2nd Oct 2014
No one likes to see their favourite team lose. It’s a horrible feeling that can ruin an evening, a day, a weekend or even, for some, an entire week.
During my teenage years I was definitely one who would consider the weekend ruined if Liverpool lost. I wouldn’t read any of the Sunday and Monday newspapers and I would avoid watching Match of the Day like the plague. Given Liverpool’s record in the 1990s, this would be quite a regular occurrence!
As I’ve aged and experienced more than my fair share of ups and downs, I’ve definitely mellowed and appreciate it’s not the be all and the end all although sport still has the ability to make me feel sick to my stomach – see Phil Jagielka’s bolt from the blue in the Merseyside derby as a pertinent example.
Having reacted terribly to a defeat in the past I can certainly emphasize with sports fans around the world when results don’t go their way but what I do have an issue with these days are the ridiculous knee jerk reactions that inevitably accompany negative results.
Last season, Liverpool under Brendan Rodgers performed beyond all expectations in the Premier League, getting to within touching distance of the title before ultimately finishing second to Manchester City.
This was done playing a brand of football that hasn’t been seen at Anfield for a number of years and the team and manager, quite rightly, won a lot of plaudits along the way.
With improved results comes higher expectations and Liverpool finding themselves languishing in 14th with seven points from six games is very disappointing.
What’s of interest to this author, however, is the reaction from “fans” on the club forums, Facebook and twitter.
Last season, Rodgers was lauded by all and sundry of a Mersey red persuasion and plenty of neutrals too, even if some of the praise was a little over-the-top but after a disappointing three defeats in six league games, a number of those same fans are now turning against the manager with some even calling for his head; that’s right, after SIX GAMES.
The team has just lost one of the world’s best footballers and the manager has brought in nine new players, some of whom are new to the Premier League. It is going to take time to gel as a team so to judge them and write some of them off at this early stage is nothing short of lunacy.
For the achievements of last season, Rodgers clearly has a lot of credit in the bank – and rightly so – but not amongst those with a short-term memory problem apparently.
When I raised this point on twitter I was told it was because they are “passionate” about the club; so am I but there’s a marked difference between passion and fickleness which many seem to have in abundance.
It’s clearly not just fans of Liverpool who are guilty of knee jerk reactions; it’s a surprise some Manchester United fans haven’t suffered an injury given the violent nature of the spasms that have occurred since the Red Devils initially failed to take their pre-season form into their league campaign.
I initially thought #LVGOut was a joke but it soon became clear that number of “fans” genuinely wanted the same manager they’d hailed as the messiah out of Old Trafford after a home defeat to Swansea and a draw with Sunderland – TWO GAMES!
There was also a significant number who turned on Sir Alex Ferguson of all people after David Moyes’ disastrous spell at Old Trafford… What is the sporting world coming to?
It seems to be a trend in today’s society in that we now demand instant gratification and success and we appear less inclined to show patience and far more inclined to spit the dummy at the slightest poor result or performance.
Maybe this has always been the case among football fans but it seems worse nowadays following the meteoric rise of social media.
Before the birth and growth of the internet, fans and followers of sport were restricted to talking to fellow fans at the match, debating issues in other social surroundings or by calling radio shows such as BBC Radio 5 Live’s 606.
Thanks to chat rooms, twitter, facebook and the like, fans have a platform to express their opinions that they never had before.
The invention of smartphones has served to increase the volume of comment on sport as people can now vent their spleen to an international audience while on the move, lying in bed or even at the game itself.
What I’m not saying is that people should be afraid of giving their opinions; part of what make sport so great is having differences of opinions. As a result it means you’re never short of a debate or, more often than not, an argument about one thing or another but it is a concerning trend, to this author at least, that people are becoming more fickle than ever before.
How long until fans start demanding change after just one bad result regardless of previous success?