Crowd v Plzen

[gordondaviesmoustache]

So what was the crowd then?

12000 Season Ticket holders, 4000 blue members, 8000 policemen, 8000 students, 4000 schoolkids, a handful of tramps, 600 Czechs and 14 people who won a penalty competition against moonbeam.

Careful making light of this subject. Some people seem to be a bit touchy about it.

 

[EalingBlue2]

Some of those tourists could have followed city a very long time and spent a great deal of money to get there

 

[moomba]

You should have got a padded seat on level 2 then. I didn't see anyone who wasn't a tourist.

Were they wearing "I am a tourist" t-shirts?

No but they were wearing half/half scarves and taking photo after photo.....a t shirt would have been preferable

Fair enough. I was in the padded seats and didnt see one half and half scarf or any more photo's than usual.

You might find that some season ticket holders buy half and half scarves for European games as a momento as well. See them every week goong back to Lokeren when they first appeared on the scene.

 

[Millwallawayveteran1988]

Were they wearing "I am a tourist" t-shirts?

No but they were wearing half/half scarves and taking photo after photo.....a t shirt would have been preferable

Fair enough. I was in the padded seats and didnt see one half and half scarf or any more photo's than usual.

You might find that some season ticket holders buy half and half scarves for European games as a momento as well. See them every week goong back to Lokeren when they first appeared on the scene.

I think it's more that where I sit is a corporate overflow area and different faces every week. We had at least 15 or so plzen fans near us too so must be corporate as not sure how they would have got tickets in that area. They were having a good time anyway!

 

[johnbmcr]

So what was the crowd then?

12000 Season Ticket holders, 4000 blue members, 8000 policemen, 8000 students, 4000 schoolkids, a handful of tramps, 600 Czechs and 14 people who won a penalty competition against moonbeam.

Careful making light of this subject. Some people seem to be a bit touchy about it.

you must have 6 fingers then saw at least 6 tramps

 

[East Level 2]

Thought it was a decent crowd tbh. Specially as we had already qualified , close (ish) to Christmas, lots of fixtures....

Same here, all things considered it was a good crowd. I didn't see any "tourists" either. Having said that I much prefer tourists to empty seats.

You should have got a padded seat on level 2 then. I didn't see anyone who wasn't a tourist.

I was moved from my padded S/T seat to another padded seat so therefore not a tourist. I had a quick look round my usual block at half-time and didn't recognise anybody.

 

[mcfc01]

I moved from my regular seat in 118 to the padded seats in 207 (very nice they were too) so im certainly not a tourist!

 

[Dave Ewing's Back 'eader]

Same here, all things considered it was a good crowd. I didn't see any "tourists" either. Having said that I much prefer tourists to empty seats.

You should have got a padded seat on level 2 then. I didn't see anyone who wasn't a tourist.

I was moved from my padded S/T seat to another padded seat so therefore not a tourist. I had a quick look round my usual block at half-time and didn't recognise anybody.

Uefa apparatchiks who travel the continent getting free and unfettered hospitality, and getting to see free footy matches, under the guise of checking up on whether Uefa fair play apparatus is screwing MCFC to the floor!

 

[r.soleofsalford]

12000 Season Ticket holders, 4000 blue members, 8000 policemen, 8000 students, 4000 schoolkids, a handful of tramps, 600 Czechs and 14 people who won a penalty competition against moonbeam.

Careful making light of this subject. Some people seem to be a bit touchy about it.

you must have 6 fingers then saw at least 6 tramps

only on each foot

 

[East Level 2]

You should have got a padded seat on level 2 then. I didn't see anyone who wasn't a tourist.

I was moved from my padded S/T seat to another padded seat so therefore not a tourist. I had a quick look round my usual block at half-time and didn't recognise anybody.

Uefa apparatchiks who travel the continent getting free and unfettered hospitality, and getting to see free footy matches, under the guise of checking up on whether Uefa fair play apparatus is screwing MCFC to the floor!

That was my theory when we were moved for the first time a couple of seasons ago. However these are just a bunch of seats given to UEFA and they can go to any UEFA affiliated organisation and be distributed at will. For example if Ford sponsors the CL tickets can go to Ford and while they might give them to senior people at the company or to dealership management they could also end up in a raffle being won by anyone who works for them.
The main gripe is that a huge proportion of these tickets aren't used by UEFA and are returned to City who put them on open sale. City say they can't hand them back to the displaced S/T holders as many sit in groups and the tickets are returned by UEFA as individual items. The club also think it would be a ballache to move people and then move them back - this might sound a bit dodgy but UEFA can return the tickets up to a few days before the game.
I believe the UEFA requirements are as follows:
The visiting team can request up to 5% of the capacity. So in our case that's 2,400 which isn't far from the standard away allocation so it makes sense to stick to our usual segregation system.
The visiting team also gets 250 (I think) "premium seats" - these have to be along the side and between the two penalty areas. - I've heard that our premium seats at some away games haven't fully met this criteria. We give them a block in CB2.
UEFA get around 500 "premium seats" - these are the one's we give close to the corporate area on EL2.
There's also something about greater press access which is why the front dozen or so rows of the centre block of CB3 often has press desks installed and the locals are evicted.