West Ham Trump Arsenal: Supporting the Bottom Four Beats Supporting the Big Four
EPL sides have more passionate, fanatical, hopelessly devoted supporters than any other sports teams on Earth.
Is it the British class system and economic mobility constraints therein that lead to such fanaticism? Is it family tradition? Is it 1000+ year history the sport has in the UK? Who really knows?
As with any league, there are top teams and bottom teams. Supporters of the Big Four will tell you until they’re blue in the face that you’re a fool for loving any team but Chelsea, any team but Arsenal, any team but Liverpool, any team but Untied.
Supporters of struggling sides like West Ham United, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Wigan will tell you you’re an arrogant, obnoxious pissant if you worship at the altar of Arséne Wenger or Sir Alex Ferguson, and there’s some truth to that. Here are your top five reasons to love the bottom dwellers, not the astral bodies.
Who do you love, the Big Four or the bottom four?
Pretty Colors
1 of 5
That claret and sky blue West Ham sports looks quite smart. Ditto for the unique orange and black of Wolves.
Wigan Athletic’s blue and white striped home jersey looks a bit like a racecar (vroom vroom! That jersey’s getting somewhere even if the team isn’t!) while it’s black away kit is what Bruce Wayne would wear for a Saturday kick about.
Now let’s look at those big clubs. Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United: variations on a boring theme. Blaring red. Are they emergency beacons? Matadors? Fire hydrants? And let’s not even go into Liverpool’s candy striped stripper away kit or Arsenal’s freshly regurgitated mustard alternate jerseys.
Fact of the matter is, bottom four supporters look smart when they put on their jerseys and Big Four supports risk getting peed on by dogs.
Financial Feasibility
2 of 5
Save yourself some money by falling in love with a flailing side.
The cheapest tickets you’ll find for a match at Stamford Bridge run £46—adult general admission runs £56 for games no one wants to see and £61 for matches against the Big Four, Manchester City, Tottenham and West Ham.
Looking for a Fernando Torres jersey to wear to the game? That’ll run you another £56. Say you wear your Torres jersey to the Liverpool match—£117 pounds, mate.
Adult tickets at Molineux, hallowed home of Wolves, begin at £25. You won’t find yourself paying more than £40. Children 12 to 17 get in from anywhere between £8 and £20.
Say you take your two sons, aged 13 and 16, to see Wolves at home. Say you wear your Wolves home top (£20), your 16-year-old son has the same and your 13-year-old son wears his hoodie (£20).
At the cheapest ticket price, you’re looking at £101, at the most expensive £140—only £23 more than the Chelsea package to bring the kids.
It's all in the numbers.
Passion
3 of 5
You’re living in the middle of the United States—say, Omaha. Your job transfers you to Mexico City. You’re on vacation in Japan. A mate gets married; the stag do is in Brazil (nice mate, that!).
In any one of these places you will walk into a bar. It’s the middle of the afternoon and you’re looking for a pint to get the day started. Maybe there’s a match on you’re interested in. You sit down at the bar and you meet an Arsenal fan.
“You support Arsenal?”
“I do.”
“Great, mate. Why’s that then?”
“Because they’re Arsenal.”
End of conversation.
Same scenario, but the man you meet is a West Bromwich Albion fan. You spend the next hour and a half talking about Odemwingie’s inconsistent form, the sacking of di Matteo and the under use of Carlos Vela by new gaffer Roy Hodgson.
While there are passionate, intelligent, knowledge Arsenal, United, Chelsea and Liverpool fans out there, there are just as many flaky people who love the brand, not the tradition.
But you will never, ever, in your life, find a fair-weather West Ham, Wigan, Wolves, Birmingham, WBA etc fan (and maybe this is because the weather is rarely fair in those climates).
Expectations
4 of 5
When Liverpool lingered around 10th place earlier this season, pundits and fans alike cried for the head of Roy Hodgson. Like Judith slaying Holofernes, the Merseyside management severed and served.
Barry Glendenning of the Guardian used more epithets that we care to print regarding Liverpool, among them awful, dismal, terrible and horrible.
In a recent interview, West Ham United striker Carlton Cole said with optimism that the side might be able to finish in the top ten, though would be satisfied to safely avoid relegation.
With the Big Four clubs, anything short of greatness is unacceptable. If you support bottom sides, you live with the motto of any proud parent—your best is good enough for us.
Trophy Drought Smophy Trout
5 of 5
Arsenal has not won a trophy since hoisting the FA Cup in 2005—that’s six years of nothing. Ultimately, not a particularly long time, is it?
Yet in the intervening years, fans have grown impatient with Wenger. Though they praise his pursuit of pure football when it is successful, they are quick to call for his resignation when things go awry.
When Birmingham FC won the League Cup in 2011, it was the first time the side had done so in 48 years. Did fans spend that enormous span whinging?
Hardly. They loved the club and followed the club, regardless of its trials and tribulations, because that’s how life goes when you’re living in the basement.
