Atmosphere tonight

[wythenshaweblue£££]

people are over looking the fact that we/city are crap in europe and thats the real problem,not so much the atmosphere but the preformances,i think a lot of people know this and think why should i go when we dont play well,bit of a catch 22

that doesn't make any sense, why do anyone go when we were really crap then. Its the price thats stopping people from going. btw we outnumbered the roma fans and had a singing section the same size as theres, but we didn't make a noise. The south stand have stopped singing and just stand there with arms folded. Only the corner sings now.

Spot on this south stand was quiet last night

 

[the originalkippaxman]

City offer the best value for money in ticket prices for league and all cup games in the Premier League. Extremely harsh that fans are saying that the Club is pricing us out you all should be ashamed to even think that. I understand it is difficult for a lot of people to afford the games but stop blaming the club.

What is pricing us out is our own Success

We are not used to having to fork out hand over fist for games as we have never been in most of these competitions for a long time. My season ticket costs £675 and I pay that on a direct debit basis. Fairly certain that City is the only club that offers this to the fans so they can spread the cost over the season.

What might help the fans is if City add the cost of the group games to the season ticket. So for example mine would have been £775. Meaning a payment of £193,75 every couple of months or open a separate savings account and put £64.58 a month away.

As I said early not as easy for everybody that has children and other commitments but don't start blaming the club that subsides nearly everything that we get.

 

[Why Always Ste]

The powers that be are pricing games on the basis that we have the same fan base as United/Liverpool etc, we don't

I agree with that bit emphatically. City are playing the game where they are pretending that we have the drawing power of a team that has been successful for 30 years and it is starting to blow up in their faces. It is a total misunderstanding of who City are as a fanbase and how we should be prioritising different income streams.

We are a working class club from the backarse of Manchester and in terms of matchgoing fans, we skew older than most due to the success of United over the past 20 years and the constant promotion of them through SkyTV. Because we skew older our matchgoing fans can generally stretch their expenses further but it also means that we don't have the next generation of rapid teenagers coming through to bring that enthusiasm because they can't get a ticket. They are either swamped out by a bunch of 50 year olds with 7000000 loyalty points or they cannot afford to pay half their wage for one ticket.

This isn't a problem of City, it's a problem that affects the whole of English football at the top level. It's amazing to me that we see fans singing at Palace and Stoke now and we remark how weird it is where every ground in the country was like that 20 years ago.

The biggest clubs in Germany have shown the way forward and City had the chance to be the first English club to really have a go at this model. They had the club to do it, the commercial revenue streams to do it and the fanbase to do it. Yet they are pretending that they're Arsenal or United instead of just trying to be City. We are not them and no matter how many bullshit bands they put on in City Square or how many bullshit "fun competitions" they do at half time, we don't want to be them and the atmosphere and interest will continue to wane as City continue not to listen to their fans and try to be Manchester United lite instead of Manchester City proper.

Well said Damo... spot on.

This needs sending to the top people at City (probably in Spanish/arabic)

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Whilst you have the away fans located directly behind the goal of the south stand of the stadium it will never have an 'atmosphere'. Particularly when at the opposite end of the ground is the Family stand. This allows the away fans to be heard in a big way and hence dominate the mood of the crowd.
I think we stuck the Dortmund away fans up in the 3rd tier at a game not so long ago and we should do this with all away fans.
To allocate away fans such a prime piece of terrace territory is madness on all fronts (view of the game, singing, stewarding etc) and does the home
fans no favours at all. The south stand should be 100% City fans and effectively be made the 'singing stand'. If that part of the stadium was packed full of Blues the singing and the atmosphere would improve dramatically.
It 'ain't rocket science. The away fans are given the prime location at our home games.
Absolute stupidity.

Totally agree and was talking about this last night. The reason given by Peter Fletcher for putting them where they are is safety and security so they can exit the stands into a "sterile" environment to get straight onto their coaches. But do they do this at any other PL ground? No they do not. Hull on Saturday, we walked out and mingled with the home fans. Villa will be the same. There's only Stoke I can think of where you go out into that sealed off area where the coaches are but no one stops you walking out of there if you want to. The away fans should be stuck up in the third tier and we should have the 109/110 corner & South Stand as our singing section.

 

[Neville Kneville]

Damocles pretty close to exactly how I would describe the situation.

We need to encourage younger City fans & less well off City fans to go to City games first & foremost & turn this stadium into Maine Road. Then fill the remaining bits with the tourists, not try to fill the ground by appealing mainly to tourists because they have extra money to spend & will buy more crap.

 

[Alex B]

Fucking embarrassment last night.

This 'fan experience' the club seems to pride itself on now is shit for me, doesn't appeal in the slightest, the cringey videos the bands in city square, the half time cringefest games. Nah your alright.

And before anyone asks I go every game home and away and have done too long. Im actually considering not renewing next season which I never thought I would. Not that the club will be arsed and I fully expect some prick new fan to come along with a smarmy comment.

I know full well im not the only one either, the lads I go with and those ST holders who have been for years sat around me feel the same.

I saw 6 different people walking round with cameras on the end of a stick filming it all and then Roma fans in our end, I mean can you imagine that even as short as 5 years ago?!

Some good points about the club going in the wrong direction and trying to be a Scum lite so to speak. Its all well and good us all having a moan here but there must be someone or something that can be done because it needs looking at now?!?!

 

[TonyBookEnd]

This is my take on the situation;

The away fans must be moved. Preferably away into the 3rd tier.

