Fucking hell the turnaround here is mad.
I was there today and most of us discussing this on here last week were considering never watching City live again knowing the board had completely sold us out, as it looked like football as we knew it was getting flushed down the toilet. I was split between going and protesting or returning my ticket around this time last week. I wasn't going to renew my season ticket. I likely would've taken a banner today had the whole thing not collapsed. As it happened I just went and enjoyed the day gagging for some live football again.
But let's get it right, it only collapsed because the club bottled it and was surprised by the backlash. The board decided to join it. If we'd all laid back and just expressed begrudging disappointment then our club, and all the others, would've been sold down the river with football as we know it altogether.
Don't con yourself that this was a little misstep and it isn't indicative of something very worrying and insidious at the club and in the wider game. This could happen again in future. I personally think Soriano, while doing a lot for the club commercially, has been central in my sense of the club becoming increasingly divorced from its core support. The continual annual season ticket renewal increases and the way the expansion of the corporate spaces and away ticket allocations were handled for example. That disconnect is how things like this happen.
We know how much we owe our current success to the original ADUG takeover and it's literally made our wildest dreams come true, and we're all hugely grateful for that, but let's not pretend that it's success at any cost we want. City getting into bed with the very people who tried to keep us out of their monopoly for years, in the promise of forever being enshrined in it with them in a corporate cesspit of non competition and money making exhibition reach arounds is not something we can just forget about and never speak of again because it collapsed.
It's made us look like absolute fucking morons too for believing we were sticking it to the corrupt establishment in the likes of UEFA, because City have now shown they're motivated by the same morally bankrupt self interest that the clubs who've been trying to derail us for years are. So much so that we forgot about them trying to fuck us for years just to get into bed with them when we thought it would benefit us?
That's absolutely fucking sickening and we all know it. That's how we felt last week, and I personally, haven't forgotten. And I won't.
So yeah, while some of these banners are dimwitted and a bit crayons at dawn, it's important we don't think that we shouldn't run a critical eye over the decision makers in our boardroom and their goals because we have it better than a lot of the other clubs. It's important that the board's goals are in line with the core support's, to a reasonable degree at the bare minimum. Which doesn't mean selling out the whole football pyramid and our club's history and future, and believing that sending an "oops, sorry!" email to us all is enough to smooth it over.
Football's delicately balanced at the moment and we'd do well to remember that sometimes. It doesn't mean going back the the good/bad old days (depending on your inclination), but it doesn't mean being hapless nodding dogs either. We have to be clear that there are red lines and be vocal about them when we need to.
