I've been going home and away since 1967. Matchday book, season ticket, season cards, the lot for 53 years. I brought my two sons up with the faith, both season card holders since they were 5 and they have only missed two games in the last seven years (CSKA away when City fans were banned and Shakhtar Donetsk away). We stand in 111 immediately next to the away fans and we always try to sing and support as best we can. All this is just to give you some background and is not a "We're bigger Blues than you" post. I'm sure lots reading this will recognise the sacrifice, the considerable finance and the harm to personal relationships (wives, girlfriends, etc) and careers that this loyalty has brought for us three and you reading this. We have all done it willingly and gladly and with zero regrets.
This season has been different. The game and matchday experience (I hate that phrase!) that we know and love is being slowly eroded. It is being eroded bit by bit, drip drip drip, by all the factors previously mentioned in earlier posts. No standing, growing numbers of tourists, sanitized, over zealous stewarding, no smoking, alcohol bans, bent VAR, biased media with constant attacks on City, indifferent atmospheres, snowflakes, PC brigade, price increases, etc etc etc. It has reached a tipping point for me and my two sons. We will soon have a decision to make regarding renewing. If I'm undecided then it can be put down to me being an old fart, a dinosaur missing the "good old days and not changing with the times". But how can you explain two younger blokes, die hard Blues, undecided about renewing? Football is becoming more and more a TV sport....an entertainment business....profits....run by big corporate businesses with different agendas to the match attending fan. We are no longer a priority (if we ever were). The old school working class fan are not wanted anymore. We have become the victim of our success. We helped create the beautiful game and others then wanted it....and have took it.
If the three of us all decide not to renew, I doubt we would be missed. We would be replaced quite easily....but ask yourselves by who? What would our replacements look like? Maybe we are in a minority, but heed the warning, we could soon be a growing minority. All the above sounds like just another moaning old Blue. It's not. Three die hard Blues with a combined over a hundred years of following the Blues home and away. If we are disillusioned and wavering on renewing, what does that say about the future?
