Belgian Fans (merged)

[worsleyweb]

It's my single biggest gripe with City at present, and it's something that's causing me quite a bit of disillusionment with the club in all honesty. So yeah, it's probably something you'll have heard me bang on about before.

We all want to see a successful City, but I'm not happy for it to be at any cost.

We're becoming more and more a corporate whore sellout clone of the scum with every passing year, and it knocks me sick.

We're the frogs placed in a pan of cold water, unable to appreciate the slow temperature change as it's placed over the stove and we slowly boil alive.

Things have been getting worse for us as supporters for several years now, lots of incremental steps which make things shitter for us.

And we're blind to it because all we see is that City are now a footballing powerhouse, or we passively accept it as part of the trade off with no desire to kick up a stink and seem ungrateful for our great fortune in having such investment placed into the club.

But when will we sit up and say it's gone too far?

- The Platinum scheme double your loyalty points for £50.

- Cup Scheme membership necessary to ensure a ticket to a relevant cup final, with loyalty points alone no longer enough.

- The removal of the word 'loyal' from 'loyal points', to be renamed 'ticket points'.

- The vast expansion of corporate seating into once ordinary areas of the ground, and those people being guaranteed a ticket for any away game or cup final, exempt from the now renamed 'ticket points' criteria.

- An annual average increase of a circa 10% in season ticket renewal prices every season.

- Among the most expensive individual league tickets in the Premier League. With the derby in a few months being just short of £60 as a basic starting price for an adult, the new corporate lite areas being much more.

- £35 membership necessary to buy individual league or cup tickets unless they reach open sale, and if they do you have to pay a percentage more on the basic price as a non 'Cityzen'.

- Large swathes of away tickets for the biggest games of the season being siphoned off to brand new supporters clubs, and brand new bandwagon City fans here for the glory - ahead of the longstanding core support.

Not to mention the general sense of the club enacting a kind of professional disassociated distance from the core support, a good example would be Points of Blue being binned; once an opportunity for the support to engage directly with club officials and discuss issues pertinent to the support, only to be replaced by limited, and often clearly loaded, online surveys.

Where does it end? Where and when will it stop? When will we say enough?

I'm not saying this club was perfect 10 years ago, but I don't think there's been a period in City's recent history where the core support has mattered less than it does today.

We supported the club when they needed it the most, but we're dispensable now. I truly believe that. City are sufficiently glamorous enough a club to attract the new generation of shallow needy cunts in the UK and abroad who would've jumped on the rag bandwagon had they been born ten years earlier.

Our loyalty counts for nothing. There are plenty of people with money to spend who are now willing to take our place, some are doing so already by virtue of having a larger disposable income than the rest of us.

This is the single greatest issue we face as supporters at present, and we're doing fuck all about it. We're even policing dissent and criticism among our own supporters about it.

I think in years to come we'll look back at this period as a turning point, where we sat in the pot, and boiled to death.

Our match crowd in 10 years will be totally alien to the one we used to recognise as City in 2011.

You need to relax more and go with the flow. I suggest a book the power of now. Don't look back, don't look forward - just enjoy the now.

 

[Alex - City Matters]

For all his faults Gary Cook seemed to value the core support a lot more than the current lot.

 

[rapidCT]

Do they collectively stick a load of scarves in the air and impede your view of the game?

It doesn t really matter, we all stand.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

It doesn t really matter, we all stand.

So were we, and therefore it does.

 

[rapidCT]

So were we, and therefore it does.

Well, there are a few songs that requests scarfs up in The air.. Anyway, we dont have more than 100 foreigners attending( mostly students) so is not a problem for us. We speak to them, write down the songs for them and stuff. All friends.

 

[worsleyweb]

For all his faults Gary Cook seemed to value the core support a lot more than the current lot.

Club felt nicer under him.

 

[Alex - City Matters]

Well, there are a few songs that requests scarfs up in The air.. Anyway, we dont have more than 100 foreigners attending( mostly students) so is not a problem for us. We speak to them, write down the songs for them and stuff. All friends.

I think you're still missing the whole point of this...

 

[PragueBlue]

- The removal of the word 'loyal' from 'loyal points', to be renamed 'ticket points'.

While I agree with some of your post, I think the removal of the word 'loyal' is a good thing. Is somebody less loyal if they don't have the time and/or money to attend away games, buy a platinum season card or join the cup schemes etc? What about a youngster who hasn't been around long enough to have accrued a high number of points? Is he/she somehow less loyal? Ultimately they are ticket points and should be so named.

Perhaps the whole system of ticket allocation (including the points based system) needs a review.

 

[rapidCT]

I think you're still missing the whole point of this...

No... You just think of what would be ideal. Go with your friends to away games, have a nice chat and a nice couple of beers, people that you know for a fact that grew up with City in their hearts.. This is how it used to be. Everything changed now. In Benfica they have more 'socios' than chairs in The stadium. People that pay every year and cannot attend not even1 game and still they have foreign tourits at their games. Would you prefer to watch City in a CL final on tv or attending a League Cup final?

 

[Blue Smarties]

I read it all. Foreign fans can only come when holidays, like now. They can t come in The midle of The week to a League Cup game, like I read here. Every fan who spends at least 1000 euro, to make a dream come true, must be more than Welcome to ANY City game.

Because you're throwing £1,000 at a game you want to be welcome to ANY game? How about life long City fans who throw way more than a £1,000 at the club. You're one off game means they can't get to the away games.