Column: Why Chesterfield fans should cheer up and be grateful

Cheer up Spireites, it could be much worse '“ just be grateful you're not a Gunner.
'Thank God we're not at the Emirates''Thank God we're not at the Emirates'
'Thank God we're not at the Emirates'

This week Arsenal fans have provided the perspective Chesterfield supporters so desperately needed.

Thank your lucky stars that you don’t have to suffer Champions League football every single year.

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Imagine the shame of finishing in the top four of the Premier League every season for the past 20 seasons.

Be grateful your club doesn’t have to try and defend the FA Cup again this year in an attempt to win it for the third successive season.

You don’t have to watch world class players playing for and against your side.

Those problems certainly put into context the flies in Chesterfield’s ointment.

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Sitting second bottom of League One, staring relegation full in the face, supporting a club still reeling from the embarrassment of a faked raffle and an association with a failed academy, suffering falling attendances, rising debt and put up for sale by an owner who quit as chairman.

I imagine as Town fans watched footage of Arsenal supporters out on the streets protesting this week, every single one of them happened upon this realisation – we don’t know we’re born.

The same thought probably dawned on football folk in Coventry and Blackpool.

Charlton and Leyton Orient fans too must have sent up a quiet prayer for the Arsenal and their terrible plight.

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I understand it’s all relative and as someone put to me, those Gunners feel their hope and the club’s ambition has gone.

If that’s indeed the case, it could therefore be said that the hope Chesterfield fans once had has been brutally murdered – hurled off a cliff onto the rocks of bitter, regular disappointment

There will be directors in boardrooms across the country mopping their brows and crossing fingers that the dissatisfaction of their own club’s fans doesn’t spill over into protests and action.

Protesting doesn’t necessarily work of course, as fans of several Football League outfits will tell you – people fans don’t trust remain in charge, continue to load clubs up with debt and seemingly turn a blind eye to on-field under achievement.

The lot of the football supporter is often a helpless one.

I hope those Arsenal fans feel better after venting, but doubt they will.

Perhaps a few weeks at the Proact would cheer them up – there are plenty of seats going spare.