I posted the below in the Priced Out thread but it belongs here as well:
Yep. I had some dickhead half and half scarf seller of all people having a pop at me last night while I was handing out the protest leaflets near the tram stop. Turns out he's a season ticket holder. It all started off ok when I was showing him the leaflet but his cluelessness came racing to the surface straight away when he saw the match day prices for the Villa game on the leaflet and said that he thought the tickets for Villa fans were capped at £30. I pointed out that these were home end ticket prices. Then he started getting all defensive about the club. Now he's entitled to his opinion like the rest of us but some of his takes were unreal and full of shit.
I asked him whether he thought it was fair that a family of 4 should pay between £228 and £292 for last night's game. His answer was that he's a ST holder who stumps up all his money up front so in that case it absolutely is fair. I said "So how does a working class family from Manchester afford to pay that?" His answer: "Well those ticket prices aren't aimed at those people as they know they can fill it with other fans". To which I asked "So how come there are thousands of unsold tickets for tonight?" Not much of an answer to that one as you can imagine
I asked him what he would do if he was ever priced out. His answer was simply "I'll just accept it and not go".
Then I asked him what he would do if he got affected by the 10 games minumum attendance stipulation for next season and what he would think to it if he broke his leg and had to miss shit loads of games, putting his 10 game minimim attendance in jeopardy: "I'll just get someone to go to the ground, scan my season ticket and then walk back out again". Yep, like fuck you would mate.
I asked him how does a child follow in his/her father's/mother’s footsteps by getting a season ticket when no new season tickets have been issued for years: "Use someone else's season ticket then". Like it's that fucking easy!
I asked him how the likes of Bayern Munich can have thousands of dirt-cheap season tickets without jeopardising all their other revenue streams and still managing to compete at the top table: "What are you bringing those German cunts into it for? It's a 1 team league"......."But Borussia Dortmund and other German clubs sell cheap season tickets too"......"So what"
The icing on the cake was him telling me that the biggest complaints amongst fellow season ticket holders around him were the number of randomers being there, and implied that we should be specifically focusing on that, yet the cheeky **** was there selling half and half scarves to the very type of people that he'd just been slagging off!
Funnily enough, the United supporting half and half scarf seller who was with him put the prick to shame because he actually got the gist of why we were protesting.
Oh, and we're all moaners apparently. We never do anything else but moan and he told me I'd been moaning ever since we left Maine Road. How he could draw that conclusion when he'd only known me for 15 minutes is beyond me!
Something else he said that’s just come to me. Apparently the new North Stand and all the associated facilities aren’t being built with us long-standing fans in mind. And the way he said it implied that he was ok with that!