Chelsea: Football fans need to stop abusing players

Chelsea fans, but also football fans in general, are entitled. They think they’re entitled to the best football, the best players, the best everything. Even Arsenal fans think they’re entitled to the best players. This is a subconscious part of fans minds that gets petulant when they feel they’re not getting what they want, especially from players.

It is well known that players are paid ridiculous wages compared to the average job. However, this knowledge has led many fans to feel justified to treat players as machines or equipment. Many vile fans eventually use the famous quip “they should do the job they’re paid heavily to do”, the problem is that the thing many fans think players are paid to do, are completely out of the players’ control.

Chelsea fans have a nasty habit of turning on players in bad times. It all starts from some fans thinking they deserve an apology when a player has a supposedly poor game. If you think that’s dumb, wait till you see the fans that expect players to apologize for missing penalties. There’s probably no player in football history with a 100% penalty record. No matter how important a penalty is in a game, the probability of scoring it is 76 percent according to Understat. This means that there’s a 24 percent of times that penalties aren’t scored.

Player abuse has become popular in fan culture. Some fans go to great lengths to let a player know exactly how they feel about their performance(s). First of all, there’s something that needs to be mentioned. There’s only a finite number of players that don’t know when they’ve had a poor game. 99 percent of players would be the first to tell you when they’ve played poorly. It is then extremely silly to go to a player’s comments section on any social media platform and type “Get out of my club!!” or “I hope you die”.

Fans get angry and frustrated when their favorite teams don’t win matches, and understandably so. Match results hinge on all sorts of things, ranging from personal pride to betting outcomes. Losses are frustrating, but it is extremely silly to think that players don’t get frustrated when they lose. It is selfish and short sighted to think that poor results hurt the fans more than they hurt the players. Players have pride too, and they also want to win games, especially against their fiercest rivals.

There have been several examples of fans going above and beyond to abuse players. Granit Xhaka was a victim of abuse by fans aimed at his wife and then unborn child. That’s the height some “fans” will get to just to try to hurt players that are paid to execute roles on the pitch to the best of their ability. When Xhaka lashed out, hypocrites berated him for “disrespecting the fans” and quoting stupid things like “two wrongs don’t make a right”. Footballers are often held to impossible standards so they’re treated really badly by fans sometimes and are expected to be the “bigger man”.

If Xhaka is getting dribbled past frequently in a game, it’s not because he wants to, it’s because the opposition player and team have gotten the better of him for the day. It happens. To then blame and abuse him after the game for something like that and maybe even blame him for the loss would suggest that there was something he could do about whatever happened that he didn’t do. Majority of the time that’s not the case.

Antonio Rudiger received all sorts of abuse, including racist abuse, in the wake of Frank Lampard’s sacking because of reports that he had “engineered” his sacking. This gave idiots someone to blame for Lampard’s shortcomings, lying to themselves that Lampard was sacked because of anything Rudiger said to the board rather than anything about Lampard’s performance. There are also those that very much participate in the abuse and then write epistles and messages to “condemn” it when things come to a head.

Another player that Chelsea players abused and still abuse to this day? Alvaro Morata. Chelsea fans abused him and called him a wimp. Morata had to leave the club, and even then the fans didn’t let up. Some fans went as far going to his comments on Twitter and Instagram and said all sorts of vile things. Morata was still called a wimp for not “taking it on the chin” and for “always complaining”?

The most recent one (if that is the most recent) is a “fan” who said in a microphone at an open live training session “Get Werner out of this club”. You have to take a step back to think what has to be going through someone’s mind to have the privilege to be at that kind of event and say that into a microphone. Abuse was initially disseminated through social media where abusers were hiding behind a keyboard, now they’re getting bolder and doing it to players’ faces when they get the chance. Werner has had a difficult first season at Chelsea. His confidence has taken several dents. He knows he has been profligate. He knows he has not delivered what Chelsea fans have expected, but to his credit, he has not let his head drop. Werner has been getting abuse throughout last season, it’s only being talked about now because someone said it, in person and to his hearing.

Players don’t deserve this. You can have opinions of players after a match, but they don’t need to hear it. You can criticize players, but criticism is not “I knew it! This is why he’s a rubbish player!” neither is criticism “I’m done with him. Get him out of my club” and please, please stop mentioning players’ handles on Twitter or wherever when you want to talk about them. They don’t need to see your tweet.

Yes, players are paid a lot of money. Yes, they have bad games. Yes, they miss decisive chances. No, they shouldn’t be abused for it. Players are paid to perform roles on the pitch to the best of their ability. The same player that scores four goals in one game may miss five in another, he doesn’t owe anyone an apology because these things happen. If a player knows what he has to do to score a chance, he wouldn’t miss it. Hindsight is always 20/20. The rate at which not only are players being abused, but also expected to just take it because they’re paid a lot of money is quite frankly vitriolic, idiotic and selfish. It needs to stop.