conn having a dig again

[squirtyflower]

No I wasn't. I said he's entitled to his opinion, even though I don't share it. The reply above is an indication that I don't share his opinion.

I have to say I had a great time in 69, 70, 76, 99, 2011 and yesterday
And the last three were great to share with my friends and family

Conn can go and pucker up in the wilds of Yorkshire and keep his outdated views to himself

If someone bought me a Lamberghini I wouldnt enjoy driving it any less because I hadn't paid for it myself.

What's great about all these Wembley trips is that whilst the novelty starts to wear off, and let's be honest, the first successes in anything are the sweetest, you make up for it by learning from your mistakes in the way you structure your day. When I think of those first couple of times, trekking about for miles trying to meet people in some shit ram-packed pub, sitting outdoors with cans, we were clueless. Now we have a top class routine, no faffing about.

We have our immediate pre match and match routine perfect now.
Have got tickets in the same block, even the same row now, for several games

I'm still playing around with the early drinking as I prefer to sit and enjoy my pint and discuss the day ahead than fight with several others at an understaffed over priced bar.
That was sorted on Sunday as we went to Wealdstone FC where we had a good few hours sat drinking and eating.

 

[Didsbury Dave]

I have to say I had a great time in 69, 70, 76, 99, 2011 and yesterday
And the last three were great to share with my friends and family

Conn can go and pucker up in the wilds of Yorkshire and keep his outdated views to himself

If someone bought me a Lamberghini I wouldnt enjoy driving it any less because I hadn't paid for it myself.

What's great about all these Wembley trips is that whilst the novelty starts to wear off, and let's be honest, the first successes in anything are the sweetest, you make up for it by learning from your mistakes in the way you structure your day. When I think of those first couple of times, trekking about for miles trying to meet people in some shit ram-packed pub, sitting outdoors with cans, we were clueless. Now we have a top class routine, no faffing about.

It's not a novelty going to Wembley but there's still a thrill to it that I hope never goes away. On my journey in, i know exactly where I will first see the arch and when I did on Sunday, my growing excitement went up a notch. When Nasri smote the ball into the net I exploded out of my seat with a roar and when Jesus sealed it, I was dancing in aisle (well, I did have an aisle seat). The salary those guys were getting was not something that entered my head.

I almost pity Conn: he seems to be a sad, sorry, little man. It's football, it's a form of entertainment, enjoy it for what it is.

Yeah, the excitement is still there. Might be down a notch if we have Hull in the semi there, though, for obvious reasons.

I feel sorry for Conn too, because he's done his time when we were shit and he's not able to enjoy these halcion days. But that's up to him...he's entitled to feel how he wants. I don't like the vilification of him on here to be honest.

With regards to your last point, and this might sound odd, as we raised the cup my thoughts turned to Conn and this discussion. I actually thought "Does it matter to me that this has all been paid for by a trillionaire?" and then I felt a welling of emotion and thought "No. This is my Manchester City, the one that's been with me since I was a boy. This is City and I'm still delighted".

 

[OB1]

If someone bought me a Lamberghini I wouldnt enjoy driving it any less because I hadn't paid for it myself.

What's great about all these Wembley trips is that whilst the novelty starts to wear off, and let's be honest, the first successes in anything are the sweetest, you make up for it by learning from your mistakes in the way you structure your day. When I think of those first couple of times, trekking about for miles trying to meet people in some shit ram-packed pub, sitting outdoors with cans, we were clueless. Now we have a top class routine, no faffing about.

It's not a novelty going to Wembley but there's still a thrill to it that I hope never goes away. On my journey in, i know exactly where I will first see the arch and when I did on Sunday, my growing excitement went up a notch. When Nasri smote the ball into the net I exploded out of my seat with a roar and when Jesus sealed it, I was dancing in aisle (well, I did have an aisle seat). The salary those guys were getting was not something that entered my head.

I almost pity Conn: he seems to be a sad, sorry, little man. It's football, it's a form of entertainment, enjoy it for what it is.

Yeah, the excitement is still there. Might be down a notch if we have Hull in the semi there, though, for obvious reasons.

