Boycotts!

[Devon Malcolm]

I don't know if this counts as a boycott or not but I gave up on supporting Manchester United after the Mason Greenwood-related fiasco at the start of the season.

When I decided, in my head, that I was going to stop supporting them, I didn't think for one second it was going to stick. You know, 40+ years supporting something, and you're just going to stop? Best of luck with that.

Then they had that game against Forest, I think it was, when they went 2-0 down after 10 minutes and I realised I just didn't care anymore. If anything, I was amused by it all. Mentally I'd just checked out with them and had enough. There are plenty of times I could (should?) have done that in their recent history. I don't think the Glazers taking over was one of them and I still have strong issues with FC United of Manchester and their set-up and philosophies. I felt like Ronaldo signing was the final straw - but then they got rid really soon before the horrible shit with Greenwood and how that whole affair was treated.

I'm actually quite sad at how easy it was to just leave them behind. All the years of joy and entertainment and quite a few of going to Old Trafford and standing in the Stretford End, swept aside without a second thought. That's the way I always go with these things though - my brain will tell me when the line has been crossed and it's mostly served me quite well.

I started following Stockport County and Stockport Town now. But you can kill me if I ever become a "I support my local team(s)!" wanker.

[Loki]

10 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

I don't know if this counts as a boycott or not but I gave up on supporting Manchester United after the Mason Greenwood-related fiasco at the start of the season.

 

Saves you a fortune on rail fare, so another plus point.   /KeithHouchen.

[Keith Houchen]

14 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

I don't know if this counts as a boycott or not but I gave up on supporting Manchester United after the Mason Greenwood-related fiasco at the start of the season.

Absolutely counts, and good on you. One thing that annoys me is seeing the green and gold scarves being worn at Old Trafford with this seasons shirts. If the point is to drive the Glazers out, you won’t be doing it by giving them your money because, quite frankly, they don’t care what you think of them. 
 

As you say, it’s in your blood and you can’t just switch it off. To use Coventry as an example, and one I’ve used before, when our owners (SISU) were being absolute berks over the Ricoh and expected the owners (the council and a charity) to forego the rent arrears and just give them the stadium, they moved the home ground to Northampton. A campaign started called “Not One Penny More” which called for a boycott of home games and merch until SISU were gone. 
 

Of course, as soon as we returned to Cov, people ended their boycott despite the owners still being in place (and indeed playing another season out of the city) and returned to games and bought the shirts etc. now obviously that’s up to them because it’s hard to just forget something that’s been part of your life for decades, and it’s easier to stick to when you live 100 miles away from the home ground (I’m not even going to bother for once with the obvious). But it did annoy me a bit how quickly people forgot the whole point of the campaign when the inconvenience of travelling to home games disappeared. 
 

But ultimately, it’s about individual choices and what’s right for you and what you’re comfortable with. 

[Devon Malcolm]

1 minute ago, Keith Houchen said:

Absolutely counts, and good on you. One thing that annoys me is seeing the green and gold scarves being worn at Old Trafford with this seasons shirts. If the point is to drive the Glazers out, you won’t be doing it by giving them your money because, quite frankly, they don’t care what you think of them. 
 

As you say, it’s in your blood and you can’t just switch it off. To use Coventry as an example, and one I’ve used before, when our owners (SISU) were being absolute berks over the Ricoh and expected the owners (the council and a charity) to forego the rent arrears and just give them the stadium, they moved the home ground to Northampton. A campaign started called “Not One Penny More” which called for a boycott of home games and merch until SISU were gone. 
 

Of course, as soon as we returned to Cov, people ended their boycott despite the owners still being in place (and indeed playing another season out of the city) and returned to games and bought the shirts etc. now obviously that’s up to them because it’s hard to just forget something that’s been part of your life for decades, and it’s easier to stick to when you live 100 miles away from the home ground (I’m not even going to bother for once with the obvious). But it did annoy me a bit how quickly people forgot the whole point of the campaign when the inconvenience of travelling to home games disappeared. 
 