I don't know how feasible this is and the legal implications.
But allocate some of the current away fans blocks in the South Stand to the 1894 group. Allow the 1894 group to manage those blocks (i.e only 1894 members allowed). This should concentrate the number of singers and eliminate the dilution of the singers by day trippers. These members of the 1894 group should not have designated seats and this should allow family / friends to stand together thus encouraging them to sing (if not start a chant at least join in).

Fans should be encouraged to gather in the concourse earlier. Similar to away games. This will hopefully generate atmosphere before kick off. Maybe have a 'happy hour' before the game to encourage people to get to the ground early instead of trying to get in 5mins before ko.

Obviously ticket pricing is an issue and the demographic of supports is changing but the expansion is a perfect opportunity to sort these issues out.

 

[M18CTID]

The powers that be are pricing games on the basis that we have the same fan base as United/Liverpool etc, we don't

I agree with that bit emphatically. City are playing the game where they are pretending that we have the drawing power of a team that has been successful for 30 years and it is starting to blow up in their faces. It is a total misunderstanding of who City are as a fanbase and how we should be prioritising different income streams.

We are a working class club from the backarse of Manchester and in terms of matchgoing fans, we skew older than most due to the success of United over the past 20 years and the constant promotion of them through SkyTV. Because we skew older our matchgoing fans can generally stretch their expenses further but it also means that we don't have the next generation of rapid teenagers coming through to bring that enthusiasm because they can't get a ticket. They are either swamped out by a bunch of 50 year olds with 7000000 loyalty points or they cannot afford to pay half their wage for one ticket.

This isn't a problem of City, it's a problem that affects the whole of English football at the top level. It's amazing to me that we see fans singing at Palace and Stoke now and we remark how weird it is where every ground in the country was like that 20 years ago.

The biggest clubs in Germany have shown the way forward and City had the chance to be the first English club to really have a go at this model. They had the club to do it, the commercial revenue streams to do it and the fanbase to do it. Yet they are pretending that they're Arsenal or United instead of just trying to be City. We are not them and no matter how many bullshit bands they put on in City Square or how many bullshit "fun competitions" they do at half time, we don't want to be them and the atmosphere and interest will continue to wane as City continue not to listen to their fans and try to be Manchester United lite instead of Manchester City proper.

That's a really good post. Spot on!

It's an excellent post in the main but I don't think the City Square stuff is relevant to the argument. I don't visit City Square often but it's hugely popular across all ages of our support - a fair number of old school fans drink there and in any case would we sooner pay City for our pre-match beers or the United-supporting owner of Mary D's? Regardless, the point I'm making is that we can still have City Square working in tandem with the German ticket-pricing model that Damocles suggests (in any case, many of the German clubs have their own version of City Square) and everyone would be happy with that.

 

[Lavinda Past]

Absolutely spot on, it is staggering that people at the Etihad cannot see this.

They're too busy thinking up exciting new games for Hugh Ferris to showcase at half-time.

We'll be rattling around in a 60,000 seat stadium in a couple of years if they don't drop the prices significantly. I can see thousands of free tickets being given out to schools (or CB3 being closed off) for most games to avoid embarassment on TV.

Has that 'super fan' co-opted onto the club's books not come up with any ideas to benefit proper supporters, or is he too busy meeting and greeting half and half scarf tourists?

 

[GaudinoMotors]

I agree with that bit emphatically. City are playing the game where they are pretending that we have the drawing power of a team that has been successful for 30 years and it is starting to blow up in their faces. It is a total misunderstanding of who City are as a fanbase and how we should be prioritising different income streams.

We are a working class club from the backarse of Manchester and in terms of matchgoing fans, we skew older than most due to the success of United over the past 20 years and the constant promotion of them through SkyTV. Because we skew older our matchgoing fans can generally stretch their expenses further but it also means that we don't have the next generation of rapid teenagers coming through to bring that enthusiasm because they can't get a ticket. They are either swamped out by a bunch of 50 year olds with 7000000 loyalty points or they cannot afford to pay half their wage for one ticket.

This isn't a problem of City, it's a problem that affects the whole of English football at the top level. It's amazing to me that we see fans singing at Palace and Stoke now and we remark how weird it is where every ground in the country was like that 20 years ago.

The biggest clubs in Germany have shown the way forward and City had the chance to be the first English club to really have a go at this model. They had the club to do it, the commercial revenue streams to do it and the fanbase to do it. Yet they are pretending that they're Arsenal or United instead of just trying to be City. We are not them and no matter how many bullshit bands they put on in City Square or how many bullshit "fun competitions" they do at half time, we don't want to be them and the atmosphere and interest will continue to wane as City continue not to listen to their fans and try to be Manchester United lite instead of Manchester City proper.

That's a really good post. Spot on!

It's an excellent post in the main but I don't think the City Square stuff is relevant to the argument. I don't visit City Square often but it's hugely popular across all ages of our support - a fair number of old school fans drink there and in any case would we sooner pay City for our pre-match beers or the United-supporting owner of Mary D's? Regardless, the point I'm making is that we can still have City Square working in tandem with the German ticket-pricing model that Damocles suggests (in any case, many of the German clubs have their own version of City Square) and everyone would be happy with that.

Some absolutely nail on the head posts recently on here. Agree with you about City Square - a decent effort and enjoyable to spend a few minutes in before kick off. I like the irreverence and incorrectness of Mike McClean - the Club should let him do more - but probably doesn't fit the blazer and tie experience.