I feel sorry for Conn too, because he's done his time when we were shit and he's not able to enjoy these halcion days. But that's up to him...he's entitled to feel how he wants. I don't like the vilification of him on here to be honest.

With regards to your last point, and this might sound odd, as we raised the cup my thoughts turned to Conn and this discussion. I actually thought "Does it matter to me that this has all been paid for by a trillionaire?" and then I felt a welling of emotion and thought "No. This is my Manchester City, the one that's been with me since I was a boy. This is City and I'm still delighted".

I was thinking about the fact that this was for me the first time that I have seen City lift a trophy for the second time in person: I was on the Wembley terraces in 1976. Then my Dad and little brother were in the stands (it is the first game that he can really remember going to). This time, I was side by side with Our Kid and we have waited a long time to watch City lift a major trophy at Wembley together because he couldn't go to the Stoke game due to having to be in the U.S. on a business trip. That was a special moment and this is a special time to be a City supporter; especially when you have been a regular throughout the drought years. I find it fucking incredible that someone who was there in 1976 couldn't enjoy it in 2014.

 

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

Thanks,chaps!!! I'm an old guy myself, and more than a bit of a dinosaur. I don't tweet or twitter or whatever it is so I haven't read David Conn's twitter or tweet... I'm actually overwhelmed by the response to my post and would just like to say that I'm really gratified that it struck a cord with so many fellow blues. I have read David's The Football Business[/u, The Beautiful Game? and, Richer than God as many fellow posters have. I found myself in agreement with many of the things I read in his work. Where I agreed with him most was that no City fan ever accepted this absurd "culture of failure", no City fan ever set City up as the opposite extreme to the other "Manchester" club, no City fan ever got any enjoyment out of being "bleak and blue" of winning only "cups for cock ups". We may have suffered in silence, but we suffered plenty. And we suffered most under true blue, born Manc owners. Where I part company with David is in his more general vision of the past. I remember battles to take over City in the early 60s and then again in the early 70s which saw Peter Swales enter. I cannot believe that David was in his 20s before he realised football clubs could be bought and sold as any "other" business. I cannot believe that he didn't realise that Peter Swales financed the club on debt, just as the clubs of the early 90s and now the Glaziers do. He was right to argue that in the early 90s the "businessmen" who got involved in football were all too often get-rich-quick-merchants who spent everybody else's money, then got out, making a huge personal profit. But, as Petrusha pointed out on Sunday, David over-romanticises the past, not only City's but the game's more generally. David's vision of the Bundesliga is similarly partial and flawed, apparently because the idea of club's owned by the fans and providing cheap seats and standing areas accords with his principles.

And where does Sheikh Mansour fit in to all this? It is inconsistent, to say the very least, to criticise sharks who take fortunes out of the game and then criticise the Sheikh for putting £1.5 billion in! It is strange to take no account of the changes in football between the mid-70s and the arrival of the Sheikh - the development of sponsorship, "football related" sources of income, the burgeoning revenue from TV for those who were successful and, especially and above all, the champions league. By the time the Sheikh arrived City were in the same division as United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and several others but, in reality, nowhere near being in the same league! A billion was the cost to get into this league and the Sheikh was ready to pay his (and our!) dues! The smart jibe is that is that he's a "sugar daddy" and that this "kind of thing" has no place in the"people's game". At the end of his first season in control he reduced ticket prices. Is that disgraceful? He's forked out to buy us players of breathtaking quality. Is it only United who have the right to watch top players in Manchester? He's paying up to make the ground bigger. Is it ignoble to allow more Mancs to feel the joy of watching live football without paying anything like the fans of that wonderfully traditional club from north London have to pay? And he's changing for the infinitely better the landscape of east Manchester. He may not be replacing the factories that used to thrive there, David, but these were never as rosy as they became in your partial vision of Manchester's past. And it certainly wasn't the Sheikh who ruined them.

