Honest discussion about the atmosphere

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yorkshiresufc said:
I have seen this crop up a few times on here, particularly since COVID, but we need to start having a proper, open and honest discussion about the atmosphere at Bramall Lane at the moment and we need to do it without getting touchy and defensive.

I know this is quite a delicate subject because it is not a nice thing to have to admit and I think that is probably why the recent posts about this have been met with some negativity and so many excuses.

We need to come to the terms with the fact that the atmosphere at home games over the past 3/4 years has just not good enough and it is becoming borderline embarrassing.

I know people want different matchday experiences and it is not for everyone to be stood in the Kop singing for 90 minutes, and I know that many bring their young families and do not want it to be too rowdy.

But since COVID, for the most part, it has been truly awful and I think over the past year or so even the sections of the ground that have been doing their best to inject a bit of noise have slowly started to give up.

I personally want a raucous atmosphere for my matchday experience and I, like many others, probably fell in love with this club as a kid for that reason.

I know our identity as blades is built around the fact we support a proper club, with proper, honest down-to-earth, loyal fans, hailing from what I think is the best stadium in the world and I love us and our fans to bits. But the fiery cauldron, which only 9 years ago, Mauricio Pochettino described as the best atmosphere has ever experienced in England, is slowly becoming a myth that at the moment feels so far away.

I completely get that it can’t be amazing every week and when its 0-0 or cold or a midweek game it might not lend itself to being lively in the stands but since COVID I can probably count on one hand the amount of times when I have left thinking wow that was class today. And why should we only make noise when Man City are in town or when our centre half is clattering someone or the ref is bad? Or only when we are playing a brand of football we deem ‘proper’? I just don’t see it as valid to say ‘ah well we need to be entertained first…’.

What are we going to do about it? Obviously a club like ours should and would never go down the cringe faux ultras route of clubs like Boro, which is just not compatible with English fan culture in my opinion. But this issue is not going to be resolved by excuses and getting touchy about this.

I think the only solution I can see is if safe standing is brought in, which by all accounts is absolutely miles off, but at least this way, those that want this sort of matchday experience can be catered for and those that don’t can also be catered for.

Would be good to hear some honest thoughts on this.

UTB
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I do get where you're coming from, but opinions of atmosphere are very individual.

Addressing some of your points

  • the atmosphere over the past 3/4 years has just not good enough'
Good enough to achieve what? Good enough so that people have a good time and want to return? Attendances say otherwise. Good enough to get behind the lads? The players often say how good it is. New players mention what it was like as a visiting player. How do you measure the atmosphere? If I'm being combative to overly make a point, I assume you have totalled the atmosphere score for each game and then calculated an average for the games over the 3/4 years to determine an overall average, which has fallen below the 'good enough' target? Can you clarify? ;)

  • 'since COVID, for the most part, it has been truly awful' 'I personally want a raucous atmosphere for my matchday experience and I, like many others, probably fell in love with this club as a kid for that reason
My own thoughts are that it was similar pre 2020 compared to now. 18/19 and 19/20 are pretty fresh in my mind because I have a huge gap prior to that where I lived overseas. The atmosphere of those two successful season was very similar to the two successful champ season with Hecky, for example, in my opinion. On the 'better when I was a kid' note, that tends to be how we feel about our youth experiences. We were experiencing freedom and an environment that felt like there were no rules, for the first time and it was amazing. It's more about us experiencing the environment for the first period of our lives than a reflection of the actual environment. A bit like when middle-aged people like me, and older say how it was better in the old days. It wasn't that things were better, it was that you were younger, and that was better.

  • 'becoming borderline embarrassing'
Definition: cause (someone) to feel awkward, self-conscious, or ashamed.

That's an individual thing. It may be embarrassing for you, for your own reasons, but I'm not embarrassed. I haven't heard anyone ever say to me something along the lines of, 'great win today but I'm gonna put my hood up on the way out, I'm cripplingly embarrassed. We sing 'football in a library' at away games, they sing it to us occasionally at BDTBL.

  • 'people want different matchday experiences'.
You've nailed it here. This is what drives the atmosphere and delivers a self-governed outcome. A lot of people don't go to away games because of the 'unpleasant' atmosphere they feel is there.

  • 'it can’t be amazing every week and when its 0-0 or cold or a midweek game it might not lend itself to being lively in the stands'.
Agree. As above. Self-governed outcome

  • 'I can probably count on one hand the amount of times when I have left thinking wow that was class today'.
That's a genuine shame for you. Controversial thought, maybe, but have you thought about whether the issue is your expectations or your requirements to mean something is 'class'?

