Manchester City - Jesus saves, Ederson plays - MCFC - OK!

[Jay Park]

Remember rumblings about how come the Nevilles didn't put their money there considering their dad was a lifelong part of the club but seems they preferred Salford as they could do what they wanted with it, similar to what we had with Dale Vince but in spades.

who's Dale Vince, may I ask?

and funny thing is, Salford's ground is called Moor Lane, but the fans entrance is on Neville Road

 

[JimW]

This thing about "legacy" fans with the ESL proposal got me, as it's that legacy that makes these "brands" valuable and while they might be able to do the moveable franchise of galacticos for a while would think eventually they'd find they'd killed the goose that lays. Not really up on the scene here of Chinese fans of European clubs but my impression is most interest is betting driven then next they do look for something "authentic". Maybe the former is global enough to make the circus work

 

[JimW]

who's Dale Vince, may I ask?

and funny thing is, Salford's ground is called Moor Lane, but the fans entrance is on Neville Road

Bought my team Forest Green Rovers, ex-traveller green energy millionaire and veggie activist, changed the home strip to match corporate branding and has now stopped selling meat products, pissed off some of the old school but since he's taken us from conference perennials to lower league crowds are actually a bit up and it's still just about recognisably the same club. Do get a lot of moaning about how he's more interested in club as a megaphone than a community sporting endeavour which is not without basis but he is progressing the academy and so on as well.
First watched us as a Step three side not long after we moved down to Glos, they'd not long since won the FA Vase which remains out major honour

 

[Jay Park]

This thing about "legacy" fans with the ESL proposal got me, as it's that legacy that makes these "brands" valuable and while they might be able to do the moveable franchise of galacticos for a while would think eventually they'd find they'd killed the goose that lays. Not really up on the scene here of Chinese fans of European clubs but my impression is most interest is betting driven then next they do look for something "authentic". Maybe the former is global enough to make the circus work

yeah they usually pick a club and stick with them, right? Obviously that being their understanding of what soccer is all about. Which it kind of is.

 

[JimW]

yeah they usually pick a club and stick with them, right? Obviously that being their understanding of what soccer is all about. Which it kind of is.

Seem to, only tangential knowledge I have is a sports bar I used to go and watch a few games in which was also a base for a local Arsenal supporters group who might have jumped on the invincibles season but then stuck with them in relatively thinner times. Think it works the same for the other major European leagues.

 

[editor]

just wondering who to choose.

If you want to give a rough idea of where you live you can let urban decide!

I've started following Peckham Town FC who are in the Kent County League Premier Division, which is Step 7 of the National League System. At this level your presence can make a real difference and there's plenty of ways to get involved with the club and its community.

There's loads of space around the pitch, you can stand/sit wherever you want, have a drink any place you feel like it and - most importantly of all - you're free to have a chat with other fans with a bunch of hi-viz stewards bellowing at you to sit down/comply/whatrever.

Peckham Town cruise past Otford United with a 4-1 home victory in front of a record-breaking crowd, Sat 24th Oct 2020

The weather conditions weren’t ideal but the result was perfect, with Peckham Town sweeping aside Otford United 4-1 in an entertaining encounter at the menace Arena this afternoon. Once again…

www.brixtonbuzz.com

 

[editor]

yeah they usually pick a club and stick with them, right? Obviously that being their understanding of what soccer is all about. Which it kind of is.

Cardiff City was picked for me by virtue of the being my home town - and rightly so - but when it comes to a point where you don't even recognise the thing you fell in love with any more and you feel like you and your fellow fans are being seen as little more than a (minor) revenue stream, well, it's time to move on.

 

[JimW]

If you want to give a rough idea of where you live you can let urban decide!

I've started following Peckham Town FC who are in the Kent County League Premier Division, which is Step 7 of the National League System. At this level your presence can make a real difference and there's plenty of ways to get involved with the club and its community.

There's loads of space around the pitch, you can stand/sit wherever you want, have a drink any place you feel like it and - most importantly of all - you're free to have a chat with other fans with a bunch of hi-viz stewards bellowing at you to sit down/comply/whatrever.

The other Stroud district side I've been to a few is Brimscombe and Thrupp who are up to step 5 now (Hellenic Prem), lovely ground and neat little clubhouse but somehow more for the stroll and the beers, just slightly too park footie for me to really engage for some reason.

 

[editor]

The other Stroud district side I've been to a few is Brimscombe and Thrupp who are up to step 5 now (Hellenic Prem), lovely ground and neat little clubhouse but somehow more for the stroll and the beers, just slightly too park footie for me to really engage for some reason.

Well there is of course a trade off with the quality of football, but it's still pretty good, and if any player starts all that fake foul nonsense you see at corporate level, they rightly get laughed off the pitch.

Nothing will match the atmosphere of a top level game in front of thousands of fans, but then that can't compete with the friendliness, sociability and fun you find at local non league games.

