Yeah, I've done a fair few. Usually just sit on my hands.I've been to plenty of away games over the years in corporate etc.
Just stay calm, don't be a **** and all should be good.
(Apart from that time at Sheff Utd when Anelka scored right at the death. I think we were cunts that day...)
I wasn’t at that game but heard so many stories about it down the years. I think it would’ve been a lot different if we were still in the promotion race. The attendance would’ve been far bigger with many more home fans snapping up tickets, but as we’d fallen away in the weeks leading up to it and Chelsea were going up their fans basically had the run of the ground.That Friday night chelsea completely took the piss Paul, they more or less owned Maine Road that night. I can’t remember many bigger away supports at Maine Road?
I think these were the lads in 207...There were two lads together on one row, and one on his own further back. One of the two is a Yorkshire based City season ticket holder who got tickets in 93:20 so he could bring his mates. He just wanted to watch City and was chanting and cheering with the rest of us. The lad he was sat with had zero interest in football and spent most of the first half on his phone checking on, what I assume was, a rugby match and wanting to know where in 'Clack' (presumably Clackheaton) they were going to eat after the match. Lad on his own was openly commenting on Leeds loudly. Not being aggressive, just "what was that?", "need to do better" type stuff in very broad W.Yorks accent. He got asked to move for 'his own saftey' when someone reported him to stewards and the other 2 followed him out...So there’d likely have been another incident earlier on with them for being moved into 93:20 in the first place?
Likely that they got tickets from the multitude of City’s ticket tout partners because there are no checks on who buys these tickets (even though Blues can’t transfer to a mate if they’re already a ST holder if that Blue can’t go for say, illness on the day of the game so it’s too late to put it on the Exhange, and maybe their mate who’s a ST holder has a friend they could have taken on the day, but oh no, not allowed in the club’s eyes!) and were sat in the home stands probably being mouthy cunts and removed after complaints.
Funnily enough, in City’s own Ts&Cs, it states that away fans cannot purchase tickets in the home sections. I know this because I’ve read their own Ts&Cs to them over the phone when complaining about away fans in the home sections.
Galatasaray will be the defining moment. The club will bluster their way out of it but it’s going to be the final straw for a lot of fans.
Madrid finished me off last year. Haven’t missed CL games at all.
Which prem clubs do care about their loyal fans nowadays?. I'm sure it's the same at Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal etc with ticketing issues, but we're right up there with the very worst
Haha can you imagine any of our prima donna little darlings interacting with anyone from the Manchester area ??100%.
I live in a large village that has a lot of out of towners that have moved to the area. Not sure if thats unusual or not , but off the top of my head i know a geordie, cov , west brom, villa, bristol, essex, a jock, etc , all with kids similar ages and regardless of who the dad supports, the kids are city fans. They might have their dads teams at heart too but they are running around in city kits. A load of little future blues, the next generation
My kids are 13 and 10. They share a season ticket next to me , its actually a relatives whos moved away and his ticket is on my phone.
If theyd have got it right, pricing, ease etc id have bought - ticket each for them.
They didnt know united used to be good and care less, like the little out of town blues i mentioned above they care about the now.
Just like the junior blues in the 70s secured a generation of support that saved us in the 80s and 90s when times were SHIT, we had the chance to lock in thousands of supporters but instead we whored ourselves out for a quick buck.
What a fuck up
And with 20% of the new stand being corporate, things are about to get 10x worse
Like you say, they’ll put restrictions in place for those trying to buy tickets through the club website but loads of Galatasaray fans will get tickets through the resale partners. It happened at Old Trafford and it’ll happen at our place.Youre absolutely right. My parents went to their first UCL game this year against Dortmund as they've started going over the last few years. When the fixtures came out at the start of the season, I flat out said that Napoli and Galatasaray were not happening.
I was at Feyenoord last year and that was an embarrassment. Drunken inbreds being found out all over the home end.
Stewards and the club will just continue to do the bare minimum. Not to mention as a City fan you're running the risk of a multi year or even lifetime ban getting involved.
Restrictions should be in place for location on certain fixtures. If you're registered in Turkey or have a Turkish payment method attached to your account, you should not be able to buy a ticket for Galatasaray as an example. Obviously this only works so well since the club has 9 official resale partners but its a start.
And it will be someone's job in 5 years to how can we get youngsters to come and watch us now we don't win much .It will be someone’s job to increase match day ticket sales now with no thought to the future. They’ve probably got someone breathing down their neck re sales figures and they won’t care about how this affects ticket sales in the future or what happens when we aren’t as good any more, as these types of people have no vested interest in what happens long term.
Like I said previously 12k in the swampLike you say, they’ll put restrictions in place for those trying to buy tickets through the club website but loads of Galatasaray fans will get tickets through the resale partners. It happened at Old Trafford and it’ll happen at our place.