  • 'What are we going to do about it?'
We, meaning everyone? Everyone already does something about it, individually. They contribute to the atmosphere to the level they want to. I assume you mean 'we' meaning the club though, which is where it will need to come from to get a mass participation change

  • 'never go down the cringe faux ultras route'.
I feel that would have to be started in the kop, and yeah I don't think we'd (kop standers) would go for it, personally.

  • 'only solution I can see is if safe standing'.
Solution suggests there is a problem, but if we instead look at it as trying to generate more noise than now, I agree that safe standing would help, at least for a while, but it depends who gets the season tickets in those sit-stand seats. There would be a prioritisation system when they first go on sale, and it will not have anything to do with who is the noisiest, as that can't be accurately established. Hopefully they would give priority to those already at the back, which are the existing noise-generating sections, but if it went solely on loyalty points, we could have an outcome different to that you desire.

My general thoughts on this are that it isn't an amazing atmosphere consistently, but as someone who travels to lots of away games, I get my noisy loutish fix there, and don't see home games at any ground as being anywhere near the atmosphere in away ends, generally, and I don't mind. At home I just join in with whatever chant/song has built enough to reach where I'm sat. I do feel our atmosphere for an average game can still be good. We need something to trigger an emotion though. People don't generally arrive all full of emotion ready to sing and shout. Hatred or anger are what seems to fuel our best atmospheres, so Sharp sticking his arse into someone and falling over and not getting a free kick, or a shit ref, or a good ref that isn't giving us what we want, or a rival team, or disliked player....they're what gets us going. You can't manufacture that though (although Billy could tell when the team needed the crowd to get up and he'd shithouse something to help)

As a note, if you ever look at the YouTube channels that rank Championship away grounds for visiting, we are always high up. They do tend to take a few things into consideration, not just atmosphere, but still. I've just searched for a recent one, and here it is...from 2 days ago actually

 

s20Blade said:
I don't mind joining in with abit of atmosphere but being at the back of the kop is one of the worst experiences in my life. Not been there for a good 15 years but it's like being stuck in the jobcentre when they announce the giros will be late and they are stopping the crisis loans.

Scumbag pandemonium.
Click to expand...

If only it were still scumbag pandemonium, we might have some atmosphere. It's clearly not what it was 15 years ago, might be worth you chancing it again.
 
Greasy Chap Butty said:
The back of the kop is very good for noise. Problem is it isn't one area,.in terms of groups.
Very often left side and right side are singing different things over each other and both die out.
Pulling them together would help. How that's done, asking big seat blocks to move seats, I don't know.
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Honestly I'd love us to have the problem of multiple songs being sang at the same time rather than none or the insipid drone of "sheffield united... sheffield united"
 
Snake said:
I don't do social media or any internet socialising at all. I look at this forum for Blades related info and news and post occasionally, if I feel I have something to add.

I hate mobile phones. Until very recently I had an old relic of a phone that was used for emergency calls and texts. Now unfortunately a phone (or mobile device) is forced upon you. Increasingly a phone is more or less essential......... match ticket is on the phone, go to a restaurant - menu and ordering is on phone, go on holiday, info and updates on the phone, etc etc etc. It's a fucking nightmare. Until a couple of years ago I went on holiday to escape the real world and have 2 weeks or whatever, completely out of the loop and living in the moment. My family knew my hotel details and would only contact me in the case of an absolute emergency. I used to go out with just cash in my pocket - if I got mugged or lost it, so what? That's life, no massive drama. Now if you lose your phone - ffs your whole life is on there.

People talk about mental health issues - ffs, you used to be able to escape all the shit in the world and live in the moment. Now kids have to be mentally alert 24/7, in case somebody is dissing them on social media or whatever. People can say what the fuck they like about life in the 70s and 80s (and of course there was shit) but life really was so much simpler then - you arranged to meet, then met, had a beer or 6, went home had your tea, then went back out. If you were late - tough, just find your mates further on in the evening. No worries.
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It's each to their own though isn't it.

I feel my life is very much improved by having easy access to information on my phone about places & things & events that it would take me hours to find by word of mouth and/or phoning places up.

I've discovered things worth doing that would otherwise be "hidden" from me. And I feel my Mental (and physical) Health has improved as a result.

Respect your view. Just I see it differently.
 
I guess the style of football played, may also have an effect on atmosphere.

If the millionaires kicking the ball around arent entertaining, then should the paying customer be expected to show vocal support?

