borninm14 said:
We are not Stockport County but we are Manchester City Football Club and the vast majority of our fanbase has been through the bad times which subsequently has moulded us into what we are.
I despise all these people that have no connection with our club and have just jumped on to a very large bandwagon, would these cretins be wearing the latest city shirt if we were mid table ? would they fuck, remember we have risen very fast in the last few years but we can easily return to mid table mediocrity, will these fuckers be buying shirts then ?.
Eh, we had a lot of fans before 2008 who had no connection to Manchester or to City before, but they were still fans then. There was some survey from 2002 that used to be linked on the Wikipedia page, which said that back then we had an estimated 2 million fans - only 800,000 of whom were based in the UK. I know that surveys can fudge numbers, but that's got to have come from somewhere. We still retain large followings in the Scandinavian countries because back in the 1970s, English football was the only foreign football shown there, and large groups of them attached themselves to various clubs. In 40 years, tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands stayed with this club even as we kept getting relegated and generally absolutely sucked. The funny thing is, though, before we started becoming obsessed with "acquiring too many new fans", no-one used to complain about those Scandinavians - in fact I think I recall seeing a few people here posting about how proud they'd been of our Scandinavian following. Do you want to turn those fans away because, even though they've suffered like you and I, they don't have a proper connection to Manchester?
I share your unrest with gaining legions of fans who will desert at the first sign of a struggle (although honestly, seeing the way that, for instance, the Asian Arsenal fans have reacted to their seven years without a trophy...by largely staying completely loyal...makes me think that actually we might keep a lot more than you would think even if we were to slink back in the murky depths of the relegation fights) and wish we would only acquire those fans who will stay with us forever more, but honestly if anyone gets bitten by the blue bug then I see no reason not to welcome them in. I mean, we always say here that "you don't choose City, City chooses you" - if someone else finds themselves honestly hooked by City, as many here have admitted to being (including, I might add, British non-Mancunians who became blues back in the 60s/70s and thereabouts - fans who now consider themselves part of the furniture and have been fans for longer than I've been alive) then why should we say to them "you don't choose City, City chooses you...but only if the existing fans are OK with you joining up"?
Besides, I always thought that the reason we hated the rags' fans so much was because they are all so arrogant and obnoxious - the foreign rags included. If our foreign fans can keep grounded and even learn to appreciate the self-deprecation that we still exhibit here, then our fans will still be one hundred times more acceptable than the tea-towel-wearing vermin.
I could also make the point that, without people joining on for the ride now, we will never stand a chance of making enough money to cement a position in the top echelons, too...I'm sure that won't convince you at all, but it's a very important point all the same. Everyone is crying out for stadium expansion; well that certainly won't happen without more fans.