I'd sooner see ten thousand empty seats than have a repeat of the Celtic farce, and 5 games previous history should do that especially if it's announced the day the tickets go on sale.This is a game they sell with the ‘5’ game previous history knowing there’d be issues.
Makes joke of it when they sell to touts
When the RIP Fergie stuff was deleted the reason given by mods was VK. The reason was soon deleted too.This was not a moderator action. Here's a look behind the scenes at the logs. I purposely edited a random thread in the ticket forum so you can see thread title edits show up.
View attachment 176221
Bluemoon is and always has been fiercely independent with zero oversight or pressure applied from the club. The two deleted posts in the last 5 hours were from me in the Cuddly toy (double post due to bad internet) and Jim (deleted his own post joking about Rangers). We don't routinely delete or edit posts unless they're fairly egregious and would absolutely never under any circumstances delete a post or edit a title because the club reached out. In fact, we'd tell them to politely fuck off. 99% of the time, moderators will edit thread titles for style reason - putting proper grammar in, capitalisation, etc. But it's pretty rare. And certainly not because somebody asked at City.
Tim probably thought it came across a bit harsh so edited it himself.
Those making the decisions will be working elsewhere when we can't sell tickets in the future. They don't give a stuff about the club or the fans. - However it might be much sooner than 5 years unless we loosen the restrictions during this season. Those 8,000 seats won't sell themselves.And it will be someone's job in 5 years to how can we get youngsters to come and watch us now we don't win much .
Shortsighted isn't the word ,it's ridiculous what they are doing.
££££It surprises me that clubs like City, who are deliberately and knowingly compromising safety and segregation by partnering with touting agencies, don’t run into problems in getting safety certificates for hosting games. If the club does not accept a duty of care for supporters, it should be forced upon them by the authorities. There seems to be a total blind spot about this issue in football, and it is going to end in tragedy.
Was that when they beat us 5-2 i think after we took an early lead? I was at that game. Very few clubs came to Maine Road and took the piss. Leeds's certainly never did, they were always hammered. Chelsea always gave a good account. The ECWC semi final second leg there was scrapping all over the ground, including in the Kippax. They did the same on that Friday night game that was televised when they were going for promotion and brought thousands down.
From about the closest 50 friends and family I know in Manchester, most of them are football fans of either City or United, and about 41 of them don’t go to the Etihad or Old Trafford.The club have completely and utterly fucked up. At a time of our greatest success surely it’s been the perfect opportunity to increase the fan base, to allow new season tickets to Blues on the waiting list, yet all they have done is take actions to reduce the City support - stupid price rises, no new season tickets, no ability for Blues to transfer to other Blues, banning orders left right and centre - we have lost so many legacy fans in our period of greatest success and they will never come back, and we have lost the potential for newer younger fans by not selling new season tickets. All this at a time when we are about to increase the capacity by 8k or so. Match day revenue is nothing compared to tv and commercial income so surely the way the club continues its success is to have the ground full of enthusiastic Blues with season tickets rather than half and half tourists and away fans but the club don’t give a fuck. It’s sad to see what the club has become in terms of our home fanbase and it’s getting worse by the week. Incidents like this will become commonplace
Infamous Chelsea HeadhuntersI wasn’t at that game but heard so many stories about it down the years. I think it would’ve been a lot different if we were still in the promotion race. The attendance would’ve been far bigger with many more home fans snapping up tickets, but as we’d fallen away in the weeks leading up to it and Chelsea were going up their fans basically had the run of the ground.
It wasn’t just at City they took liberties that season. Astonishingly they took the piss at Ninian Park too, filling 3 stands apparently and giving Cardiff fans a right battering.
From about the closest 50 friends and family I know in Manchester, most of them are football fans of either City or United, and about 41 of them don’t go to the Etihad or Old Trafford.
It feels like the culture of going to the game has changed massively in this city, almost disappeared.
I know 6 City ST holders and 3 United ST holders out of around 50 of my closest f&fs. Two decades ago, of that group, more than half of that 50 of us were ST holders at City. Many were die-hard home+away, when we were shit, Blues.
For both the 2011 FA Cup semi and final, we filled a coach with just mates without having to advertise it anywhere. We even had to let some know we were full and they’d have to find another way down, such was the demand.
In recent years, there have been semis where I’ve gone down on my own on National Express because nobody else I knew was going. There have been finals where we’ve not been able to book a minibus because we couldn’t get the numbers and a handful of us have been able to go in one car.
This is probably similar for many groups of friends+family across Manchester. We have become a conurbation of arcmchair supporters, with most football fans in this city watching at home because going to the ground isn’t on the cards for people.
How has this been allowed to happen? How can the club have done this to our support?
We were known as the most loyal supporters in the country. Anywhere you went, up and down the country, holidays abroad, as soon as we said we were City fans we got immediate respect because of the way we were viewed as a set of fans. Now we are ridiculed for being shit fans, it’s almost embarrassing to admit you’re a City fan due to the lack of respect we have as a fanbase these days.
