EPL Season 2016/7

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Originally Posted by NeverFeltBetter

And their neighbors will generally sell-out every EPL game (or come close to it). I guess it might be a legacy thing in a way? Not that the typical atmosphere at Old Trafford is anything to get excited about either.

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United have way more fans globally, of course, but I also always sensed when I lived in Manchester that tourists would have been a lot more inclined to go to a game in Old Trafford than one at the Etihad. I used to live a walk of a few minutes from the Etihad and always got the impression that those attending games were, by and large, locals or regulars, whereas Old Trafford would be thronged with tourists and day-trippers taking group-selfies outside the ground, buying the club shop out of crested coffee mugs and just generally doing the whole "big day out" thing on match-days. Obviously, my observations are anecdotal, but there probably would be more general interest (even if it is way more casual or novelty-based) in United due to the history and legacy of success, as you mention.

And, yes, Old Trafford is also a library on match-days.

Just on Old Trafford attracting the more casual fan; often, when a player lines out against a rival club of a club he once played for in the past, he'll get boos, jeers and a generally pretty tough time from the rival club's fans, but I noticed that there wasn't even a hint of a hostile reception for former Manchester City player John Guidetti in Old Trafford last Thursday night. How many people in the stadium were even aware that Guidetti formerly played for their "bitter" city rivals?...

For all the hype, Anfield is library 99% of the time too. They'll pull out the occasional big atmosphere if the match is high profile enough.

Manchester City's stadium is obviously just too big for them, there's empty seats when they play the likes of Barcelona. Having a lot of cash overnight and winning a few things doesn't transform you into a big club, not straight away anyway. They had the stadium before the huge injection of cash though, which makes it all the more mind boggling.

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Originally Posted by DannyInvincible

United have way more fans globally, of course, but I also always sensed when I lived in Manchester that tourists would have been a lot more inclined to go to a game in Old Trafford than one at the Etihad. I used to live a walk of a few minutes from the Etihad and always got the impression that those attending games were, by and large, locals or regulars, whereas Old Trafford would be thronged with tourists and day-trippers taking group-selfies outside the ground, buying the club shop out of crested coffee mugs and just generally doing the whole "big day out" thing on match-days. Obviously, my observations are anecdotal, but there probably would be more general interest (even if it is way more casual or novelty-based) in United due to the history and legacy of success, as you mention.

And, yes, Old Trafford is also a library on match-days.

Just on Old Trafford attracting the more casual fan; often, when a player lines out against a rival club of a club he once played for in the past, he'll get boos, jeers and a generally pretty tough time from the rival club's fans, but I noticed that there wasn't even a hint of a hostile reception for former Manchester City player John Guidetti in Old Trafford last Thursday night. How many people in the stadium were even aware that Guidetti formerly played for their "bitter" city rivals?...

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I'ts funny you say that about booing former players, because I heard the crowd booing Iago Aspas, former Liverpool, throughout, and I needed a live-update site to tell me who he was.

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Originally Posted by NeverFeltBetter

I'ts funny you say that about booing former players, because I heard the crowd booing Iago Aspas, former Liverpool, throughout, and I needed a live-update site to tell me who he was.

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I sensed that the fact Aspas was a former Liverpool player (who was restricted to a back-up role on account of Liverpool's wealth of options up front including Suarez, Sturridge and Sterling at the time) was given greater exposure in the media and during televised coverage of the first leg in Vigo than the fact Guidetti formerly played for Manchester City, but I could be wrong and my observation/theory on the casual nature Old Trafford attendees may be bullsh*t. :o

Saw some highlights from a few of the other big games around Europe last night actually.

Monaco, on the verge of their first Ligue 1 title in seventeen years, playing in front of a half empty 18,000 capacity stadium! I know it's a strange sort of club/country anyway but still. Regardless, the won 4-0 and have all but mathematically secured the title.

Second placed Roma entertained leaders Juventus at the Stadio Olympico. Granted it's a high capacity stadium (70,000) but there was a serious amount of empty seats there too. Roma won 3-1 to delay Juventus celebrations until next week (probably) when they entertain relegation threatened Crotone. Juventus also play Lazio in the Coppa final on Wednesday.

Even allowing for the emotional scenes at White Hart Lane, atmosphere of the day was definitely in Rotterdam where Feyenoord landed their first Eredivisie title in eighteen years, thanks to a Dirk Kuyt hat-trick. The place was absolutely hopping with supporters in tears before, during and after the match. Everybody was standing from start to finish so it was like a throw back to the terrace days.

