I've said it before, and people just seem to totally disregard out of hand my opinon.
The problem is NOT the position of the away fans, it is the design of the stadium.
Question: No one can deny that in the latter days of Maine Road the North Stand was the heart of the noise at the games...... where were the away fans at Maine Road???
Unless you are blind or retarded the answer will be "The North Stand".
With this in mind, you have to ask why there was an atmosphere there and not here? The "Kippax" is still the other side of the away fans, just like at MR.
The problem is the fact that the whole stand is split by making it two tiers. The whole first tier stands up and sings for large portions of the game, and as is my understanding, this is not the case on the second tier. I know a lot of people in that second tier who sit most games. The North Stand as I recall had the whole stand standing..... not the bottom half.
I am very confident that if the South Stand was all one tier, the atmopshere generated from that part of the ground would be greatly improved.
Moving the away fans WILL not solve the problem IMO. The only true solution is to redesign that part of the ground to make it into one tier.
Another solution, especially for cup games is to not allow the away fans to take over the south stand..... fuck them off to the 3rd tier or something if they want to bring more!!!! But don't allow them to force the majority of our "vocal" supporters to be spread out around the ground, as we have seen a few times this doesn't help with the atmosphere either.
Even if this proposal is agreed, I can forsee that the whole of the lower tier in the south stand may sing/chant etc, but the upper tier will change very little IMO.
As I have said, the only true solution is to completely redesign that part of the ground, make it all one tier, make it a bit steeper (this will make it look more intimidating ala The Kop/Stretford End etc) to try and recreate what was the North Stand..... or Kippax if you wish.