Taking fans for granted

bobom said:
They were probably pissed off there wasn't a better atmosphere. People come from all over the world to see our team play. Poor us.
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They were a huge part in why there was a shit atmosphere. And I'm all for supporters from X, Y and Z but the fact that so many hundreds got handouts over City fans who turn out all the time, to a "glamour" London away tie, in which tickets cost £30; it stinks a bit n
 
blue b4 the moon said:
West Ham have a big shiny new stadium to fill, see how those tickets go in a couple of years.....also we sell out but with S/C's si cheap some fans don't bother with some games, this would probably get worse if the tickets went cheaper.

It's a conundrum for the club.
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I doubt it, 60,000 Balti pies bought, I pity the toilet cleaners.
 
halfcenturyup said:
It's easy. Listen less to image consultants and more to the fanbase. Problem is we are run by a management consultant, and one thing consultants like is more consultants.
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The problem is those consultants are not tasked with making the best experience for the fanbase, they are tasked with extracting as much money as possible and we are the smallest pot to extract from. If you look at our growth figures, you can hardly argue they aren't doing their job. The problem is at what point does the club look behind the profit.

To me a lot of the fan related stuff behind the scenes is still part and parcel of the same amateur club we were 15 years ago, no wonder they built a fancy new office up the road away from it all. Even the CFG have an office out of the way in London now. Had it not been the club I love I would of voted with my feet a long time ago.

The ticketing and customer service really is the pits compared to the other major European clubs. For the Stoke game I was stuck on hold for almost an hour to get a late ticket for the game and I couldn't get through so I ended up throwing the towel in and bloody shopping with the mrs on Deansgate. I watched the game later on TV in the pub and there were empty seats everywhere, what does that tell you really about the priorities right now. The club lost potentially around £80 from me that day but what is that really when you are paying some players 2,500 times that a week.

It's unfortunate and is the price of being a big club, I wouldn't want to send us back to the stone ages but it is so frustrating that the club has the resources to make this a truly world leading experience for everyone but they just aren't interested.
 
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Getting the balance right between the global aspirations of the brand and keeping it real for the local football club is an interesting challenge and one that has not been conquered.

I still think it is a pity that Gary Cook had to go but he got the balance wrong on how much to be in the public eye. Soriano, who brought plenty of ideas in, is at the other extreme but at last Cook made a commection with the supporters. If it was up to me, I would be tempted to bring Cook back as MD of MCFC and let Soriano be CEO of CFG, which, after all, seems to be his baby. Don't know though whether Cook can ever be rid of his PR curse and he is not a Mancuian or born City fan, which might not be essential but would help.

Changing tack slightly, I've seen a few digs at the ticket office on here but that is nothing new. I regularly used to curse them; especially when you had been queuing from the early hours for tickets to a big away game and they would never open up one little bit early, and were even late on some occasions, despite the hundreds stood freezing outside. On the other hand, on the couple or so occasions that we turned up for a game without our season tickets (it's a long time since we did that but the average is about once every 10 - 15 years), they have been brilliant; don't know if they handle that so well now.
 
I concur with everything he OP said, increasingly the players seem to have developed a fuck the fans attitude, aside from the few notable exceptions we see applauding us every game ...

This is not just a City problem though, fans of most PL clubs experience similar, many of them say as much at the away games...
 
Only a handful of players show any sort of appreciation to the fans Hart, Zaba, Navas, Both Ferns, Clichy, Vinny, Mangala & Nacho.. It has been the case for a long time, even under Mancini we hardly got the players clapping the fans. But notably our star players all tend to head off down the tunnel.

What I love about Klopp, Ranieri, Pochettino and have seen of Pep is that they expect the players to go and show their appreciation to the fans. Maybe some players are just introverted or even ignorant of the importance of this connection. Maybe these managers don't really have any box office players in their ranks who are harder to control and give instructions to.

What slightly bothers me is I don't truly think our wonderful group of players are truly together....We have no leaders who all the group probably look upto. A good leader would be able to influence the group to do whatever that person wants them to do. Hopefully Pep has that and can get a strong bond formed in the dressing room and with the fans.