The game of the weekend must have been in Germany though, as Bayern came from 3-1 and 4-2 down against the Red Bull crowd in second place to win 5-4 with three goals in the final six minutes.

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Originally Posted by DannyInvincible

. It's well-known. Manchester City are the epitome of modern football's totally soulless club. I get that sense every single time I watch them play.

Embarrassing, but also sad in a way.

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I think that's harsh calling Man City "a totally soulless club". I for one will never forget the scenes when they scored those two late goals to beat QPR and win their first title in yonks a few years ago. City have always had a good fan base (perhaps 35K) despite living in the shadow of one of the biggest club in the world for decades - a bit like Everton and Sheffield United. However, I suspect that the non-season ticket holders don't fancy shelling out near the end of the season. I am not sure what the prices are but for a ticket for Sheffield Wednesday vs Fulham game (a Championship game) a week or so ago I had to pay £46.00 !! I would imagine the City tickets are a lot more. City have a great history, despite the chants from the red side, and I remember watching City on the Big Match with Colin Bell, Rodney Marsh and Frannie Lee in the City side and large crowds at the game. Sure they're awash with money now but that doesn't make the club soulless.

We all know that it is usually the away crowd which makes the noise at games (league, cup or internationals). The home crowd get excited every now and again but by and large (there are exceptions) there is a sporadic chant until there is a goal or some such.

Pep has a way with words - http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/socc...-now-1.3084217

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Originally Posted by Pep Guardiola

In my situation at a big club I’m sacked. I’m out. Sure. Definitely. At the clubs I worked at before I am not here [for the following season], but here we have a second chance and we will try to do it better than this season.

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Originally Posted by DeLorean

Pep has a way with words - http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/socc...-now-1.3084217

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he is correct though. man city hardly sold out a home champions league match and there were spaces at the recent Manchester derby. complete wannabees without substance

Of course but "think it, don't say it" comes to mind. :)

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Originally Posted by jbyrne

he is correct though. man city hardly sold out a home champions league match and there were spaces at the recent Manchester derby. complete wannabees without substance

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Man City ? Before the big money they had won the league twice and FA Cup 4 times and many within living memory (for me anyway :) Very unfair to say the club has no substance. 61,000 capacity in the stadium. Most clubs would find it hard to fill that no matter who they are playing. Personally I think it's great for their fans having lived in the shadow of the biggest club in the world to have their day in the sun.

Just for clarity, I was agreeing with the comment that Pep was right, that they're not a big club on the scale of Barca or Bayern. As I said earlier, they're stadium is simply too big for them but I don't think they're lacking soul or substance a such, no more so than most of the rest of the Premier League at this stage.

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Originally Posted by OwlsFan

I think that's harsh calling Man City "a totally soulless club". I for one will never forget the scenes when they scored those two late goals to beat QPR and win their first title in yonks a few years ago. City have always had a good fan base (perhaps 35K) despite living in the shadow of one of the biggest club in the world for decades - a bit like Everton and Sheffield United. However, I suspect that the non-season ticket holders don't fancy shelling out near the end of the season. I am not sure what the prices are but for a ticket for Sheffield Wednesday vs Fulham game (a Championship game) a week or so ago I had to pay £46.00 !! I would imagine the City tickets are a lot more. City have a great history, despite the chants from the red side, and I remember watching City on the Big Match with Colin Bell, Rodney Marsh and Frannie Lee in the City side and large crowds at the game. Sure they're awash with money now but that doesn't make the club soulless.

We all know that it is usually the away crowd which makes the noise at games (league, cup or internationals). The home crowd get excited every now and again but by and large (there are exceptions) there is a sporadic chant until there is a goal or some such.

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City have history - don't get me wrong - and they have thousands of committed and well-intentioned supporters who have real, deep and long-standing sentiment for the club, but I guess what I meant by "soulless" is that there's just such a massive disconnect between the club and those fans - or the local community even - now. What is a club without that real connection between itself and its fan-base, the constant that provides a club with its unique and distinct character?

I feel sorry for City fans in a way. What is their club's identity now? Is it Mancunian?... I think it would be difficult to argue that it is. Is there even a single Mancunian in or near the first-team squad? It's a team made up almost entirely of detached mercenaries who have been shipped in and who have little to no real or material contact with the supporters.* They would be off like a shot if the Abu Dhabi money-flow dried up.

