DON’T BELITTLE CITY FOR EMPTY SEATS AT THE ETIHAD
THREE of the most memorable football matches of my youth were all very different.
Liverpool’s European Cup semi-final first leg win against Panathinaikos at Anfield in 1985, Luton Town’s relegation of Manchester City at Maine Road two years earlier and a Division One play- off game between Newcastle and Sunderland during time spent there as a student in 1990.
All are linked by one thing. On each occasion, a ticket was purchased very simply on the day of the game.
I mention this because of the debate triggered by Pep Guardiola last week about attendances at the Etihad Stadium. The City manager believes the ground should always be full to its 55,000 capacity and he is not alone.
Others — particularly fans of rivals Manchester United — often use City’s attendances as a stick to beat them. The inference is that City can’t really be a big club if they don’t have people hammering at the gates to get in.
History tells us this is a flawed argument. We may wish to believe football was so much better back in the day that our creaking, wooden old stadia were crammed full every weekend but this is just not true.
City’s history tells its own story. Season 1992-93 was the first of the Premier League. City’s Maine Road stadium had a capacity of 35,000 and the team finished ninth, just ahead of Chelsea and Arsenal. But the average attendance that season was just 24,698 and occasionally threatened to drop beneath the 20,000 mark.
City have a much better team these days. More people want to watch, naturally. But set against that are such things as spiralling ticket costs and the fact that just about every game Guardiola’s team play is available to watch on television somewhere.
January is always a challenging month for the paying football
customer. There are lots of games, some more appetising than others, to attend at a time when nobody has any money.
That Guardiola doesn’t see this is not surprising. His previous two postings were Bayern Munich and Barcelona, two super clubs whose games are
attended weekly by a mixture of bona fide supporters and what you may call ‘tourist fans’. The same can be said of United and Liverpool.
Visit these clubs on matchdays and the number of American, Scandinavian and Asian fans is immediately obvious. They are there on packages — some are on long-planned holidays — and are indicative of the enormous reach of the modern game.
They swell the numbers in a way that does not happen at City. Not yet. No, the vast majority of people at the Etihad are supporters of the club in the traditional sense. As their team gets more successful and the bar of what truly excites them gets higher, is it really any surprise that some decide to stay on the sofa for an FA Cup tie against Fulham from the Championship?
Old football was better in some ways but don’t pretend it was something it wasn’t. When Nottingham Forest won the First Division under Brian Clough in 1977- 78, they did so with an average attendance of 32,501. Their City Ground stadium held at least 14,000 more than that at the time.
A few empty seats back then were no slur on the people of Nottingham. Nor should they be on City’s good name now. The fact is the club’s crowds have doubled in the Premier League era. That’s some going.
DAVID MOYES took an admirable leap of faith in signing striker Jarrod Bowen from Hull City and it is heartening to see a 23-year-old from the Championship given a chance. Nevertheless, the West Ham manager may have been overstating his ability to turn water into wine when comparing Bowen’s arrival with some of his transfer work at Everton. ‘I can probably name half a dozen players I signed from the Championship,’ said Moyes. ‘People like Leighton Baines, Joleon Lescott or Phil Jagielka.’ That will be Baines — signed after 72 Premier League games for Wigan — and Jagielka, who made 38 top-flight appearances for Sheffield United before moving to Goodison.