The sense of entitlement

A few questions this week on this comment following the 1-0 defeat to Carlisle United.

If you think you “deserve better” then I don’t know what to say to you other than that you have an inflated sense of entitlement

Let me be clear I’m not suggesting that Bradford City fans should not expect things from their club. I’m not suggesting that supporters should not expect the players who represent the team to put in a level of effort into performances. Nor am I saying that supporters should not expect a lot from the manager or coaching staff or boardroom at Bradford City. I have those high expectations.

Those expectations are positive. They push the club to try be better next season than it is last and trying to make the club better is what every supporter wants.

There, though, is the rub. It is what every supporter wants not just every City supporter. Every club in football has supporters pushing them on expecting players and managers to do better.

So when I hear someone saying that Parkinson should be sacked because the fans who travel to Carlisle deserve better than the 1-0 reversal to the Cumbrians then I fear that an inflated sense of entitlement has become an issue.

Because one set of supporters do not “deserve better” than another and football is a multi-polar world. Everyone is trying to do well and not everyone can and effort in football is not zero-sum. A team can play well and be beaten by one which plays better. There is no case that the losing supporters “deserve better” than the winning supporters and if no case can be made in single games then it can’t be made in a sequence of games.

One could make a judgement that players or managers or boardrooms are not performing well enough but that must be an absolute judgement against an accurate perception of how those people could be performing.

The inflated sense of entitlement comes when a supporter (or any club, but in this case of City) believes that the fact that they “deserve better” more than a rival supporter. The idea that one’s personal needs are greater than another person’s to the wider society is not something that we should countenance.

The club cannot – and should not – be pushed into making decisions on the basis “deserving better” when every supporter “deserves better” and have to exclude those considerations and the people who have them from the decision making process.