What is the point of Red Action?

[donaldo71]

This sums Red Action up

[clockender1]

the point of red action is for the misguided supporters who encouraged the move away from Highbury to feel less bad about their massive mistake.

they and the club tore the heart out of our support and now they are trying to put it back in, like trying to put escaped air back into a balloon. it can't be done.

we left our soul and History at Highbury, the soul is never coming back but the History can be made again. I'm sure in 20-25 years it could come back as the regulars who sit together through thick and thin build their own history.

as i said just after the move, we need one or two decades of midtable teams and crowds of 25-30,000 to get rid of the tourists and JCL's so the Loyals can sit together again and build a real atmosphere again.

cheap safe standing tickets would accelerate the process, imho.

[Herd]

Possibly the best post I have ever seen on here , thank you clockender1 !

[QuartzGooner]

The club wanted to move, because the new stadium generates more profit.
Plenty of fans were unable to get tickets at Highbury when it went to 38,500 from 56,000.

Why kid ourselves that the atmosphere at Highbury was great all the time?
It was not known as "The Highbury Library" for nothing.

The main regular atmosphere went downhill when it became all-seater.
It was still good for some big games though, usually night midweek games.

It would take a change in society to replace the tourists with local fans, the Premiership is a worldwide brand, and London is a city with many foreigners.

Also there is a diminished amount of locals who know the chants, and who were brought up with the idea of inventing new chants/songs.

That was part of terrace culture, where "characters" generated a certain vibe.

Now we have less "characters, they have been replaced by "Individuals."
They will go on fans TV and phone in radio shows, but they lack the charm and wit of the older crew.

If Red Action want to try and generate atmosphere, good luck to them, as long as they stay out of the boardroom struggles!

My remedy?

Safe standing areas.

As for the idea I have seen written here (sorry I forgot who wrote it) that the presence of executive boxes all the way round the ground was a bad thing for atmosphere, I beg to differ.
I have sat in the boxes many times.
Much better atmosphere than the regular seats
You get to sit with your friends and sing, and the booze flows freely.
The boxes are not all owned by corporations, private individual Gooners own boxes too.
And so do medium businesses owned by Gooners.

[VAVAVOOM 14]

As for the idea I have seen written here (sorry I forgot who wrote it) that the presence of executive boxes all the way round the ground was a bad thing for atmosphere, I beg to differ.
I have sat in the boxes many times.
Much better atmosphere than the regular seats
You get to sit with your friends and sing, and the booze flows freely.
The boxes are not all owned by corporations, private individual Gooners own boxes too.
And so do medium businesses owned by Gooners.

I think the point was the boxes all the way 'round creates too much of a chasm between the upper and lower tiers.

[QuartzGooner]

I think the point was the boxes all the way 'round creates too much of a chasm between the upper and lower tiers.

I think the chasm is irrelevant.
There is precious little going on in the upper and lower tiers anyway!

Club level is between them too.
I have sat in Club Level about 15 times, there are a lot of Gooners there but they tend to be upwards of age 30 and less vocal.

[Midz]

Very good thread with some interesting comments.

[silus]

I find calling yourself "ultras" a bit embarrassing and i hate drums at football nearly as much as half and half scarfs...but the Palace lot are everything red action(?) should be.
As someone else said there aren't many of them but they get everyone else going with non stop singing and a mix of new and old songs that everyone knows. They seem to all travel away together as well from what I can tell. Red action add nothing to the atmosphere and seem to think they are above the rest of our support for some reason...waste of space if you ask me.

On the Highbury subject...i stopped going as often for quite a few seasons when it went all seater...mainly due to ticket availability and personal finances, so moving was a good thing for me. I miss the days of when it was terracing, it makes me sad when you see pics of the old girl with everyone packed on the terraces, but when it was seated I thought the atmosphere was generally poor.
When The Grove gets going I think it is much louder than (all seater) Highbury was. Unfortunately this only happens on the odd occasion, Barca win, beating the vermin and the occasional cup game spring to mind...i think if red action were anything like the palace lot the atmosphere would improve ten fold.
I also think a lot of our support are pretty bored of how things are on the pitch. It's quite hard to get overly excited about wins against the likes of Villa,Leicester and Galatasary when you know we won't beat the likes of Utd, Chelsea and Bayern. No matter how some people try to big it up I think most people realise finishing fourth and going out of champs league every year is fucking boring.

[VAVAVOOM 14]

When The Grove gets going I think it is much louder than (all seater) Highbury was.

Naturally, there are 22,000 extra fans.

[nut flush gooner]

When The Grove gets going I think it is much louder than (all seater) Highbury was.

Naturally, there are 22,000 extra fans.

Acoustically the emirates is far more atmospheric. If there was 36000 in the emirates it would be more noisy than Highbury which because of its quirky design could not hold all the noise in. Remember the clock end was pretty much open and the corners where never filled in.

The only problem is that we haven't had the occasions at the Emirates where we see how noisy it can be. The only exception I can think of is possibly vs Barca when we beat them 2-1. The stadium quite literally erupted when Arshavin scored the second.

Redaction, whose fans I believe sit in block 9 have been woeful with their support in recent seasons. The north upper and the clock end seem to be getting more passionate fans these days.

[northbank123]

The first 5 minutes of the 2009 CL semi against United was pretty loud...

[nut flush gooner]

The first 5 minutes of the 2009 CL semi against United was pretty loud...

Surely you mean the 15 minutes before when we where encouraged to get in the ground early . The game itself was a disaster.

[clockender1]

city AND mickeys fans today :

[StuartL]

city AND mickeys fans today :

They want Wenker Out too ?

[Henry Norris 1913]

atmosphere was shite today, even by emirates standards.

whenever you watch an old match from the 70s you can always hear the kids with their mates at the front, the swearing and stuff like that. these days its nothing, your told to shut up and probably grassed by text by some busybody c word who should be watching the game. even maria singing her come on arsenal song was deafley quiet today. the only good chant I ever hear at arsenal these days (watching home matches on tv, the away days are decent) is the north bank/clock end song.

surely some arrangement needs to come into place. the supporters in the nb need to say to the clockenders we'll start the chant every ten minutes or so otherwise it never gets loud enough for the other side to hear. and if you looks at the holmesdale fanatics (well not fanatics, teenagers from mitcham mostly) they are allowed by their club to bring in flags. would that be a problem for redaction to do? none of these designated flag waving bellends in fluorescent coats that probably had to pass a 4 day course to learn how to wave them, but just medium sized Arsenal flags, red white gold whatever, just something. instead they just stand there, with their arms folded making half hearted attempts in the least visible area of the ground.