So come on, David, the Sheikh is a shining light that has illuminated, is illuminating and will illuminate football, the PL and Manchester. Wembley on Sunday was a superb scene awash with sky blue and red and white. The passion of the fans was just as great as in 1976, the intensity of the players was at least as great, the whole country enjoyed the game and the spectacle (well, apart from one specific area!) and for City there's real hope that there'll be more wonderful finals, more cups and more than a few PL titles. And more than that they will be achieved by "effort, determination and youth policy." When City won the PL in 2012 you wondered what moral this sent to the "young boys" watching, "reach for the stars, work hard, keep going to the very end - and get a sheikh to put in £1bn." At the end of this season the new training complex opens, and, believe me, it really will hammer home the need to reach for the stars, to work hard and to keep going to the end. But, very silently, it will bear witness to the fact that, the way football has been hijacked over the last 50 years, you'll only get that chance if you have an owner who puts in £1bn instead of bleeding it out.

 

[The Flash]

Thanks,chaps!!! I'm an old guy myself, and more than a bit of a dinosaur. I don't tweet or twitter or whatever it is so I haven't read David Conn's twitter or tweet... I'm actually overwhelmed by the response to my post and would just like to say that I'm really gratified that it struck a cord with so many fellow blues. I have read David's The Football Business[/u, The Beautiful Game? and, Richer than God as many fellow posters have. I found myself in agreement with many of the things I read in his work. Where I agreed with him most was that no City fan ever accepted this absurd "culture of failure", no City fan ever set City up as the opposite extreme to the other "Manchester" club, no City fan ever got any enjoyment out of being "bleak and blue" of winning only "cups for cock ups". We may have suffered in silence, but we suffered plenty. And we suffered most under true blue, born Manc owners. Where I part company with David is in his more general vision of the past. I remember battles to take over City in the early 60s and then again in the early 70s which saw Peter Swales enter. I cannot believe that David was in his 20s before he realised football clubs could be bought and sold as any "other" business. I cannot believe that he didn't realise that Peter Swales financed the club on debt, just as the clubs of the early 90s and now the Glaziers do. He was right to argue that in the early 90s the "businessmen" who got involved in football were all too often get-rich-quick-merchants who spent everybody else's money, then got out, making a huge personal profit. But, as Petrusha pointed out on Sunday, David over-romanticises the past, not only City's but the game's more generally. David's vision of the Bundesliga is similarly partial and flawed, apparently because the idea of club's owned by the fans and providing cheap seats and standing areas accords with his principles.

And where does Sheikh Mansour fit in to all this? It is inconsistent, to say the very least, to criticise sharks who take fortunes out of the game and then criticise the Sheikh for putting £1.5 billion in! It is strange to take no account of the changes in football between the mid-70s and the arrival of the Sheikh - the development of sponsorship, "football related" sources of income, the burgeoning revenue from TV for those who were successful and, especially and above all, the champions league. By the time the Sheikh arrived City were in the same division as United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and several others but, in reality, nowhere near being in the same league! A billion was the cost to get into this league and the Sheikh was ready to pay his (and our!) dues! The smart jibe is that is that he's a "sugar daddy" and that this "kind of thing" has no place in the"people's game". At the end of his first season in control he reduced ticket prices. Is that disgraceful? He's forked out to buy us players of breathtaking quality. Is it only United who have the right to watch top players in Manchester? He's paying up to make the ground bigger. Is it ignoble to allow more Mancs to feel the joy of watching live football without paying anything like the fans of that wonderfully traditional club from north London have to pay? And he's changing for the infinitely better the landscape of east Manchester. He may not be replacing the factories that used to thrive there, David, but these were never as rosy as they became in your partial vision of Manchester's past. And it certainly wasn't the Sheikh who ruined them.

So come on, David, the Sheikh is a shining light that has illuminated, is illuminating and will illuminate football, the PL and Manchester. Wembley on Sunday was a superb scene awash with sky blue and red and white. The passion of the fans was just as great as in 1976, the intensity of the players was at least as great, the whole country enjoyed the game and the spectacle (well, apart from one specific area!) and for City there's real hope that there'll be more wonderful finals, more cups and more than a few PL titles. And more than that they will be achieved by "effort, determination and youth policy." When City won the PL in 2012 you wondered what moral this sent to the "young boys" watching, "reach for the stars, work hard, keep going to the very end - and get a sheikh to put in £1bn." At the end of this season the new training complex opens, and, believe me, it really will hammer home the need to reach for the stars, to work hard and to keep going to the end. But, very silently, it will bear witness to the fact that, the way football has been hijacked over the last 50 years, you'll only get that chance if you have an owner who puts in £1bn instead of bleeding it out.

