Lost the passion?

Kuipers Supporters Club · Apr 11, 2015

Feel very much the same as HO.

When we were shite in the past - it was still our team. There was a passion and connection with the players. I can deal with bad results and seasons as we did in the past - as we were united as one.

It hasn't, for me anyway, got anything to do with the results, The thing I hate most is the spin. I can not stand it. Barber does some things very well, and others not - fair enough, he's just doing his job. We all make judgements on what we think is right.

But if something goes wrong - we don't need the crap manipulation of the facts - i.e the Season Ticket Renewals - there is absolutely no way it's as high as they have said on face value .
Brighton fans are not the same as today's Premier League Supporters - or those in the MLS. We've had the wool pulled over our eyes before. A suit talking to us like they are a politician is not what we need - the corporate side of things has totally trampled over 'little old Brighton' in their 'ramshackle Withdean Stadium'.

Maybe I was naive when we got Falmer that we could still keep the same identity we all fought for - but this club today doesn't have the same feel or look to it anymore. Unfortunately this sanitised version of football seems intent on carrying on.

fleet · Apr 11, 2015

Still have the passion. Stressing on the Millwall result this afternoon and will stress until we are safe, then look forward to a new season with optimism.

essbee · Apr 11, 2015

Seagull58 said:
By all means have the player of the season awards dinner. Give the award to NOBODY Then Hughton and Bloom can kick the players collectively up the a**e in public and explain what they're doing to ensure next season is much, much better.

You mean there might be the same core of players next season? F*** me please not.

Hastings gull · Apr 11, 2015

Lincoln Imp said:
If it was just about the football the original poster and so many people on here wouldn't have gone week-in week-out to Gillingham; wouldn't have stood, soaking wet, at doomed relegation seasons at the Goldstone and Withdean.

For me, I still love the Albion but I no longer have a clue what it is I love about it.

A few weeks ago there was a thread on here called "I hate football". What was interesting about the contributions was how many posters - many well-known names - have fallen out of love with the professional game but still keep coming to the Albion. It's what they've always done. They don't always enjoy it but they keep, for the moment, doing it. As season ticket holders it is a relatively painless process but I doubt so many of them would shell out 35 quid for last night's disappointment, and then another 35 for Tuesday. I wouldn't.

Board members, especially the ones the present chairman brought in - five of them, all with finance backgrounds, none an Albion supporter - don't understand the mindset of the average man on the Falmer omnibus. People with a sense of place and community and empathy for a provincial football club might as well be Martians as far as they are concerned.

There is a dislocation between those running the club and the people who follow it. The former don't understand the latter. Example - instead of being grateful for and nurturing the Albion's huge STH base Paul Barber and his men seemed to take it for granted, concentrating instead on getting new, ah, customers in and making the present ones wallets sweat. It's a classic marketing approach but if you try it in a provincial football club many of your existing customers will drift off and replacing them will be very hard. (It's all right at Spurs of course - if you pee off 5,000 supporters you just send out to Harpenden for replacements.)
After a lifetime in an Albion-supporting family I too feel very flat.

The problems the original poster talked about are real and I suspect widespread. The board and those reporting to it must start communicating and stop spinning. And if they can't understand ordinary supporters - and they clearly can't - they should employ people who do.

I do share your frustrations at what has happened this season, and fully agree that concern as to the future is widespread, but I am not sure that this is true - what evidence do you have that TB and PB take the STs for granted. Did they not recently extend something for the 21 year olds, and I gather that what keeps them from announcing too many one-off match deals is that this would cheese off STs who would have paid more. Have the prices not been frozen for next year? Also, the travel rules have been relaxed so that train travel for many coming from the East is cheaper, which will benefit the regular fan. Of course they are trying to entice more fans -why should they not? (I know that is not what you are saying) as this will bring in more revenue, which can only be for the best. Huge errors have been made, particularly last summer, I fully grant you, but I do feel it is all too easy to state that the Board do not care or fail to understand the mindset of the fans. One thing PB is good at is his willingness to be in contact with supporters.

