Ha ha! Right now we have a mix of the old guard who are probably 50+ in age who remember and were there during the rough times and the new fan who has only known glory. Some of these new fans will have only known all seater stadiums and the coloured wigs/clappers/ fanzone days. While the old guard are denounced by some for being grumpy old men and stick in the mud Luddite's, it is that very same attitude that got them through week after week when we really were dog shit. Weaker fans would have jumped on the rag bandwaggon as half the country did.
Pep might be arguably the greatest coach in the world but he has been here five minutes and may only be here three years. I am sure he meant well in what he said but he needs to look up our history and understand why we are as we are. He can of course say all that is the past, we need to look forward and move on. In part he is right. Once we do though we become 'Just another successful club' people want to latch onto and something is lost. Some will say it is a good thing but it will be a sad day when it eventually happens.
You're right mate, we've got a pretty unique fan base. There's a fella in his 60s who sits in front of me and he only comes to moan. Never heard him say anything positive about the team in 5 years. He just wants to complain about referees, or Kolarov misplacing a pass, Sterling missing a chance etc. When we've been shit for so long, it's quite difficult for some to adjust.
We've had a core of 30-50k match going fans for the last 30 years. Usually towards the lower end, but even at our worst we could have sold 50k for a derby, big semi final, or league title run in or whatever. It's just we didn't have any semi finals or league title run ins during the 80s and 90s. We've got the same core match going attendance, it's just now we're brilliant, so we get towards the 50k mark and above regularly.
If we went shit again, got relegated, appointed Frank Clark as manager and were insipid to watch, I've got no doubt our attendances would slip back towards the 30k mark. No problem with that for me, that's just our match going regulars. We've maybe attracted an extra 5-10k fans who are tourists, international students etc who would have never come 20 years ago. But their numbers are still quite small. Compare that to the 30 odd thousand the Shite have every week bussing in from London, Doncaster, Belfast, Oslo etc.
City have still not attracted that extra 20-30k plastics who just support a club because they're insecure and desperately want to be associated with success. I'm sure it will happen eventually and those numbers will grow. I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing though. Who gives a toss if the seats are filled up with tourists in half and half scarves? It won't add much to the match day experience for me.
It's funny, City used to get praised for having 30k turning up in the 2nd division. Now we're getting slaughtered for only having 30k at a Champions League game. So what these people are saying, is that basically we're shit because we can't attract a load of glory hunting fans that want to be associated with success. I'm afraid that mob over the road stole a march on us with that. If you want to go and see a crowd of glory hunters, take yourself over to Trafford once a fortnight.