Suck on that, Mr Conn.

 

[paulchapo]

My biggest beef with Conn is this.He has a platform writing for a national newspaper where he could right all the myths and lies written about our owner and his investment.He could write about the joy it has given to thousands of long suffering City fans,many raised on a diet of failure and watching utterly crap players in a blue shirt,lots of them stealing a living from our club by masquerading as footballers or by their lack of effort and affinity to our club.

Instead he has chosen to take all the negative aspects that are trotted out by so many green eyed journalists and other fans and by doing so he is given their views some creedance,almost justifying them.

Yesterday i stood in an almost empty Wembley as people made their way out,the game finishing in normal time meaning i had the luxury not to have to rush.I stood and reflected on the game,zipping my coat up against the now bitterly cold late afternoon chill and wind.I re-lived my feelings as our goals hit the back of the net,my utter joy and sense of relief and pride that this team and magnificent players had had some reward for some of the unbelievable football they have produced this season.Whatever happens now they won't remain potless for all their efforts.

I was here in 1976 when we last won the league cup and it was like coming full circle.As i looked up at the grey Wembley sky i remembered my two best mates now dead, who had stood with me game after game watching failure after failure and i had to swallow a lump and wipe my eye once or twice...well it was starting to rain now!

I hope there is an afterlife and that they watched it all from somewhere up above,taking the mickey out of that sad now older bugger stood alone wiping away a tear of nostalgia down there.

So Mr Conn can pontificate all he likes,i couldn't care less.The investment in our club has given me and countless thousands of Blues some of the best days of our lives,days we never,ever thought we would see again.For the youngsters it has given them hope for the future too and as Malcome Allison once famously said,''They can go to school now with that big blue scarf wrapped tightly around their neck and wear it with pride!''.......And that Mr Conn is what it is all about.

 

[The Flash]

My biggest beef with Conn is this.He has a platform writing for a national newspaper where he could right all the myths and lies written about our owner and his investment.He could write about the joy it has given to thousands of long suffering City fans,many raised on a diet of failure and watching utterly crap players in a blue shirt,lots of them stealing a living from our club by masquerading as footballers or by their lack of effort and affinity to our club.

Instead he has chosen to take all the negative aspects that are trotted out by so many green eyed journalists and other fans and by doing so he is given their views some creedance,almost justifying them.

Yesterday i stood in an almost empty Wembley as people made their way out,the game finishing in normal time meaning i had the luxury not to have to rush.I stood and reflected on the game,zipping my coat up against the now bitterly cold late afternoon chill and wind.I re-lived my feelings as our goals hit the back of the net,my utter joy and sense of relief and pride that this team and magnificent players had had some reward for some of the unbelievable football they have produced this season.Whatever happens now they won't remain potless for all their efforts.

I was here in 1976 when we last won the league cup and it was like coming full circle.As i looked up at the grey Wembley sky i remembered my two best mates now dead, who had stood with me game after game watching failure after failure and i had to swallow a lump and wipe my eye once or twice...well it was starting to rain now!

I hope there is an afterlife and that they watched it all from somewhere up above,taking the mickey out of that sad now older bugger stood alone wiping away a tear of nostalgia down there.

So Mr Conn can pontificate all he likes,i couldn't care less.The investment in our club has given me and countless thousands of Blues some of the best days of our lives,days we never,ever thought we would see again.For the youngsters it has given them hope for the future too and as Malcome Allison once famously said,''They can go to school now with that big blue scarf wrapped tightly around their neck and wear it with pride!''.......And that Mr Conn is what it is all about.

You can suck on that as well, David.

