Bragging rights: A deep analysis of every standard derogatory football chant

The most cutting thing you can say, the greatest tweet ever posted explains, is “‘who's this clown?’ because it implies they're a) a clown and b) not even one of the better-known clowns”.

There is a similar - and perhaps surprising - intricacy to the impact a football chant can have on its intended target: the oppositions fans, an opposition player, either manager or the referee. It’s 14 years since the first (and, curiously, last) Barclaycard Chant Laureate was crowned and, while Jonny Hurst’s unwieldy lyrics about Aston Villa striker Juan Pablo Angel never quite caught on, there remains a solid array of football-chant standards for almost any mid-game scenario.

Among the ironically self-congratulatory refrains of “We’re by far the greatest team the world has ever seen” and the occasional topical improvisation, one particular strand of football chanting has endured. But which of the generic abusive football chants really cuts the deepest? It’s time to employ some graphical analysis.

"You are s---, you are s---!"

Straight to the point - almost too directly for me, Clive - and certainly not a difficult one for the novice to get to grips with. The origin of the tune remains unclear, but it’s certainly not the driving force here: that, simply, is the repeated reminder that you, the opposition, are not good.

That simplicity lends a layer of impertinence to a chant that, to its credit, is not overused: you’ll need to be a good two or three goals down before you qualify to be on the receiving end. A solid, unspectacular start - the benchmark is set.

"You’re s--- and you know you are!"

Village People’s venerable “Go West” provides the three-tiered chorus for this one, which is a skewering extension of “You are s---”, on the basis that it suggests the targets are not only s---, but that they were already aware of it anyway.

That in-built assumption ramps up the Rudeness and Smugness scores straight away, but accordingly makes it rather harder to prove in a court of law, if that ever became necessary.

"How s--- must you be, we’re winning away!"

Another variant on the brutally straightforward theme that is “you are s---”, but this time with two minor complications: 1) the first portion is phrased as a rhetorical question and 2) the second portion admits some inferiority on your own team’s part.

Unfortunately, this attempt to twist the knife - Christ, even we’re beating you - tends to backfire a little, and leads only to mutual appreciation of each other’s s---ness in the grand scheme of things. The Rudeness score therefore takes a hit, but the bafflingly enduring melody of Caribbean folk song “Sloop John B” holds things steady in the Tunefulness department. Handily, too, it also contains an irrefutable claim about the scoreline.

"Down with the [Club X], you’re going down with the [Club X]!"

Moving into a more specific area of s---ness now, with the forecast of relegation along with whoever their equally hapless local rivals are. Once again, the Rudeness rating is impaired by the dilution of adding another team to the mix but, on the other hand, the twin-target lording is enough to keep the Smugness score high.

Cuban classic “Guantanamera” provides the rather monotonous musical structure, which doesn’t help, while any prediction of relegation is made at one’s own risk.

Individual players are rubbish

"Ooooahhh, YOU’RE S---, AHHHHHHHHH!"

Football’s tuneless, traditional serenade to a goalkeeper - as they commit the heinous act of getting the ball back into play - is in crisis. As the practice of short goal kicks continues to trickle down the divisions in the interests of possession football we may soon find ourselves robbed of the chance to bellow this aimless, almost affectionate terrace staple.

Despite the lyrics, little offence is intended to the goalkeeper themselves. This is not the chant we’re looking for.

"Who are ya?! Who are ya?!"

One of a small family of rhetorical-question-based football chants (one of its siblings being the pertinent enquiry of “what the f------ hell was that?” whenever an opposition shot sails over the bar), but its intentions remain unclear.

Perhaps it is deployed to put an opposition player back in their place whenever they cause a fuss - essentially, “who do you think you are?”, but crammed into three syllables instead.

Anyway, it’s all a bit vague, and an overall score of 14/50 (a sorry 28%) is the result.

"What a waste of money!"

Reserved almost exclusively for £30m-plus opposition strikers going through a barren run of goalscoring form. Slightly too pantomime to be taken seriously. And, let’s face it, every Premier League club will have had a £30m flop by 2025, so we’re all just laughing at ourselves in the end.

Harmless fun, then, and still positively encouraged at provincial non-league stadiums for FA Cup third-round ties against the big boys, where the Smugness score is fully earned.