But ultimately, it’s about individual choices and what’s right for you and what you’re comfortable with. 

Some of this is not terribly dissimilar to how the green-and-gold campaigns went quiet when United's success continued during the early part of the Glazers being in charge. A lot louder now that United are shit.

There's been a lot of backlash against green-and-gold but my issue with it is that it's not going to make a blind bit of difference to the Glazers. They don't give a shit. I got into a Twitter argument with Pete Boyle when I said that the protest tactics The 1958 were using were completely inadequate and that there needed to be more militant action. You know, like when they got an actual game against Liverpool postponed during the initial ESL stuff. That was genuine, potential game-changing action. The Glazers will take note of *that*. And empty stadia. And nobody buying the merch. If you're buying season tickets and attending the matches, you're propping up the current owners. You can't claim to be against them if you're putting money in their pockets. The Glazers don't give a fuck what you do when you're in the ground. They got your money. That's not protest, it's pretending to be against something for social media clout with other Top Reds.

So I think, with me, maybe it wasn't just the Greenwood stuff. Seeing so many fans twerking for Qatari ownership after claiming to want 'their' club back was infuriating too. But the Greenwood stuff was a big shove for me, with Antony as well. Manchester United, as it was, is dead, and it's never coming back.

[SuperBacon]

I suppose in many ways it's about where the line is, as there really are no "good" owners at the very highest level. 

Is Joe Lewis, a tax dodging exile really much worse than the Glazers etc? Am I a hypocrite for still supporting Spurs, and giving Lewis my money (not often as he's made it virtually impossible)

At some point, if they want to compete with the big boys, Spurs will be bought and I don't know how I'll react if its a "properly" dodgy owner, but we'll see.

United have green and gold, we have purple and yellow. "We want Levy out" they scream in our amazing new stadium, having paid the highest ticket prices in Europe (yep) so that he can hear. THAT'LL SHOW HIM!!! Let's get another Neck Oil.

Sorry Chest, erm don't buy Nestle newspapers, is that right?

[organizedkaos]

I would hazard a guess TV companies are even aware how pirated something is, occasionally there's news stories about how such and such show is the most pirated show of the year so someone's tracking that information and it's being used in a semi legit capacity.

Given how there's been a push to in media advertising it would track that those stats could get used when negotiating advertising rates given someone torrenting the media would see the advert.

It only occurred to me after reading this thread a few times since it started that I guess boycott Spotify. I just never really thought of it that way. I think it does way more harm than good for music I like and I generally find capitalism within niche media to be mostly terrible. Then again friends listen to stuff they wouldn't normally listen to cos it's on Spotify and might go and see those bands so there is a value there. I'd just rather my money went to musicians rather than the middle man.

[Keith Houchen]

8 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

You know, like when they got an actual game against Liverpool postponed during the initial ESL stuff. That was genuine, potential game-changing action. The Glazers will take note of *that*. And empty stadia. And nobody buying the merch

Absolutely! That’s spot on, that. 
 

 

9 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

So I think, with me, maybe it wasn't just the Greenwood stuff. Seeing so many fans twerking for Qatari ownership after claiming to want 'their' club back was infuriating too. But the Greenwood stuff was a big shove for me, with Antony as well. Manchester United, as it was, is dead, and it's never coming back.

Quite often it’s the culmination of a few things, innit? Ashley Massaro was the final straw for a lot of people (myself included) with WWE and I understand how Greenwood can be the final straw. When it’s something as important to you as say a football club or a wrestling promotion, it’s natural to give them a bit more benefit of the doubt than they deserve. I guess that ties in for me with “You can’t boycott something you never bought or used in the first place”. 

[Nexus]

7 hours ago, Gus Mears said:

Apologies if it's a reference I don't get, but my old man was called Andy for what it's worth.

It's a Bottom quote, not important!

