Here's the video - I know they are usually rivals, but I urge you to give it a look:
There but for the grace of (insert deity/non-deity of choice here) go us. We were one Alisher Usmanov away from perhaps starring in a video like this ourselves. Turn that over in your mind for a bit...let it really seep in.
It's got me wondering about our real place in all of this. Look, I'm hardly naive enough to believe that supporters can or perhaps even should have designs on affecting the day-to-day running of a football club. We are not qualified to do so, and the old adage about managers who pay too much attention to what's said in the stands soon joining them there comes to mind. We can certainly express our opinions about what goes on during games, who is on the roster, whatever. But, Ebbsfleet United is not exactly the model I'd like any rational, grown-up club to follow.
However, I do wholeheartedly believe that football supporters have a right to a club without unnecessary debt, that makes at least a token effort to treat supporters as something other than a revenue stream, and that maintains the important traditions that make a football club what it is...that makes up its identity.
I can understand that the natural on-pitch and terrace-song hostilities that we have with other clubs can lead us to schadenfreude when misfortune comes their way. Now, if we're talking about a certain Scouse club capitulating at home to Blackpool, then shit...that's half the fun of what we do. But, when it comes to the very survival of a club, when it comes to the demolishing of a dynasty and a bulwark of the English game, then perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to stick the boot in when they're down.
Without our enemies, then what is our purpose? Whatever we feel about United and Chelsea and Liverpool, would you really want a whole fixture list of nothing but Stoke and Sunderland? I sure as fuck don't.
My point is, moneyed interests are firmly entrenched in the game and nothing we say or do is going to change that....there's no unringing that bell. What we can do however is to be vigilant about who owns our club and what they are doing with it. Had the sale to the Red Sox owners not happened, then I would have hoped that Liverpool supporters would have finally smartened up and coordinated to not buy merchandise, not travel to away games, the foreign supporters not traveling to Anfield, etc. I would do the same if it happened to Arsenal.
What do you think? Personally, I think supporters from every major and mid-sized club should get together and agree on some kind of Supporters' Bill of Rights or something. Then again, most of us are lazy sods, aren't we?
