Enyoueffsea

It does make me smile to see people who are attending are often saying their reason is “because nobody will tell me what to do” and “because I want to”. Taking a stand against taking a stand because they don’t want to feel like they’ve been told to take a stand Maybe the next protest should be to tell people they must attend? There will be thousands of empty seats presumably with those who are too self important to be seen to follow what others have suggested.

I assumed when reading that post initially it was satire, unbelievable if not. Each and every one of those points being a selfish point of view rather than what is best for the football club they apparently support, says it all about society in general these days.

I’d recommend boycotts being singular in the first instance. Otherwise you lose momentum and people who may be undecided are much more willing to give up 1 game rather than 10. It also allows you to step it up to more regular boycotts if needed. Start at 0 and work up to 100, you can always dial up but you can never dial down. See how the boycott on Monday goes to get feelers for the appetite. Anything from 10% extra empty seats visually compared to a normal game along with it being mentioned on TV can be seen as a win. Ignore the official attendance. Once this has passed, consider the next step, a peaceful protest pre-match (walking from the city centre to the stadium) or a visual in stadium protest like entering x minutes late.

These two posts seem to explain one another.

One last thing from me before I sign off for the night and get some beers… For the Leicester fans who think boycotts don’t work, this wouldn’t be a bad article to share with them. This was drafted by our AshleyOut campaign for the naysayers. An empty St James’ Park is the most powerful message this fanbase can send to its owner, the Premier League and the rest of the world. It is the single most authoritative act we can take. Because without fans, there is no Mike Ashley’s Newcastle United. As we enter the next chapter of this dismal era, scrabbling around trying to understand what our purpose is, and what effect we can have, in this perpetual battle against self-destruction – it is vital to know that other fanbases have tried and succeeded in stadium boycotts. It doesn’t have to be taboo… because it’s effective. In recent seasons, it’s difficult to look past seasiders Blackpool when it comes to deliberate and effective vacancy. For a good three seasons, supporters swapped Bloomfield Road for the beach, leaving behind wave upon wave of orange plastic: a palpable vision of a malevolent regime headed by the ultimate donkey: Owen Oyston. The achievements of the ‘Not A Penny More’ (NAPM) campaign, led by the tenacious and unrelenting Blackpool Supporters Trust, were recognised nationwide and ultimately made a difference to the club they loved. Their efforts provide something that the Toon Army should take inspiration from, especially given the positive outcome which eventually arrived at Blackpool. On the 11th of February 2017, only 2046 home fans rocked-up to see Blackpool play out a feeble 0-0 draw with Crawley Town, which represented the Tangerines’ sixth consecutive League Two game without a win. Perennial Football League journeyman Neil Danns was on loan at the time; he whacked a penalty wide in the first half. Little else happened, but that wasn’t the story: the real story was the attendance. Blackpool hadn’t experienced turnouts this low since their dismal days at the foot of the old Division Four in 1990, where barely more than 1000 were turning-up to see them flop to miserable defeats against the likes of Aldershot and Scarborough… two sorry eras which barely differed in their shades of desperate. The club has risen and then fallen spectacularly since then. Recently, the action taken by the Blackpool Supporters Trust was necessary and – alongside their admirable battles in the courtroom against the Oystons – demonstrated the significant impact of organised protest. Notably, the Crawley game was played only seven years after Blackpool’s unlikely Premier League campaign. In 2011, Bloomfield Road was accommodating over 16,000 fans which were – amusingly – hitting decibel levels of 85, apparently the fifth highest in the league that season! But, following their immediate relegation, supporters were soon remonstrating as the Oystons ‘illegitimately stripped’ the club of £26.77million – money dropping into their salary packets and conveniently into other businesses under their control. This despicable behaviour came at the expense of Blackpool rapidly tumbling through the divisions; its identity muddled by a board and fanbase in conflict. Numerous non-attended football matches later and the Oystons are gone, after a court ruled that the club enter receivership on account of the financial misdemeanours. Regardless, the Blackpool Supporters Trust – and their NAPM campaign – established themselves as an example for other supporters to follow – including Newcastle ones. The Tangerines actually ended their 2018-19 campaign on the wrong side of a 3-0 battering at home to Gillingham but, like the Crawley game, the scoreline wasn’t the story: the real story was the quadrupled attendance. 