Manchester United to introduce singing area for Real Sociedad tie Manchester United will trial a 1,400-seat singing section for the Champions League home game against Spanish side Real Sociedad on 23 October. Noise levels at Old Trafford have long been derided by the club's own fan groups and opposition supporters. The club scrapped an earlier attempt at the venture after police refused to allow away fans to be relocated to the Sir Alex Ferguson Stand's third tier. The singing section will be in the south-east corner of the ground. Sociedad's travelling fans, who would normally be housed there, will instead be in the East Stand. United midfielder Michael Carrick wrote on Twitter it was a "great idea". As part of the fan-led initiative, season ticket holders will be given priority, with any remaining tickets then offered to members. United attempted to increase noise levels at the club last season by appointing an acoustic engineer.
It's a big old stadium though, and there doesn't seem to be that enclave of 'proper' fans all together anymore. And the accoustics ARE ****. I used to go in K stand and it was all brilliant, even up to half a dozen years ago, with the away fans off to your left. The Stretford End still made some noise too. The accoustics are such that you can barely hear them though so the songs go out of synch and die a death. You barely get a murmur from the sides of the ground though, it's both ends or nowt. You wouldn't appreciate that, given that Anfield is a clapped out old shed of a ground!!
I think part of the problem is that the expansions have ****ed up the allocation of seats. The ends in particular are a bit screwed now that all the Stretford End lot have ended up all over the place. Also a lot of the FCUM lot cancelled their season tickets and people got moved all over the place as a result. So you get scattered groups of hardcore fans in amongst the quieter ones and they struggle to all sing together. The acoustics with all the angles of the stands don't help either. Most of the Stretty End lot are now in the second tier, and so struggle to make themselves heard at pitch level. The club have tried to sort this out but never made much progress. Not sure this will help that much either - 1,400 fans aren't going to make that much noise amongst 75,000. They really need to just completely redo the seating allocations to bring all the groups of singing fans together. Doubt it will happen tho' - too many people will complain about being moved around.
You won't be surprised to learn that I posted the same thing on our board. The days when I went to virtually every home game are long gone - I used to stand on the Kop. We now have the same problem, with a few obvious exceptions. The 'singers' are distributed all round the ground, so the whole thing gets diluted. Some of our lads and one BS in particular (you know who you are) actually think this is a good idea.
Personally I would have standing back. Manage it safely and all the like minded people go in that end and there you have it, a loud enclosure. They could also make it the cheaper enclosure and two problems are solved right there. For obvious reasons it was removed from our game but now there are ways of managing this situation. It works in Germany.
It's been discussed many times on both our boards, but I can't ever see it happening. My knees are ****ed now anyway
Would the rant be from personal experience or just what you've picked up from the match threads & the telly?
This idea was brought up a few years ago and was laughed at by a lot of the opposition fans including the City fans, until they started talking about doing something similar. My old man still goes to games and has said many times the atmosphere is pants and its not like it used to be, and as much as I like the idea of a singing area, I don't think the atmosphere will ever be the same which would be a shame, but if it improves it then it can only be a good thing.
