Do City Matters still exist? How many times have we asked about minutes and still no response.
There will be minutes published from the next meeting. We had a big meeting last night (I was there for 5 hours, plus another 2 on Tuesday for a meeting about transport). Unfortunately much of what we discussed was confidential but I've had permission to go public with some of it.
First of all there's a big push to look at transport, particularly with the new arena due to come on stream at the end of 2023 and I've presented my ideas to the club. There are constraints we can't get round - we aren't getting 6-lane highways like they have in the USA and Metrolink have capacity and other logistical issues. TfGM appear to have a bit of a 'fuck you' attitude to us but we're going to try to engage them to see if we can persuade them to do things slightly differently.
On mobile ticketing, you already know that the club have issued a small number of seasoncards, which we welcomed. The overwhelming majority of fans use mobile ticketing now but we (and the club) know there have been many issues, some of which were foreseeable and some of which weren't. The IT & Ticketing teams have been working hard to resolve these and they are making progress. New readers at all turnstiles should improve access times and they will be putting in additional turnstiles in the South Stand in the next few weeks. There will still be problems but these should be more individual, rather than systemic.
They are hopeful that Safe standing will be given the go-ahead at the Etihad and a few other grounds in the next few weeks, which will then formally come into force at the start of next year (Jan 2022). This will be carefully monitored of course and further progress will be dependent on the results of that.
I can't go into the details but they are looking at kicking off a major programme looking at all fan or customer interactions with the club, either via attending games, buying merchandise or just using the website for information, videos etc.