{"id":3039,"date":"2026-04-21T04:33:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T04:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/?p=3039"},"modified":"2026-04-21T04:33:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T04:33:38","slug":"arsenal-tottenham-and-the-amoral-but-delicious-art-of-rubbernecking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/?p=3039","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal, Tottenham and the \u2018amoral\u2019 but \u2018delicious\u2019 art of rubbernecking"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Bottled water sales were through the roof outside the Etihad Stadium on Sunday afternoon. Not so much because Manchester City fans were particularly concerned with staying hydrated while watching their side take on league leaders Arsenal, but because the bottles were labeled with the north London side\u2019s crest.<\/p>\n

Arsenal bottles. Arsenal bottlers.<\/p>\n

The meme potential has been obvious since City dismantled Chelsea 3-0 this month, 24 hours after Arsenal lost against Bournemouth, and the Sky television cameras lingered on a City fan sipping from an Arsenal-branded water bottle in mock celebration. Rival fans shared it on social media to poke fun at Arsenal supporters, the jibe stinging even more given the team finished second in the Premier League three seasons running.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just City fans who are (understandably, given their position in the table) transfixed by Arsenal\u2019s apparent inability to get over the line. The rest of the football world also seems unable to look away, watching for Arsenal\u2019s results almost as keenly as those of the teams they support.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a similar story elsewhere in the capital, where Tottenham Hotspur\u2019s nightmare season threatens to end in a first relegation since 1977.<\/p>\n

Who can look away when a club of that stature is spiralling towards the unthinkable?<\/p>\n

Taking pleasure in a rival\u2019s misfortune is nothing new, especially in football. It\u2019s often allied with the universal human emotion, schadenfreude, from the German words Damage<\/em> (\u201cdamage\/harm\u201d) and Joy<\/em> (\u201cjoy\u201d).<\/p>\n

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\n Manchester City fans are enjoying taunting Arsenal fans\u2019 \u2018bottling\u2019 the league (Michael Regan\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIt has been described as the most amoral of all emotions,\u201d says Dr Matt Butler, a research fellow at King\u2019s College London who researches neuropsychiatry and published a scientific paper on the behavioural neuroscience of football. \u201cBut there\u2019s something quite delicious about it as a football fan.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explains that studies<\/a> of football fans have shown that the same areas of the brain that show activity when they see their teams win also light up when rival teams do badly. \u201cThese are the pleasure centres of the brain, so it\u2019s inherently a rewarding, even joyful experience sometimes,\u201d says Butler. \u201cAnd there\u2019s some evidence that suggests that in football fans, it\u2019s more prominent after their own team has lost or is going through a bad patch. So it can be seen as an emotion to remedy the sadness or disappointment of loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

The joy at seeing a rival lose can sometimes be powerful enough to override the feeling of one\u2019s own team winning.<\/p>\n

In May 1995, many Liverpool fans were torn over the possibility that a win for their side over title-chasing Blackburn Rovers could hand the league to their fierce rivals, Manchester United. In the event, Liverpool won but United drew at West Ham United, meaning Rovers topped the table regardless: the celebrations at Anfield when news that United had fallen short were just as throaty as those that had greeted Liverpool\u2019s two goals.<\/p>\n

Last year, the notion that some \u2014 maybe even most \u2014 Tottenham fans would have been happy to see their side lose to Manchester City to help deny Arsenal the league title infuriated the then-Spurs head coach Ange Postecoglou.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand it, I never will,\u201d Postecoglou told a press conference. \u201cI understand rivalry \u2014 I was part of one of the biggest ones in the world in the last couple of years with Celtic and Rangers \u2014 but I\u2019ve never and will never understand if someone wants their own team to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the feeling is real. In 2017, a team of Harvard social psychologists asked fans of rival baseball teams \u2014 the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox \u2014 how much they would pay to produce either their own team\u2019s win versus the rival team\u2019s loss. The study<\/a> found that, overall, fans were willing to pay more for the rival\u2019s loss.<\/p>\n

That can be driven by various factors, including envy, moral values and the bonding power of seeing a rival do badly, says Butler.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a cooperative species, but we also have it in us to feel envious when a rival does. Seeing them do badly can remedy that.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there is a sense that the rival deserves<\/em> their misfortune, the feelings can intensify. \u201cJust seeing someone bad fail can inherently feel good,\u201d Butler explains.<\/p>\n