 

[JimW]

Well there is of course a trade off with the quality of football, but it's still pretty good, and if any player starts all that fake foul nonsense you see at corporate level, they rightly get laughed off the pitch.

Nothing will match the atmosphere of a top level game in front of thousands of fans, but then that can't compete with the friendliness, sociability and fun you find at local non league games.

Yep, never really been to top level football but I do need a bit more of a crowd to really get into in, even if it's just the several hundreds as was often the case in my more regular FGR attending days. Away at North Ferriby and the like

 

[RD2003]

err yes, exactly (100k in today's money) - as I said, completely different and irrelevant to the point I was making. millions of similar examples over last nigh-on 100 years of football. are they similar to what's happened at city? no.

Where have you got that figure from?

The only point is that Gibson stopped them from going under and laid the basis for future success at a time when it was, financially and otherwise, a far more simple game. There is absolutely no difference between what happened there, or in any similar situation last century, and what City's owners have done. If you want success you need investment, and if you want to reach the top it takes investment on that scale now. That's why no other club has done similar, and yet so many people insist on fooling themselves that West Brom or Sunderland (for example, no comment on those particular clubs) could end up winning the Champions' League if only they put their minds to it.

 

[The39thStep]

Cardiff City was picked for me by virtue of the being my home town - and rightly so - but when it comes to a point where you don't even recognise the thing you fell in love with any more and you feel like you and your fellow fans are being seen as little more than a (minor) revenue stream, well, it's time to move on.

Didn’t you have a soft spot for Man Utd at one time ?

 

[Jay Park]

Bought my team Forest Green Rovers, ex-traveller green energy millionaire and veggie activist, changed the home strip to match corporate branding and has now stopped selling meat products, pissed off some of the old school but since he's taken us from conference perennials to lower league crowds are actually a bit up and it's still just about recognisably the same club. Do get a lot of moaning about how he's more interested in club as a megaphone than a community sporting endeavour which is not without basis but he is progressing the academy and so on as well.
First watched us as a Step three side not long after we moved down to Glos, they'd not long since won the FA Vase which remains out major honour

22 years ago City got beat by Mansfield

Seem to, only tangential knowledge I have is a sports bar I used to go and watch a few games in which was also a base for a local Arsenal supporters group who might have jumped on the invincibles season but then stuck with them in relatively thinner times. Think it works the same for the other major European leagues.

I filled in for a semester at a Foreign Language Middle School in Shenzhen. They had a lovely 2/3s astro turf pitch. When I started it was was mahem. 20 v 30 with the older lads always hammering the younger ones.

I split the pitch in two and used the hockey nets at both sides. Started off with age and then divided them into ability. They hated it at first. I even got them doing warm-up passing drills

There was one girl, she had a wonderful first touch but because of of the bedlam never played. When she was given that outlet and a bit of space to play she excelled.

a lot of em still email me about their uni life and how they still play; and how I gave them the confidence to play (excuse the hubris).

long story short those students that had a team have kept it.

I miss those days. Some very sporting talented kids but they were all rich and their parents wanted them to study. Not learn how best to head a cross into the net, or trap a ball on the turn.

 

[editor]

Didn’t you have a soft spot for Man Utd at one time ?

That's because my grandad - who was from Salford - was one of their longest serving employees. We used to visit Manchester regularly as kids and I met quite a few of the players and saw United play fairly regularly. So yes, I did develop a bit of a soft spot for United, but Cardiff remained my main team.

 

[Jay Park]

Didn’t you have a soft spot for Man Utd at one time ?

I did, grew up in a house of reds. Took all the British Eagle stickers of my BMX and put Cantona ones on. Then I went Maine Road for my first game. My uncle was priced out of Old Trafford in the early 90's. He'd been going every game for 20 years

 

[Jay Park]

That's because my grandad - who was from Salford - was one of their longest serving employees. We used to visit Manchester regularly as kids and I met quite a few of the players and saw United play fairly regularly. So yes, I did develop a bit of a soft spot for United, but Cardiff remained my main team.

Hard not to, such history.

 

[editor]

Yep, never really been to top level football but I do need a bit more of a crowd to really get into in, even if it's just the several hundreds as was often the case in my more regular FGR attending days. Away at North Ferriby and the like

This is the kind of thing I like about non league football. Not sanitised. Down to earth. No prima donna players.

 

[Jay Park]

Cardiff City was picked for me by virtue of the being my home town - and rightly so - but when it comes to a point where you don't even recognise the thing you fell in love with any more and you feel like you and your fellow fans are being seen as little more than a (minor) revenue stream, well, it's time to move on.

totally with ya. Hard as it is, been coming to this decision for a good few years now.

