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Status Anxiety

Toby Young

Wednesday, 6th February 2008

When Arsenal got too posh, I switched to QPR. Now look what's happened

As an angry young man in the 1990s, I used to get extremely irritated when I read articles by left-wing intellectuals in the London Review of Books about football. To my jaundiced eye, it was a feeble attempt to shore up their credentials as men of the people. Back in those days, football was still a predominantly working-class sport and, as such, was frequently hijacked by middle-class poseurs in the hope that its ‘authenticity’ — key Nineties word — might rub off on them.

How distant that period seems now. Today, if a middle-class novelist wrote about his unswerving devotion to Arsenal — about how he had gone to every match this season, including the Champions League game in Prague — we would instantly suspect him of trying to big himself up. The implication would be that he enjoyed a substantial private income — or, at the very least, knew one of the club’s shareholders. How else to explain his frequent attendance?

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matthew rees

February 7th, 2008 1:17pm

The disloyality shown by your writer sums up the changing face of English Football. Arsenal have been on a roller coaster of a Journey as one of the aristocrats of the English Game. The shrewd and far sighted vision of the Clubs directors have funded and introduced modern training and life style techniques that will become the standard for successful club management in the U.K. They have also remained one of the very true purveyors of entertainment through the medium of competitive football. I'm a QPR fan of Forty Five years and i'm one of many that remain loyal to the Club. I shall remain loyal even if the prices go up and the value of the directors watch's match my annual income. So what! Somebodies got to pay the cost both financal and emotional for being a Club supporter. I'll take the agony these visionaries who have bought the franchise can pay the bill. Thats how its always going to be. I think your option is a type of moral cowardice pushed along by almost childish naivity. Get back to North London and read Nick Hornby. Hope i don't get a seat next to you at Loftus Road whichever league we are in.

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