When we were playing the most boring football we’d played under Pep, some of the most boring since the takeover, barely scoring (more than ¼ of all our goals up to as recently as Christmas were scored in one game against Burnley), -1 goal difference, and had only won 40% of our games... you could see it on Pep’s face and hear it in Pep’s voice that he was feeling exactly the same as the fans. There’s no shame in that. Recently he’s looked like he’s been plugged in, he sounds excited; just like the fans.
Add to this, fans have been detached from supporting this team because we’ve not been able to go to the stadium for a long time. Fans have had little chance to bond with players who signed last season and not bonded at all with any who signed this season, because we haven’t been to see them, they haven’t run to celebrate in front of us, they haven’t given us the thumbs up when we chant their name, they’ve not come over and applauded us at the final whistle.
For matchgoing fans, the past year has been like being in a long distance relationship when it comes to City.
Importantly as well, City don’t do this bonding with the fans very well off the pitch (they actually do jack shit) through their social media. I’ve noticed that other clubs and clubs in other sports have posted online about missing their fans and they can’t wait for them to go back. I’ve seen fuck all of this from City.
They also don’t show us much about the players and their personalities, all of their social media output is sanitised and boring (and the City Instagram account is a fucking embarrassing disgrace with some of their output!). We don’t get to know anything about any of the players. City used to do this really well a few years back with the likes of Micah and Joleon, Chappie, de Jong, Hart... now I feel like I know more about that ginger Brendon kid more than I do the players!
Add to that the disappointment of the Arsenal FA Cup semi and Lyon CL quarter results and performances, Liverpool winning the league, no off season to forget about those things, and no pre-season to start to build our excitement for the new season.
You can see why fans weren’t feeling great towards the team. Our performances against Arsenal and Lyon were a fucking disgrace and a lot of people have only really started getting excited for games again since in this recent run of games where we’ve been good, because they weren't over the disappointment of those results.
And yet still we can’t bond with the players over the quality of this run. As good as Ruben Dias has seemed on Tele, we’ve not been able to come up with a new chant and get that chant going at games. What we would have thought about him had we been in the stadium would have been ten times what we feel about him now because that bond in the stadium makes you feel differently about the players and the team. Plus the rise of Gundogan (for me, the best player in the league this season) and John Stones as well as Phil Foden.
I don’t blame anyone for feeling a bit distant and disappointed with the performances, it shows they’re bothered about it.
I also don’t blame anyone for feeling like they lack a connection with this team, because we’ve not been there.
Basically, for all that shite I’ve posted above, I’ll never know why people bring threads like this back up and say things like “haha, you weren’t half taking shit then” because at that very time the things said may well have been true and that’s exactly how they felt at that time.