Kuipers Supporters Club · Apr 11, 2015

Lincoln Imp said:
If it was just about the football the original poster and so many people on here wouldn't have gone week-in week-out to Gillingham; wouldn't have stood, soaking wet, at doomed relegation seasons at the Goldstone and Withdean.

For me, I still love the Albion but I no longer have a clue what it is I love about it.

A few weeks ago there was a thread on here called "I hate football". What was interesting about the contributions was how many posters - many well-known names - have fallen out of love with the professional game but still keep coming to the Albion. It's what they've always done. They don't always enjoy it but they keep, for the moment, doing it. As season ticket holders it is a relatively painless process but I doubt so many of them would shell out 35 quid for last night's disappointment, and then another 35 for Tuesday. I wouldn't.

Board members, especially the ones the present chairman brought in - five of them, all with finance backgrounds, none an Albion supporter - don't understand the mindset of the average man on the Falmer omnibus. People with a sense of place and community and empathy for a provincial football club might as well be Martians as far as they are concerned.

There is a dislocation between those running the club and the people who follow it. The former don't understand the latter. Example - instead of being grateful for and nurturing the Albion's huge STH base Paul Barber and his men seemed to take it for granted, concentrating instead on getting new, ah, customers in and making the present ones wallets sweat. It's a classic marketing approach but if you try it in a provincial football club many of your existing customers will drift off and replacing them will be very hard. (It's all right at Spurs of course - if you pee off 5,000 supporters you just send out to Harpenden for replacements.)

After a lifetime in an Albion-supporting family I too feel very flat.

The problems the original poster talked about are real and I suspect widespread. The board and those reporting to it must start communicating and stop spinning. And if they can't understand ordinary supporters - and they clearly can't - they should employ people who do.

To summarise my above post . This.

CC2 · Apr 11, 2015

Brighton4Cambridge3 said:
Feel very much the same as HO.

When we were shite in the past - it was still our team. There was a passion and connection with the players. I can deal with bad results and seasons as we did in the past - as we were united as one.

It hasn't, for me anyway, got anything to do with the results, The thing I hate most is the spin. I can not stand it. Barber does some things very well, and others not - fair enough, he's just doing his job. We all make judgements on what we think is right.

But if something goes wrong - we don't need the crap manipulation of the facts - i.e the Season Ticket Renewals - there is absolutely no way it's as high as they have said on face value .
Brighton fans are not the same as today's Premier League Supporters - or those in the MLS. We've had the wool pulled over our eyes before. A suit talking to us like they are a politician is not what we need - the corporate side of things has totally trampled over 'little old Brighton' in their 'ramshackle Withdean Stadium'.

Maybe I was naive when we got Falmer that we could still keep the same identity we all fought for - but this club today doesn't have the same feel or look to it anymore. Unfortunately this sanitised version of football seems intent on carrying on.

Sums it up for me!! The spin is driving me insane. Plus if the player budget has genuinely been increased then the 'spin masters' have been mugged.

essbee · Apr 11, 2015

"Example - instead of being grateful for and nurturing the Albion's huge STH base Paul Barber and his men seemed to take it for granted, concentrating instead on getting new, ah, customers in and making the present ones wallets sweat. It's a classic marketing approach"

This reminds me very much of the car insurance companies (AA, RAC ...bah, blah, blah) who ramp up the price 2nd year after they've got you and are only interested in new members. So you
toggle back and forward getting a new customer price each time.

Stat Brother · Apr 11, 2015

- The spin;
I doubt the club has ever had a more approachable Chief Exec, or committed Chairman.
I don't like some of the politicking but that's 'big' business in the 21st Century.
American Express isn't buying into a local club for local people.

- The number of disaffected ex-employees and ex-suppliers, loyal individuals, who are highly critical of what's gone on over the last 4 years;
If I only listened to those with an axe to grind, I'd be pee'ed off too.

- The disconnect with players (no settled squad, too many money grabbing loan rubbish);
Fair comment.
Although I assume the academy is their to change that in the future.