City certainly aren't a unique club in this sense, but they are one of the model, classic or more amplified/egregious examples of all that's wrong with modern football. The stadium and its immediate planned-urban-landscape-style vicinity just looks corporate, uniform, clinical and utterly devoid of charm. The rounder, spacier and anything-but-intimate architecture of so many modern elite-level grounds - also all-seated, regrettably - has contributed significantly to a general decline in atmosphere and the match-day experience at games in the EPL in recent times. Fans find themselves more distant from the action on the pitch and from what's going on at the clubs they support both literally - in the physical sense - and in the emotional or sentimental sense. The Etihad Stadium, which is, of course, named after a UAE-based airline, perfectly illustrates this unfortunate phenomenon, just like the Emirates Stadium and West Ham's new ground do too.

If the whole Etihad Stadium campus could be lifted from its present location and plonked down somewhere else in the world - you could even send the entire playing squad with it - nobody would know it came from Manchester except for the fact the name of the club might be a give-away. It's like its own separate little village situated next to a dual carriage-way and an Asda superstore.

Earlier this season, City constructed a spot-lit catwalk - raised and separated off from by-standing fans at ground-level - for their players to parade across as they exited the team-bus and entered the stadium prior to a Champions League game.

http://images0.minutemediacdn.com/pr...bce000001.jpeg

I assume it was a marketing gimmick, but numerous fans were embarrassed by it and felt it was all a bit weird and ridiculous; something more suited to a fashion show or the WWE maybe.

No doubt there are lots of other City fans who couldn't care less about all this and who are content with the club pretty much buying its success, having become little more than a commercial/PR enterprise - or the play-thing of a billionaire from the other side of the planet - but it would jar with me if I was a supporter.

Judging by the empty seats at recent games (including tonight's match against West Brom) when Champions League qualification is still on the line, it also appears plenty others, however, are either turned off by it, are bored of it all, have developed a bloated sense of entitlement and expectation or simply can't afford to attend games regularly any more because they've been priced out of supporting what is less and less so their club. Whichever reason it is, those are all unfortunate symptoms of the neoliberal commodification, gentrification and sanitisation of the game in England at elite level.

*^{A possible exception to this is Vincent Kompany who, as club captain, does at least seem to try to engage off the field and embody some sort of spirit shared by those who support the club.}

Good post and much that I agree with even though I don't understand the last sentence :) Isn't it true though that City have put the most money in to their Academy to at least try and grown grassroots players? Most of your comments relate to every EPL team and I suspect they'd all develop stadiums like City's stadium if they could afford it. It will be interesting to see what Spurs' stadium ends up like. I'd say Everton would kill for a similar ground. I have seen many such scaled down stadiums in the Championship where they are plain rectangles with no character but very good views it has to be said. Hillsboro at both ends has 4 stanchions holding up the roofs which, while they give an old fashioned feel to the ground, blind the people behind them.

There is a huge gap between the players and the fans of course but I believe that the entrance you posted at City's ground is not to glorify the players but to give the fans a better view of them coming and going (your picture shows a load of kids ready and waiting for their heroes to appear).

If you're a supporter, to me anyway, it doesn't matter where the players come from, and I include Ireland here. If the player plays for the jersey that's all I want. They can drive top of the range cars, have private jets, be from the furthest point on the globe to where my clubs are based or the country I live, earn veritable millions but just playing for (not kissing) the jersey would satisfy me. We all know club players/managers are mercenaries and will go to where the next best offer comes from. I don't think the fact that the supporters now sit in clean stadiums which are owned by billionaires from foreign lands bothers them. Some supporters want success but most are happy with absence of failure provided the football served up each week isn't too dire.

Is there a chasm between the clubs and fans ? Provided they continue to attend the games it would appear not. Of course the Man City of old bares no resemblance to the current one but mostly for positive reasons - better ground, better players and probably better entertainment on the field. They are still locals who attend the game. Most of the English clubs were dying on their feet until the Far Eastern investors came along, Sheffield Wednesday being one of them: £30 million in debt and Inland Revenue on their backs. The fans love and respect the investors because now it's now the perennial relegation struggle but tilts at promotion. When the Thai King died a while back there was a minutes silence in the ground which was respected by everyone. It remains a huge club in the community, with a few foreign strange fans, and most players are foreigners as well but other than a few comments from rare and xenophobic extreme right supporters, they are regarded as if they are Yorkshiremen. The point is no matter who owns a club and who plays for them, the locals will support and this applies in Ireland, England or China.

