Over time, you come to realise that football, for all its charms and addictive qualities, is an inherently angry place. It’s unshakeable, there will always be eruptions of temper and no matter how much our grounds have been sanitised in recent years the sport is still essentially the same as when Arthur Hopcraft wrote in 1968 how football crowds are “never going to sound or look like the hat parade on the club lawns of Cheltenham racecourse”. My mind goes back to Martin O’Neill’s early days at Leicester City, barely a few weeks into the job, and the unpleasantness of a 2-0 home defeat to Sheffield United when the crowd at Filbert Street made it clear that they did not want him at...
Full Story »