Oh my god the season is nearly

[flash gunner]

excellent news for loyal fans who will be moving on up the waiting list

Nice to see Red Member has a new WUM buddy

I'm 100% serious - been saying it for ages, only advantage of us being shite is getting rid of the whiners, glory hunters and part-timers and freeing up season tickets for the loyal

If only that was the consequence. Unfortunately the inverse of that is happening: It's a lot of the once loyal fans that are giving up their tickets to be replaced by the 'event' chasers and day trippers who only come every now and again and don't have the same emotional investment of those who used to turn out - even when we really were shit!! - but now feel abandoned by the clubs pursuit of the pound note!! .

Don't bother biting. Someone's obviously seen the type of reaction that Red receives and has gone into copycat WUM mode.

Agreed JD is on a mission today. Having said that Hlebbys post is bang on

[highburyJD]

on a mission how?
I've never changed my opinion about possible non-renewers because we're not good enough
please please please don't renew
leave season ticket holders for those who support their team irrespective
its my opinion

the views of Arsenal 'fans' who want us to lose, hate our players, hate one of our greatest managers are fully accepted here
is it a big enough 'church' to accept those whose love for the club isn't results dependent?

I haven't started any threads - just responded to what others posted

don't see the logic of what Hleb posted vis a vis season tickets - yes day trippers and prem event fans buy up lots of tickets
but surely not season tickets - if some seat near you is a season ticket touted to diff tourists every week then grass them to the club, fcuk touts

my assumption is that those seats are bought with memberships not season tickets...
could easily be wrong but if I am the club should crack down - happy to bring up any evidence with AISA

[SteveO 35]

on a mission how?
I've never changed my opinion about possible non-renewers because we're not good enough
please please please don't renew
leave season ticket holders for those who support their team irrespective
its my opinion

the views of Arsenal 'fans' who want us to lose, hate our players, hate one of our greatest managers are fully accepted here
is it a big enough 'church' to accept those whose love for the club isn't results dependent?

I haven't started any threads - just responded to what others posted

don't see the logic of what Hleb posted vis a vis season tickets - yes day trippers and prem event fans buy up lots of tickets
but surely not season tickets - if some seat near you is a season ticket touted to diff tourists every week then grass them to the club, fcuk touts

my assumption is that those seats are bought with memberships not season tickets...
could easily be wrong but if I am the club should crack down - happy to bring up any evidence with AISA

I think if you read your second sentence then you can answer your own question in the first one i.e. you are assuming that non-renewal decisions are just being made because "we're not good enough". Drop in a line like that and then wait for a reaction eh? Well not from me. Unlike others I will not hijack a thread with seven pages of personal insults, but if you really believe that not being good enough is the sole reason for non-renewal, then you clearly don't read people's views in enough detail or opt to put your own spin on it

Seeing as you clearly have all the answers round here, answer this one. Why do people like me turn down season tickets now, when the team is qualifying for the CL every season, but were happy to own one during periods of dismal football in the 80s and at the end of GG's reign in the 1990s

[highburyJD]

pop idol, talk radio and the tinterweb has addled your mind...?
you spend all your dosh on floridian flat screen crocodiles?
HTF do I know why others take their decisions

I read your posts and thought you were saying it was because of disatisfaction with transfer dealings
and you're lying/misremembering/bonkers if you think you were 'happy' at the end of GG's reign

I think we are all more critical now. We had no midfield creativity yet George hardly played Davis for years and sold Limpar and Rocastle. Those were basically my favourite players yet somehow I didn't freak out at the manager...

[armchair]

WUM ALERT - Dont bite.

[SteveO 35]

WUM ALERT - Dont bite.

Don't worry mate, I won't. As I said, there will be others that will provide the sought after seven page tirade. Won't waste energy.....especially seeing as the chap involved has gone out of his way to provide us with his favourite TV and radio programmes in the last post

Apparently I said I was happy at the end of GG's reign as manager too. Funny I'll have to delve back through 5000 posts to find when I said that.

[Henry Norris 1913]

the current regime at arsenal is only attracting more noveau-riche moths to the light, to watch our overpriced prim-donnas play beautiful football, without the nasty expectation of winning anything. I know lifelong fans who can't afford to go anymore and quite frankly they don't care as long as the club care more about tourists, soccer am generation "footy lovers" etc than actual supporters. I actually know a shef weds fan that went to our home match v wigan recently and said the atmopshere was shite. I was literally lost for words, there were so many reasons I could give, but I went with "and what did you do to help"? He was a neutral and naturally answered accordingly, then it hit him. Neutrals coming to watch the team rather than support them.
Although I actually disagreed with him, the atmos for that match was surprisingly good considering we were losing to wigwam.

