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So goes the regular taunt from away fans to home fans at football grounds around England.
People often question why away fans are more noisy, but the answer is very simple – they are the absolute diehards.
I had a friend who used to go to every single Exeter City game home or away (he lived in London), and I thought he was insane.
Jose Mourinho has opened a can of worms (how unlike him) this week by criticising Chelsea fans for the atmosphere at Stamford Bridge. As a Chelsea fan and season ticket holder I can confirm that he is correct, it is awfully quiet.
But the fans have fought back arguing that ticket prices are to blame for driving away younger fans, and that it is the club’s fault. But is it?
I started going to Chelsea as a teenager in the 1990s. London was a phenomenally expensive place to live even then and going to Chelsea was not cheap.
However, it became a priority for me and I often ended up having to buy a ticket in the most expensive area of the ground for big matches (the only ones left) as I could not afford a season ticket.
If you wanted to go, you found a way and saved money on something else.
Now, are ticket prices really to blame or is it a stagnant (this is specific to the EPL) league with many clubs with a certain level of expectation?
I attended Chelsea’s home match against Spurs last season and it’s a case in point. In the first half, Spurs played well and it was 0-0. The ground was like a morgue.
After halftime, Spurs went down to ten men and Chelsea romped home 4-0, and the ground was bouncing with unending singing throughout the half.
So that has nothing to do with ticket prices other than ‘I’ve paid the money now entertain me’, the crowd is still more than capable of making noise – just ask Rafa Benitez on his first home game whether they were ‘real’ fans booing him.
They can make their feelings perfectly known when they feel like it.
I am told it is similar at the Emirates and Roy Keane famously complained of ‘prawn sandwiches’ at Old Trafford manay years ago.
I also read a report that is it happening at Stoke now (I can’t personally comment) and I just wonder whether mid-table comfort at the Britannia with little hope of anything better has not damped the enthusiasm.
Another issue is that football (at least in the UK) has always thrived on tribalism. I took an English friend once to Pittodrie Stadium in the ’90s to watch Aberdeen versus Dundee United, which is a fairly established rivalry.
My friend was astonished (he is a QPR fan) at the amount of time the rival fans spent eyeing each other rather than watching the game. Admittedly the spectacle on show was fairly mediocre.
Football has rightly worked hard (not hard enough for many I know) to remove the unwanted elements from the game, especially that of racist abuse.
The reality is however, that the most memorable atmospheres you will find are in the most vicious hate-filled matches. Rangers versus Celtic, West Ham versus Spurs and United versus Liverpool (there are many more and probably far worse).
UEFA and the other authorities have been attempting to come down hard on sectarianism, racism and other forms of abuse. One of the effects of this is that football will invariably become a more sanitised and sterile experience, that is what they are trying to achieve.
Rugby matches typically involve songs about your own club or country, cricket has a huge amount of banter which occasionally goes too far but is generally a far better atmosphere.
Football songs have always been as often about negatives as positives. West Ham, Millwall and Chelsea fans singing about gas chambers when Spurs are in town, Liverpool fans sing about the Munich air disaster, other teams singing about Hillsborough, Rangers and Celtic fans trade insults about terrorism, the list goes on.
The EPL in particular has also gone global and I am a symptom of the problem. I have kept my season tickets yet I live in Singapore, do I go to every game? No, I don’t.
Local fans are complaining about tourists yet at the same time are happily embracing the shirt sales and TV rights they pay for allowing their team to be catapulted onto a different financial level in European terms.
Clubs will also argue their ticket pricing is correct. In fact the BBC’s recent ‘cost of football’ survey found a surprising amount of fans who did not have an issue with pricing.
There is, in all reality, zero community aspect for the big clubs nowadays. Their job is to maximise revenue which means charging the maximum while achieving a full stadium, they’d argue they’re doing a pretty good job.
Football has changed hand in hand with society and so the atmospheres at grounds must change with the times.
A bigger problem for the EPL however, is that a large level of status quo for many clubs and a minimum level of expectation for a large amount of fans have led to a more sterile environment.
But one thing is for sure, they all still sing when they’re winning.
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