"Shall we sing a song for you?!"

The absolute peak, the unquestionable zenith, the Mount Everest of pure football-chant smugness. The gleeful slamming of an opposition’s fanbase - in terms of noise, numbers or provenance - is a peculiar sub-genre of football chanting, but it’s one we must examine.

Welsh mega-hymn “Cwm Rhondda” provides the tune in this case, which makes the whole thing just too pleasant to the ear to be offensive. An overall score of 22/50 (a mere 44%) says it all. Its close cousin “Is this a library?” - to the tune of Verdi’s “La donna è mobile” - at least has some culture about it.

"Your support is f------ s---!"

To the same tune, but considerably more cynical, sneering and mean-spirited than the “SWSASFY?” ditty. Suffers, perhaps, from not expanding on its core point: what, precisely, about our support is f------ s---, and how would you suggest we go about fixing it?

Like a sawn-off shotgun, it has explosive force, but lacks the necessary precision for the job at hand.

"We support our local team!"

A rare case of punching upwards when it comes to derogatory chants about football fanbases, still raging against the global machine after all these years.

While this ticks the box for geographical snootiness, some inter-generational banter can be found in its sister chant of “Where were you when you were s---?”, the answer to which, in many cases, is simply “not yet born”.

Until a chant about official noodle partners and gruelling Far East pre-season tours is commissioned in response, this one is likely to endure - to little reaction either way - for a few more seasons yet.

"Sacked in the morning, you’re getting sacked in the morning!"

The gleeful mass celebration of someone edging closer to unemployment might be considered rather crass in any other walk of life, but this is football and the managerial merry-go-round is, for some, as fun as it sounds.

But this isn’t a chant used willy-nilly: the opposition manager’s future does tend to be in serious doubt, even before he’s stood, helpless, on the edge of his technical area, pretending not to hear the repeated, relentless speculation about his immediate job prospects.

However, the pedestrian tune of “Guantanamera” once again undermines the chant from a melodic perspective, while there is insufficient research into precisely what time of day the average Premier League sacking takes place.

"The referee’s a w-----!"

While such foul-mouthed abuse of referees cannot be condoned, this timeless set of syllables is still surely better than “you’re not fit to referee”, which is the most pompous of all football chants.

Rude as it is, though, it’s hard to imagine that such generic criticism gets under a professional referee’s skin. Both ubiquitous and somehow harmless, like football-chant wallpaper.

"You don’t know what you’re doing!"

A mild assessment of someone’s professional capabilities, which is as likely to be directed at your own team’s manager as it is to a referee.

Much like “you’re getting sacked in the morning”, there is often an element of truth in this one, and results have to have become dire before it’s given an airing, but it lacks the necessary bite.

"You’re not singing any more!"

The godfather of all scoreline-based chants of ridicule, effortlessly condensing a classic footballing narrative of “you were winning, now you’re not, have some of that” into just five satisfying words. The “YOU’RE” takes the full brunt of the vocal cords’ power, with the rest just being dragged happily along behind it for as long as the schadenfreude persists.

It has its more modern offshoots, too: “We can see you sneaking out” references both the dwindling minutes and the opposition fans’ fairweatherness all in one, while “Is this a fire drill?” tends to dissolve into some self-congratulatory chuckling at 4-0 up with five minutes to go.

Rude? Not really. Smug? Overwhelmingly and by its very definition. Granted, it’s not the most inventive reaction, but it has been tried and tested over several decades. The old ones are sometimes the best. But wait...

"2-0 and you f----- it up!"

Scoring a handsome 35/50, a whopping 70%, just enough to earn a first-class degree in Football Chant Ridicule Studies - this takes the old wound of “You’re not singing any more” and liberally applies some rock salt.

2-0, a scoreline already dripping with paranoid myth, appears to be the optimum situation whose unceremonious reversal should be met with the ecstatic reminder to the opposition fans that their team - right in front of their eyes - has f----- it up.

A sprinkling of bad language, the soaring notes of “Go West”, the indisputable facts of 1) what the scoreline was earlier and 2) that scoreline’s current state, all wrapped up in bubble wrap of the highest-grade smuggery. The knife is stuck in, and twisted. We have our winner.