Our man @SteTudor123 gives his take on the most annoying online fanbases in the Premier League - do you agree with his selections?
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All clubs have annoying fans, but some have many more than others
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A surprise high entry is a club that looks to the past
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The most annoying online fanbase is let down by thousands ‘over-compensating’
We’ve all done it. A rival fan tweets something derogatory about our club and instinctively we’ve ‘bitten’ and replied in a manner that is anything but cordial.
At no point do we consider whether there is any substance to their claim. Their bio pic of a rival player is sufficient in telling us they are absolutely in the wrong and, furthermore, that our club’s good name needs defending at all costs.
If social media has weaponized us all – to an extent – as individuals, then the same is true of fanbases and sadly this has resulted in online platforms becoming toxic, tribalized playgrounds for the unreasonable and the obstinate.
It’s a virtual war played out daily, and there will never, ever be a winner.
Yet if no fanbase is without sin, some naturally are far worse than others, and even if of course there are some good eggs among them, these hateful eight especially should be approached with extreme caution at all times.
8) Manchester City
The only supporters to make it onto our top ten best online fan’s list and this rogue’s gallery, perhaps their inhabiting of both extremes is a reflection on how City fans are still struggling to adapt to their transformative takeover in 2008.
While the old school tend to keep it real, the younger collective, who only know anecdotally of City’s sustained periods of rubbishness pre-takeover, are typically a rowdy and entitled bunch who believe the world and his dog is against them.
An eight-page newspaper pull-out to mark their latest title success? That’s an ‘agenda’ because Liverpool would have got at least ten.
We caught up with some fans at our fan park ahead of today's game! 🇺🇸#ManCity | @Midea pic.twitter.com/FyJNJN1fLp
— Manchester City (@ManCity) July 23, 2022
7) Wolverhampton Wanderers
It’s hard to know what to expect of Wolves this coming season, with Bruno Lage’s squad undergoing a mini-overhaul as they attempt to address inconsistencies that cost them in 2021/22.
Ultimately finishing mid-table, they could be brilliant and terrible from one week to the next.
What we can anticipate is that a horde of online warriors will take great exception to anyone who dares question the ethics of their club’s close affiliation with Portuguese ‘super-agent’ Jorges Mendes.
Others, meanwhile, rail against the playful nickname of ‘Portugal B’ given to a team heavily populated by players from that country.
They’re a touchy lot, basically. Not the worst out there by any stretch, but touchy all the same.
6) Chelsea
If any fanbase needs a PR makeover it’s Chelsea’s, with several prevailing perceptions saddled to their reputation, rightly or wrongly.
Viewed as a whole, do Chelsea fans go to any great lengths to distance themselves from such charges? Alas, no.
In the main, they double-down on the discord, tweeting and posting like a belligerent uncle who rarely gets invited to Christmas dinner for fear that he brings up politics.
For balance, it should be stated that Chelsea gets a seriously unfair ride from the media. How they are defended however, by their own, sometimes leaves a lot to be desired.
5) Tottenham Hotspur
The latest football odds have Spurs down at 14/1 to win the title this year, making them an optimistic shout.
This feels fair given they have signed shrewdly in the transfer window yet remain a significant distance behind Manchester City and Liverpool.
To add historical context meanwhile, it’s pertinent that Tottenham haven’t won the league since 1961, with clubs such as Ipswich, Derby, Nottingham Forest and Leicester winning it since. Indeed, they last lifted a trophy in 2008.
Could someone please inform the Spurs faithful of these home-truths because they appear to be under the impression they are London’s biggest club, matching the very best around for silverware.
Or at least that’s how they tweet and post, with a sense of delusion that is almost admirable.
4) Manchester United
‘We’re Man United, we do what we want’.
This unsavoury chant, that smacked of arrogance and stunk to high heaven of entitlement, was prevalent among the Reds fanbase throughout their heyday and even if it’s an era of dominance that is increasingly sepia tinged in the past, that sense of self-importance still comes across loud and proud online today.
A tweet from a United supporter at times reads like a fading actor demanding the best table at a restaurant.
An odd obsession with their club supposedly possessing an ‘attacking DNA’ also grates, when the reality is that a whole bunch of other teams can say the same.
3) Aston Villa
At first glance a surprisingly high entry but it all makes sense when you dig a little into Villa’s past and circumstances.
First off, the Villans aren’t called the ‘Manchester United of the Midlands’ by their local rivals for nothing, nor are they called it in a complimentary manner.
Regarded as being above their station by the many outfits who operate within a fifty-mile radius of Villa Park, theirs is a supercilious attitude that annoys.
Beyond the region meanwhile, Villa fans are under the firm belief their club resides among the elite, largely because they won a European Cup in our lifetime, but the grim reality at present is that ‘bigger’ clubs can cherry-pick their finest talent at will.
This leaves the fans online with two distinct means of response, either accepting that football is constantly in flux and right now theirs is a selling club, or they can get very, very bitter about it.
Regrettably, more times than not, the latter option is picked.
2) Arsenal
It is tempting to simply write ‘Arsenal Fan TV’ and be done with it. Anyone who has been subjected to the silly hysteria that is rife on that channel will surely understand why.
That though would be huge disservice on the rest of the Gooner fanbase because the truth of the matter is that a great many of them are infinitely worse than Troopz and company.
A jarring hypocrisy lies at the heart of why Arsenal fans agitate online. On the one hand, they vociferously demand that their board gets the chequebook out and buys, buys, buys.
On the other, they take inordinate pride in being the net spend champions of the modern era, lording it over rivals, as if football is played in accounting ledgers, not on a lush green pitch.
The Arsenal fans are buzzing! 😍 pic.twitter.com/N3q7FWp3Uw
— Arsenal FC News (@ArsenalFC_fl) July 23, 2022
1) Liverpool
A match-going Liverpool supporter is always worth a follow on social media. They’re typically objective and to lean on local jargon, they’re ‘sound’.
The problem is that the Merseyside giants have an estimated 100 million followers online who post regularly or otherwise, and Anfield only holds 54,000.
This, you could argue, is a disparity that can be applied to all clubs but then it’s acknowledged that supporting Liverpool seems to be a heightened cause for many.
This means more. Wasn’t that a slogan recently spewed into existence by the club’s marketing department?
What it certainly means is that everyone, from the club’s left-back to their kitman is estimated to be the very best in the world while the passionate nature of their support becomes zealous to put it mildly.
Alas, an inevitable extension of this is that the internet is clogged up by accounts called @Salahisgod3542 or similar who feel the need to overcompensate for their lack of match-going experience by being super-duper-uber-fans.
And very often they’re anything-but-objective, and sometimes not even sound of mind. The Premier League odds suggests another runner-up spot for the Reds in 2022/23. There could be trouble ahead.
FIRST PUBLISHED: 25th July 2022