- The utter lack of passion on the pitch (barring a few heroic individuals like Calde and CMS - who sadly don't possess enough skill); and
- The very poor quality of play on the pitch.
It's 1 (one) bad season, will the top learn from their mistakes?
We'll know in just 4 months time.

SittingbourneSeagull · Apr 11, 2015

nwgull said:
One poor season. Are we so fickle that that is all that it takes?

It's not about the poor season for me. I feel the same as the OP. I would rather get relegated with a team of calderons who give a toss about the club but aren't good enough then stay up with the team we have with players like Best and a load of loans that don't care.
I am feeling the same way as the OP. My son is in Germany until July and this season going to brighton had been about meeting up with him rather then the football. As he isn't going again this season I am finding it hard to get the enthusiasm.
I am hoping I will feel differently by August and have renewed my ticket but the whole corporate machine leaves me cold.

Albumen · Apr 11, 2015

It's not even been a year since Kaz screamed into the camera after Ulloa scored that goal.
In fact it's only been a month or two since we creamed Derby.
Yes, our squad isn't strong enough at the moment but there's little reason to moan. Times change, football changes with it. It's ruled by money, and we probably wouldn't have a club if Bloom & co hadn't invested.

SittingbourneSeagull · Apr 11, 2015

.

Albumen said:
It's not even been a year since Kaz screamed into the camera after Ulloa scored that goal.
In fact it's only been a month or two since we creamed Derby.
Yes, our squad isn't strong enough at the moment but there's little reason to moan. Times change, football changes with it. It's ruled by money, and we probably wouldn't have a club if Bloom & co hadn't invested.

I agree it's not been long but tbh the amount we pay to watch we have every right to moan. It's not about the standard of football for me but the whole corporate image of the club and the constant spinning of everything.

Albumen · Apr 11, 2015

SittingbourneSeagull said:
.

I agree it's not been long but tbh the amount we pay to watch we have every right to moan. It's not about the standard of football for me but the whole corporate image of the club and the constant spinning of everything.

Which club's image and lack of spinning would you prefer to mirror?

SittingbourneSeagull · Apr 11, 2015

Albumen said:
Which club's image and lack of spinning would you prefer to mirror?

Why do we have to mirror any club? Brighton has always had a special identity for me but we seem to have lost that IMHO.

Albumen · Apr 11, 2015

SittingbourneSeagull said:
Why do we have to mirror any club? Brighton has always had a special identity for me but we seem to have lost that IMHO.

I'm saying try to find a club that isn't doing what we're doing. It's for the money, for sponsorship, for players wages. I ignore it all and just enjoy the match.

Guinness Boy · Apr 11, 2015

Lincoln Imp said:
If it was just about the football the original poster and so many people on here wouldn't have gone week-in week-out to Gillingham; wouldn't have stood, soaking wet, at doomed relegation seasons at the Goldstone and Withdean.

For me, I still love the Albion but I no longer have a clue what it is I love about it.

A few weeks ago there was a thread on here called "I hate football". What was interesting about the contributions was how many posters - many well-known names - have fallen out of love with the professional game but still keep coming to the Albion. It's what they've always done. They don't always enjoy it but they keep, for the moment, doing it. As season ticket holders it is a relatively painless process but I doubt so many of them would shell out 35 quid for last night's disappointment, and then another 35 for Tuesday. I wouldn't.

Board members, especially the ones the present chairman brought in - five of them, all with finance backgrounds, none an Albion supporter - don't understand the mindset of the average man on the Falmer omnibus. People with a sense of place and community and empathy for a provincial football club might as well be Martians as far as they are concerned.

There is a dislocation between those running the club and the people who follow it. The former don't understand the latter. Example - instead of being grateful for and nurturing the Albion's huge STH base Paul Barber and his men seemed to take it for granted, concentrating instead on getting new, ah, customers in and making the present ones wallets sweat. It's a classic marketing approach but if you try it in a provincial football club many of your existing customers will drift off and replacing them will be very hard. (It's all right at Spurs of course - if you pee off 5,000 supporters you just send out to Harpenden for replacements.)

After a lifetime in an Albion-supporting family I too feel very flat.

