PLAYER FEED ARTICLE FEED
Social Networks, Football Fans, Fantasy and Reality: How Corporate and Media interests are invading our Lifeworld - Part 3
by Dr David Wainwright and Rachel McLean on 22/11/2008

Newcastle United Football club is perhaps gaining notoriety as one of the worst managed football clubs in the English Premier League. This is due to a constant state of flux concerning the ownership of the club and a constant ‘churn’ with respect to unsuccessful managers not meeting the aspirations of a very demanding and loyal set of ‘Geordie’ football supporters (with a main locus within the Newcastle City and surrounding area of the North East of England). Newcastle United have won very few major honours – their last successes being the Football Association cup in 1955 and the FAIRS (now UEFA cup) in the 1969. The football supporters are considered to be very loyal and fanatical about ‘their’ club supporting it through generations: it has one of the largest grounds with a capacity of around 54,000 seats and for the past 10 years has consistently filled the stadium at most games with over 35,000 consistent season ticket sales each year (ranging from £520 to around £1000 for an annual ticket).

The most recent saga concerning ownership and managerial regime change at NUFC concerns events that happened in 2008. These events, perhaps more than ever before, were fuelled by the Media (Television and Newspapers), the supporters (using their voice at the football ground during and after matches and also through the radio, local paper and internet discussion/chat forums) and the Financial power of the City (London Financial Markets).

NUFC supporters view the ‘true’ ownership of the club as ultimately in the hands of the local Newcastle community despite the physical ownership of assets being vested in powerful business men (more recently Sir John Hall and his son Douglas (Property Developers from the North East), then Freddie Shepherd (Former Business man and friend of the Halls again from the North East) and latterly Mike Ashley (Sports Retail magnate and a Southerner deemed a ‘Cockney’). In 2007 after a period of resentment and unrest by the supporters due to near relegation battles in the Premiership (accentuated by the sacking of a local Newcastle ‘hero’ Sir Bobby Robson as manager and his replacement by a series of unpopular managers finishing with Sam Allardyce – NUFC was sold to Mike Ashley in July 2007. There was much euphoria over this deal due to promises of large investments in the club to buy new players to compete with the top 4 in the Premiership. Ashley initially supported Allardyce but when results turned sour and the supporters rebelled against his ‘long ball’ style tactics he was dismissed. A surprise new appointment (second choice however in January 2008) was the return of the ‘King’ Kevin Keegan who had managed the club previously and was a former player. Keegan was an extremely popular choice amongst supporters and hailed as the ‘Messiah’ and saviour of Newcastle United. On the 4th September 2008 Keegan resigned after a bitter row with Mike Ashley and his senior management team (led by Dennis Wise – a ‘Cockney’). Reasons cited were the lack of promised funds to buy world class players, the selling (or offer of sale) of the best players including James Milner to Aston Villa and an under-mining of Keegan’s right to manage by taking away his control of the buying and selling of players. In effect the Board Room had full control of assets within the club and the Manager was relegated to the role of a Coach purely in charge of team selection and tactics.

During this period the voice and views of the fans were completely disregarded. Even though there was huge public outcry conducted through the local paper (Newcastle Evening Chronicle), on local radio phone-in programmes usually following poor performances, through the discussion and internet forums and amongst the local community in the pubs and clubs and workplace. The official NUFC.com website was fully utilised by Ashley to project a Corporate image of a well run club –mostly containing ‘feel good’ stories from players and club officials. This followed an extremely astute commercial manoeuvre in the summer of 2008 to force fans to commit to 3 year season ticket terms for a promised price freeze – otherwise they would have to pay a 20% increase. This was a distinct play on the loyalty of committed fans to lock them in – especially if success was not immediately forthcoming. The players and their agents were effectively ‘gagged’ and instructed not to give interviews directly to the Press and Media. Pressure was also exerted on local newspaper reporters not to publish material that would agitate the fans – the effective sanction being controlled access to the Club and information on players, transfers, tactics and management. Local reporters responded with their own U-Tube Blogs (such as Blogonthetyne) where they could discuss more contentious issues with greater freedom – but not officially under the banner of the newspaper.

Fans sought solace and therapy for their feelings of injustice, bad treatment and lack of information forthcoming from the club over events in the use of internet discussion forums. One such forum, run and moderated by the local Newcastle Evening Chronicle newspaper (the NUFC general discussion forum) might be considered the most popular site for postings about events. Discussions reached a peak over the events surrounding the resignation of Keegan. The majority of fans were sympathetic to his views as he was regarded as one of their own and with his heart in the club. This rebounded in a tidal wave of resentment and vitriol against Ashley and his senior management team recreating prejudices related to the UK North South divide – especially a dislike and a distrust of London ownership of a Newcastle football team.

An example of this type of post is provide below where ‘MadPete’ expresses caution to other forum users after the messages were becoming increasingly litigious or possibly subject to Police monitoring and (perhaps Corporate) surveillance. He reminds users that even though pseudonyms are used – fans identities can be traced through IP addresses of forum users (and they will have signed up to the policies and conditions of the forum itself).

This is an example of what is popularly thought to be a ‘free speech situation’ rapidly rebounding on forum users into something that could get them into serious trouble. The more emotive the outbursts (and this was an escalating situation where fans ‘wound each other up in heated debates either agreeing or disagreeing) the riskier the position of the respondent. Eventually the moderator ‘HelenD’ from the Newspaper has to step in and make announcements for users to be careful and not to use bad language or defamatory comments – or incite violence. She states: “Thanks MadPete for your post. The Chronicle and Journal will not tolerate threats of violence on our forums…We understand that fans are angry and upset – we are too – but we cannot allow posts containing abusive insults and violent threats to remain published.” Posted 4th September 2008.

This series of threads discussing the poor state of the club, Ashley’s mismanagement and possible motives, possible solutions to the crisis and possible threats of action represent real democracy or free speech in action. However – we can see how this is curtailed with a mild threat from the Corporate media interests (supported by the judicial and legal systems) and a sharp reminder that the users are not secure in their conversations. They can be under surveillance, they may be identified and they are asked to modify their behaviours to be less emotive and speak more rationally (again a culture of instrumentalism from government and large business).

Due to a lack of information coming from the Club, and a restriction of flows of information to the popular local Press the NUFC General forum became the main focal point for fans to obtain any breaking news, rumours or general intelligence about the state of the club and future speculation.

Posts are in real time and seem to run constantly throughout each day with a dedicated set of users. This represents a public sphere for discussion and is an important counter-veiling power to Corporate interests. Users cannot be controlled or verified however – there is no certainty that the Media (as in HelenD) or representatives from the Club owners, management group or players agents are not ‘leaking’ information to manipulate, provoke, counter, misinform, or influence debates and opinions.

If this is representative of fans’ culture and their particular Lifeworld, it is certainly currently colonized (or at the very least at risk of being colonized) by the System of large business interests, players commercial interests and the Media.