I have been impressed with the way Spurs, Leicester, West Ham and to an extent Liverpool have collectively gone out and worked for one another and then all appreciated the fans at the end of games.

Pep has shit loads to do when he gets here. First thing is to get all the players on board together and explain the importance of fighting for one another and then to start appreciating the fans, win, lose or draw. At the same time Khaldoon and the Sheikh need to have a rethink about how this club engages with its fan base.

Although I wasn't one of the ones who walked out after the game, I still believe it was a damn good message to give the board.
 
Blue Til Death said:
I concur with everything he OP said, increasingly the players seem to have developed a fuck the fans attitude, aside from the few notable exceptions we see applauding us every game ...

This is not just a City problem though, fans of most PL clubs experience similar, many of them say as much at the away games...
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I've noticed as well that, where i used to think a number of them were applauding the stand, they're actually just waving to their family/mates above us.
 
KippaxCitizen said:
This article is spot on for me (apart from the bit about United players standing with fans at away games because i wouldn't want our players to do that because it is taking even more tickets away from proper fans who have enough taken away by corporates as it is!).
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"Club has lost its heart and soul", "club full of twats", Soriano just stopping off, the club lacks players like Carrick, Jones and Rojo.

While there are good talking points about Pellegrini's leadership it is full of Mogden's little digs at City, he can FRO the rag twat.
 
pavelsrnicek said:
"Club has lost its heart and soul", "club full of twats", Soriano just stopping off, the club lacks players like Carrick, Jones and Rojo.

While there are good talking points about Pellegrini's leadership it is full of Mogden's little digs at City, he can FRO the rag twat.
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Read through this thread. We think the club is losing it's heart and soul. Also read through this thread. The "blazers" who tell you to move out of the way as there are players coming through or tell you when you can speak to a player or even that you cannot speak to a player as if they're some sort of royalty or the people in place at the club who know nothing about the fans or football culture and are just here to rip us off - they're the twats (and the writer said it was a long serving employee of the club that said that). and as i said i don't want players standing with us in away ends (read the bit in the brackets that you quoted).
 
Agree with pretty much most on this thread .... I set my personal bar at £700 for my season ticket. It hit that last season, and I opted out of all cup games to keep it as low as possible. (And as I hadn't been to any of the early rounds, I stayed away from the QF even)

It's stayed the same price this season, so renewing, but mainly to see what Pep can do for us on his arrival, after that I expect to step down too, for many of the reasons posted here, besides cost .... I certainly do see us already on the plastic path, and feel it's irreversible at this point.
 
pubs and clubs are already filled with manc blues who used to be match going fans and City are on a path that sadly will only see those numbers grow

Money and people within the club who have little or no connection with our grass root fans, it all started to go tits up when the club started using phraseology like "match day experience"
 
The plastic path is certainly what the owners want though right? I know it sucks for old school fans, but revenue is what the end game is surely?
 
I find all this talk of the club taking the fans for granted a little funny. Sometimes I think it's the fans that take city for granted.
 
City ARE the fans, not the players, or any other person only involved as an employee.

shit, i may just have bitten there.
 
I have 5 tickets for me and the family but we've stopped going to cup and euro matches because of the cost.

I resent being robbed for the price of food/drinks and sweets so we now pop into tesco amd bring our own.

I used to regularly buy at least 5 shirts a season but stopped a couple of seasons not just on price, which is expensive, but primarily because the quality of the Nike kids shirts in particular is bloody awful.

I used to pay for a car park ticket but the organisation of exiting was so shit it's quicker to park a way away.

I recon what they've gained in putting up my season ticket prices they've lost at least the same on the other rip off stuff I now don't buy.
 
I think it's more a misjudgement of mood that has been brewing over the course of the last couple of years by the board rather than them consciously doing something. Sunday would have been a real wake up call for them.
 
Stevieatlasblue said:
I don't know how any one can afford to go to football now..I'm a working class man and I can't afford it anymore..oh for the good old days when i used to pay on the gate on the kippax with my mates..and stand where we wanted to..all for about 10 pounds..with an electric atmosphere..
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You can get a season ticket at the Ethihad for £299, which works out at £15 a game. with inflation this is more or less exactly how much you used to pay to get into the Kippax. You can hardly say you've been priced out .
 
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