9,571 people – who presumably sat glumly as Gills’ Tom Eaves notched a quick-fire brace to put the visitors 3 up at the break – knew, above all, that they’d got their club back. Now, I know the obvious point to counter this is the disparate club size between Newcastle and Blackpool. But these major protest events aren’t only feasible in the lower leagues. For instance, in March 2014, Serie A superpower Lazio played in front of an empty stadium as fans protested against their president – Claudio Lotito. Bad form. No transfers. A neglecting owner. Banners read “Lazio is ours and we will leave it to our children.” The message was ultimately the same as ours to Ashley, only this one packs a punch. It really hits home. Since then, Lazio have qualified for the Champions League and Lotito has sanctioned impressive signings like Stefan De Vrij, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, Ciro Immobile and Joaquin Correa – to name a few. Lotito remains at Lazio and is still unpopular (things flared spectacularly with the bizarre departure of Marcelo Bielsa after four weeks in charge in 2016), but strong and definitive supporter action has made a difference to the immediate fortunes of the club. Elsewhere in Europe, Borussia Dortmund and their famous ‘yellow wall’ protested against Monday night football (no, not you, GNev and Carra) by vacating an entire stand for games against Wolfsburg and Augsburg in February 2018. Well over 20,000 of their noisiest supporters decided to take a stand because they passionately believed in overrulling something that they felt wasn’t right (it doesn’t always have to be ownership issues!) Come the end of the calendar year, the German FA discontinued the Monday night fixtures. Immediate boycott results. Back to Italy (and club ownership), in April of this year, the Fiorentina Supporters Association – which represented several thousand supporters – didn’t appear for 45 minutes of a game against Bologna – making a stand against their owners – luxury shoe magnates Andrea and Diego Della Valle – due to a lack of investment. Impactful, meaningful, notable protest. There are more examples in Europe. The soon to be demolished San Siro has witnessed both Inter and AC fans boycott their respective clubs’ matches. In Spain Valencia fans did the same. All of these are massive and important clubs at the centre of their communities, with unhappy supporters who are entitled – perhaps even duty-bound – to attempt to make a difference. In order to really emphasise the point (that disgruntled football supporters really do speak the same language, wherever they’re from and whoever they support), let’s go even further afield and consider Kerala Blasters, of the Indian Premier League. This well-supported team normally see attendances of 20-30,000 but played in front of a virtually empty stadium in December 2018, after a long run of really poor results. Their fans, the ‘Manjappada’ (Yellow Army) held up banners during a 0-0 draw against Jamshedpur FC reading: “Supporters, Not Customers. We Deserve Better.” Doesn’t that sound familiar? But let’s not forget ourselves: in April 2015, thousands of Newcastle fans took a stand together and avoided the Spurs game. A few months later, we had a new manager with a transfer budget of £80million (author note: choice of manager irrelevant to wider point…) These things work. When football fans make a stand together, they can make a difference. Let’s learn from these examples, Newcastle fans. Let’s be like Lazio. Let’s be like Blackpool. Let’s be like Kerala Blasters. Let’s be like Us.

We were never under threat of going bust, absolutely. However, Ashley wanted to finish 17th in the PL every season, increase the club’s value through inflation and achieve **** all. Sport is about attempting success, that isn’t good enough. A banner we held up at Leicester funnily enough, “we don’t demand a team that wins, we demand a club that tries” neatly explains that. He also sold off many of our assets to himself/his own companies. For example, our club shop was entirely operated by Sports Direct and we saw none of the profits from it. Land behind the stadium (vital for expansion) was sold off at a cheap price. Sports Direct was the sole sponsor in the stadium, which we gifted them for free. We were essentially an advert for Sports Direct, aiming to tread water every year and never have any success. What a life. Ashley would be an upgrade in the sense that you would break even every year but you would also assign yourselves to become a yoyo club for the rest of your lives. Some might be happy with that.

