I Predict A Riot.
Thanks to those that emailed regarding the two empty rows in the south stand for the game V Charlton , while I have been aware of the problems for a while , a deeper look into the situation reveals a potentially explosive situation in more ways than one.
Just a quick scan of various message boards and city websites shows a varied but always passionate take on these events and provides the club with a diffusion act on a hand grenade with the pin already pulled of a situation.
So what's it all about alfie ? Its starts with Lord Chief Justice Taylors report in to the Hillsborough Tragedy which decreed all football stadia to be all seater. Local councils issue safety certificates under interpretations of the report. The local council now happens to be our landlords ! Which would appear to be a major factor in the current situation.
At Maine Road as many stood as do now but there appeared to be no problem , in fact the only mention of problems came from the Buccs over in Stretford with the council regularly threatening to close parts of the swamp (but never actually doing so?)
And so to Sundays events , two full rows closed with the normal residents apparently sent a letter and dispatched to all sides of the ground with scant regard shown for people who normally sit together and more importantly an almost 'punish the class' attitude shown by the club as they moved people may not have broken any rules , ever. Rumours from stewards that more rows would be closed until the problem is resolved have not been confirmed.
From the fans perspective ; more annoyance that its the 117 block that is been routinely monitored and indeed cracked down upon when away fans are left alone seems to be the main objection. The other that the 'rules' are killing football and that they would rather be banned than sit down and become one of the 'happy clap' brigade.
And so to the conundrum that now faces the club : how to keep the council and the fans happy.
As much as I would like to see along with many others a return to standing , and given the magnificent access in our stadium it would not be a huge problem to put a second set of turnstiles in the concourse to enter an enclosed section for season ticket holders only which was monitored by CCTV ( too easy ?) its never going to happen. The police , FA and even the clubs don't want it. As we all give our hard earned cash to only industry that only expects loyalty from its customers should we expect anymore ?
Well yes ! in this situation its upto the club to open meaningful dialogue with not only the fans affected but all the fans to get there opinion on this. If the club sat and listened went away and tried to get the views of the fans implemented or at least heard im sure most fans would feel a lot happier and maybe even more compliant with the situation if the the consequences were spelt out to them , however , I doubt it. The club appears to be cut off from the fans, paying only lip service to likes of point of blue the solution may well end up been trouble on the terraces once again if sundays incident goes up just one notch and sub 40k crowds next season.
Some more views :
citymancs
bluewatch
Any comments on this welcome.
17 comments:
What is the problem here? People have died in standing only areas, I've yet to here about people being crushed to death in an all-seated arena. Get a grip on reality and argue about something more important. Being seated is part of the restrictions you accept when buying your ticket. If you don't want to sit - go somewhere else.
Seeing the club move on, improve and do well is far mor important.
People died in the dreadful Hillsborough disaster in 1989. That was 17 years ago and that is why standing is now banned. 17 years is such a short period of time and yet technology has advanced, if fractionally, in that time. We now have a few trivial improvements such as the internet and computers which don't need tape players and cd burners and id schemes and ways of picking people out in a crowd from their appearance on a cctv camera and ways of managing human movement to such an extent that the Germans, hardly risk takers, allow some limited standing in their stadia.
Of course the football authorities know they can simply demand loyalty from the customers they fleece.
They know that there will always be supporters willing to stump up the cash and pay the outrageous sums required from the various concession stands, for the programmes, for the overpriced tickets. And if they have to pump in a canned atmosphere then that's what they'll have to do.
Personally I wonder what would happen if we were to make our feelings really felt but I know we can't do it. There's no way all 40,000 fans in there would be disciplined or organised enough to do the one thing that might cause people to sit up and take notice. The fact is that the atmosphere is deteriorating beyond what ought to be acceptable. If we gave it a push and showed them just what we think of it... I don't think we could do it though.
If we could all turn up, not buy the programme, not spend any money other than our tickets (many of us have season tickets anyway) and sit, for the whole match, in complete silence.
all of us
in complete silence...
no atmostphere, no encouraging the team, not a peep - even if we score - like a minute's silence but for 90 minutes.
no buying anything from the hotdog place or the bar.
don't give them any of your money
just us, sat, in silence, for the match
a bit like being on strike except we get to see the footie too - and make a hell of a point under the media spotlight.
