Here, the Saudi Arabian government are appalling shitebags. We should not be welcoming them into the city whilst they outlaw homosexuality, indiscriminately bomb Yemen among many other things. However the metropolitan journalists make the same mistake in their analyses as (1/)

much of the pre-Brexit commentariat. The finger-wagging, chin-stroking reporters are quite rightly concerned about the genocidal crude oil factory buying its way into the national game, but fail to offer any insight as to why and how that has become possible, and instead (2/)

turn their ire on the punters rather than the powers that be. It is the PL’s unrestrained pursuit of capital that brought us here. Nothing else. From Heysel through Hillsborough and 1992 and beyond, this is the story of the Premier League, and to hector the fans, now mere (3/)

pawns of geopolitics, mirrors the sneering attitude of the metropole in 2016. The supporters never asked for all-seater stadia. The supporters never asked for Nike-manufactured footballs. The supporters never had a say in the league being sponsored by Barclays, an (4/)

institution with as horrifying rap sheet as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia itself. Such whataboutery isn’t always the most compelling of arguments (it rarely addresses the original accusation) but it is difficult for the average fan not to laugh at morality lectures given some (5/)

of what has already been readily accepted into top flight football. Are we complicit? Yes, in huge numbers. But the UEFA-accredited match reporters who are given lunch at the Emirates or Etihad and complain about the weak WiFi in the vicinity of their free seat are at least (6/)

as compromised as the paying public. For the other side - not caring that our potential new owners are involved in an enforced famine because we haven’t won an FA Cup since 1955 is morally repugnant. But pointing the finger at hordes of fans - particularly on twitter - isn’t (7/)

a way to solve anybody’s problem. The Premier League is one of the most valuable cultural and financial exports of a post-imperial nation in the grip of an identity crisis, which, whatever way you vote, is exemplified in the state of our political discourse. The League is (8/)

the foremost exemplar of the country’s rotten ideology - run by elites, sold off to the highest bidder and utterly indifferent to the wishes of the proles who pay to watch it. Some supporters are correctly derided for believing football is important enough to get mad about (9/)

yet its gatekeepers at the FA, the Premier League and in the House of Commons are let off the hook for knowing it’s far more important than that. Fans are told that we could start with collective action - a boycott, a protest - but why should one believe in its efficacy (10/)

when the last 40 sordid years of British history have chewed up and spat out anyone who dares to question the all-knowing wisdom of neoliberalism? Why should it fall on fans of football clubs - institutions that have long been playthings of unscrupulous custodians, to rise (11/)

against petrostates, hedge funds and governments that control the game? Mike Ashley is a moral desert, of course, say the journalists, but he is a mere individual - a state is worse. It is. But what of the possibility of someone becoming a billionaire in the first place? (12/)

They might say that is a different argument altogether. It isn’t. The same capitalistic avarice that allowed Mike Ashley to accumulate billions is the same avarice that now means he has been priced out by those with half trillions. The Premier League cannot be extricated (13/)

from the society in which, and on which, it was modelled. Supporting Newcastle United is not tacit acceptance of war crimes. Newcastle United is fifty years older than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in its current form, the borders of which were drawn by the British Empire. (14/)

In a country not even slightly coming to terms with the impact of that Empire, it is with grim predictability that the moral burden is being placed on the shoulders of the working class.