I DON’T like music – I love it.

But when Brand New, my favourite band in the whole world since I was 15, go on tour, you don’t see me walking around talking to people saying, “we’ll we’ve had the show at Manchester, and we’ll be playing in Birmingham next week.”

You know why? Because I am not part of the band. Just like how football fans are not part of the football team.

Why do football fans sit in the pub, their house, in their cars, in betting shops, or on the phone, talking like they are the team’s 11th man and there’s just no way they’d get through a game without them.

I am not the drummer for Brand New? I do not provide the beat for the whole show to be played against. I am a fan. I watch shows. I listen to releases. I buy merchandise.

I support them through break ups, new members, tough album releases, the changing world of digital music, and at signings and fan meetings.

You are a football fan. You watch the games. You listen to interviews or coverage. You buy football shirts, boots, and balls. You support your team by standing by them through fall outs, new team members, relegation, the controversy of an obscene wage, and at signings and fan meetings.

I’m sorry, but I fail to see the difference between being a fan of one thing and being a fan of the other.

I do not connect to football in the slightest, even the banter across the office about how realistic ‘we’ all need to be about where ‘we’re’ going to come in the World Cup.

I connect with music. I constantly walk around with a soundtrack in my head despite not having headphones in, or searching for the latest releases and gig announcements.

Music gets in to emotions, in to your soul. How does football do that? If I am to be part of anything it would be part of a band because of the emotion behind it.

Jesse Lacey pouring his heart and soul behind his lyrics that tell his story as well as hundreds of thousands of other people’s.

People talking about the ‘emotion of the game’ on the sports news are disillusioned.

Yes, you can get obsessed with it, involved with it, play it yourself, hope to be a footballer one day, but a game won’t change your life like a song, and to be honest, if you weren’t a fan, the team would still play. If people don’t show up for a gig, a band might not play again.

So think about it – how much of a fan are you really?

Do you get paid to play in the team, clean their shirts, make them dinner, sell them to other fans? No. You just enjoy what the game does for you, like I do music.

You’re no more a part of the team than I am Brand New or Aerosmith, Little Mix, One Direction, and so on.