Arsenal Supporters Groups’ Poor Perception Harms Their Ability to Unify Fans

For those of you that don’t know, in real life outside of coaching youth football and supporting the Arsenal, I work as a pharmaceutical marketer. In fact much of my job is advising many of the large pharma companies on how to reach their intended targets. Inevitably every year when we go through operational planning, the talk turns to the use of social media.

Every year the conversation ends when we say – if you can’t handle the negativity of social media don’t do it. The rationale is that social media has become more for the trolls than the advocates, and the advocates much like in the normal world are drowned out by the vocal minority.

What’s this all got to do with Arsenal Supporters Groups, you ask?

When I write – Arsenal Supporter’s Trust (AST) – what’s the first thing that comes to mind? When I write Black Scarf Movement (BSM) – what comes to mind? In most cases, if I say AST on twitter the first thing that comes up is the personal views of one Tim Payton. Conversely, if I mention BSM, I am likely to get some sort of mention of Highbury Harold.

Before I go on, I should say that I have individual twitter connections with each of these gentlemen. Whether you want to believe it, they are just as passionate as you about the Arsenal and have right to have an opinion.

However, the line has been blurred between their respective roles for the organizations they represent and their own personal opinions. In the end, it has become impossible for them to achieve what they hope to achieve in their roles with the AST and BSM because they have indulged their personal feelings and whatever agenda they may have as priorities, making it difficult for anyone to see where personal ends and organization begins.

And it hinders the ability of those organizations to gain any kind of consensus among the fans, especially when it would likely be so easy to unite all Arsenal supporters under a common effort in opposition of Stan Kroneke’s ownership.

The AST outlines its current priorities as:

• To seek further explanation from Stan Kroenke as to his vision for Arsenal and to encourage him to engage personally with Arsenal fans and other shareholders
• To maintain a dialogue with both major shareholders in Arsenal and urge them to work together to make Arsenal a stronger club
• To independently review the corporate governance of Arsenal and urge appropriate modernisation and policies that support the future of the club
• To provide independent analysis and review of Arsenal’s finances to enable Arsenal supporters to better understand how the money they put into the club is used
• To promote more affordable ticket prices at Arsenal and at all football games and fairer distribution of tickets to Arsenal fans, including maximum use of tickets at home games through development of an improved Ticket Exchange
• To support policy change by both Government and the Football Authorities that would see football fans given a greater say in the ownership of football clubs including through the proposed changes to the Premier League rulebook on structured dialogue between Clubs and Supporters
• To work closely with other supporter groups at Arsenal for the benefit of all supporters.

It all sounds very good, but when Tim goes on to social media or any form of media and talks about spending money or the manager’s competence, it’s hard for many supporters to discern his personal opinion and positions from that of the organization he is meant to represent.

For the Black Scarf Movement, their aims as defined by their web site are little more simplistic than those as defined by the AST. According to their web site

“We’ve said all along that everything we do shares a common goal: to benefit Arsenal fans.”

The BSM, like AST, has been vocal on ticket prices and other items concerning the fan base. However, perception of the organization is being largely based on the opinions of one – maybe a few more people.

Just like the AST, that perception is based on personal rather than organizational positions and is further convoluted by the use of a personal platform to be rude or intemperate to fellow fans. Now, look if someone is initially rude to them, I’ve no beef with taking a like-minded tack, but when someone who doesn’t agree with your opinion says so in a manner that isn’t rude, being rude back only harms perceptions. In this case it harms the perception of the organization these people are associated with.

The sad part for the organizations they are associated with is I’m afraid to say, is they are being prevented any chance of them being successful in what they’re trying to achieve. It is like the political arena we see every day – bad politics from bad politicians.

And this is what the acrimony has become to an extent — a political exercise. Like politics, the choice of side you are on is now based on whom you most agree with. Fact is, I would wager that most supporters are not as vocal on either of the major issues that seemed to be argued over daily in the social media universe.

Most fans see pros and cons to all arguments. They probably rationally see the good and bad of the organization and know conditions aren’t so black and white. In fact there’s probably 95% of all the issues facing Arsenal that we can all agree on. The 5% we don’t is okay. We don’t have to agree on everything.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a supporter organization that could bring everyone together based on that principle alone? That all ideas are welcome. All positions are welcome.

Sadly, the perceptions of the organizations have led to them to be ridiculed and part of that is due to the vocal people that represent them. The organizations will never achieve their ultimate aims because they are now viewed as too divisive, too caustic and caricatures of what they were supposed to be.

The bad thing about that is they needn’t be. They’ve done some good. They still can.

Red Action.

I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on an organization that has disappointed me recently with its decision to join the protests that we saw towards the end of the season. Not because they protested. But because they used their official platform to promote the protest.

Red Action has had the remit of working with the club to create a positive game day experience for all match going fans. They’ve been hugely successful.

However, they lost sight of their remit when they joined in with those organizations to protest the club. Again, there is nothing wrong with an individual’s desire to protest. They should by all means be allowed to do so. But when you use an organization whose purpose is the betterment of the match day for ALL fans, you take a position that is exclusionary to a portion of the fan base that is not willing to protest, believes in the protest but not in the manner, etc.

Moving forward, are the club going to want to work with an organization that decided to support a protest against it? More importantly when Red Action go on to try and create an environment in the Emirates again, are they going to get support from the broader fan base because they’ve now diverted into a protest organization?

I want nothing more than for each of these organizations to be successful in their stated objectives. I’d love it even more if they could successfully unify the fan base against the ownership (or lack thereof) of Stan Kroenke, but when smart, professional individuals make stupid decisions without thinking how it hurts the aims of those organizations, you know it’s not going to happen and we will remain as fractious as ever.

Sigh.