Family affairs

Wolves FC have recently announced a new shirt sponsorship deal for next season with The Money Shop, a payday loan firm. This being 2016 and the internet being the internet, an online petition was swiftly set up and has amassed plenty of outraged signatories.

The modern malaise of one-click activism is a topic for another day, but what I do find curious about this saga is the common refrain that Wolves should not be associating themselves with such ne'er-do-well companies because we are a 'family club'. This does rather beg the question of whether any football club wouldn't consider itself a Family Club in this day and age.

Actually, the answer is probably Leeds United, who according to an employment tribunal were guilty of unfair dismissal and sex discrimination when they sacked the partner of former manager Neil Redfearn, and have an owner in Massimo Cellino whose titanic self-delusion appears to be matched only by his chronic sexism, if his alleged views on roles for women in football are anything to go by.

But Dirty Leeds aside, surely any club's boast of being more family-friendly is pretty meaningless? Football is now a business like any other, and although every club needs to keep - and ideally, build - its fanbase to generate income, any reasonably large club doesn't particularly care any more where that money comes from.

Which brings us back to shirt sponsorship. The Money Shop have links with Wolves dating back several years, including being the current sponsor of one Molineux stand. But it seems the prospect of having their name emblazoned on the hallowed shirt is the tipping point. Lots of fans don't want their club's key sponsor to be a company whose practices they consider dubious, presumably because they think it will automatically reflect badly on the values of the club itself.

But herein lies my issue with the more one-eyed football fan. The nature of their fandom gives rise to the false logic that because they love their club unconditionally, they believe that it is objectively better than all the others. You can find this fallacy in a million internet comments - a popular one is the utter failure to grasp why a player might choose to sign with another club rather than your own. Another is believing that "we" should somehow hold ourselves to a higher standard than any other team when choosing which company's cash should be filling our coffers.

I don't particularly approve of The Money Shop as a business, but are the plethora of internet betting companies and obscure financial services firms who currently grace most Premier League shirt-fronts really any more morally superior?

Ultimately we football fans do consider our chosen clubs as family members - and like any dysfunctional relatives, no matter how bad their behaviour or shabby their treatment of us, we still love them just the same. There are far worse things to get upset about than a shirt sponsor. Having said that, if we could go back to the glory days of shirts bearing the logos of Sharp, Finlux and Crown Paints, that would be lovely too.