Because if the club want their twelfth man in the stadium they can provide the facilities we want. We aren't demanding £28,000/week but we are demanding the opportunity to support our club properly.
Calm down, calm down, it is only a commercial!!
When you say don't buy anything, don't buy a programme, just sit quietly , making no noise- do you mean like we normally do?
The franchise security company's stewards follow company instructions. They are not vetted in any way by the club, and many, of course are reds. Gives them a license to attack City fans with the full backing of the club.
Time the club booted out these clowns and trouble-makers. The catering franchisees should be the next to go.
The Taylor Report called for seating, not to make people sit down, but to act as continuous barriers to prevent sick scousers from hurling themselves forwards, breaking the existing barriers, and committing mass suicide. Nowhere does it state that people must sit on the seats. Having installed the seating the club are in full compliance - end of...
Leave the fans alone.
People die every day in car crashes and people die every day while drinking alcohol, so what does the government do, they allow faster cars to be built and sell alcohol 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year…if you get your facts right, the people who died at Hillsborough dint die because they stood up, (how f@*!ing insulting is that?) they died because of gross negligence and the utmost of incompetence on behalf of the people who were being paid to protect them, i.e. Police, Ground Officials the FA, FIFA and the Government for starters, and to blame the death of 96 football fans on themselves its shows a total injustice and criminal misuse of the truth and a lack of intelligence on your behalf! Forcing people to sit down is nothing more than a class thing with an attitude of we know best, If I go into ASDA or any other shop I am greeted with sale prices and offers and usually a smiling face, that’s because they are targeting their customers but if you look all around the City of Manchester Stadium you see posters all over about Stopping Hooligans and Kick out Racism…are they trying to say something? You don’t know when your being had over, that’s your problem. When people pay money they have the right to complain!
city til i die
And your point is? If you had run a poll of football supporters country-wide asking "Which football club's supporters are most likely to be involved in a crushing incident?" there wouldn't even have been a club in second place. Everyone knew it was going to happen. The victims were the poor Sheff Wed supporters who got the fall out from all the whingeing and whining that went up.
Read the Taylor Report - it makes it clear that a major contributory factor was the failure to realise that Hillsborough just wasn't capable of withstanding that type of behaviour.
So all the other English football supporters had to suffer - as they had after Heysel. And the club involved at Heysel was....?
My point is that we have to stand up for ourselves and not to let this hypocritical bunch of doo-gooders force good people to sit down for no reason other than some Twits ill thought out report that had to be seen to be doing something, I don’t remember any official being charged with the Hillsbourgh disaster, what the report basically said was ‘we know it was the fault of the Police and Officials but we have to protect our friends so we have no choice but to point the finger at you so sit down when watching games it was all your own fault’ but I do remember Police officers claiming money for watching people die while relatives of those who died got nothing, your views against scousers is clear but have some respect for those who died…I am for safe standing, they can place men women and apes in space and land on the moon, they can send moving images through space, they have invisible armies we also have mind control by force feeding propaganda through its terrestrial media channels on a never-ending cycle, so we must be able to control an area of a closed stadium for safe standing for 2 hours each week? If not why not?
city til i die
You are still missing the point. I have every respect for those who died - they were the ones who arrived in good time for the game, and were waiting in anticipation. They didn't expect to be murdered. And it wasn't the police, or the ground authorities, or the government who pushed, and pushed, and pushed, until the barriers could no longer stand the strain, and carried on pushing until all those innocent people had been crushed to death.
I am not missing any point, those people who went into that pen at Hillsborough didn’t know how many fans fit into it nor did they control who goes into it… do you think if those FENCES were not there that they still would have died?..NO…do you think if they opened the EMPTY pens to the side, those people would have died?...NO…do you think if the stewards and Police only allowed the CORRECT amount of people into the pen those people would have died?...NO…When I use to go to a Maine Road I didn’t count how many people are in the Kippax with me, I trusted the stewards and Police with that, since I was not expecting to die. I went to watch a football game and so did those 96 Liverpool fans, many was kids, if you was late for something, you tend to rush to get there on time, same with the late Liverpool supporters, only they should have been directed to the empty pen. Standing didn’t kill anyone! The fault was the authorities; they are the ones being paid to controlled and guarantee the safety of those supporters. Standing up has never killed anybody, fences trapped people like animals, people pushing to watch a game, they should never have been allowed in that section, the people who pushed wasn’t murderers nor was they guilty of any crime, they wasn’t in control of the ground.
city til i die
I agree with wigan blue, you are missing the point. If Hillsborough had been all-seated then there wouldn't have been too many people trying to push their way into that area of the ground, only those with tickets for those seats would have entered!