[highburyJD]

Apparently I said I was happy at the end of GG's reign as manager too. Funny I'll have to delve back through 5000 posts to find when I said that.

delve about two inches up dude
let me quote it for you

Why do people like me turn down season tickets now, when the team is qualifying for the CL every season, but were happy to own one during periods of dismal football in the 80s and at the end of GG's reign in the 1990s

WUM ALERT - Dont bite.

you thought getting rid of Rocky and Limpar was the right move...?
or you think season tickets are widely touted
or what, which opinion that I've posted to you refuse to believe anyone could hold?
Is it just that anyone who doesn't post they hate the manager must be lying???
by all means disagree
but this methodology of claiming I don't think what I post is simply bizarre

why would being pro-Arsenal upset people on an Arsenal message board?
truly baffling

[SteveO 35]

Highbury JD - if you're going to quote me mate then at least do it in context. The quote you've referred to is the very point I am making. I said that I was happy to own a season ticket then - not that I was happy with the performance of the team. In fact I use the word 'dismal' to describe how we were playing in the last 2 years of GG's era - that hardly sounds like being happy with the team does it? The football from 1994-1996 was mostly bloody awful - midfield plodders with no creativity and a total reliance on Wrighty to nick us a goal. We could still defend pretty well, but what was laid out in front of that back four was the most predictable, stale midfield I think I've witnessed in my days as an Arsenal fan. But, and back to the original point and retort to your post about fans only renewing based upon the results

I don't like being lied to by corporate schmoozers, and I don't like my expectations being mismanged - whether its the car I drive, the restaurant I eat in, the suit I wear etc. I'm not a snob by any stretch of the imagination - if I fancy a Subway or McDonalds I'll eat it. I'll pay a fiver and enjoy it.....but I won't have it sold to me as a Michelin star dining experience. If I hire a Ford Fiesta, I expect it to drive like one and not like a Bentley.

One of the main rules of business life is not to alienate your customers. Another is to under promise and over deliver. Now I hate comparing Arsenal to a corporate organisation because its my pleasure in life and not the same as buying a car or eating in a restaurant - and hence the reason why it hurts 100x more to watch my club being led and managed the way it is currently i.e. complete alienation of the fan base and overpromising and underdelivering

When we moved to the Emirates we were sold a vision of competing with 'Europe's elite', and ticket prices were set accordingly. Since then we have seen a constant weakening of the squad, ticket price increases despite the fact that people's disposable incomes have been squeezed drastically, and a team that are further away from competing with Europe's elite than they were in 2006 when they reached the final of the CL, knocking out the likes of Real Madrid and Juventus en route. The club's focus on its property development activities at the expense of the football club has been impossible to disguise - read the club's accounts for the past 5 years.

Stan Kroenke is a high wealth individual that is running this club for cash, ready to sell it to the next owner. He doesn't care about Arsenal FC, to the extent that he'll show up to the AGM, give stock answers to preloaded questions and will then fuck off again for another year.....leaving Gazidis to preside over the milking of the fans for another year - last year 6.5% ticket price increases, this year pushing through Silver membership increases that have seen the price rise by 70%+ total in 2 years. What next year? I can only imagine...

I personally choose not to add to Kroenke's personal wealth all the while I feel that I am being lied to. I don't enjoy not going as regularly as I once did, but I can live with it. There is no counterargument to that - it is my right, and my personal feeling. If it isn't shared by you then great for you - you'll benefit to the extent that I am one less ST holder / ticket purchaser for you to worry about....but please don't confuse everybody that doesn't want to renew with some form of trophy hungry fan that pisses off the first time we don't win something. It was years until I saw Arsenal win anything of substance from the time I started supporting them and I went every week and the football was far worse.....and I can assure you that if these current owners or the next batch eventually fuck us all over and saddled us with crippling debts, I'd be one of the first fans to be buying tickets in the Championship or League One if we were owned by people that didn't rip us to shit, were honest in their ambition and delivery and didn't constantly feed us a pack of lies.

[frankbutcher]

JD - told good and proper. Now fuck off down the Lane.

[Chippy]

We really need a like button on this forum. Well said SteveO.

[g88ner]

Fantastic post, Steveo

[flash gunner]

Good post SteveO im not taking the piss here but id like to see JD's views on that post

[arseofacrow]

SteveO can be quite coherent when not talking about Diaby

[g88ner]

SteveO can be quite coherent when not talking about Diaby