I've lived in Leicester for too long, having left the leafy suburbs of Sale decades ago.
I thought the whole organisation of yesterday was a fucking shambles. The Leicester branch had our annual Blue party in Aylestone, never any trouble, good natured and at least 2 publicans have credited City fans for literally saving their pubs after Covid left them nearly bankrupt. The landlord of the Union is doing up his beer garden from yesterday's takings. He'll never tolerate a bad word about City fans, neither will the locals.
The normal match day commander was changed for this game and he wasn't "briefed" that approx 2000 Blues would be meeting in Aylestone, despite us advising Leics Constabulary through the normal channels, as we had for the previous 10 meets we'd arranged. He had already planned on routing the scouse coaches through Aylestone, sending them to the Gasworks end of the KP. His solution? We want all "your lot" out of the pubs and in their coaches by 1pm. This, despite the fact that some weren't arriving until 1:30pm. We refused, they has a strategy meeting and he changed it to 3-4pm...and left the scouse route the same, with an increased police presence. When their coaches went through? Not one brick, bottle, flare or kebab was chucked. Plenty of verbals, NO incidents. Not fucking one. One copper said to me "imagine if that was in Liverpool? Good lads your lot". Class act.
The rest of the organisation was shite. From the struggle to get through the turnstiles, then off the concourse, to moving the coaches to somewhere no-one knew about.
The ground was ours, outsung the vermin throughout. Keep that going at the Etihad? We'll see.
Prouder than ever to be a blue yesterday. We'll be welcoming all comers again at the end of October.
Bringing a little bit of Manchester to our dull ex-pat existence.
Salutations Blues.