Season ticket refunds

[Linz]

It was briefly mentioned in another thread earlier on last week, but more and more people seem to be talking about it.

I have a question to all those who are seriously thinking about asking for a season ticket refund:

Is the sale of players, in this case Naughton and Walker, really the straw that breaks the camel's back and the defining reason why you're jacking it in and stopping going?

Personally, I couldn't ever see that being the case for me. I don't go to Bramall Lane to watch United win... I go to watch United... whatever that team consists of. Which is why I'll go to crap friendlies and reserve matches too. It does for me and I don't expect much... what would I do otherwise? Go shopping every week? I think not.

I understand there are financial constraints for some people, but if they would prefer to spend the money getting pissed every week instead of going to United, why don't they just say that instead of trying to find an excuse which makes them a martyr to a cause?

"Oh I'm not going any more while Blackwell is manager"

"If they sell Naughton and Walker I'm never going again"

If you can't be arsed, just say you can't be arsed.

I just want to understand why this is suddenly the case.

I don't want either player to go. I've seen them progress from the side that did so well in the FA Youth Cup a few years back and grow from little boys to young men who have shown, for a relatively short period of time, they can cut it in the Championship.

But both are being promoted to near God-like status... Naughts on the back of a good season and Walker on the back of a handful of games most people seemingly didn't go to. While £8 million might be spare change to Premiership clubs... it isn't to us.

There are people who have watched United go through the leagues. Play in a three-sided ground. Suffer under Chairman who had a clue neither on or off the pitch. Seen our best players sold for tuppence against the manager's wishes.

Is this sale of two homegrown, relatively inexperienced youngsters for millions of pounds really the thing that's made you stop and think "why do I bother"?

I would love the players to stay. But ultimately if they get sold, c'est la vie. It's the same old United we know and love.

Sometimes you have to call a halt to relationships that aren't doing you any good. But it doesn't do you any good to kid yourself as to why you're doing it.

 

[Robbie]

For me, I am not renewing my season ticket.

The reason - Kevin Blackweels brand of football.

I would personally go and play on a Saturday than be bored to tears watching crap football. My preference and I know some people will disagree.

I used to enjoy going to watch United, these days it seems like a chore and I don't feel anyone should feel like that.

When he goes I will renew my season ticket.

 

[Linz]

So my question is, when have we played good football?

 

[matth]

I think the problem for a lot of people is that yes, they've suffered some shit in the past - as you mentioned, the three sided ground, the laughable excuses for chairmen at the helm, playing in the fourth division, and so on. But this is different. We've got a fantastic infrastructure with a chairman who is forward thinking and progressive, and wants to get the club to where he thinks it belongs - the top half of the Premiership. We've got a nice ground that is only going to be improved, and may well end up hosting international matches in the World Cup. We've got an academy that seems to be bearing fruit, albeit all called Kyle and all playing in the same position.

But here's the rub. Despite all that, we're still going backwards as a team. The squad, the tactics, the manager - can you honestly say that we match the ambition off the pitch, on it (which is surely where it matters)? We shoot ourselves in the foot. In my lifetime I've seen a lot of the Blades, and I've seen us go most recently from being a team full of spunky underdogs, overachieving through sheer grit most often, to being a group of players who rarely seem particularly bothered, who seem to have no clear gameplan, and who seem in some cases to epitomise the modern footballer who turns up, puts in a half-arsed shift, and then fucks off again in his big stupid car.

When this is juxtaposed with the off-field activities such as link ups with foreign clubs, making the stadium bigger and better, and building a hotel, it just makes us look like a soulless business.

It's a point I know I've laboured time and time again, but we as fans support a football club, not a business. The business side is peripheral to what we pay our money for every other Saturday. If we're not performing on the pitch, we're not performing - end of. And I don't mean winning. There are very few fans who would be stupid enough to expect us to win every single week. Look at the match against Derby last season - a fantastic display of football with two committed sides battling it out. I don't think there could have been too many complaints if we'd drawn, or narrowly lost that. That's what football's about, to me.

I can't be proud of having an interest in Ferencvaros, or a link with White Star Woluwe, regardless of how much they force it down our throats on the OS or in the programme. I can be proud of a squad of sixteen men who go out and give their all for the shirt under the committed leadership of a man who knows what he's doing, and a board who put the team first. This is not what we're getting at the moment, and this is what people are railing against.

 

[Thelooneytuner]

So my question is, when have we played good football?

