How are we all feeling about our club today?

[Fat Chance]

 

[Deleted member 77198]

But everything else Soriano has done for the club has been very good*, look how we’ve grown commercially to a point where we’re not far off overtaking the rags and scousers.

Not only that but who out there is available as a better CEO (apart from Garry Cook!). Sacking Soriano for this would be like sacking Pep for losing one cup game.

*almost everything else.

Inflation has never been above 2.58% since 2008, yet SeasonCard prices have gone up anything upwards of 12.5% some years. Nothing in my life has seen the scale of rises that City’s SeasonCards have seen. City upped SeasonCard prices by £75, £65, £50 and £50 season-on-season. Then froze it for a year. Then upped them by £50 again. For a large number of people the conintual rises made them decide to give up their SC, or it’s stopped me being able to afford go to Cup games or as many away games. I don’t think doing things that make long standing fans of the club fall away from the support is good. Especially when there’s never any consultation with the fans about it beforehand. Even if the club need to up these prices, there has to be some sort of discourse with the fans about it, we aren’t just some no marks who are buying chicken from KFC.

A £50 increase in SCs only brings in an extra £2.1m for the club. But for a fan, if you’re struggling to afford it at £650, another £50 increase when Cup and away tickets aren’t even included in that is just too much to justify for many people.

Putting tickets on foreign travel package sites and ticket tour sites means we have groups of non-City fans going to games. This is hated by City fans and English football fans in general. Tourists who don’t give a shit about the club and smile when the opposition score (that’s even happened with United and Rooney scoring once at our ground when we had people in the home stand shifting in their seats with excitement, smiling and taking pictures of Rooney sliding on his knees). These are who the long standing fans were replaced with, they bring in more money but I don’t think that’s a good thing. I also think some of the tout sites some City tickets are on are actually illegal

Then they started the eviction process that we’d already seen with the North Stand becoming the Family Stand (before Soriano’s time), with the rise of corporate areas. With the same outcome as when they did it in the North Stand, where there were instances of fans being moved from seats they sat in with friends/family only to be moved on their own somewhere because the club couldn’t find three seats together (even though there are blocks like 210 that have loads of seats used for those ticket tour/tour sites, mentioned above).

Changing the way away tickets are allocated is wrong. Those same sites you can get the home tickets from, you can also get for away games. When we’ve got tens of thousands of people with Loyalty Points, but you’re stood next to an American woman and her son who’ve paid £400 for the tickets against Spurs at Wembley (who nearly fainted when my mate told her he paid £30!), when you’re stood next to Arsenal fans in the away end at Arsenal, when you’re stood next to Dresden fans supporting Huddersfield at Huddersfield... i think there’s something very wrong with all that.

I saw my arse big time yesterday and said Soriano should offer his resignation even if just for a gesture that al Mubarak wouldn’t actually accept. Now I’ve calmed down somewhat, I’d like him to come out and explain to us what this was all about and then see how I feel.

He’s a very good CEO, but he’s not got everything right, but has has got most things right. But I think this misguided saga of the ESL just further cements something I’ve never felt he’s understood: City fans, City fans’ working class base, that we haven’t got a set of fans like the Redhsirts where we can call upon rich people from all over, and City fan culture (not understanding that it’s a City fan cultural thing to invade the pitch for big moments - in a scene in All Or Nothing).

 

[Colin Bells Boots]

Loving this mistake made, let's move on nonsense.

Our club tried to unplug itself from English football, it misread the room spectacularly and it cited Glazers on our website as justification. The fact that they pulled out an hour ahead of the rest is pretty much immaterial.

As fuckups go this one is epic and had Garry Cook done the same he would be in the dole queue with Woodwood today.

Nice try - and it's barm by the way .

 

[Sir peace frog]

They've been terribly naughty boys, but can't help but love em

 

[IOWBlue]

Oh god, don't even go there. My rule of thumb that a fan's football intelligence can be mapped directly from their opinion of Soriano and Txiki works in reverse with Garry Cook.

Mine can be mapped directly from your posts.

 

[PhdWave]

Loving this mistake made, let's move on nonsense.

Our club tried to unplug itself from English football, it misread the room spectacularly and it cited Glazers on our website as justification. The fact that they pulled out an hour ahead of the rest is pretty much immaterial.

As fuckups go this one is epic and had Garry Cook done the same he would be in the dole queue with Woodwood today.

And its also not like we were forced to make a decision in 2 days completely out of the blue. I am pretty sure we knew about the general plans all along...I feel the only thing which was sudden is the time of execution of this ESL.

 

[blueste41]

Disappointed that we got involved in the first place, but relieved that we saw sense and glad that we were instrumental in bringing this whole thing crashing down. Still think we’re due a proper explanation though.

I can't agree that we (the owner/club) were instrumental in bringing it down, by the time we announced our withdrawal the project was already dead in the water and that was down to everyone from fans to the government not Manchester City. We maybe deserve some credit for being the first to "leave" but not much.

 

[RegMuffin]

And its also not like we were forced to make a decision in 2 days completely out of the blue. I am pretty sure we knew about the general plans all along...I feel the only thing which was sudden is the time of execution of this ESL.

Yes. It was leaked in January and 442 magazine reported it along with others. Are people really naive enough to think we were not at the top table then and just decoded to dive in after a few pints last Friday night?

 

[1.618034]

I didn't lose my shit on Sunday, or Monday especially when we weren't originally named. The women in the office asked about it on Monday, which is unusual to even talk football and I said it was all about the CL proposals due that day and it'll be over by the end of the week.

Felt proud of Pep and the club on Tuesday.

Today, I'm back to normal.

CTID

 

[BlueMonkey79]

They were stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they said no from the start and the ESL took off, we could of been left behind financially.

This was a little blot on the landscape. When the dust settles we will all be laughing about it in a few months time.