi, you know exactly what that wall was told to do.”
*Yugoslavi 
*
RickQ:
4 teams in the playoffs. Everyone should try to catch some of those play off games. Serious craziness there.
Also, England are now alloted 4 places in the Champions (hah!)League by UEFA, because of good performances in the past few years in that competition or something. This has led to Newcastle getting into what Sir Bobby probably still refers to as the European Cup. They have to go through a couple of qualifying round though, as do the third placed team.
Crusoe:
I’m sure the Worthington cup still offers a UEFA cup place, at least it did this season, so now mighty Blackburn are heading for a (probably short) European tour. If they stop offering a place in Europe they might as well pack up the trophy and give it to any random first division side, because everyone else in the premiership will stop giving a damn too. Not that it’s not already happening, what with even Bolton (IIRC) fielding a reserve side and all… At least it still gives a back door way into Europe, and let me dream of a European adventure for some time when the mighty Owls made it to the semis.
The Cup Winners Cup has been discontinued though, I guess because it had a really stupid name. And it went the way of the Worthington Cup with regards to popularity.
-Salil.
I believe Ipswich Town (just relegated from the Premiership) have got a UEFA Cup place because they had the best disciplinary record of all teams not already in European competition. They went into a draw held by UEFA and won.