I give up.
When I was a young fella, growing up in Ireland, following City meant tuning into Radio 2 on longwave. I cried when they switched that channel to medium wave. Then my father, God rest him, took a small transistor radio apart (a "pocket radio", remember them?) and showed me that by wrapping one end of a piece of electric flex around the aerial and the other around the water pipes, I could use the whole house as an aerial. Happy days! Well, sort of... I had perfect reception, the day Raddy f**king Antic sent us down.
All those years when I'd have given anything to actually be there. Long drawn out Saturday afternoons, spent huddled in my bedroom, waiting for Jimmy Armfield to shut the f**k up, so Ron Jones could tell us about a goal at Maine Road. And it was hardly ever a City goal.
Then I grew up (relatively speaking). I could afford the odd trip over. Tickets weren't exactly hard to come by, either. Ryanair came along and, for all their faults, they did make it cheaper. Sky came along and, as biased as they are, at least it's not solely about the same five clubs, week in week out, like ITV were. Suddenly, in my adult years, that hissing, crackling soundtrack of my childhood seemed like a lonesome, foggy dream. Satellite TV happened, quite literally whilst nobody was looking. Matches could be bounced into outer space, back down again and beamed live on the telly in my local. The small corner portable telly, mind because the 50" plasma screens were always busy playing you know who. Progress, I tells ya! I'd gone from being huddled, alone, in my bedroom listening to City to huddled with my wife, kids and one or two other like-minded pilgrims watching City, albeit with the sound usually turned down or occasionally drowned out.
Then: the takeover! Suddenly, we were gigging on the main stage. Big time, baby! I could tell the f**kers to stand idle. City were the biggest game and ye can piss off to the corner. Neutrals wanted to watch us. People (supposed football fans!) who had spent decades blithely ignorant of MCFC were suddenly crackling and hissing at Tevez and Balotelli. Oscar Wilde had it right when he bemoaned being talked about. It's a good feeling to piss off the people who once pitied your allegiance. Damn it, life, not to tempt fate, is good, these days. My mortgage will be paid off in the next couple of years. So, when City came a-knocking, asking about whether I'd like to upgrade the Bluecard to a Season card, I said I'd go for it. It'll be a poor enough seat, higher than God's attic and behind the goals but hey, at least there will be goals scored in them goals - and most of them by City, too. And - more importantly - hey, it'll be MY seat. Huddled up against the clouds and the sounds of the crowd drowned out by the scream of a passing 747, probably, but mine just the same.
And all that... years of it... frustration, anger, disappointment and glorious, glorious joy too... all of it so that I can look forward to being squeezed between f**kers watching, on an iPad, a stream of a replay of the moment that they just missed live because they were too busy watching an ad for Sky... Why bother?
I. Give. Up.