Date: 5th November 2014 at 6:00pm
Written by:

Chelsea season ticket holder, Clayton Beerman, asks whether Chelsea supporters are suffering from a sense of entitlement in expecting to win every game…

I started writing this blog in the aftermath of the Manchester United draw. My question at that time was as a fan what exactly am I entitled to expect? When am I allowed to be angry and upset without sounding ungrateful and downright spoilt? All of this sounds slightly ironic after Jose’s outburst.

Immediately after the Manchester United game I made the cardinal sin of going straight on to twitter and rant. I was not happy, why didn’t we go for the jugular, why did we shut up shop so early. I was hauled back being told that I should be happy with a draw at Old Trafford and if we’d gone for it we might have lost etc. Maybe, maybe not. Football is all about opinions and I am still angry but less so.

Photo by @cfcunofficial

Photo by @cfcunofficial

It did make me think though, what as a fan am I entitled to expect from my team. You see I have always been annoyed by the arrogance of certain teams/fans, the most obvious of which both play in red and their sense of entitlement. Is that what I am turning into? Heaven forbid I was just having a moment, wasn’t I?

You see I have been a supporter for a long time, which is not a boast merely a fact. I was there when we were shit and for the bit before that when we were good and nearly very good until in true CFC style we imploded. My starting point when going to any game is ultimately hope mixed with a little trepidation. It may be a throwback to times less successful or merely the initial standpoint of most football fans. It may be a glass half empty thing but to me going into a ground expecting to win borders on the foolish no matter the odds. Exhibit 1, I give you, losing the home record to Sunderland last year. That result was the last thing anyone expected not least Sunderland fans

The team I hate playing the most is the North London mob who play in white. Losing to them is one of my worst footballing experiences. It’s always been the way but despite having the most amazing record against them in the last 30 odd years I can never relax when playing them. I am filled with anxiety, even when we were on that phenomenal run against them which was up to about 29 games unbeaten I never once went into the ground anticipating victory. That is not to say I wasn’t filled with hope that we would win.

So the fact I was angry we didn’t get the job done on against United does that make me wrong? At the moment we are a very good team, in my opinion we didn’t achieve what we could’ve done on that Sunday hence my frustration but I want to stress it was a judgement made from what I saw rather than a belief we have a divine right to win every game.

Many fans I know are fatalistic and the game makes mugs out of all of us. Poor old Brentford a couple of seasons ago had a penalty to secure promotion, hit the bar and the opposition went up the other end of the field to score. They had not been promoted for a long time and despite getting into the play offs many of their fans just “knew” that something would go wrong.Roman Abramovich - Chelsea

We as a club have grown enormously in terms of expectations. This ramble is not to cast judgement on any “new” fans and who is a proper fan and who is not. There  is no doubt however that those who have only been a fans since the early 2000s/post Roman, will expect us to win every game we play in. Some of those fans may well shake their heads with wonderment at non trophy winning seasons. Whereas some of us pre Roman fans expected nothing as trophy less decades passed us by. My own son had a championship under his belt at 18 months and had 3 league titles a double and a Champions League (amongst other trophies) before he was 10!

Social media has assisted us fans with expressing our opinions. It started with the phone ins, the original 6 o 6 with Danny Baker was wonderful. It seemed a great forum and he was both witty and knowledgeable. I remember coming home after a 3-0 home loss to Sheffield Wednesday and DB muttering the immortal words “I see that that Anthony Cascarino has been weaving his magic at Chelsea”. Alas he has become a parody of himself and the phone ins are now in my experience awful, with verbose punters not letting the callers get a word in.

So the unrealistic expectations and opinions have now transferred to other formats of social media. The one I use the most is Twitter. In the main the people I follow tweet sense. The problem is and as I alluded to above, it’s instant and there is little time for reflection everyone anxious to get there point out there. So if I had waited until the following day would my feelings have changed, no, could I have put it more eloquently yes.

So as fans should we ever have any sense of entitlement? Should we ever expect anything? For me I would say no and yes. No, I am not entitled to think that we should win every game we play (and as an aside this invincibles talk is very annoying). Yes, I am entitled to expect my team try and complete. I do not think that because we have better players and a great manager but to me that is a minimum. Nothing in my experience annoys a fan more than someone not putting in a shift. Luckily I struggle to remember the last CFC player in that category.

As I said above this article was not written to comment on the atmosphere at the Bridge. Others have written eloquent and well thought out pieces. I just wanted to question what a fan is entitled to and perhaps one of the reasons for the lack of atmosphere is all about turning up to grounds expecting to win. I do think inevitably there is some truth in that. As we have become more successful maybe there are more people with that mind-set attending games.

An example would be an incident that happened outside Wembley after the FA Cup final in 1994. We have just been trounced, were soaking wet and on walking out of the ground encountered a group of Manchester United fans. They were not giving it large, just minding their own business. One of us (we all know who he is) went bonkers at the them: “why aren’t’ you celebrating you’ve just won the double” etc. He couldn’t believe the perceived arrogance and apparent nonchalance to their success, something in 94 we couldn’t dream of achieving. Those Manchester United fans had been used to success and were used to winning, that doesn’t mean it meant any less to them.

The day I go to a game expecting to win is the day I stop going but that doesn’t mean I can’t have my opinion before during and after a game, as they say “there is no fool like an old fool”.

Clayton Beerman

Follow Clayton on Twitter @goalie59

 

2 responses to “Great Expectations”

  1. Karen Fisher says:

    Hey cuz,
    Great blog which I thoroughly enjoyed reading, being so heavily involved in my beloved Welwyn Garden City FC. Not quite the Chelsea or Man U, but feels like that to me and our supporters.
    The bit that got me the most was the speed in which we react to results, performance and even referees. I have learnt through experience to try not to react instantly, even though that is bloody tough sometimes. If we sleep on it, the perspective becomes different.
    Would love to see you and Charlie at a game soon.
    Well done honey. Writing must run in the family. X