James Constable

[Kairdiff Exile]

13 miles across London, from South East to the North, might as well be 100 miles anywhere else in the country.

Eh? How do you work that one out? Transport links in London are a million times better than anywhere else in the country. You try getting across Oxfordshire by bus (including waiting times, walk to the bus stop etc) and compare it with going by tube from one side of London to the other. I know which I'd rather do. Especially on a Tuesday night in January after a cup tie has gone to extra time and the last bus home went at 8pm leaving me with a long walk home in the rain...

[Jimski]

Anyway, I"m not sure what this Arsenal move has to do with anything really. It's being used as a lazy line of argument that seems to be roughly: "This kind of thing has always happened, so it doesn't matter if it happens now." If I'd been around then, and I knew the fans were against the move, I'd have opposed it too. The same thing if Arsenal tried to move now, against the wishes of their community fanbase. Clubs are important community assets, and business people treating them as toys for their own reasons, against fan wishes, should be opposed whenever it happens.

[slappy]

30 years ago there were no "naming rights" for grounds; now it is widespread throughout the leagues, particularly when a club moves to a new ground. Similarly the FA Cup sponsored by Budweiser, N Power League 2 ...

It's a bit rich of Hull City fans to complain about "Tigers" being added to their club name when they play at the KC Stadium. Where were the protests then?

If a club chairman wants his team to play in red, add a suffix to the team name, rename the stadium, it's part of the commercial era.

[Jimski]

It's a bit rich of Hull City fans to complain about "Tigers" being added to their club name when they play at the KC Stadium. Where were the protests then?

Who cares? If they don't like the renaming then they should protest against it. Whether they opposed the stadium renaming or not is irrelevant to the matter at hand. (And maybe they thought the renaming of the ground less important than the renaming of the club. I certainly would. The important aspect is that fans mobilise now against decisions that they don't support.

Are you saying that what what owners (who tend to disappear when the going gets tough) think is all that matters, whereas what fans (who tend to be there to pick up the ensuing pieces) think is unimportant? I far prefer the model where fans have some direct influence on how their club is run - for the benefit of the main fan base rather than some abstract growth area elsewhere.

[Old Abingdonian]

We can go round this endlessly. All (almost all?) on this forum would agree that fans hold the soul of the club, and have significant moral rights. However, over the years, football has sold its soul to the commercial devil, a trend increasing with the Premiership and its billions.

The only issue seems to me whether there is any balance of power: whether fans can exert significant influence on how their team (or more ambitiously, football as a whole) develops. Put another way, what is to prevent an owner allowing his team to play in a virtually empty stadium - perhaps miles for its traditional fan base - and still raking in the TV money and branding rights?

Part of the problem is that the media and pundits who appear to try to correct absurd abuses of power ('Its not in the spirit of the game') are themselves compromised by past laziness and appeasement. Take the FA Cup - the media still trot out the appalling 'magic' clichés, whilst failing to stand up against big clubs using it as an excuse for having squads which are too large.