Firstly very well said Linz on the first post I couldn't agree more

as for the good football many see good football as on the floor skill such as barca etc however we are in the second tier of English football and a YORKSHIRE club. I've never seen a Yorkshire club play "good" football we don't have players called lionel messi from a star studded spaggheti eating country, we have bob muckysod from down road who sits having a bag o fish n chips and a good old pie n pint.

Now for me watching the team I supported all my life win or lose is a good game for me. Mainly as I don't get to watch as often as Id like,

just my view

 

[SwissBlade]

I used to enjoy going to watch United, these days it seems like a chore and I don't feel anyone should feel like that.

I don't think i've ever enjoyed watching United play. I don't remember a time when we've consistently performed and played decent football (perhaps under Kendall).

But thats always made the good times both unexpected and worthwhile

I've got my season ticket and regardless of who we sell or buy i'll go to the games I can.

Funnily enough i've been optimistic about United in the past couple of years and had my optimism shattered more than I care to mention with relegation, play offs, missing promotion and losing derby matches!

With the Naughton and Walker situation I'm now pretty much as pessimistic as i've ever been, but the only bit of optimism that I have comes as a result of having Blackie in charge.

We don't play good football often, but at least with Blackie he can get the best out of the players we have. We may be direct at times but at least we don't play the awful sideways football that Robbo played.

 

[Come from away]

We are a championship club, and a good one at that, and we play good championship football - always have. We are not going to see the 'lovely football' folks moan about until we have survived in the Premiership for a couple of years - even then we're more likely to be the next Bolton rather than Villa.

 

[Linz]

I think some people do misunderstand the way I'm coming at this. They see me as a dippy blonde "happy clapper" when actually... my true standpoint comes from a completely different angle which is difficult for some people to understand.

I know United are shit. I've always known United are shit.

I was brought up in a school of a majority of United fans getting stick from the few pigs because we were shit.

It's a joke in our family that going to watch United is a penance... but better that than being a pig (ask Jimbo... he was inculcated as was I!)

It's almost seen as something our family does because there is nothing else for it... a begrudging fondness akin to that of taking in and caring for a lame and rabid dog.

In a word... nonsensical.

The ridiculousness, cynicism and sheer bloodymindedness of this view point is so wound-up in what being a Yorkshireman or woman is to me that being a Sheffield United fan is synonymous with being stoic, having a grim sense of humour and always thinking it could be worse. Which let's face it... it could.

I may look like a product of the Sky generation... but inside there's a gruff old bastard wearing a flatcap who just won't let me be anything else. Yeah, I could throw a strop every time United do something I don't like. But frankly, I'd be knackered.

Better to grumble than to flounce.

 

[Jimbo]

Excellent comment Lindsay!
All these who are threatening to take their Season Tickets back because Naughton / Walker may be getting sold are (in my opinion) the laughable sort of fair weather fans you'd expect to support that shower of sh*t from across the city, looking for any excuse to stop going.

While I'll never claim to be the most die hard of fans (don't get to many away matches and haven't been to a Reserve match for a good 10 years) I've had a Season Ticket for all but a couple years since 1990 and would never consider packing it in because we've sold a couple of players, homegrown or otherwise. Being a Blade is in the blood, no matter who's playing, who's managing and who's in the Boardroom.

Question to Robbie- Had we won at Wembley, would you still have boycotted this coming season because of Blackwell's "brand of Football"?

 

[SouthEssexBlade]

Running a professional football club is nigh-on impossible, unless you have the clout of the big few.

They will always be there, sat on top of things. A few may appear for a while and join them (Chelsea, Citeh) but without the backing it doesn't last.

There are a good few in the next batch, mid to lower PL and top 8 CCC. This is where we are and this is the most difficult place to be in charge of a club. You can see the possibilities and they seem tantalisingly close and perfectly achievable, if only! And there is the rub, if only! Ideally you try and build the club off the field as you improve on the field. If one gets too much in front of the other you have problems. Leeds, Wednesday et al tried to wholly generate improvement on the field, and ignored the off the field stuff that would feed that improvement and it all went very, very wrong for quite a time. Too much the other way and you end up a bit like Wolves for a long time, with top rate facilities and the such, but average 3rd tier stuff on the pitch.

Balance is the key and a long-term strategy in both departments. Ideally off the field progress always being slightly in front of on the field progression so that it is financially fuelling team improvement and the spending gets way beyond income.

It may be a very cautious way that McCabe is operating under and can be intensely frustrating when the progress away from the pitch seems to be so far in front of progress on it, but better that way than a 'live the dream' scenario of the Ridsdale years at Leeds, followed by a decade or more attempting to recover from it.

 

[Jimbo]

It's a joke in our family that going to watch United is a penance... but better that than being a pig (ask Jimbo... he was inculcated as was I!)

