I can honestly say that in all my years on this planet I have only ever seen 1 person on the street wearing a Manchester City shirt and I have only ever known 1 Man City fan, and he was a very sad somber chap! (Granted I live in the South). Now though I think I see at least 3 City shirts a day on passers by and the football forums are full of apparent "life Long" City fans. What have they been doing all this time have they just been sitting quietly and now for some reason have decided to pipe up?? Very strange.................
i'm sure there are many recent fans who never really bothered but now are more vocal about it because the club are successful. there was a Man City die-hard family down my road when I was growing up, and they went through all the relegations and the bounce-back, felt very sorry for them at the time! now they're absolutely loving it, and with fans like that i can't blame them. i don't agree with how the club are doing it, but for those fans that went through the terrible times, seeing players the calibre of sergio aguero and yaya toure pulling on a sky blue shirt must be a dream come true.
Couldn't have put it better myself. The same went for Chelsea fans, I never saw a Chelsea top until Hoddle went to Chelsea then all these Chelsea fans started springing up everywhere. Coincided with when it became fashionable to be a football fan,
In the early 80's there were as many Liverpool fans in London as Arsenal/Tottenham/Chelsea/W Ham fans etc, then by the ealy 90's the kids were Man Utd fans, a few years back Chelsea, now Man City, it's a sad case of the fans who get some childish pleasure from standing in a pub gloating about the trophy 'their' team have won instead of having any real affiliation with a club. They're usually the 25+ year olds who go home to Mum and Dads...
The worst case I've ever seen was when I was at secondary school. This one kid supported, in order: Norwich, Liverpool, Manchester United, Newcastle, Blackburn...three guesses what their league positions were? Doubtless he's Man Utd or Chelsea these days.
To be honest I've never heard of or met a fully grown adult who has switched club just like that, it seems to me like it's just kids (which is acceptable as they are only kids) and foreigners.
or the owners will stop chucking money at them and leave them to make it on their own with their super team