The problems the original poster talked about are real and I suspect widespread. The board and those reporting to it must start communicating and stop spinning. And if they can't understand ordinary supporters - and they clearly can't - they should employ people who do.

Brighton4Cambridge3 said:
To summarise my above post . This.

Agree with most of this.

I missed the "I hate football" thread - being stupidly busy at work at the moment - which is a shame as I would have contributed. The players, in general, are arrogant spoiled mercenaries. Maybe they still were back in the day but it didn't come across to me that way. I think about the heroes of my day and I think of Ian Chapman and Stuart Tuck buying me a pint, John Keeley saluting each and every one of the 200 odd who used to go up North after another dismal 3-0 defeat that those of us who'd gone by train has used as a two hour break from drinking or Johnny Byrne giving every last bead of sweat. Nice bloke Byrne, he's coached my son and follows back on twitter, Agustien won't even do that with the sad sacks that spend all day kissing his ar$e. I think of leaders like Fozzie, Grealish, Horton. There was a photo of Wendy Wilkins in the programme last night that I joked about because, despite his nickname, he was caked head to foot in mud in it. When you did lose 3-0 in some Northern shit hole there was no spin, no marketing campaign or twitter take over. Nobody "manged expectations on social media". You just got on with it and two weeks later you'd be back with your mates at 6am on Brighton station with a bag full of newspapers and ale ready to go again. Maybe it's that the OP misses? I know I do.

The absolute nadir of this season? It's hard to tell. Millwall's up there but so is last night. We literally would not have scored if we'd played till midnight. Paul Barber lecturing the fans, Sami being appointed / kept on. The club pretending Toko was a DS signing. All fairly annoying. But if anything sums up my "i hate football" match of the season was Arsenal. The mega superstar multi millionairre Sanchez walking about with his hands in his pockets before the game and getting cleaned out by Rohan Ince during it. We still lost it though because we gave them too much respect, treated them like Royalty instead of 11 other players. After the game the OB on Falmer station protected a load of their brain doners singing "no noise from the batty boys" just outside a stadium that has led the fight against homophobia.

That's modern football folks. Massive clubs with massive salaries and massive twitter accounts. Spin, money and loan players like that little shit Leon Best. I put more effort in than him fetching my morning paper.

Yet I still go. Yet I renewed. Why? My son loves it for one. It's a genuine passion. He didn't even want to leave early last night. My friends for another. The social side. The monthly DD becomes a kind of down payment on good times with my mates. The alternative, frankly, is tramping round some equally soulless, commercialised, overpriced zoo complete with its own twitter account or visiting a similar shopping centre or cinema complex or, God forbid, staying in. They've got us by the short and curlies. I don't like it but I like the alternative less.

More similar thoughts here if you're interested https://brightononlyathome.wordpress.com/

Dan Aitch · Apr 11, 2015

So many issues raised in this thread...

Supporters who travel from London - it doesn't give you the gold key to the crapper when it comes to feeling particularly hard done by - you pays your money, you makes your travel plans and you live with it.

How it feels not to be able to go - eventually the depression wears off and it doesn't even cross your mind to go. You then need two things to get you back - opportunity and a kick up the arse from someone to remind you what you're missing.

How it feels to go again after a long time away - awful, as far as this season is concerned; bloody awful, the same as it does for those who never went away. Peaks and troughs, ups and downs, stand or fall.

Player of the season - find some poor soul who has been to every single game this year, home and away, cup and league, friendlies as well, and give the award to him or her. Some efforts off the field are worth rewarding more than the efforts on the field this year.

The Amex 'experience' - shorten the halftime beer/food queues somehow (dedicated beer lines maybe, or add all drinks to the beer only carts/stands), stop the servers from gripping pints by the rim with their grubby hands... and that's about it. When we whinge about the stadium then things must be appalling on the field.