Absolutely prefer the current ownership. The new ownership have already shown what could have happened if Ashley even put in 10% effort. They’ve invested minimally so far and used money the club generates whilst significantly expanding our commercial income. Things were so toxic under Ashley that he would make decisions to spite the fans and the club at times. Like most multimillionaires he was incredibly thin skinned. So many of them were “be careful what you wish for”. The reality is nobody knows who your next owners will be, but you can either accept mediocrity for the rest of your lives or roll the dice and bring about change. It’s no different to managerial changes. Lots of fans constantly say the grass isn’t always greener but you’ll never find out unless you make the change. It might work, it might not, but if the current status quo is not working, what are you risking? It’ll be even worse at Leicester, I would imagine, due to the success under Vichai. However, it’s abundantly clear that was Vichai’s success and Top is either incapable or unwilling to provide what is required. I would imagine a large number of your fans will dig in due to this and make it even more difficult. We had one 5th place finish under Ashley and that was trotted out time after time to justify his mismanagement of the club.

You have to ask what is the alternative, sit around and do nothing? Boycotts work from multiple angles, the most effective is bringing regular media coverage of the situation - no organisation (King Power included) wants exposure to regular negative coverage. It also gets the interest out there from other groups, people are more likely to try and get a cheap deal at Leicester with fan discontent. Secondly, starving the income might sound counter productive, particularly when your financial position is less than perfect already, but no businessman wants to sit on a depreciating asset. It has now, but it was a long slog over several years with two relegations in the middle. It’s not a quick solution but as already said, when the alternative is just to turn up in acceptance, it’s quicker than never.

Hello all. Newcastle United supporter here. I came across this forum when looking at some of the recent **** ups publicised of not paying staff before Christmas/not feeding the stewards. This thread is so remarkably similar to our movements when attempting to get rid of Mike Ashley. I thought I’d share our learning from this, which might be helpful. Boycotts do work. Ashley was forced to give away season tickets, lock people into cheap 10 year deals and sell half season tickets year after year, along with giving away free tickets to schools and community groups to keep the ground looking full. Our change of ownership was led through Rafa Benitez, who fully bought into the anti-Ashley narrative from supporters and linked Amanda Staveley into the club, who in turn bought the Saudi investment with her. However, boycotts also split opinion. So many fans who have to attend that game to… get away from the wife/because they’ve paid for it/because they want to/because nobody will tell them what to do/because it’s what they’ve always done/because it’s the only chance they get to see their friends [delete as appropriate]. It’s all bollocks and the exact reason why people like Top, Chansiri, Ashley, Oyston get away with what they do. If people who didn’t boycott offered the team 100% support loud and proud throughout, fair enough, but you often find that the people who have to attend are the same people who arrive after 10 minutes, leave for half time on 35, arrive back on 55 and go home on 80 all whilst sitting in silence. Unfortunately there is no way to change these people or their opinions and you simply have to continue without them. The best ways to drum up support are: 1. Publicise it across all social media, with the support of as many fan groups and channels as possible. 2. Set up a “King Power out” website with all of the terrible stats and figures, protest movements and events etc. the media and other fans will pick up on this. 3. If you arrange a boycott or protest, give out flyers/information cards outside turnstiles the games before to ensure those not online do not miss it. 4. Do not just boycott games, boycott all King Power products, including food and drink in the stadium and the club shop and any external investments they have. 5. Keep it peaceful. Those who have to attend will try to create conflict, shout abuse etc. but do not react to anything to prevent this creating the narrative that you’re trouble makers. 6. You’ll find King Power try to disrupt it by preventing banners entering the stadium, cancelling tickets of people involved and giving away free tickets. You have to continuously evolve to counteract these measures. 7. You must have a core group who lead all of the planning. If you try to get single ideas off the ground, they do not work as well. You need a good group of people who will coordinate, market and implement all of the above. There is so much more, but I see it’s quite early days for you so I’ll leave it there.