Joe Fitzpatrick 
The so called economic downturn has hit many of us in ways that we could never possibly have expected. Jobs have been cut, wages have been frozen, prices have increased, VAT has risen and there are thousands of university-educated youngsters out there who literally cannot find the jobs that they were spending huge amounts of money on tuition fees to educate themselves for in the first place. Young people today probably have less disposable income than they have had in the last ten to fifteen years and this fact has given me pause for thought for fellow Gooners.
I gave up my season-ticket at the beginning of this season because, quite frankly, I felt like the board was taking me for a bit of a mug. I was spending thousands of pounds a year of my hard-earned money on watching the steady decline of the club that I love. It was heartbreaking. The season-ticket was costing me £1,500. The extra beer, Jack Daniels and ciggies must have been costing me £40-£50 a game (if that seems like a cheap night out for you, then congratulations! You are officially an alcoholic) and I would say that the three or four away "lads’ weekend" trips that I was permitted by the missus to do per year by train, plane and car must have cost me thousands when you factor in hotel bills and "other operating costs". I can't give you any more details because my girlfriend might be reading this in the future and I might be asleep next to a huge pair of scissors. I'm only joking, love! It was an Ivan Gazidis joke. Honest.
The point I'm trying to make is that supporting Arsenal in 2013 can be a very expensive hobby, and many young people under the age of 27-28 just can’t afford to attend every single home and away game of the season. If all of the season-ticket holders aged 28+ (I'm 28) gave up their season-tickets at the end of this season, then I can see a situation whereby Arsenal will be forced either to slash ticket prices or face having thousands of empty seats for certain games of the season and significantly-reduced match-day income during every single one of their home games due to the lack of disposable income that the young fans bring with them. The empty seats inside the stadium coupled with a sustained campaign of protests by hundreds of Gooners outside might finally wake Silent Stan and Ivan the Terrible up to the fact that Arsenal Football Club isn't a cash cow that can be milked indefinitely and that they must start investing in the playing-squad in order to keep the fans happy or be forced to sell out to Usmanov.
The atmosphere probably won't suffer too much in the long run as a far smaller but younger crowd might actually make a good amount of noise inside the stadium. I just don't think that they will all be turning up for the games against Wigan, Southampton and QPR when they can get tickets for Manchester United, Tottenham, Chelsea, Liverpool, Everton and Manchester City. In the short term, you might regret missing the nights out and the odd dramatic victory like we experienced last night against Bayern Munich (typical Jekyll and Hyde Arsenal again - I was at the San Siro last season for f**** sake!) but in the long term you will realise that you are forcing the club to slash their ticket prices, bring in a staged payment scheme for season-tickets, spend serious money on world class football players like Juan Mata and realise that the fans are not as stupid, gullible and powerless as they would like to think.
People are simply not going to keep spending thousands of pounds per year on following Arsenal if the club keeps losing players like Flamini, Henry, Vieira, Fabregas, Nasri, Adebayor, Touré, Clichy, Nasri, Gallas, Song, van Persie and possibly Sagna because they are not surrounding them with a squad of players that can compete with them for a place in a trophy-winning team. All of those players could probably still do a better job for us than some of our current "stars" such as Bendtner, Chamakh, Gervinho, Ramsey, Diaby, Santos, Squillaci, Fabianski and Arshavin. The fact that all of the players that have left us have won trophies or been significantly influential for other clubs during the last eight barren years should be food for thought and maybe make you think that you should be thinking of passing on your season-ticket to the next generation because only a child could be stupid enough to think that continually selling your stars for profit while replacing them with cheaper, less capable replacements is any way to run a football team.
