Why don't we have a better atmosphere?

Re: Re: Why don't we have a better atmosphere?

danburge82 said:
Golden Balls, the opening words to your post are wrong. The Etihad may well be a fairly nice looking stadium, we are very lucky to have it and without it we wouldn't have the Sheikh; but it is not a fantastic stadium. I'd go as far to say its a bit shit as far as being a proper football stadium goes.

Also it's the fifth highest capacity in the league, not third (Old Trafford, Emirates, Sports Direct, Stadium of Light are all bigger than ours).


It's a symmetrical stadium that doesn't lend to any individuality in any stands ("We are the South Stand" - so fucking what, you're half a stand where the other half [away fans] are louder than you, your name is bland/shit, and there's twice as many Blues down the other end!). The tiers are too small therefore separating fans into small chunks here and there. We have about 3000 seats (standing area) for vocal fans which is utterly woefully pathetic - I could name twenty+ clubs that have more than that, even Stockport have more than that as a vocal stand. It's too nice, people sit back, relax and watch the football in - for many - absolute silence every single week. Its like we have three main stands and one noisy end which is half and half [home and away]. When we play at home in the cups we have to move our already too tiny vocal area to house a fucking mass of away fans - this is APPALLING! - imagine the Kop or Stretford End having to do this?! The away fans get pride of place and it looks like there's about 10000 of them on tele. The roof is so high up and points out to the sky so any atmopshere is lost upwards. Etc...

I can remember all our good atmospheres since we moved there (Chlesea, their only loss in 04-05, Villa Saturday tea time win in 04, the first derby there 4-1 in 04 and Hamburg which was good but not as good as is looked back on). Ask a Spurs/Stoke/Derby fan the same question and he'd name you that many a season at their grounds.

People in the vocal areas think we have a good atmosphere - ive stood over in both and thought the same - but away from them areas it sounds like a murmur in the corner most of the time and anytime an away team brings a full allocation they almost always out-noise our vocal areas. I watch back every game, win/lose/draw, on Football First and Sky+ and rarely do you hear a good atmosphere coming across on the tele.
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Great post, well said

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk
 
The average age of the match going supporter is going up and those in their 40's - 50's are less likely to spend 90 minutes dancing and singing, though i feel that the atmosphere aint that much different than it was in the last days at Maine Road, ok we all remember the great atmospheres against the rags in the last derby, the Norwich game at MR under KK and the Millwall game (which puts paid to the idea that we need an away support to bounce against), but when we had the terraces, a group of blokes could leave the pub together, get to the ground together and stand to watch the game together, now we have to book tickets up to 5 weeks before the game and go to our allocated space.
To improve the atmosphere, imho, all we need to do is to get groups from the same pub, club, area etc to get their season tickets together, the club to have a few seats for the citycard - bluecard holders from that area to sit alongside their mates when they go, if you are sitting (or standing) beside a group of mates, then you are more likely to belt out a song or twelve than if you are beside a lot of people you dont know.
This could also be part of the reason why the away support is more vocal as supporters clubs tend to get blocks of seats together, rather than be spread about around the stadium.
 
danburge82 said:
Golden Balls, the opening words to your post are wrong. The Etihad may well be a fairly nice looking stadium, we are very lucky to have it and without it we wouldn't have the Sheikh; but it is not a fantastic stadium. I'd go as far to say its a bit shit as far as being a proper football stadium goes.

Also it's the fifth highest capacity in the league, not third (Old Trafford, Emirates, Sports Direct, Stadium of Light are all bigger than ours).


It's a symmetrical stadium that doesn't lend to any individuality in any stands ("We are the South Stand" - so fucking what, you're half a stand where the other half [away fans] are louder than you, your name is bland/shit, and there's twice as many Blues down the other end!). The tiers are too small therefore separating fans into small chunks here and there. We have about 3000 seats (standing area) for vocal fans which is utterly woefully pathetic - I could name twenty+ clubs that have more than that, even Stockport have more than that as a vocal stand. It's too nice, people sit back, relax and watch the football in - for many - absolute silence every single week. Its like we have three main stands and one noisy end which is half and half [home and away]. When we play at home in the cups we have to move our already too tiny vocal area to house a fucking mass of away fans - this is APPALLING! - imagine the Kop or Stretford End having to do this?! The away fans get pride of place and it looks like there's about 10000 of them on tele. The roof is so high up and points out to the sky so any atmopshere is lost upwards. Etc...