[Steve Justice]

Forgive me, but what's the issue with the Mason Greenwood stuff? I know about the allegations, I'd heard the audio, and from a very distant view, I could see that he was dropped from the team and subsequently sold. 

Appreciate I'm probably being very ignorant here and I have maybe missed some vital information, or I'm just not close enough to the story/situation. 

[LCJ]

29 minutes ago, Steve Justice said:

Forgive me, but what's the issue with the Mason Greenwood stuff? I know about the allegations, I'd heard the audio, and from a very distant view, I could see that he was dropped from the team and subsequently sold. 

Appreciate I'm probably being very ignorant here and I have maybe missed some vital information, or I'm just not close enough to the story/situation. 

You’ve pretty much summed it up. This might give you more information https://news.sky.com/story/amp/mason-greenwood-will-not-play-for-manchester-united-after-attempted-rape-charge-dropped-12934726

Greenwood hasn’t been sold though. He’s on loan to Getafe.

I do wonder if social media and smartphones been a thing twenty to thirty years ago, whether more of this kind of thing would’ve been exposed by footballers over the years. Like this kind of thing has probably happened multiple times, it’s just now a lot more people find out about it.

[TheBurningRed]

26 minutes ago, Steve Justice said:

Forgive me, but what's the issue with the Mason Greenwood stuff? I know about the allegations, I'd heard the audio, and from a very distant view, I could see that he was dropped from the team and subsequently sold. 

Appreciate I'm probably being very ignorant here and I have maybe missed some vital information, or I'm just not close enough to the story/situation. 

We was going to intergrate back into the team despite a lot of people being against it. There was a huge backlash online and amongst fans that they backtracked their plans to bring him back in the team. Case was dropped but the audio and pictures don’t tell lies. 

Bringing him back really came down to this imo - if he was a shit player or someone from the youth team who was unheard of, they wouldn’t have tried to keep him. But he’s such a good player/generational talent and was very important to our future, that the club was going to choose to ignore what he did for selfish reasons. And now rightly so he’s out of the club (on loan) and will probably have a career abroad as no one will want him. 

[Devon Malcolm]

43 minutes ago, Steve Justice said:

Forgive me, but what's the issue with the Mason Greenwood stuff? I know about the allegations, I'd heard the audio, and from a very distant view, I could see that he was dropped from the team and subsequently sold. 

Appreciate I'm probably being very ignorant here and I have maybe missed some vital information, or I'm just not close enough to the story/situation. 

Not speaking for anyone else but it was the way in which the club dealt with it, for me.

They went on record as saying that they were going to wait until the women's team World Cup players came back before they made a decision on his future. Essentially wanting to place the shitstorm that would occur if he left or stayed on their shoulders. 

[Mr_Danger]

The thing is, technically guilty or not, Man United can’t say they had no grounds to bomb him out when they have a manager who is happy to bomb players out due to attitude problems. So to even consider giving him a track back was disgraceful and a pretty strong indicator of where the club are now compared to when Fergie was there.

[King Coconut]

For me, to boycott something their practices have to disgust me. I've tried watching F1 and WWE via nefarious means but it didn't interest me in the slightest anymore. I might tune in for the Jerusalem GP next year though.

[Steve Justice]

Cheers for the info. And all fair points. I didn't realise the club wanted to bring him back in. What a thoughtless consideration. 

It's fairly similar to Arsenal and the player also accused of similar actions. I guess the difference there was that it was/is hearsay from SM in terms of who it is and what they were supposed to have done. I guess because that players name wasn't in the mainstream media, the club felt justified in continuing to play them. 

I don't agree that they did. But on the flip side, in not playing them then they were also condemning them. And that player may well be innocent (I don't believe they are innocent). 

I don't know how things lie with that situation either tbh. I've struggled to get behind the team since Wenger left, and that has increased as seasons went by. I think the covid football hiatus pretty much ended my interest in football altogether if I'm honest. I do still try to watch games, but I'm very easily distracted now. 

Edited January 12 by Steve Justice