Hang on. We were told that the reason the reason for the empty seats against Cardiff was because there was a Wembley semi-final on the Saturday and people couldn’t afford/be expected to go to both. Then there empty seats and Wembley anyway. So now it’s “too many games to go to”. But there’s always empty seats.
Did they know months ago that there were going to be loads of games? Do different people sit the game out each week and, in effect, everyone goes to 40 odd games each?
So many questions.
The woman who called in to 5 live makes a really good point about semi-finals being played at Wembley and the overall price of tickets for games, I'm with her on both of those things. However, if the argument for not selling out is because they've had a few games in London in quick succession, then it doesn't hold weight. Their allocation for games like Fulham away, Spurs away and Palace away will be about 2000, so the prices/travelling would only affect a small amount of supporters. The 35,000 tickets available for the semi-final shouldn't really be impacted by those away games. It also doesn't explain why they can't seem to sell-out most of their home games. I also don't see this issue with other clubs who come from poor areas. Do you think if Newcastle got to an FA Cup semi-final they wouldn't be able to sell all their tickets? They could probably sell them twice over.
The fact is, City are just a smaller club. They have fewer fans, people are less interested in them, they don't even really attract neutrals. That's fine, football shouldn't be reserved for the big clubs only but I guess the reason City fans will be feeling defensive is because they know that despite all of their success over the past few years - the 100 point season, the best manager in the world, a billion pound squad - people just don't really care. Their own fans don't even really care. After years of proclaiming themselves Manchester's 'proper' supporters and taking the piss out of United's glory hunters they've found that they can't even sell out their home games whilst embroiled in one of the most exciting title races in PL history. If City win the title (or the quadruple for that matter) there will be a small amount of celebration in Manchester, whilst the rest of the footballing world shrugs its shoulders. If Liverpool win the league, it will be the biggest party English football has ever seen. But beyond our own interests, I think there are lots of 'smaller' teams in England that would show City up if they were in the same situation. I think for the rest of football, it just feels like all of this success is a little undeserved and it could be going to a set of supporters who would really appreciate it.
