What determines who you support in Manchester? Is it a geographical thing?

Pughie said:
Ours is an odd one.

My grandad was born in Lostock Gralam, a little village in Northwich, Cheshire.

He was a Manchester United supporter in the 50's, up until he learnt how the families of the Munich disaster were being treated and renounced his support.

In the mid 60's he joined the GMP and was posted at Maine Road, so began supporting City instead.

Because of this decision my entire family are Blues. Him, my dad, my uncle, their cousins, my cousins, me, my brother, my sister. I've even converted my girlfriend who started life supporting the Scum, then became a Red Dipper because thats who her mum supported, and now is an avid City fan. I have mixed feelings on adding such a football supporting mongrel to the City family.

I was born in Wythenshawe hospital in 1991 and lived in Didsbury until 1993. Ironically, other than my uncles family, we all moved back to Northwich in Cheshire. There is still a strong prescence of Pugh's in South Manchester and West Cheshire, every single one of us are blues. What makes me especially proud, is that when the football debate is brought up I can say that A) I am a Manc and B) I supporr my local team, my 3 closest friends either support the Scum or Everton, all 3 are born in Crewe. In their defence they are surprisingly knowledgable about football, and do go to games.

So that's the Pugh history on why we all support City!
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Good man. What happened to Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, and Grub.....assuming we all know where Dibble went.
 
Loving reading all the stories of how you became blues. What comes through is a love of the club and a realisation that even if you tried, you cannot evict your team from your heart no matter how much they drive you mental.

I like that as for me that's the only way. No halfway house of emotional attachment.
 
Ordinarily, I would say you follow in your fathers footsteps, I think it's part of a bonding process, me personally ( born Withington), never really sure why I chose to be a Blue, older brother was, although him being a blue would more than likely have made me go the other way, step dad was a red (born Whalley Range, Blue before 1958 ;-) and I was already Blue before he came on the scene) and as it transpired my biological dad was a red (Born Moss-Side).

My earliest memory though, and one I think is the thing that influenced me most albeit subconsciously, was seeing Colin Bell in an open neck shirt, V neck jumper, flared kecks, German helmet hairdo and platform shoes, as a kid I just thought he looked cool as fuck and I just wanted to be like him.
 
No Blues in immediate family, just cousins. Dad was a rag, took me a couple of times. Uncle was a Pool fan, took my brother with him. Mum would take us to Bury. Asked my Mum for a City scarf, boy up the street liked em. Yeh, not great but in my defense it was the 70's, I was about 10
 
mccity said:
United only really became mainstream popular in 92. When it became easy to support them. I reckon if you recorded the demographic of City/United fans who started following their respective teams before 92 there'd be a fairly even split.
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Nah, mate. The Busby Babes were mainstream and I believe the rags picked up sympathy support post-Munich. I started going to City in the early 60s and am pretty sure there were more reds than blues in those days. (Maybe not massively more.) Then, despite the glorious Bell/Lee/Summerbee team, the red cnuts consolidated further with Best/Charlton/Law and their European Cup win. History then shows they went on to grow to 680 million ;)

I don't have stats but an analysis of average attendances over the years would give some (imperfect) idea of relative popularity. Would be really interested to see them.
 
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worsleyweb said:
Salford and north manchester are more rags I would say. South Manchester, east Manchester more city. Generally if you are a twat you support them.
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I thought that but my Mrs lives in north Manchester so I now spend a huge amount of time up there, it's full of City shirts from my experience.

United only outnumber us in Salford and Trafford I'd say but there's obviously a lot dotted about in blue majority areas.
 
Where I grew up in didsbury at a Church of England school everyone seemed to support city.
 
I think I am pretty typical. Born in to a blue family in Abbey Hey in the mid 60's. Was taken to Maine Road from an early age. There were definitely more blues at school as I remember we used to always have City v Utd matches at dinner and they had a smaller pool of players. Started going away with my mates as a teenager and still do, so have only really ever had blue mates. My lads have been brought up pretty much the same way and are season ticket holders with nearly all their mates being blue.
 
Southern said:
Salford is surely Rag central?

And basically, if you are from outside Manxhester, you're probably a rag
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Bit of a myth about Salford, i know loads of match going Blues from Salford and they often say how many live there especially in Broughton, not saying they are not outnumbered by rags as that would be foolish
As for living outside Manchester that's a bit of a myth as well, the lads i go to the matches with come from varied places, Blackpool, Rochdale, Oldham, Accrington, Burnley,Wigan, Newton le Willows, Trafford, Ashton yet strangely none from Stockport!
 
The coming from outside of Manchester and being a rag things is a bit outdated now. Lots of families were moved from inner city Manchester to Wythenshaw and estates in Wilmslow, Knutsford etc in the 70s and they've got loads of longstanding blues and rags. There's more geographic mobility so things are pretty mixed up. Prior to the war it's probably true that City fans were from central and east Manchester and the rags more from the outskirts. Maybe that's still a factor as it does feel like eastern side of the City is predominantly blue. Utd attracted a lot of Irish catholic supporters from the migrant workers in the west of the City and Salford but fortunately religion was never really a factor. I think in the 60s United tried to cash on Irish support by declaring themselves the catholic team in Manchester but fortunately nobody ever really bought it.

What the rags have is hundreds of thousands of dedicated followers with no connection to the City at all (or a very tacit one). The number of Rags I've met in London who have an uncle from Manchester is unbelievable.

I tend to think that in the old days City chose you rather than the other way round. When I became interested in football I was surrounded by Rags and had parents with zero interest in the game. Nevertheless, there was one other blue in my class and that was that and instinctively I preferred the whole concept of City. It turned out later that City had been the family club since it's formation but nobody had ever communicated that to me or told me to support City.
 
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