Like most disasters it is combination of things that caused the terrible scenes that day. What is not in dispute is that it would not have happened in an all seated arena.
Whatever,
Our sport has been changed beyond all recognition. You may think it has changed for the better - personally I have my doubts. Certainly there have been improvements - Peter Barnes would have become an international superstar in today's climate. But personally, I object to losing the right to stand in the standing section - if I want to. I have seen many contributions from this and other sites that say that people have valid reasons for not being able. or not wanting to stand. In the days before Hillsborough we all had a choice.
Has the world gone MAD!!!!!! Or maybe its just you lot. Hillsbourgh was NOT caused by scousers going mad and niether was Heysal.Both were caused by gross negligence by the authorities. We pay over the odds for tickets to pay for 'the running of the club' Let people stand, bring back the atmosphere, make the POLICE earn their wages and done properly Hillsbourgh and Heysal WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN
Lets go back to Maine Road but rip all the seats out first!!!!! Every City fan you meet would love to be back in the Kippax(before they ruined it).
It's not about your choice - I used to stand on the Kippax as a 10 year old, I remember being shoved to the front to sit on the wall at the front, fantastic!. However as a 10 year old I had no idea what could happen.
I do remember though the feeling of not being in control when the fans surged forwards. It doesn't matter what age you are the force of 1000s of people moving as one is impossible to resist, accidents will happen
In all standing areas there will always be the chance of trouble occuring.
As I said earlier it not about choice, it's about safety.
Ian: - Its all about choice, we are not yet living in a full dictatorship (although not far off), example, many people die everyday in ALL SEATER car crashes, so nobody calls for the banning of cars, they demand safer cars, planes crash on a regular yearly basis, same again, nobody demands they stop flying ALL SEATER planes, they want safer planes, same with ALL SEATER ships, same with walking across roads, ALL SEATER space shuttles, its goes on and on and its absolutely outrageous to ban outright something that has been around for over 150 years, and people massing in arenas has gone on for thousands of years without, to my knowledge any real ancient disaster worth a note…
You mention being a 10 year old in the Kippax, this is exactly my point, we all know that back in those days Clubs including City took our money and packed us in cages with no real concern for our safety, on many occasions there must have been 40,000 in the Kippax alone but yet the crowd attendance never went over 45,000, we also know that they manipulated the figures in order to swindle the TAX so they can pay their bungs for transfers etc (Terry Vanables, Brian Clough and all the top managers of the day). We are asking NOT for a ban, with a brutal Stalinist approach, we are asking for SAFE standing, remember these words, “SAFE STANDING”, please feel FREE to repeat those words, SAFE STANDING, many lessons have been learnt in the past couple of decades and it is not too much to ask clubs to offer the PAYING customer a CHOICE for our hard earned cash, which will inevitably has a significant effect and create a greater atmosphere and excitement to many a dull game for the new “10 year old” and everyone else who have missed out of what we use to enjoy. So please don’t tell me standing kills people, unless you have seen a death certificate with the cause of death as ‘Standing’
Ian, are you Sir Ian Blair by any chance? The traitor and anti British friend of the liar and dictator Prime Minister Blair? Really Sir Ian its you that needs to "Get a grip on reality", shall we all wrap ourselves up in cotton wool and bubble wrap?
Sir Ian the title of this Blog is “I Predict A Riot” if you want I could give you my address and me and you could DOUBLE OR QUITS this conversation in the car park. And I could knock some sense in your autocratic communist head!
Ok, ok, the sir Ian bit was just a joke…but I do firmly believe in Choice, and Safe Standing should be a choice we have, since it was a choice not so long ago…and it is totally understandable that people can over react when 96 people lose their lives I say over react not as a disrespectful thing to those poor people, but as a way of saying not all what was done by Lord Justice Taylor was thought out thoroughly and I’m sure Mr Taylor has never been a football supporter or even been to any football match, and in my opinion if something isn’t done to allow some sort of atmosphere to come back to the our national sport, then I’m afraid it will only be detrimental to the game as a whole. Ian, was it OK in your opinion to have mass standing at Live 8 ? The rest of the world has no problem with standing.
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