Where's the Mean Guy?

Have you ever had one of those days when you were expecting to have a great day, and suddenly a bunch of football hooligans come out of nowhere, proceeding to urinate out of a bus while chanting "Fudge the Pope"? Me neither.

Bill Buford had one of those days, and surprisingly enough, he wasn't being urinated on (nor was he the Pope). As our narrator gets slowly assimilated into being a "thug", he starts to learn their ways, consequently learning how to urinate out of the window with the most optimal aim. While this doesn't actually happen, being among "them" is teaching the narrator how things work in this new community he now finds himself in. 

Despite this, I think he hasn't met the most hardcore of said fans, because so far, I haven't seen anyone get beat up and frozen into a grape-flavored popsicle for supporting Chelsea. I can safely deduce this because we've only heard stories, through other people such as Roy, about people getting savagely assaulted for picking up a stick to defend himself.

Before ending this post, I got to think: when the author says "among the thugs", is he implying that he is among them, but not actually one of them?