New To This Game Are Yer?

This article was published in the January 2009 edition of The Gooner Magazine

http://www.onlinegooner.com/covers/index.php?id=192

The ‘Eboooooue’ scandal rumbles on and everyone has their own opinions on the antics of a 60,000 strong crowd in London N7. Fleet Street with acres of tabloid column space to fill has certainly not passed up the challenge to add its two pence worth on the situation. The Sun evoked images of warfare and the inefficiencies of Islington’s limp-wristed middle-class liberals in comparison to the spirit of the two world wars stating ‘when it comes to fighting in the trenches, you would not want to be alongside too many Arsenal fans. The Nick Hornby Brigade would leave 10 minutes before the end of the battle so they could catch the tube home. And the hardcore fighters who stayed until the end would pick on their own to such an extent that they would turn the guns on themselves’.

Chris McGrath of the more high-brow Independent also links the Arsenal fans antics to declining social standards, asserting that ‘people like this represent something – not just in football, but in society itself....in short they are the symbol of decadence....that is why all the obloquy (for those without English as their first language this means ‘stick’) directed at Emmanuel Eboue must be returned towards each and every Arsenal fan who rose from his seat to join a vile chorus of booing as he left the field on Saturday’. In fellow broadsheet the Telegraph, Jim White claims that ‘Arsenal’s customers bring out their Santa claws to leave Eboue scarred’. He elaborates that ‘money has altered the fundamentals of the game; the Arsenal fan websites (do they mean us?) were alive yesterday with debate about the E-booing. In the past....it would never have happened you supported the shirts no matter what....that is what being a fan is about....to boo one of your own is sacrilege’. Patrick Barclay carries with this theme, believing that ‘We have a different kind of football these days, a person disrespectful, a person brought up on the kind of humiliation culture you see on these TV programmes...They should offer any fan who's not happy the chance to go, hand in their season ticket to someone on the waiting list’. Barclay stops short of analyzing a piece of reality TV from the 80s called ‘Hooligan’ which solely centred around how football fans of the day conducted themselves, probably because it didn’t fit in with his trip down selective memory lane.

So the conclusion the press expect us to draw from this turns out to be that football fans booing their own players is a new phenomenon and one which can only possibly done by affluent ‘neuvau’ rather than ‘real’ fans. The evidence put forward sadly leads us nowhere near water but they expect us to drink nonetheless. In fact an ignorance of past instances of fans booing their own is a far greater implication of some sort of recent conversion to football spectating because such examples are numerous. For a kick off, Emmanuel Eboue is not the first substitute to be substituted due to a crowd’s dissatisfaction of his performance. This accolade goes to Niall Quinn in 1987 against Southampton, who was in fact the first ever substitute to be substituted in English football. The player he replaced in the opening minutes of that match turned out to be ‘cult hero’ Perry Groves, himself a target for the Highbury boo-boys from 1991/2. In that season reliable first team favourites like Nigel Winterburn also had the same treatment. As the defending champions, our title chase all but disappeared by Christmas that season. In the midst of all this frustration a mistake by Winterburn against Wimbledon on New Year’s Day which lead to the Dons taking the lead at Highbury led to him receiving a level of abuse from the North Bank which he publicly complained about to the press after the game.

Arsenal players who have written themselves into the club’s history books have also had their share of abuse; Michael Thomas received his in the 2nd half of the 1988/89 season after he began to lose his phenomenal early season form. He was dropped on Paul Davis’s return from nine match suspension, but came back into the fold due to Davis’s injury around March, scoring his famous 89th minute winner at Anfield in late May. Ian Wright, who during the ‘1-0 nil to the Arsenal’ years was the undoubted star of the side. However he too received stick from the Highbury crowd just months after breaking Cliff Bastin’s scoring record. As Arsenal’s title race withered along with Wright’s form he was on the receiving end of abuse from his own fans during the 1-3 defeat by Blackburn at Highbury. His anger led to a particularly x-rated challenge on a Rovers defender and his subsequent substitution, and then later shouted abuse through the dressing room window in the direction of Arsenal fans in Avenell Road on their way to the tube. As Arsenal went on to win their first double in 27 years, the Blackburn episode had hastened Wrighty’s exit. Despite this, all was apparently forgotten less than 18 months later when he received a rapturous reception after coming on as sub in Lee Dixon’s testimonial, leading to Dixon question whether it was he playing in Wrighty’s testimonial rather than the reverse.



Another incident of barracking popular players came in April 1979. Sammy Nelson – named as the 35th Greatest Arsenal player by Arsenal.com was described by the website as ‘a funny and endearing individual...held in genuine affection by team-mates and supporters alike’. However after putting the ball into his own net, Nelson had received what could be described as a negative response from the North Bank. After the leveling the score later in the game Nelson had decided to respond by dropping his shorts in front of the North Bank. Nelson had in turn received a fine from the FA for his actions.

So past history tells us that not only is booing of our own players nothing new, it’s happened to better and more popular players than Emmanuel Eboue. I have personally never myself booed or seen the point in booing one of our own and feel to a certain extent that Eboue’s treatment was harsh considering his return from injury and being played out of position. On the other hand I also can’t cry a thousand tears for the fact that he has, correct me if I’m wrong but Eboue received nothing more than common or garden booing and ironic cheers. Unlike various past players he has received no abuse related to his ethnic background; unlike Ian Walker he didn’t receive jibes about his dead mother, unlike John Fashanu he never received chants about his upbringing in a Dr Banardo’s children’s home. In the history of football crowd chanting the abuse dished out to Eboue was nothing particularly spectacular.
It’s true that there may be nothing particularly nice about being booed by 60,000 people for whose benefit you are supposed to be working for, however compare this to the abuse and threats of physical violence from the general public that comes in the direction of people doing jobs such as driving London’s night buses, working in call centres having to answer for managerial inefficiencies of corporations like energy or telephone suppliers or working in the local Job Centre Plus dealing with the increasing number of desperate and agitated benefit claimants face to face. There are many similar jobs out there in which people who earn in a year what Eboue probably earns in a week have to deal more frequently with abuse from the general public. If Eboue doesn’t like the abuse, he’s got several hours a week on the training ground to sort out his game. As shown from previous history a few good performances tends to stop the boo boys. If he hasn’t got the mental strength for this situation, perhaps a day in one the aforementioned jobs might help him to put it into perspective.

And the argument regarding new and old fans with regard to this is totally irrelevant; the likes of Patrick Barclay et al seem to assume that old school working class fans don’t try to get hold of tickets anymore. Many do for lesser demand games (like Wigan) and have to pay up to £65 for a ticket as once they come to red members as most of the cheaper tickets on the lower tiers are taken up. Barclay and co. on the other hand get paid a tidy sum to enter a football stadium and watch a game, and yet they want to lecture us about the football fan’s relation to economic reality. Perhaps it’s you that needs to spend a bit of time in the real world boys.