"Disappointing" attendances

[feedmpenzaandhewillscore]

Somebody scoffed at me once when I said we should be enticing Scottish fans however the rags and dippers have got Wales and Ireland pretty much seen up. It's a 4 hour drive from the population belt and they may support a Scottish club but us as well. Few games ago there was a group of kids from there really into City and not just there on a school beano.

So what your saying is ‘we might as well be Celtic?’.

 

[Gray]

Pep should realise that his pal and the other cronies on the board have turned the Etihad into the ‘Theatre of Cheese’, I sacked it off 40 years at the end of last season mainly because I was going out of duty and in the end I felt a huge disconnect mainly due to the horrendous match day experience and awful atmosphere and I’ve felt no desire to return.

I am the opposite to you. Much prefer the live match experience and find my self watching less and less televised games, mainly because of the presentation team and the poor quality of a lot of the matches.

 

[blueparrot]

Nothing wrong with that all it makes sense the borders, Dumfries and Galloway, Ayrshire etc, I remember there was thing a decade or so ago there was a smallish link up with Selkirk probably something to do with Bobby Johnstone but it was never really pursued. You are spot on about Ireland and Wales As well, our pals from M16 could relocate to Dublin and they would be equally as popular.

We don’t seem to have made many inroads into towns close by such as St Helens, Northwich, Winsford, Warrington etc we seem to still be the 4th most popular club still. The Manchester United Foundation seem to have upped their game locally as well recently, the Club give the impression that they don’t want local working class Mancunians any more sadly.

Its full of liverpool fans, and it goes back years, children brought up as liverpool fans. My son has just left school in the borders and all through junior football he was the only one in a city shirt. He does a bit of coaching now and there are one or two city shirts but it’s still more liverpool than anyone after celtic and rangers, a few united too, but that seems to be getting less. Will take a lot to change it as I said their parents are liverpool fans and with their current success the children won’t change.
There was a link with Selkirk, but that seemed Bernard Halford driven and was linked by Bobby Johnstone, and the City tartan came from it. Natalie Pikes dad is involved with Duns and she did get a youth team sent up a few years ago to open their new ground and both Selkirk and Duns have a couple of city shirts up in their clubs but nothing much has come from the links.

 

[levets]

Manchester City's average attendance in the Premier League this season is 54,391 - more than 98% of capacity. [via @spbajko]

It’s actually more than 98%, as that calculation uses 55,097 as the capacity. That is the number of seats in the stadium, not the working capacity, which is 54,780.

 

[jrb]

If you want to know what the clubs priorities are, and why the atmosphere and support has died a death at the Etihad, here you go.

Those running the club have carved the Etihad up and displaced thousands of local working class fans all over the stadium to accommodate.....

And right at the bottom of that list is the fans on the terraces.

 

[WestGorton]

So what your saying is ‘we might as well be Celtic?’.

Don't know what you mean exactly but I am talking about the growth of the club and the way it can be achieved. We also need to promote locally all the time and never be complacent on relying on ageing fans like me.

 

[half & half derby scarf]

If you want to know what the clubs priorities are, and why the atmosphere and support has died a death at the Etihad, here you go.

Those running the club have carved the Etihad up and displaced thousands of local working class fans all over the stadium to accommodate.....

The Harvey Nicks one doesn't seem to involve watching the game at all. Seems like a win/win if you can watch the game whilst the wife is committing credit card fraud.

 

[WestGorton]

Manchester City's average attendance in the Premier League this season is 54,391 - more than 98% of capacity. [via @spbajko]

Yes we have made amazing strides and nobody should forget that.

 

[Mike Cledford]

It is relevant because Pep has often spoken favourably about these big clubs and their rich history. It also shows that not even the largest clubs are immune to the same sort of issues wth attendances . City remain one of the best supported clubs in England and have been for more than 100 years. Pep needs to respect us fans more than he does.

Just saying something like
'all clubs are having too much football at this time. Even Manchester United with their 692 million fans cannot fill their ground" would help by showing its just not our problem. A dig against the rags always goes down well.

 

[oakiecokie]

If you want to know what the clubs priorities are, and why the atmosphere and support has died a death at the Etihad, here you go.

Those running the club have carved the Etihad up and displaced thousands of local working class fans all over the stadium to accommodate.....

And right at the bottom of that list is the fans on the terraces.

If we didn`t have any of these then we wouldn`t be the 2nd richest club in the world. ;)

 

[blueparrot]

If you want to know what the clubs priorities are, and why the atmosphere and support has died a death at the Etihad, here you go.

Those running the club have carved the Etihad up and displaced thousands of local working class fans all over the stadium to accommodate.....

