Question I want to ask after catching the end of the final Manchester City home game this season. Well not the game itself but my question relates around it's supporters at the end or shall I say the lack of them, oh maybe a certain play-off final does sit nicely into this after all. Imagine having won trophies in successive seasons, something that only ever comes Gillingham FC way once every 50 years! 2011 FA Cup 2011-12 Premier League 2012 Community Shield 2014 League Cup 2013-14 Premier League 2016 League Cup FA Premier League runners up twice - 2012/13 & 2014/15 Yet for their supporters this is not enough, demonstrated by their ground emptying quicker than a Wembley section in 1999. So the question is are Manchester City fans fickle or has the game become social cleansed to such a degree that only the haves get to watch them these days, or as their rivals Roy Keane is well known for saying...
When you spend fortunes following a team around the country and across Europe and they don't bother trying half the time,perhaps you'll understand that it's really not being fickle to not give you them a celebratory end of season lap of honour I've been to every game this season home and away and I cleared off as well
Thanks for responding. I think though my point centres perfectly around your answer ie in the cost. How much does it cost to follow Manchester City to that degree and with that money does there become a greater expectation. It appears from your reply the answer is yes, hence my point being the game loses it's passion to the £££ signs (Sky 1992 virus). Meaning if they perform well ie in Manchester City's case win trophies, supporters are happy, if they perform badly, no silverware then you protest in absence at the end. I remember the days of standing on the terraces in all weather's, no luxuries, with merely an open air wall for a bog, but you were there for your team even never winning anything, it was the loyalty, camaraderie and huge passion through thick and thin, no matter how much you was pooped on. I think Roy Keane was right in his comments about the prawn sandwich brigade all that time ago, in my view I believe Maggie Thatcher succeeded in social cleansing (based on lies, lies, lies) the game to such a degree, it become born to a new generation of supporter where only the fortunate one's can now follow their so called team. Yes, if you pay a high price, you are going to expect value for money but then surely you just become nothing more than a customer and not a supporter.
Money clearly comes into it as we have very much a working class fanbase When we pay £65 a ticket at Arsenal or £58 at Spurs and the team doesn't try,we get a bit pissed off. We've not really attracted the prawn sandwich brigade or the tourists yet as Old Trafford is still a much bigger draw. I don't think it's particularly about winning trophies so much,we just want to see a similar amount of effort being made on the pitch as the supporters make off it It cost a fortune to get to Madrid and the halfhearted performance was just a joke.
From a working class perspective £58-£65 is a huge some of money, and as you point out that's excluding travel costs. No working class supporter should be having to pay that and many working class supporters cannot afford to pay that, hence they stay away, not through choice but through price, hence handing the game over to the more affluent, with new stadium's, millionaire players, Sky, billionaire owners, successive governments have succeeded in changing a culture, specifically the latter, they knew how to get at the heart of a community the price of football was the way to do it. Hence why I would never support a Premier League club, thankfully I have no fear of my club ever reaching those heights but even so pricing is still a problem even in League One, if you've ever had the misfortune to visit Gillingham Town Centre you would soon see what I mean and feel the deprivation of the area. I just find it a shame that the fans cannot generate their absence in another way, if those same huge numbers of supporters protested in the same volume through out the land about pricing then maybe change can be reversed. But the truth is those supporters will never be vocal in the same way I am, because they knew it would mean losing their multi million pound players, they know it would not be supportive of their plush stadium, they know then they would be like GFC and only win something once every 50 years, hence would those so called fans still support in the same numbers current in the modern game if we returned to the true working class way, without all the luxuries and glamour, a culture all but destroyed by discrimination, in fact if anything else had been ethnic cleansed in the way football has there would be world condemnation. noun the fact or state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition. "the interrelationship between gender, ethnicity, and class"