I mean, it's somewhat a part of your identity that you are letting go. Family too. Lost ones.

it all applies to what you're saying, we cannot fight unbridled capitalism and still follow this money game. Pure dichotomy

 

[JimW]

This is the kind of thing I like about non league football. Not sanitised. Down to earth. No prima donna players.

View attachment 267889

The path to our way into North Ferriby went through a load of allotments, though as it happens I think they'd only climbed to a national division with a bit of financial doping from some offshoot of the family who owned Hull City who then left them high and dry. Everyone is waiting for us to do a Rushden and Diamonds but to be fair to Vince he's showing no signs of that. Proof will come when we see how he sets up ownership of the new stadium he's building, so the club can survive as an entity with or without him (or not).

 

[Jay Park]

The path to our way into North Ferriby went through a load of allotments, though as it happens I think they'd only climbed to a national division with a bit of financial doping from some offshoot of the family who owned Hull City who then left them high and dry. Everyone is waiting for us to do a Rushden and Diamonds but to be fair to Vince he's showing no signs of that. Proof will come when we see how he sets up ownership of the new stadium he's building, so the club can survive as an entity with or without him (or not).

hopefully you can. Forest Green Rovers is such a wonderful name. They play in green and gold?

 

[JimW]

hopefully you can. Forest Green Rovers is such a wonderful name. They play in green and gold?

Green and black tiger stripes now The trad kit was a Grimsby-esque black and white stripes though and the change was one of the big bones of contention in his early tenure. Though a previous attempt at a rebrand under other owners had been even worse, renaming to Stroud Fc to try to link to the biggest town - Forest Green is a hamlet suburb of a small mill town that's just a village itself really.

 

[editor]

The path to our way into North Ferriby went through a load of allotments, though as it happens I think they'd only climbed to a national division with a bit of financial doping from some offshoot of the family who owned Hull City who then left them high and dry. Everyone is waiting for us to do a Rushden and Diamonds but to be fair to Vince he's showing no signs of that. Proof will come when we see how he sets up ownership of the new stadium he's building, so the club can survive as an entity with or without him (or not).

To be honest, the fun started to dilute quite rapidly when Dulwich Hamlet got promoted to the National League South when we had to encounter more chopsy away fans, player histrionics and segregation at some grounds.

 

[Jay Park]

Green and black tiger stripes now The trad kit was a Grimsby-esque black and white stripes though and the change was one of the big bones of contention in his early tenure. Though a previous attempt at a rebrand under other owners had been even worse, renaming to Stroud Fc to try to link to the biggest town - Forest Green is a hamlet suburb of a small mill town that's just a village itself really.

and Rushden and Diamonds, 3rd div late 90s. What happened to them?

 

[JimW]

To be honest, the fun started to dilute quite rapidly when Dulwich Hamlet got promoted to the National League South when we had to encounter more chopsy away fans, player histrionics and segregation at some ground.

We had about twenty seasons in the Conference national so it was what I was most used to, still not all segregated but definitely more common, often stupidly as there were usually only a few dozen of us. All gone now in the EFL of course - we really rattled around in some of them segregated away ends even though the following is up to a regular couple of hundred.

 

[JimW]

and Rushden and Diamonds, 3rd div late 90s. What happened to them?

Up in a puff of smoke when Griggs, the Doc Martens bloke, stopped putting the money in. There's a phoenix side up and running.

 

[Jay Park]

Up in a puff of smoke when Griggs, the Doc Martens bloke, stopped putting the money in. There's a phoenix side up and running.

alas, we won't be the fans of our 'legend clubs'. The rest of the world will be.

 

[Jay Park]

We had about twenty seasons in the Conference national so it was what I was most used to, still not all segregated but definitely more common, often stupidly as there were usually only a few dozen of us. All gone now in the EFL of course - we really rattled around in some of them segregated away ends even though the following is up to a regular couple of hundred.

away days, the best days.

Apart from the late 70s when a load of Leeds fans ran my Dad, Uncle, and Grandad down a dead end.

 

[JimW]

away days, the best days.

Apart from the late 70s when a load of Leeds fans ran my Dad, Uncle, and Grandad down a dead end.

Loved it and it was a lot less lairy at our level though of course you did get the odd occasion, sometimes where you weren't expecting at smaller places. When we got into the league we attracted a few new younger lads who had obviously watched a bit too much Green Street who were a bit embarrassing from our side but basically all mouth.

 

[Jay Park]

Loved it and it was a lot less lairy at our level though of course you did get the odd occasion, sometimes where you weren't expecting at smaller places. When we got into the league we attracted a few new younger lads who had obviously watched a bit too much Green Street who were a bit embarrassing from our side but basically all mouth.

fucking Green Street! I'd already seen through Scarface as the homo-erotic appeal it was, when I was 15. Green Street wasn't even that bad it was good. It was just... you get the point

 

[tommers]

We've moved about 400 yards away from the Folkestone Invicta ground, looking forward to going down there when the season starts.