small team fans bitterly mocking the big boys for being unsatisfied with their moderate success has always annoyed me. everything is relative. i'm a west brom fan who's experienced nowt but years of yo-yoing, except for a few years of mid-table mediocrity, yet i was always empathetic with arsenal fans bemoaning years of failure for example.

if you can see how your team is being mis-managed it's fucking well annoying regardless of your place in the pyramid. i remember moaning about post-dan ashworth transfer policy and how we were pissing away a decade of shrewd management and my cov supporting mate piped up and sarcastically said "YEAH, must be shit finishing 16th in the prem every season", and i had to say YEAH IT IS, i know your club is in a worse place, but that's not the fucking point.

i also think people are too quick to assume rival fans have delusions of grandeur, just cus it fits an easy NARRATIVE. i think you'd have to be a bit special to think the majority of west ham and newcastle fans genuinely think their teams "deserve" to be finishing top-4 every season playing swashbuckling, attacking football.