 

[r.soleofsalford]

I have to say I had a great time in 69, 70, 76, 99, 2011 and yesterday
And the last three were great to share with my friends and family

Conn can go and pucker up in the wilds of Yorkshire and keep his outdated views to himself

If someone bought me a Lamberghini I wouldnt enjoy driving it any less because I hadn't paid for it myself.

What's great about all these Wembley trips is that whilst the novelty starts to wear off, and let's be honest, the first successes in anything are the sweetest, you make up for it by learning from your mistakes in the way you structure your day. When I think of those first couple of times, trekking about for miles trying to meet people in some shit ram-packed pub, sitting outdoors with cans, we were clueless. Now we have a top class routine, no faffing about.

We have our immediate pre match and match routine perfect now.
Have got tickets in the same block, even the same row now, for several games

I'm still playing around with the early drinking as I prefer to sit and enjoy my pint and discuss the day ahead than fight with several others at an understaffed over priced bar.
That was sorted on Sunday as we went to Wealdstone FC where we had a good few hours sat drinking and eating.

We go to the Fox and Goose in Ealing before and after the game. i walked to the bar to order my first pint of the day, Bill the barman said "is it the usual r.sole".

Some times you want to go where everone knows your name.

 

[Mad Eyed Screamer]

If someone bought me a Lamberghini I wouldnt enjoy driving it any less because I hadn't paid for it myself.

What's great about all these Wembley trips is that whilst the novelty starts to wear off, and let's be honest, the first successes in anything are the sweetest, you make up for it by learning from your mistakes in the way you structure your day. When I think of those first couple of times, trekking about for miles trying to meet people in some shit ram-packed pub, sitting outdoors with cans, we were clueless. Now we have a top class routine, no faffing about.

We have our immediate pre match and match routine perfect now.
Have got tickets in the same block, even the same row now, for several games

I'm still playing around with the early drinking as I prefer to sit and enjoy my pint and discuss the day ahead than fight with several others at an understaffed over priced bar.
That was sorted on Sunday as we went to Wealdstone FC where we had a good few hours sat drinking and eating.

We go to the Fox and Goose in Ealing before and after the game. i walked to the bar to order my first pint of the day, Bill the barman said "is it the usual r.sole".

Some times you want to go where everone knows your name.

Cheers ;)

 

[Didsbury Dave]

I have to say I had a great time in 69, 70, 76, 99, 2011 and yesterday
And the last three were great to share with my friends and family

Conn can go and pucker up in the wilds of Yorkshire and keep his outdated views to himself

If someone bought me a Lamberghini I wouldnt enjoy driving it any less because I hadn't paid for it myself.

What's great about all these Wembley trips is that whilst the novelty starts to wear off, and let's be honest, the first successes in anything are the sweetest, you make up for it by learning from your mistakes in the way you structure your day. When I think of those first couple of times, trekking about for miles trying to meet people in some shit ram-packed pub, sitting outdoors with cans, we were clueless. Now we have a top class routine, no faffing about.

We have our immediate pre match and match routine perfect now.
Have got tickets in the same block, even the same row now, for several games

I'm still playing around with the early drinking as I prefer to sit and enjoy my pint and discuss the day ahead than fight with several others at an understaffed over priced bar.
That was sorted on Sunday as we went to Wealdstone FC where we had a good few hours sat drinking and eating.

Haha. We tried to get into an already-full Green Man twice in 2011. Ended up trekking about, sitting outside around that roundabout, drinking cans. Then we actually got in this mythical Green Man for the Chelsea semifinal and it was absolutely shit so we left after a pint. After all those games we had brilliant celebratory pissups after the game in JJ Moons. So for the Wigan final we arranged to meet up beforehand in JJ Moons, only to find it got ram-jam packed and you had to queue for 20 minutes for a pint.

So we've come to a similar conclusion that the pre-match drinking should be away from the crowded local pubs, but the post match celebrations are better in the pubs as the crowds have thinned out. It also helps that when you go to Wembley all the time you aren't worried that you are missing out on anything.

We've drunk a few times in the Hilton bar now and that's brilliant pre-match.