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Shhh! This is the Premier League. Why Stamford Bridge is too quiet

On Saturday, Jose Mourinho took issue with the home support as Chelsea took on QPR in a West London derby. I was at the game with my wife (irony to follow) and can confirm the atmosphere was fairly low key. Nothing unusual there. For the past 10 years or so, the atmosphere at Stamford Bridge has been gradually eroded. The particular problem on this occasion was that the team could not spark the crowd into life, as so often is the case. The players’ performance reflected the mood of the fans – looking at the form guide, this should have been a rollover.

I take great interest in the fans at matches because, since my first Chelsea match in 1994, aged just 11, I was hooked on the passion they brought to the occasion. For me, a vocal crowd is just as important as a great team, or a great stadium. It makes the match so much more participative. Which means that for the last 10 years or so, I’ve become more and more frustrated with the shape of Chelsea’s support, and more widely, support across all Premier League matches. So much so, that I have resigned myself to becoming another inactive supporter, so tiring is the battle to spark a song or get everyone to their feet. Here are the main reasons, as I see them, in order of relative importance:

1. Higher ticket pricing (my QPR ticket was graded AA and cost £56)

2. Family-friendly grounds (plastic flags, Xboxes IN THE STANDS for children)

3. All-seater stadiums (or ‘no standing’ policies – seriously?!)

4. Saturated coverage on television

5. Fans spoilt with success.

Without going into these in detail, it’s safe to say that the combined effect is a massively reduced noise level at Premier League matches, and in my experience, particularly at Chelsea. And I’m not the only one who’s grown weary of trying – ‘East Stand, give us a song’ used to be a popular chant used to gee-up the other fans around the stadium, but now even that has died out. The Matthew Harding stand is the exception, and I guess most grounds have always had this hardcore to fall back on.

So I’m grateful to Mourinho for having a go at the fans. I used to return from matches years ago, not celebrating victory but bemoaning the atmosphere. Anything we can do to improve it – either through (it’s come to this:) manufactured ‘singing sections’, or bringing back standing sections – is desperately needed.

I’ve reached that age and point in my life where the testosterone is, I think, more controllable than when I was at my most vociferous – through my teens and early twenties. I’m a father and on Saturday I took my wife to see the match. But where are all the youngsters who used to be inspired by the passion of the older vocal fans? They’re at home, by choice, already recreating the match on FIFA or watching it on Sky or via a pirate stream online. Instead, I was surrounded by Scandinavians and Eastern Europeans – all of which would be fine by the way, if they were singing and shouting. But they were quiet tourists, paying top dollar for a day at the home of the league leaders. And at the end of the day, it’s the dollar that The Man really cares about, not the noise.