QUOTE]


Nannan's legacy in all it's glory!

 

[Linz]

...albeit all called Kyle and all playing in the same position.

We've got a Conner now... same position. Think he needs the same sort of development though (i.e. loaned out for a few months at a time) before he can be brought through.

I do see your points matth, but you know me... football is not defined by the way it is played just the fact that it is played. You pay your money to watch twenty two men kick a ball around the pitch and some would say we're in the wrong league or even country to see that being done well.

I don't think United has changed. I just think the fans have changed. And the PR from the club has done nothing to inject any sense of "we're shit, live with it" reality into the kind of fan who believes all they read and that their club should be at the top of the Premier League. Bad handling of expectations by the club... but why do we expect them to handle them well? :lol:

Nannan's legacy in all it's glory!

Aye, a lady who, as long as I have been alive, has said she would never get another season ticket but somehow always manages to

She has a lot to answer for!

 

[Jimbo]

I don't think United has changed. I just think the fans have changed. And the PR from the club has done nothing to inject any sense of "we're shit, live with it" reality into the kind of fan who believes all they read and that their club should be at the top of the Premier League. Bad handling of expectations by the club... but why do we expect them to handle them well? :lol:

The Premiership season has a lot to answer for. I've no doubt that a lot of these fans who expect us to be a Top 4 club and threaten to boycott us and remonstrate at the board for falling short of that have only been supporting Utd for the last 3 years or so.



[/QUOTE]Aye, a lady who, as long as I have been alive, has said she would never get another season ticket but somehow always manages to

She has a lot to answer for![/QUOTE]


I'm pretty sure she's said "I'm not getting another Season Ticket" every year for the last 50 years... and she's still always there the next year! What a legend!

 

[matth]

I do see your points matth, but you know me... football is not defined by the way it is played just the fact that it is played. You pay your money to watch twenty two men kick a ball around the pitch and some would say we're in the wrong league or even country to see that being done well.

I'm not saying I want to see it done well, necessarily. What I do want to see is it being done with passion and commitment and a definite tactical approach. If the skill's not there, so be it - as long as the players are willing to run through walls for the club.

I'd far sooner have 11 Monty-type players on the pitch than 11 Tommy Smith fancy dans who have no passion for the club.

End of the day, I'm a Blade and always will be. But it doesn't mean I'm not going to have a moan every now and then*



*please note: 'every now and then' may in fact mean 'all day, every day'.

 

[Linz]

I'm not saying I want to see it done well, necessarily. What I do want to see is it being done with passion and commitment and a definite tactical approach. If the skill's not there, so be it - as long as the players are willing to run through walls for the club.

I'd far sooner have 11 Monty-type players on the pitch than 11 Tommy Smith fancy dans who have no passion for the club.

Amen to that.

End of the day, I'm a Blade and always will be. But it doesn't mean I'm not going to have a moan every now and then*

*please note: 'every now and then' may in fact mean 'all day, every day'.

As is our birthright as Yorkshire folk

At the end of the day, most people agree about where they want the club to be. There's just differing shades within that general gist which makes up our opinions... which I can more than understand.

It's the jack it all in brigade that I can't. What point are you really making and who is really missing out?

 

[Jimbo]

It's the jack it all in brigade that I can't. What point are you really making and who is really missing out?

The Club would be better off without them without a doubt. Better to have 15000 dedicated fans who will support the team no matter what, than 26000, 11000 of whom will only moan and get on the players backs at every opportunity!

 

[matth]

As is our birthright as Yorkshire folk

I was born in Essex

@Jimbo, we wouldn't be financially better off... playing Devil's Advocate, you can't on the one hand say that selling our best players is acceptable because of the financial reward on offer and then suggest that we'd be better off with fewer paying customers on board

 

[Jimbo]

I was born in Essex

@Jimbo, we wouldn't be financially better off... playing Devil's Advocate, you can't on the one hand say that selling our best players is acceptable because of the financial reward on offer and then suggest that we'd be better off with fewer paying customers on board

Ok, fair point.
Although you could argue that the players would perform better without the nerves of playing in front of unsupportive 'fans' and would be therefore more likely to gain promotion and earn Premiership money...

 

[SouthEssexBlade]

I've said it once or twice and I'll say it again now. If you can suffer that shit-awful season when we finally got relegated to Division 4 and still come back the next season, then all this is pish!

Kids nowadays, don't know their born....We 'ad it 'ard.............

 

[matth]

Ok, fair point.
Although you could argue that the players would perform better without the nerves of playing in front of unsupportive 'fans' and would be therefore more likely to gain promotion and earn Premiership money...