Our fanbase should have been sacrosanct to the club, it should have been the #1 thing the club should have looked after and cherished because it was a bigger asset to the club than anything else.
Mansour’s early doors Mission Statement to fans made me feel like we wouldn’t go down the United route of having a fanbase with no identity, just a worldwide bunch of nobodies. I thought that we were going to keep our identity and we’d be looked after.
A few things Mansour said (if it was really him who wrote it and not just some publicist):
‘My request to [Al Mubarak] has been to put together a board and executive team that is worthy of the heritage and potential of Manchester City’.
‘…we will absolutely spend time listening to you the fans about what you think about the future of the club. We are very aware that without you there would not be a club to buy, and your voice will be heard by the organisation at the highest level’.
‘We are aware also that the club has a significant role in the community going back years. As newcomers, we don’t pretend to understand all of this yet, but we will make sincere efforts to back these initiatives and ensure that Manchester City loses none of its role in Manchester beyond football and we want the club to continue to contribute to the community it represents’.
‘I am a football fan, and I hope that you will soon see that I am now also a Manchester City fan. But I am also a long-term investor and that is probably more important to the club and to you because it means we are here for the long haul and that we will act always in the best interests of the club and all of its stakeholders, but especially you the fans’.
Ha!
You’re having a fucking laugh, pretty much none of that has happened!
The latchers-on to City’s success were inevitable, of course. However, the total lack of remembering the ‘heritage’ of City, spending time listening to fans, being aware that without us there’d be no club, being active in all parts of our conurbation, having ticketing initiatives for local fans to enhance the importance of Manchester and Mancunians… was not inevitable. It was the opposite of what the Mission Statement said.
Entering the European Super League, releasing statements by Joel Glazer, not saying anything to back up City fans after Istanbul (not even to the fans, never mind UEFA), and, of course, pricing out fans whether by constantly putting season ticket prices up or having unrealistic matchticket prices for a predominantly working class Manchester fanbase… is not showing that they will act ‘always in the best interests of…especially you the fans’.
They haven’t done anything differently than United. We’ve just become ‘Man U’ in Blue. United’s match going fanbase of a load of latchers-on while the locals are priced out and forgotten about but with sky blue branding.
The German clubs have highlighted that the way Premier League clubs operate is not needed. Bayern have recently smashed their record revenue figures, and they didn’t do it by pricing out their core support and making their worldwide fanbase a priority.
Even Liverpool have ticketing initiatives for people with an ‘L’ post code and their child Premier League matchday tickets are £9 in all stands other than the new Anfield Road tier.
Mansour’s words there have been proven to mean absolutely fuck all. Mancunian City fans are not important to this club. The Manchester name means nothing anymore. We might as well be called Moon City FC and play our games around the world like Forumla 1 takes each race around the world.
They’ve run this club with only the interests of creating a faceless passionless worldwide fanbase. You see it with the trophy tours they put on whenever we win anything; these trophies are never seen in Wythenshawe, Altrincham, Stockport… if we’re lucky we’ve had one afternoon with them in the city centre store before they go on trips around the world for months on end. I’ve not seen a City presence in Wythenshawe in any way shape or form for fucking ages! You wouldn’t know City existed in Wythenshawe if you didn’t have a smartphone, tablet or laptop… and I bet that’s the case for many areas around our conurbation.
This strive for worldwide fans has lead to what’s going on in the stands and incidents like this yesterday. The constant increasing of ticket tout partners and number of tickets around the stadium where any Tom, Dick or Harry can purchase tickets in the City home ends (despite City’s own Ts&Cs stating that away fans cannot purchase tickets in the home stands… I know this because I’ve read them to the club over the phone when complaining about away fans in the home stands!) whether they’re City fans, daytrippers, neutrals or rabid supporters of the away team have seen many incidents flare up over recent years: Arsenal fans getting a pasting the other year because they goaded Blues in our own seats when Califiori scored, our biggest rivals United and Liverpool fans openly supporting their team even wearing colours without a care in the world, Liverpool fan getting a twatted in the South Stand last season…
A City fan got a pasting yesterday, but I’m telling you now something serious is going to happen soon. Someone is going to get seriously hurt in our ground, or worse! All the ingredients are there and all it takes is a bad fall after a scuffle and someone has permanent damage or could die. And it is all on the club and their ticketing initiatives. There are far too many away fans buying tickets in the home stands and hospitality sections. There should be none! as per their own Ts&Cs. The club will blame fans, ban fans, even out out a statement condemning fans’ behaviour… but it’ll be their fault!
And all this will just alienate even more proper core Blues who will get to a point of having enough of it all and will stop going to games.
54,000 away fans ? Ha haThe entire ground is going to be full of away fans. Imagine how bad it will be with another 7,000 seats in the north stand next season.