In summary, having started off in the 70s, been absent for over 20 years from the mid-80s, I'm now as committed and passionate as I ever was and screw you if you think I should be leaving that to the teenagers and twenty-somethings. We all have a part to play, all have our own threshold for putting up with this season's rubbish, and all make our choices about how we respond to how the current situation makes us feel. For me, I'm hooked again, like I should have been all along. I'm also never home, mostly skint, and always knackered. Championship, Premiership, League One - I'm in.

Bring on 2015/16.

Tom Hark Preston Park · Apr 11, 2015

Henfield One said:
After all that we have been through, the Mullery years, Wembley, the war years and the arrival at The Amex, the Poyet years, the AMEPC (training ground to you and me) - I have lost the passion.

Where did it go wrong?

No it's not the big corporate animal itself that has ground me down, it's things like:

- The spin;
- The number of disaffected ex-employees and ex-suppliers, loyal individuals, who are highly critical of what's gone on over the last 4 years;
- The disconnect with players (no settled squad, too many money grabbing loan rubbish);
- The utter lack of passion on the pitch (barring a few heroic individuals like Calde and CMS - who sadly don't possess enough skill); and
- The very poor quality of play on the pitch.

Money can't buy everything of course - we are so very lucky to have The Amex and The AMEPC - which of course are the envy of most football clubs. But if I'd spent £30m on a new state-of-the-art training ground, I'd want a pretty quick return on my investment. To see set pieces of the quality we have had this season would make me weep.

No team has the right to be successful and win trophies or be in the top 10, but every team should be united and passionate.

I haven't looked forward or been excited by an Albion match for months (years?). I don't want to leave the ground early or miss a home match but my loyalty is being severely tested. The Board would do well to listen, read and understand what supporters are saying, instead of sugar coating everything. Yesterday I received an email pushing the Player of the Season Awards Night - really? That's up there with giving the 'pretendance'. Who are you kidding? In my view, it shouldn't be held. Yes invite sponsors to a dinner, fair enough - use it as a real debriefing session. But who (other than a couple of players) are worthy off receiving any kind of award?

Football (but not exclusively football) is about opinions. They'll be people who will totally disagree with me. Some will be constructive in their arguments, others will be abusive and refer back to 'the inner sanctum' rubbish. I derive absolutely no pleasure in seeing the Club (that we fought so hard to bring back from the brink) being disunited or underperforming. I have always thought that by being united we can (and indeed have) achieve - and clearly the Club agree with their 'Together in 2015/16' strap line. But we aren't a Club that's 'together' - things need to be fixed.

Will I go on Tuesday, if my youngest doesn't want to go - I won't go. I've got lots of other things to do. Will anyone care, of course not and there's no reason why anyone should. Except I daresay there may be many other supporters, who might just be thinking along similar lines - and that should be of concern to the Board.

Mate, you, along with many others, fought long and hard for the right for the people of Brighton and Hove, and Sussex, and the wider Albion community, to have a professional football club to exist for that Albion community to enjoy. You played a major part of that fight and should be utterly proud of your part in that fight. Must have been quite a BUZZ if you're being honest. That fight was won. The club now has the level playing field it was denied for so long. Up to the current and future custodians of the club what they now do with it. Hopefully they'll continue to do the community proud. Because without the support of the community, the club is NOTHING.

aolstudios · Apr 11, 2015

Best post this year (O.P).
Eloquently put

Acker79 · Apr 11, 2015

I find, over the past 30 or so years of supporting the albion, that my passion for the albion will ebb and flow occasionally, often unrelated to how well they are playing.

Sometimes it is just the sense that going to watch the games becomes so routine at times it feels almost like an obligation. Usually the summer without football gives me a chance to refresh and miss going, but sometimes that isn't enough. To be honest, I've felt that way for the past two seasons, including last season's play off run, so I'm confident that my waning mojo isn't just "one bad season".

But, I'm also sure my mojo will return, again, unrelated to our form.

Thunder Bolt · Apr 11, 2015

erkan said:
What a load of complete bollocks.

The Amex matchday is brilliant from start to finish.
All we need are home wins and all of this stupidly entitled whinging will be quickly sidelined again.

If you knew the OP and what he's done for this club, you wouldn't call him stupid, entitled or a whinger.

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