Mister Appointment said:
moomba said:
I can see where Prestwich is coming from and I have many of the same concerns. The club has done many, many positive things but somewhere along the line I think they might have lost sight of what is important to the supporters that stuck by the club through thin and thinner. I see and hear more and more people drifting away from the club (usually accompanied by the cheap "you'd rather we were shit" accusation by the I'm alright Jack brigade), and to me I reckon we are at a real crossroads as a club.
I'm sure we'll be extremely successful, but I wonder how many of us will still feel part of that in a decade as opposed to a bystander.
For me it's not about "i'm alright Jack". I can't afford a season ticket, nor can I afford to attend lots of games. I wish the day out were cheaper. However I can balance that with what's happening at the club, the fact that we are building something huge, and that with FFP there is a genuine need to bring money into the club in whatever ways are possible. If this means I'm priced out in terms of the number of matches I can attend so be it. I don't have a divine right to be able to afford a ticket simply because I've been a supporter since i was a kid. That's totally irrelevant.
All the talk of the club losing it's "soul" is probably the worst thing though to read. I find it offensive to the owners, totally blinkered and short sighted, and not at all in keeping with the reality of the situation. Soul is not measured in pennies and pounds nor is it measured in how many freebies you give to those who feel entitled to them.
If the current ownership model at City makes you (not you in particular but the royal 'you' if that makes sense) feel that the club is losing it's soul I'd suggest that in fact you're best off leaving Premier League football because it is what it is and within the context of what it is City do their level best to keep supporters happy, and just as importantly try and listen to the supporters when they have a gripe.
I can see both sides of the argument, but I sway towards the side that says some of those involved have lost sight of the fact that having a passionate supporter base is fundamental to the rest.
Everybody knows that FFP requires us to generate lots of revenue, but ticket prices for the ordinary punter is a minor part of that revenue, and you can only squeeze ordinary fans (the vast majority of blues) so far. We can all work out our own numbers, but if say 20,000 tickets cost £20 for the 19 home league games, compared to say £40, it would cost the club less than £8m in revenue per season, peanuts in the grand scheme of things really, especially if the price paid is a somewhat less passionate support.
Anyway this is a whole subject for another thread, and one that has been done to death really. We need to expand, to create more corporate, as that brings in far bigger revenue than the ordinary punter, but as is said above the corporate won't come if there is no atmosphere, so the club need to tread carefully, and for me some of those in more middle management at City, do seem to have lost sight of this, and are just looking after their careers by trying to squeeze the ordinary fan too much. Yes other clubs are doing it, but the point is for me, we really don't need to be following the herd.
Going back to why PB posted what he did, and partly the subject of this thread, the fact that a couple of enterprising "passionate" blues managed to get into the stadium last night, and this threads subject about fans trying and sadly failing to rent an office to watch the game "live", but were shopped by people from our own club (in the case of the lads), I think he's right to say someone has lost sight of something.
99.9% of us would applaud the lads that managed to get in last night (and those that headed to Moscow knowing they wouldn't see the game), and instead of shopping them, the club should be telling the world that this is just how passionate our support really is, using it to market the club.
