On the above two posts^ I unfortunately do feel somewhat of a disconnect with the club, myself.
Over the years since the takeover, I get the feeling that the board don’t particularly value the core local support of the club all that much.
I feel like the club are more interested in a fanbase outside this city, even outside this country, and corporates, than they are the core local fanbase that have been the mainstay of the club since it was founded. I do feel like they value the football team(s) very highly here in Manchester (obviously a good thing), but just feel like they are more interested in being a global club and a global group of clubs than they are interested in the core support in Manchester.
I don’t think they’d bat an eyelid if every local supporter ditched their season cards if they could replace us with fans from wherever who’d pay more money.
I get the feeling that the board don’t particularly value the ”Manchester” aspect of the club all that much. There was a stretch of time where I felt they valued the Moon aspect of the club than they did the Manchester aspect. There may be seven clubs in Manchester, but we are the only big club in Manchester (the others being FC United, Abbey Hey, Maine Road, West Didsbury & Chorlton, Wythenshawe Town, and Wythenshawe Amateurs). As the club of Manchester, we should promote our Mancunianness much more. We had a Manchester City tradition of wearing the Manchester Coat of Arms for every Cup final we reached from 1926 onwards. It did my head in that we’ve stopped doing this.
We’ve got better at this since Puma came on board with the Madchester kit, the mosaic kit, the Paisley kit, the MOSI facade kit... but is that because of the club or Puma? I hope it is the club and that the trend of more “Manchester” coming from the club is something that is more prominent like it has been with the Puma kits.
Over the years, I get the feeling the board don’t value the history of the club all that much. Just take a look on City+, for example; there’s barely a hint of anything about the club from before 2012. A platform that we could use as a propaganda tool to sell ourselves and dismiss the myth that we have no history, yet we promote ourselves on there like we have no history. If I was running City+ I’d be hammering important aspects of our history on there. And there’s not a great deal other stuff from the club that promotes anything about our history.
I did, however, love seeing the old 1968 players finally getting their winners medals last week. More of that, please. And more coverage of it.
I get the feeling Pep doesn’t understand our history. Recently, he mentioned that he does get the history of this club but only spoke (and only ever has in the past) about it in terms of the fans standing by the club when we were down the divisions. That was only one year out of 127 years of history of this club, it’s only barely worth a mention compared to our other historical achievements and milestones.
During the lockdowns and the period where no fans were allowed in stadiums, I saw over social media posts from other clubs and clubs in other sports where they fairly often said things about how much they were missing the fans. There was absolutely nothing like this coming from City at any point.
I find the club’s reluctance to ever look remotely interested in giving us a proper vocal stand really annoying and something they don’t seem to understand about football culture. Also, the lads in the Singing Section have mentioned before that they’ve tried to put forward the idea of cutting the tannoy five minutes before kick off to get the fans in their seats and try and get some songs going pre-kick off, yet the club weren’t interested at all.
This one doesn’t bother me too much but others do hate it - the silence coming from the club when it comes to the lies and slander written about us in the media, and the shit like Sky/BT always showing/mentioning the price of our squad/bench when they don’t do it for anyone else. The club just seem to sit back and allow it to happen. Of all the shit written and said about us, I think we’ve only ever banned one journo from coming into the Etihad. Some fans feel like the fanbase are just deserted by the club and we have to face the shit on our own.
There are other things as well: matchday ticket prices, prices for juniors, price of food/drink, the slowness of getting fans into the ground at the turnstiles, the total lack of communication from the club to the fans, the lack of communication over the mobile ticketing (Spurs did a video on their website to instruct fans what to do and how it works, for example), the huge difficulty everyone faces when they need to speak to the club (up to 3 hours on hold, cut off when you finally get through, not answering emails), the scruffiness of the surroundings around the Etihad, the transport situation (gridlocked roads, few buses, Metrolink being poor, lack of thought about more options, no communication with fans about it), people waiting three months to be sent items from the online store and in that waiting time having phone calls and emails ignored (yet do you think for one second that someone who fancied getting a seat in the Tunnel Club would be ignored?)…
These are all small and possibly insignificant things to many people. But to others they are important and, when they add up, that’s where the disconnect comes in.
Don’t get me wrong, like you’ve said, the football team is brilliant and I too will stick by City through thick and thin. I also love Guardiola and want him to stay longer than his current contract. I love watching his football and our players. But a football club is more than that, and I don’t think the club/board get the most out of the relationship with us as they should.