Now, it's home to watch a certain game on Sky.

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Originally Posted by OwlsFan

Isn't it true though that City have put the most money in to their Academy to at least try and grown grassroots players?

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Maybe so, although, given City's business modus operandi, how many of them will be given an opportunity to try and break their way into the first-team?

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Most of your comments relate to every EPL team and I suspect they'd all develop stadiums like City's stadium if they could afford it. It will be interesting to see what Spurs' stadium ends up like.

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Interestingly, having taken stock of atmosphere issues in the Emirates Stadium and "teething problems" at West Ham's new London Stadium, Spurs are working with U2's concert acoustics team to help ensure the new White Hart Lane doesn't experience similar problems. Fans are also being kept as close to the pitch as possible and no front-row seat around the new ground will be more than eight meters away from the touchline, whilst the front row of a 17,000-capacity single-tier stand (designed along the lines of the Westfalenstadion's "Yellow Wall" and convertible into a safe-standing zone) behind one of the goals will be only six meters away from the end touch-line. The stadium's corners will also be closed to maintain a "claustrophobic" feel.

We'll see how it works out, but I like the sound of it and it's promising to see the experience of the club's supporters being prioritised over potential capacity. It it's a success, it'll surely provide a model example for other elite-level clubs to follow when they're redeveloping their own grounds.

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Most of the English clubs were dying on their feet until the Far Eastern investors came along, Sheffield Wednesday being one of them: £30 million in debt and Inland Revenue on their backs. The fans love and respect the investors because now it's now the perennial relegation struggle but tilts at promotion.

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I suppose it's a good example of a double-edged sword. :)

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Now, it's home to watch a certain game on Sky.

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Commiserations! That must have been a bitter pill to swallow. I thought Westwood was very unlucky not to have saved a few more of the penalties. He came close to all of them.

I notice a few EPL clubs are wearing newly-launched kits today. Clubs used to just release them during the summer off-season. Is there greater marketing potential in releasing kits for the following season at the tail-end of the previous season or is there any specific reason for this recent development (which I have noticed previous years too)?

So Big Bung Sam has departed Palace never to return to management again (unless the next dollar signs are put in front of him). Listening to John Salako's panegyric last night on Sky about him made my hackles rise (there is no cream to treat this). Poor Sam had been "stitched up" in the English job. Sorry, why did the reporters think that Sam would be interested in a bung? Did they try and set up Wenger, Pullis, Howe etc ? He was offered a bung and he fell for it. That's not "stitched up" - that's exposing corruption. To me there is no difference between acceptance of a fake offer of a bung and acceptance of a real one. The game is better off without him, until the next relegation threatened team needs a helping hand and has lots of money to spare.

Reading his comments it seems like he genuinely doesn't want to come back into the game but after six months in Spain and a chairman worrying over potential relegation Sam could be tempted by a big pay day.

Monks quitting Leeds. Off to Palace ?

Linked with Middlesbrough with Karanka (kind of) going the other way.

On your stadium comments:

I like the idea of what Spurs try to do and hopefully it pays off for them. I still don't understand how clubs during the last 15 years haven't copped on that this bowl malarkey looks cat for a soccer stadium unless it's something super like 1860 Munich's Allianz Arena. I would love some ballsy architect to give an English club something along the lines of Sporting Kansas' Stadium, Children Mercy Park. I do like a certain asymmetry to a soccer stadium.
https://kansascity-mp7static.mlsdigi...ngparkfull.jpg
https://www.google.ie/search?q=Child...w=1920&bih=925

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Originally Posted by DannyInvincible

I notice a few EPL clubs are wearing newly-launched kits today. Clubs used to just release them during the summer off-season. Is there greater marketing potential in releasing kits for the following season at the tail-end of the previous season or is there any specific reason for this recent development (which I have noticed previous years too)?

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It's been happening for over a decade at this stage. usually the team wear the new shirt on the last day of the season only. It must work cos they keep doing it.

Interestingly though. Leicester wore their 2016/2017 shirt for their last game against Everton last season and then changed back into their 2015/2016 shirt for the trophy presentation. I liked that.

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Originally Posted by OwlsFan

Monks quitting Leeds. Off to Palace ?

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How he ever got the heave ho from Swansea I don't know. CP would do well to get him.