Clubs that should be more hated than Leeds United

Last week, my beloved Leeds United finished top of a poll of fans to find the most hated Football League club in England. Although I knew that because of our rivalries with Man U and Chelsea, and with other smaller Yorkshire clubs like Bradford City, Huddersfield Town and Sheffield Wednesday suffering from inferiority complex, we would be right up there. But above M********r United? Seriously?

Anyway, here’s a list of clubs who should be more hated than us, and why:

M*********r United
Although they came second, they’re worse than us. They were at the forefront of the commercialisation of football. They started the whole ‘prawn sandwich’ culture. They’ve got hardly any fans from their home town. Roy Keane. Cristiano Ronaldo. Wayne Spudface. The Neville Brothers. At least FC United’s fanbase has some principle.

Chelsea
They brought Ken Bates into the footballing world. They assumes a key role alongside the scum in developing the ‘prawn sandwich’ culture. Also, under Jose Mourinho and Avram Grant, they bored the arse off millions of people. And they’ve got a bigger group of far-right supporters than we have. Oh, and don’t forget the oligarch owner.

Liverpool
Simply for the decade of tedium that they’ve inflicted on their own fans, oppsing fans and millions of TV viewers. Not even their comeback against Milan in the Champions League final a few years ago can redeem them.

Millwall
Nazi fans. Perhaps even more than Chelsea and Leeds combined.

Sheffield United
For giving us Kevin Blackwell, the man who makes Kevin Keegan look like Ottmar Hitzfeld. And they’ve got a few dickhead fans.

I was going to put Villa in, but Martin O’Neill and the disappearance of Doug Ellis has let them off. Middlesbrough’s Benitez-ish tendencies also made them candidates, but they’re nothing like as bad as the five clubs that made it.

Why you shouldn’t hate Leeds United:

• Albert Johanneson, the first black footballer in the country
• Eddie Gray. Would be the best winger in the world today
• Our record 37-pass move against Southampton in 1972. Amazingly, the Mirror said that was a reason to hate us, but when other clubs do it, they get applauded
• Lucas Radebe: nicest man in football. Also, if it wasn’t for him, Rio Ferdinand and Jonathan Woodgate wouldn’t be the players they are today
• We’re the only club who could potentially rival Man U as a superclub. All we need to do is get rid of Bates
• We deserve sympathy because we’ve had five arsehole chairmen in a row: Bill Fotherby, Peter Ridsdale, John McKenzie, Gerald Krasner, Ken Bates
• All our fans hate those chairmen more than other fans do
• We have to pay £600 for a season ticket to watch League One football

That’s all I can be arsed writing at the moment, but there’ll be more football-related stuff coming soon

Anarchoaspie

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Kevin McCloud And The Big Pat On The Head Of The Poor Northerners To Show How Much We Pretend To Care About Them In The Media…

Having watched the first of the four-episode series on Channel 4’s Castleford Project last night, I wasn’t surprised to find that it was basically the twat off Grand Designs patronising people from the town, repeatedly calling Cas a ‘failing town’ and saying that it really needs regeneration.

I lived in Cas (well, Whitwood, but it’s practically the same place) for five years, and I didn’t like it. However, there are other towns that need regeneration more. If McCloud and his filming team went just a few miles further east along the M62, they will have seen Knottingley, a place that doesn’t even have a town centre to speak of (a row of shops and a Morrison’s doesn’t count).

The first episode was all about the £1.1m footbridge that was recently opened connecting the town centre with Duck Island, the area of Cas where Lock Lane is. To the dozens of people in the South watching, they didn’t know what happened, but a large chunk of the audience will aready know that bridge was built, and hasn’t collapsed yet.

I’ll watch the next episode, although I get the feeling that McCloud will still pat random people on the head going through the town, look down on everyone and will only do pieces-to-camera at 5am when all the shops are closed, just to give the impression that there’s no shops there. Also, they’ll probably conveniently ignore Glasshoughton and Cas Tigers’ new stadium.

Anarchoaspie

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PrideTM: a big disappointment

How do,

The past two Sundays, I went to Gay Pride events at both Leeds and Wakefield. These were significant because they were the first such events I’d ever been to, and having only come out as a bisexual less than two years ago, I thought that this would help to aid my understanding of what it is to be gay. I also hoped that going to pride would help increase by rock-bottom confidence, and that I would at least make a friend.

Although I feel that I might have made a couple of friends, the rest was pretty shite. Leeds was just a sea of advertisements and endorsements from minor celebrities and politicians, desperate to tap into the ‘pink pound’. How depressing is it to find out that you’re part of a community which is little more than a demographic to the bosses? Also, it was the same system which presents itself as part of the emancipation of LGBT people that helped bankroll the homophobic Thatcher regime, which introduced the infamous Section 28.

Hanging out with a couple of other queer anarchists, we got a few questions about what the Red and Black flag we were carrying was about, but thankfully, we got no harrassment from the police or from fascists and religious fundamentalists, who usually stand on the sidelines of the parade, shouting “blasphemy, blaspheyou” and other such bollocks.

Although Leeds Pride was pretty shite, Wakie was far worse. Going with one of the guys I was with last week, we were told by one of the organisers that he couldn’t fly his flag outside the pedestrianised part of Westgate or leaflet because,  by their reckoning, that meant that they could allow the BNP to come. I don’t know about you, but I can’t see any of the fash coming to these things because:
a) they’ll be heavily outnumbered, and
b) being one of the most homophobic parties in the country, they’re unlikely to participate

They also said that it was a ‘non-political’ event, even though we were stood right next to a fair trade stall. What a load of bullshit. How is the idea of gay pride and gay rights not political? The whole movement started with the Stonewall Riots, and one of the main reasons why there are gay pride marches is to try and help combat homophobia, which is still a problem today.

Next year, I reckon that all queer anarchists, or anyone who’s sick of the commercialism and hypocrisy that plagues mainstream marches, should get together in their local areas and hold DIY pride events. A bit like Get Bent in Manchester, if you like.