Im slightly older and a lot grumpier now, but in my youth i would go and sing as much as i caould.
Now im older, my thoughts have changed and if i can afford to go, i will support if the team warrant my vocal support.

On another note, when i was in my youth, i had a pint in the Sheldon and then went to the match under the influence of that one or maybe two pints.

I am led to believe some people maybe under the influence of different substances now, could that be effecting the atmosphere?
 
JimW1889 said:
My honest thoughts it’s pretty much entirely universal across British football and there isn’t much (without going down the silly ultras as route) that individual clubs can do, short of giving free beer out.
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100%. It's blinkered to think this is just to do with United.

That said, I've no idea what the solution is for us, or any other team.

Dodgy refs certainly help. We need (even) worse officials.
 
I sit in G Block on South Stand. I rarely hear the Kop sing. The only time singing seems to get going here is when H Block start singing “Sheff United, Hallelujah, Hallelujah”

My mates sit near front in Kop and often comment on the atmosphere being “great today”… not where I sit. Never heard a peep, other than the away end.

It’s just how the stadium is set up these days.

Main singing section is top left corner of Kop (shoreham view) territory.
That section probably makes up what, 5-10% of the Kop. If that’s all that sings 90% of the time it’s gonna be shite.

As an example. The minutes applause for Jonny the other night.
I saw the video on twitter his dad posted. They all sang “United love you more than you will know”, then a larger section of the Kop sang “He’s a blade”… neither song was heard where I sit.

The stadiums where you visit away and think the home fans were loud are places like Pride Park, where the singing section is bang next to the away fans.

I’m not suggesting we should move stadiums. I just think old style stadiums like ours have changed over the years.
 
The Kop being steeper would improve things a great deal. Those stood up are a long way back from the pitch and a very long way back from the away end/H block
 
Good atmospheres generally originate from large groups of well-oiled, working class youngsters, ideally with a large idiot contingent. (I’m talking the type of idiot that loses their bank card every weekend and harmlessly dabbles with recreational drugs, not the sort of idiots that mock the dead or racially abuse players)

It needs to be affordable for them. (Which it currently isn’t) and they should ideally be sat close together, near the pitch (which they’re not).

Once they get it going, even your most sanitised, phone-using curmudgeon won’t be able to resist.
 

Ball_Sup (Phil) said:
It's each to their own though isn't it.

I feel my life is very much improved by having easy access to information on my phone about places & things & events that it would take me hours to find by word of mouth and/or phoning places up.

I've discovered things worth doing that would otherwise be "hidden" from me. And I feel my Mental (and physical) Health has improved as a result.

Respect your view. Just I see it differently.
Click to expand...
I respect your view too. The things you describe are on the internet, accessed by various forms of client devices. I too have embraced lots of information available on the WWW. The internet to me is like the devil and angels ........ if you can avoid the devil, the angels are wonderful. My point really was about mobile phones, where you simply can't escape being contacted and often fall into the trap of not being able to unwind and live in the moment - do they call that mindfulness these days? I'm not sure. You have obviously sussed this, and only get the benefits - I'm not sure that many of the youth and young adults of today have.
 
I do wonder if there are too many young kids on the kop, and if people are altering their behaviour to be appropriate around the kids, which dulls the atmosphere.

I understand the John Street "family stand" is largely full of former children that have just kept their seats on into adulthood, so getting a decent seat there is really hard. Perhaps we need to be moving these people on to sit elsewhere so families with young kids can get seats there instead of the kop.
 
diplomat said:
A section for those who want to chant is the only way safe standing will add atmosphere. With space for non season ticket holders to be able to join it. Safe standing alone won’t change anything, it’s still an allocated seat, but with no seat, you can’t just go where you want to
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100%
 
I think we're still feeling the effect that COVID had on Football, it's only been just over 3 years since the second lockdown ended and fans were allowed to attend games again which isn't that long ago.

Before I go any further, I don't think it's just COVID that is to blame, Sky are also to blame as they are constantly changing kickoff times and making more matches available on TV.

Seen it mentioned on here plenty of times how COVID has affected atmospheres at home so I won't go too much into it, they definitely haven't felt the same since lockdown ended.

While I don't mind Sky putting games on Sky Sports and changing the kickoff times every now and then, there should be a rule where each EFL team gets a maximum amount of games on Sky e.g. 4 every season.

Having an early kickoff on Sky can be off-putting for fans as sometimes they might not be able to get to the match in time, similar situation with a late kickoff which makes watching on Sky another alternative.
 
Then there are the 5 subs which they first added due to COVID, but was kept in for some reason.