Some research also shows that schadenfreude can bind people together, particularly when one\u2019s own team is not doing so well. \u201cSo much of football fandom is about collective group identity,\u201d says Butler, \u201cso schadenfreude has this collective social dimension whereby it strengthens the group in response, particularly to defeat \u2014 that social cohesion is really important in football fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inequality and status also play important roles, says Dr Mark Doidge, reader in sociology of sport at Loughborough University. \u201cWe define ourselves based on our perceived equals or power imbalances,\u201d he explains. \u201cFootball is the perfect example of a hierarchy and rivals. It is a league table, with historic and geographic rivalries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Desecrating your rival is one way to assert status, he adds. This could be through the actual violence of fan hooliganism, but also through symbolic violence like removing stickers depicting your rival, singing songs about them or laughing at their demise.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the current examples of fans of rival teams \u2018rubbernecking\u2019 at what\u2019s happening on both the red and white sides of north London, Doidge puts it partly down to status.<\/p>\n

\u201cArsenal and Spurs both consider themselves to be in the \u2018Big Six\u2019, which is why they wanted to form the European Super League,\u201d he says. \u201cThey are seen to have big stadiums and lots of money, which automatically puts them outside the majority of football teams in the UK.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou also have the fact they are both in north London, which is seen as a wealthy part of London, and by extension, the UK. Add in a pronounced anti-London bias from some sections of the media and politicians, and this infuses a rivalry against London clubs, but also wealthy clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n

There may well have been an element of that at play with the City fans unfurling a banner reading \u2018Panic on the Streets of London\u2019 \u2014 a nod to the song by the Manchester-based band The Smiths \u2014 at full time on Sunday.<\/p>\n

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\n City fans make their point on Sunday (Michael Regan\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Tottenham may be one of the more deprived areas of London but for Doidge, the club\u2019s wealth \u2014 they posted record revenues of \u00a3565.3million ($742m) in their most recent accounts, even if the wider picture was not so rosy \u2014 is particularly pertinent to how people are reacting to them.<\/p>\n

He believes that those taking pleasure in their difficulties this season would be doing the same if it were happening to Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool. \u201cSeeing big clubs being brought down to size is a great leveller in sport. We all want to see our club succeed, we also want to see billionaire clubs who are distorting the football pyramid being relegated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is any of this new or different from any other time in the history of the game?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure\u201d, says John Williams, associate professor of sociology at the University of Leicester who has spent his working life examining British football\u2019s history and the game\u2019s cultural and social impact. \u201cYou can be sure when Sir Alex Ferguson was in his pomp at United or Bob Paisley was in charge at Liverpool, rival fans were doing something similar.\u201d<\/p>\n

What has changed, points out Williams, is social media and the \u201cfan blog-o-sphere\u201d, plus the 24\/7 coverage of the game and everything around it. There are, to put it bluntly, many more ways to \u2018hate-watch\u2019 a rival\u2019s downfall (or listen to them discuss it on a podcast) than in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cIntense support for a club is like an extension of the self \u2014 and not wanting others to succeed at our cost is a typical response,\u201d says Williams. \u201cThere is so much coverage (and much of it negative), it is hard to escape the seduction of seeing a close rival fail. Was it like this when Spurs and Chelsea were relegated in the 1970s? Partly, yes, but then not everyone could join in.\u201d<\/p>\n

How much, if anything, does this pleasure in other teams\u2019 failings tell us about human nature in general?<\/p>\n

Butler is reluctant to be \u201ctoo conclusive\u201d but says that football does \u201cco-opt psychological and emotional phenomena that we evolved to have, so it\u2019s not like something gets created out of nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n

In many ways, though, it is artificial. Football is not the same thing as real life, however much it might sometimes feel that way. There are parallels in \u201cthe way that people behave in groups\u201d, according to Butler. \u201cThe way that people identify with something a little bit abstract, like a football team, but also even a nation state.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does give us some fascinating insights into the possibilities of what we can understand about human behaviours through something like football. It\u2019s a bit less contentious than it would be for nations to compete with each other, for example.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bottled water sales were through the roof outside the Etihad Stadium on Sunday afternoon. Not so much because Manchester City fans were particularly concerned with staying hydrated while watching their side take on league leaders Arsenal, but because the bottles were labeled with the north London side\u2019s crest. Arsenal bottles. Arsenal bottlers. The meme potential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}