And right at the bottom of that list is the fans on the terraces.

The club does hospitality and corporate and promote it, its part of the plan always was always will be. Has little to do with the Fulham attendance though. Sunday was cheap some chose not to go for whatever reason, maybe they preferred to spend their money on the madrid game. It's what premier league clubs do, and it’s how clubs work in the modern world. You might want the old days back, they aren't coming back.

 

[Gray]

If you want to know what the clubs priorities are, and why the atmosphere and support has died a death at the Etihad, here you go.

Those running the club have carved the Etihad up and displaced thousands of local working class fans all over the stadium to accommodate.....

And right at the bottom of that list is the fans on the terraces.

Every one off them is grossly overpriced, how they manage to sell them is beyond my comprehension.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

City Matters side, which was thought up and brought in for this specific reason. Have the club and the fans ever been this far apart and this polarised before?

Just back from our reps meeting and we're all agreed that he was well out of order here. In fact we're going to ask the club if he'll come along to a meeting and explain what he thinks we need to do to fill the stadium. As it happens, we've got a club deputation, including Danny Wilson, coming along to our branch meeting this week so that'll be interesting.

 

[jrb]

If we didn`t have any of these then we wouldn`t be the 2nd richest club in the world. ;)

We wouldn’t have the 2nd most padded seats in a football stadium either. ;-)

 

[Gray]

The club does hospitality and corporate and promote it, its part of the plan always was always will be. Has little to do with the Fulham attendance though. Sunday was cheap some chose not to go for whatever reason, maybe they preferred to spend their money on the madrid game. It's what premier league clubs do, and it’s how clubs work in the modern world. You might want the old days back, they aren't coming back.

The club does hospitality and corporate and promote it, its part of the plan always was always will be. Has little to do with the Fulham attendance though. Sunday was cheap some chose not to go for whatever reason, maybe they preferred to spend their money on the madrid game. It's what premier league clubs do, and it’s how clubs work in the modern world. You might want the old days back, they aren't coming back.

I can not understand the lack of uptake on Sunday, the previous round we had a far bigger crowd. Some of it down to low numbers of Fulham fans but that can not be the only reason.

 

[blueparrot]

I can not understand the lack of uptake on Sunday, the previous round we had a far bigger crowd. Some of it down to low numbers of Fulham fans but that can not be the only reason.

Combination, tickets for 3 games on sale mid January, live on BBC Sunday lunchtime, Maybe even the first leg lead some saving for Wembley tickets. As you say only about 1500 Fulham fans. So we’re only talking about maybe 5000 giving it a miss compared to Port Vale.

 

[Mike Cledford]

If we didn`t have any of these then we wouldn`t be the 2nd richest club in the world. ;)

You never told us how the Bunga Bunga party in the George and Dragon went.

 

[jrb]

The club does hospitality and corporate and promote it, its part of the plan always was always will be. Has little to do with the Fulham attendance though. Sunday was cheap some chose not to go for whatever reason, maybe they preferred to spend their money on the madrid game. It's what premier league clubs do, and it’s how clubs work in the modern world. You might want the old days back, they aren't coming back.

I was referring to the degrading of the atmosphere at the Etihad over the last few years. Many of these hospitality areas were once normal seating areas where ordinary match going City fans used to sit, and who have subsequently been priced out of those areas to make way for corporate and hospitality packages and customers.

 

[Millwallawayveteran1988]

Forgot mine yours or your sister being able to afford it pal. And yes 100k(or so) fans at last two parades, but that was a free event.. The bigger picture is not just about match day tickets but the match day cost, plus having to travel in time taken up. City could quite easily got more bums on seats by considerably reducing the admission prices, to entice old fans to attend, and temp new fans to turn up. They didn't hence a 39k attendance.

Price will always play some part, but for some people a day at the cinema Is more appealing than City V Fulham. Football isn’t everything to everybody. The club maybe could do more but all that matters to them is revenue. 39000 people at an average of £20 a ticket is better than 50,000 at £10.

 

[blueparrot]

I was referring to the degrading of the atmosphere at the Etihad over the last few years. Many of these hospitality areas were once normal seating areas where ordinary match going City fans used to sit, and who have subsequently been priced out of those areas to make way for corporate and hospitality packages and customers.

Yes but many of those people relocated a fair few into the ss 3 rd tier snapping up the cheap s/c before they went on open sale, and those bits that got moved were hardly singing sections, so dont think those relocations had a big degradation to the atmosphere. Lots of other reasons for that, and things can be done to help that don’t and won’t involve changing the corporate option.