Ignoring how it benefits bigger teams with more options on their benches, having the chance to change half of your outfield players (as Keepers are rarely substituted) has made it to easy to change games with subs.

Whereas with the old 3 subs rule, I always felt that you had to be smarter with your subs and who you sent on to try and impact the game as getting 2 or all 3 of your subs wrong could cost you the game.

Slightly off topic, while I was watching the Euro's (on ITV), it was in one of the group games where (can't remember exactly which one) one of commentators (either Aly Mcoist or Sam Matterface) said that the 5 subs rule was ruining the fitness of players as they are tiring earlier in games as more of them can be subbed off.
 
TJB. said:
Turf out anyone daft enough to sit in the wonky McCabe corner, fill it with 300 18-30 year olds who care more about the craic than the match and fill them with beer. Problem solved.

It'd also get a few of the little shits off the Kop. Everyone wins!
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I've said before that it would be relatively easy and cheap to convert that corner into safe standing
 
Watching sunderland vs leeds and its been noisey all game.
 
yorkshiresufc said:
I have seen this crop up a few times on here, particularly since COVID, but we need to start having a proper, open and honest discussion about the atmosphere at Bramall Lane at the moment and we need to do it without getting touchy and defensive.

I know this is quite a delicate subject because it is not a nice thing to have to admit and I think that is probably why the recent posts about this have been met with some negativity and so many excuses.

We need to come to the terms with the fact that the atmosphere at home games over the past 3/4 years has just not good enough and it is becoming borderline embarrassing.

I know people want different matchday experiences and it is not for everyone to be stood in the Kop singing for 90 minutes, and I know that many bring their young families and do not want it to be too rowdy.

But since COVID, for the most part, it has been truly awful and I think over the past year or so even the sections of the ground that have been doing their best to inject a bit of noise have slowly started to give up.

I personally want a raucous atmosphere for my matchday experience and I, like many others, probably fell in love with this club as a kid for that reason.

I know our identity as blades is built around the fact we support a proper club, with proper, honest down-to-earth, loyal fans, hailing from what I think is the best stadium in the world and I love us and our fans to bits. But the fiery cauldron, which only 9 years ago, Mauricio Pochettino described as the best atmosphere has ever experienced in England, is slowly becoming a myth that at the moment feels so far away.

I completely get that it can’t be amazing every week and when its 0-0 or cold or a midweek game it might not lend itself to being lively in the stands but since COVID I can probably count on one hand the amount of times when I have left thinking wow that was class today. And why should we only make noise when Man City are in town or when our centre half is clattering someone or the ref is bad? Or only when we are playing a brand of football we deem ‘proper’? I just don’t see it as valid to say ‘ah well we need to be entertained first…’.

What are we going to do about it? Obviously a club like ours should and would never go down the cringe faux ultras route of clubs like Boro, which is just not compatible with English fan culture in my opinion. But this issue is not going to be resolved by excuses and getting touchy about this.

I think the only solution I can see is if safe standing is brought in, which by all accounts is absolutely miles off, but at least this way, those that want this sort of matchday experience can be catered for and those that don’t can also be catered for.

Would be good to hear some honest thoughts on this.

UTB
Click to expand...
 
Fjortoft's Aeroplane said:
I understand the John Street "family stand" is largely full of former children that have just kept their seats on into adulthood, so getting a decent seat there is really hard. Perhaps we need to be moving these people on to sit elsewhere so families with young kids can get seats there instead of the kop.
Click to expand...

You can sod off :)

Plus, my 7 year old has a season ticket with us :)
 
As Cappy pointed out earlier in the thread about football content creators usually ranking the Lane really high on the best away days, yes the atmosphere hasn't been the same for the last few years but we are still regarded as one of the best championship away days.

That will work in our favour this season as Blades (same with Leeds, Sunderland, WBA, Burnley, Middlesbrough) will be the toughest and dreaded away fixtures for teams to come and play.

When you go and play the really tough away games, you want to get them out of the way earlier rather than later in the season as the pressure will be much higher towards the end of the season.

Thankfully, we play Leeds away straight after the international break so we can get that game out of the way early, same with Middlesbrough as that's always been tough for us.
 

Snake said:
My point really was about mobile phones, where you simply can't escape being contacted and often fall into the trap of not being able to unwind and live in the moment - do they call that mindfulness these days? I'm not sure.
Click to expand...

I'm an old bugger but I just put mine on silent when I don't want to be disturbed and I get all the benefits you describe, with the added convenience of being able to use a phone when I want to.
 
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