True, true! Swings and roundabouts I guess!

 

[Linz]

The Club would be better off without them without a doubt. Better to have 15000 dedicated fans who will support the team no matter what, than 26000, 11000 of whom will only moan and get on the players backs at every opportunity!

It isn't just a United thing though. Attendances have been rising in the Championship for the last few years and each year the amount of people who seem to be a different kind of fan increases.

I guess the reason it particularly interests me... and somewhat grates... is how I have been perceived as a football fan in the past. I am both young and female.

With the rise of internet message boards, it is quite often the young who are displaying a somewhat petulant "teddies out of the pram" attitude when it comes to football clubs not doing what they want and they often lack the vocabulary to air these grievances without resorting to calling people "cocks" and the like. Some of the words I've seen McCabe called this week are what I would consider, a bit uncalled for and I know the majority of people doing the name calling are aged between 15-25.

They, like me, have more experience of football as a sanitised, Sky-sponsored sport where everything is about the Premiership and you're nothing if you aren't there. Rather than thinking, like me, that being in the Premiership was a bit crap and not a great deal of fun, they want to see the Rooneys and Lampards and Old Traffords and Stamford Bridges as that, to them, is football. I consider myself fortunate that I don't exactly buy into that. Standing up at Stockport and doing the conga in the rain was a lot more fun than being gawped at like a foreign species at Old Trafford because you happened to be singing. But maybe football to them isn't meant to be fun? It just has to be about winning. Dunno... but it isn't what I think. Maybe they are right and I am wrong, but I think I know who gets more satisfaction out of being a fan.

Now being a lass and a football fan is not something that most people think is a big deal any more. Despite still being a minority, there are lots of us and unlike at Barca and various grounds in Italy, we pay the same amount to be there. But some fans, curiously, mainly the younger fans as described above, have got it into their heads that it's women who have made the games and atmospheres at clubs sanitised, americanised and something of a leisure pursuit. And it's true that continental clubs do offer women a reduction in ticket price to foster a family-friendly atmosphere. But is it really the case here?

After the Wembley playoff when people were complaining at the lack of atmosphere, someone elsewhere put it down to the amount of women going to the game as a one-off day out. A discussion about plastic fans earlier on in the season again focused mainly on gender... no matter how many games women go to, they can't be diehard fans like these lads... lads who, in my experience, are the first to boo when things don't go their way. The regular travelling fans encompass all ages and definitely both genders and you see the same faces everywhere. But these boys seem to think that taking away the part-timers also removes all the women too (there is a very good reason I am not a member of that message board!)

The only time anyone has said anything to my face (seriously) is when shouting team news across to Foxy who was waiting at the bar a few years ago. Two lads, United fans, decided to enquire as to why I wasn't in the kitchen. I was speechless in the face of such an intelligent query and think I ended up just giving them a rather quizzical and somewhat pitiful look. These are United fans I had never seen before and have never seen since. I pay the same money... follow the team more than most... yet somehow people have got it into their heads that they deserve to be there more than me.

So seemingly, because I am under 25, I should want everything now and I'm wrong if I don't... but because I lack a Y chromosome I shouldn't even be there in the first place and it's my fault football is crap.

I would just like to make it clear that mardy tantrums aren't the norm for younger Blades nor are they for women. I will quite happily stand at a football game and I will quite happily shout myself hoarse.

And I will also quite happily be a football fan when these kinds of lads have moved on to other pursuits.

 

[SouthEssexBlade]

Moaning and complaining are part and parcel of being a football fan, always has been and I hope always will be. However, Delia, is right when she says that the philosophy and outlook of those doing the moaning has changed.

I stood on the kop for more years than I care to remember, always in the same place, always with the same people (more or less) stood around me. There was a guy (40s when I started standing there, late 50s by the end) who never missed a match, and never, ever had a good thing to say about what happened on the pitch Blades-wise;

'Bloody useless Blades' was heard constantly throughout the game, every game win or lose. I often looked round and thought, why the hell do you bother? The day Don Givens missed that penalty, I looked round at full-time and this bloke was in floods of tears, totally distraught at what had happened. I really thought that was the last we'd see of him, but come the August he was back, and not two minutes into the first game I smiled at a familiar sound...'Bloody useless Blades!'

You just know that this type of supporter is slowly but surely being replaced by the nouveau fan, Delia described above!

 

[Robbie]

So my question is, when have we played good football?

My question to reverse that would be, when have we played as bad a football that we have seen at times this season just gone?

I accept we are not/never going to be a 'footballing' team, however it would be nice to see some sort of tactical approach to a game rather than just 'get it booted up field'.

