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?
I have to confess to once having been a Gooner myself. Back when I first started going to Highbury, I used to feel vaguely self-conscious on account of being from a higher income bracket than the majority of the fans. Then, for a brief period, I was surrounded by people who seemed to come from exactly the same background as me — and today, whenever I set foot in the Emirates, I feel the same kind of social anxiety I used to experience, only now it is because I am so much poorer than everyone else.
For football fans who wish to enjoy their Saturday afternoons without being troubled by status issues, there is a solution to this problem and it is called the Coca-Cola Football League Championship. Here, down among the also-rans and the wannabes, a man of my modest means can feel at home. What is required is a club with a proud history, but which has no real chance of being promoted to the Premier League. A club that will never outgrow its supporters — at least, not in my lifetime.
It was with this in mind that I decided to switch allegiance to Queens Park Rangers. Admittedly, QPR were one of the founder members of the Premier League, but that was over 15 years ago. In 2002 they were relegated to the third tier in England’s football league and though they managed to haul themselves back into the second tier in 2004 they have been languishing near the bottom ever since. Just the ticket, then, for a soccer fan struggling to retain a foothold in the middle classes in the face of increasingly tough competition. Then calamity struck. Last August, QPR was bought by the Formula 1 tycoons Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore. As if this wasn’t bad enough, Briatore then sold a 20 per cent shareholding in the club to the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal. There was a surreal moment last year when I switched on Sky Sports to see a close-up of Naomi Campbell sitting in the South Africa Road Stand at Loftus Road. It was precisely in order to avoid having to watch games alongside the super-rich that I transferred my loyalties to the Rs in the first place. I went and saw them play Bristol City last Saturday and my worst fears were confirmed. The new owners have brought in a new manager, Luigi de Canio, and he had been busy in the January transfer window. Instead of the usual pub team hoofing the ball up the field, they looked like a proper side. City are currently one of the two or three best teams in the Championship and yet QPR managed to beat them 3-0. Only nine points separate QPR from Ipswich, the sixth-placed club in the league, so it is not inconceivable that QPR will qualify for the play-offs at the end of the season. In the worst-case scenario, they could actually get promoted to the Premier League -— and if it doesn’t happen this season, it will surely happen next time. After that, the sky’s the limit. With considerably more money than Roman Abramovich, the new owners might easily decide to mount a challenge for a Champions League place. Who knows, they could even finish above Arsenal.
Ah well. If the worst comes to the worst there’s always Leeds United.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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