I can remember all our good atmospheres since we moved there (Chlesea, their only loss in 04-05, Villa Saturday tea time win in 04, the first derby there 4-1 in 04 and Hamburg which was good but not as good as is looked back on). Ask a Spurs/Stoke/Derby fan the same question and he'd name you that many a season at their grounds.

People in the vocal areas think we have a good atmosphere - ive stood over in both and thought the same - but away from them areas it sounds like a murmur in the corner most of the time and anytime an away team brings a full allocation they almost always out-noise our vocal areas. I watch back every game, win/lose/draw, on Football First and Sky+ and rarely do you hear a good atmosphere coming across on the tele.
Click to expand...

i've never really agreed with you on this subject but the more and more i go this season i'm changing my mind. i sit in 116 and it sounds good from there but i moved for the naopli game to the other side of the stadium and it sounded wank compared to the napoli fans.

i disagree about the roof though, the fact we have and many away fans have created great atmospheres proves the point that it can be done. but yeah norwich and wigan stand out as dreadful atmospheres. i'm sure it will change when we play the rags, arse, spurs,pool and what have you though but we need it going every game.

solutions?

well we could hope the sheik changes an entire end to suit atmosphere but that's unlikely. what i'm hoping for is safe standing, ,move the away fans to 119-121 and have 111-118 safe standing areas full of blues. obviously the laws need to change first for this to happen but if it did the club could advertise that these are the standing areas for VOCAL fans.
 
There is a small comment in the Mirror today which is actually correct. Basically says there was a deathly silence on Wednesday when people knew about the Napoli score, a silence which has been noticeable on numerous occassions this season. Goes on to add that after where we have come from to what we are watching now, the fans should lift the roof each game and celebrate what we are watching.
 
Golden Balls said:
Etihad is a fantastic stadium with the ability to fit massive numbers inside. It has the 3rd highest capacity in the league yet it doesn't feel like that.

Watching the Norwich game and many others, the atmosphere is lifeless at times. It appears as though it's dead quiet for 5-6min and then a 40sec chant.

Why can't we have a group of supporters singing, clapping and chanting for the full 90min? Make it an intimidating place to come and get points.

Watching the Bayern game their away supporters were the only ones you could hear through the tele.

I'm CTID but please don't try to dispute this gents. Touchy subject but a point I felt had to be made...
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Hmmm..
 
Not enough people with beer in their bellies and too many henpecked blokes sat holding hands with their wife/girlfriend.
 
To the people talking about our ageing fanbase, are you sure about that? I'm seeing loads and loads of kids and teens. The coach I get on from Whitefield has 6-8 teen lads who go to every game, at the ground I have a man with his two kids next to me. And when you I look around there are youths everywhere, often with their parents. Many are being taught to sit quietly and watch the game by their parents though.
 
The stadium is great for unimpeded views of the pitch... and that's about it.

The Etihad is not fit for purpose as top class football stadium, and it will never be as:

* The design of the roof, which barely covers the first 23 rows of the first tier has the worst acoustics of any stadium I've ever been to. My season card at the moment is in 109 and you can't hear the South Stand, before this it was in 104 and you could barely hear 109-111, before that in 134 and you couldn't hear either Kippax Corner or the South Stand. Sound only travels upwards in our stadium, eaach block is almost in isolation to the ones around it in the way sound is created;

* Their needs to be something done about the traffic and congestion of people and vehicles after match day. Every home game people leave up to 15 minutes before the end of the match to avoid the crush on the concourse if they have young ones or to avoid the 90 minute stand still of getting out of any of the official car parks. It's frustrating but understandable why people do this, it takes me longer to walk from entrance K to the gate on Ashton New Road than it does from the Mercedes garage to the City Centre as the area outside of the stadium becomes gridlocked with no system to stop the counter-flow of people walking towards the East car park and City Square; and

* The size of each tier is something more akin to an indoor arena than a football stadium. From memory there's 30 rows, that pales in comparison to the the likes of the Holte End and Kop. One end will never work whilst a stand is broken into tiers, there's no interaction between the first and second tiers, or at least nothing like it would be if it was just one unbroken stand.

I know there's been lots of talk and speculation about the redevelopment of our stadium. I, for one, hope that's all it is, speculation. Feasibility studies on expanding our stadium will hopefully highlight the issues outside of the stadium first and foremost before then deciding the most logical approach is to entirely redevelop the stadium and not just add another tier onto something that is broken.
 
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