Blackwell makes me wanna smash my head against the wall.

I don't think i've ever enjoyed watching United play. I don't remember a time when we've consistently performed and played decent football (perhaps under Kendall).

Hmmmm, I enjoyed going to the game usually, maybe not the football but the optimism has been drowned out of me.

Question to Robbie- Had we won at Wembley, would you still have boycotted this coming season because of Blackwell's "brand of Football"?

Yes I would.

You never know, I wasn't going to renew last year either, and then did the day before our first home game.

Will prob still go to away games, as the day out can drown any football a Blackwell team has to offer.

 

[Linz]

You just know that this type of supporter is slowly but surely being replaced by the nouveau fan, Delia described above!

Aye... and the point I was trying to make, in a very verbose way, is that these kinds of new fans themselves fail to recognise that in fact they are responsible for the shine being taken off things.

They hark after this idea of football as a men's game for men who like fighting and a good excuse to get pissed every weekend, but lap up the flashy fireworks, poncy foreign nancy boy players and multi million pound sponsorship which ensures football never will be that kind of working class pursuit again.

They will only have themselves to blame when even the fun of whinging about the game has been lost and clappers and airhorns are mandatory.

 

[Come from away]

Robbie: When we player Wolves at their ground last year (a draw) it was a great and exciting game - so I do not accept the suggestion we always play crap. Some of the top two battles put on TV were crap, teams do get lost at times, that's life -but I don't understand why we expect to see international football at the Lane. Personally I like the CCC football better as the International stuff is often slow and boring - FB to CB to GK to FB to CB ..........

 

[Jimbo]

Oh I don't doubt for a minute that this is not a problem isolated to just Utd. I fully expect there's 92 clubs the length and breadth of this country who have fans they'd rather not have for whatever reason and fans who have very different opinions to each other and do their fair share of moaning.

Personally I don't see the issue as an age one, or a gender one, I guess it's just down to the way Football has gone in the last 15-20 years.

I wasn't really there so I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure the attitude to supporting your team was very different 20- 30 years ago to what it is now. I would put it down to a number of things, mainly the influence of Sky, but I suppose it was easier to distinguish between fans and non-fans back then. The fans went to games and followed the team regardless, the non-fans didn't have anything to do with it. Simple.

Nowadays you get people who claim to be fans but the only games they watch are on a Sunday dinnertime on Sky and don't have the perspective on what being a Blade (or a fan of any Football team for that matter) is really about, yet they're happy to moan and grumble when things don't go swimmingly or to their liking.

As you say Lindsay, the Premiership season wasn't a great deal of fun, for a number of reasons. Of course I want to see Utd back there and doing well, but I'm equally happy watching us on a cold Tuesday evening in November, grinding out a 1-0 win against some no hopers as I am watching us getting stuffed week in week out by some over paid "prawn sandwich brigade" team (as I know many others are). The problem, as I see it, are the 'newer' fans (young or old, male or female) who only started actually following the team in the last couple of years and therefore can't appreciate the fortunate position the Club is actually in at the minute, compared to the dross we've had to put up with in the past!

On the other hand, the modernisation of Football has had it's upsides. That women and children are more freely welcomed into the club is obviously a good thing. The idiots that you've come across in the past are an unfortunate hangover from a time gone by and I suppose we can only hope they'll fade away and disappear for good in time! I know a few women (yourself included) who are a credit to the club and could teach a high percentage of male fans a thing or three about being a dedicated fan.

 

[Robbie]

Robbie: When we player Wolves at their ground last year (a draw) it was a great and exciting game - so I do not accept the suggestion we always play crap.

Perhaps you could show me where I suggested we always played crap?

 

[mattbianco1]

Just seen this thread. I think its ridiculous that people are gonna ask for refunds because we've sold players. Absolutely stupid. Glad to hear that fans like that wont be coming to the lane next season. We don't want them.

We sold James Beattie in January and then what happened we played better!

Good riddance to the lot of you, in my eyes your not real fans. If we got relegated next season, i'd be renewing my season ticket in April 2010. If we then went down into League 2 i'd be renewing my season ticket in April 2011.... If you're a fan, you're a fan! Regardless what the situation is!

P.S. Please don't ring praise or grumble either. I hate people slagging off the result or performance and then saying "No, i couldn't get to the game, i listened on wireless!"

11000 proper fans for me anyday! Roll on 7th August, regardless of who will be in the starting 11.

 

[Jimbo]

Well said that man!

 

[mattbianco1]

Well said that man!

Cheers mate! Needed to let some steam off