Where were you when you was.......

[southlondonyiddo]

Hmm not sure some of that stacks up. For a start, we averaged over 30k when we were in division 2 in 77/78, the very definition of "where were you when we were shit? At the fucking game".

Also we averaged 35k when we won the cup in 82, so he's chosen a specific time period to make his point. That said, we seem to have had some appalling average attendances in the mid-80s, starting with the UEFA win, when we had a great team, competing in the league and getting to cup finals. Anyone know why that was? I have a blind spot in my memory/history as I was very young.

http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attnclub/toth.htm

But to be fair, I can see why it's hit a nerve. They're not a Chelsea, who have attracted loads of complete celebrity non-Chelsea fans to a club that was always a top tier club but a bit shitty, at just the wrong time. It's given them, through the Sky propensity to act like nothing pre-Premier League happened, the illusion of historical importance that isn't there, but their fans and the media are all too happy to buy into.

Yes City are an oil money club, but it's Manchester City, no one suggests they're historically important, they came through on the second wave of investment, and support doesn't seem to have been infiltrated yet to that degree. Most City fans I know are real football fans, old-school City, who have a slightly "well, what do you know?" approach to the whole thing. It's almost like a pure experiment in 'has finance fucked football'.

I really don't hate City as, like Qatar getting the World Cup, it feels to me like if they win, they just prove what we all know to be true but people don't want to admit.

But anyway, bantz innit. Don't take it so seriously, chap

i would guess that all league attendances were terrible around that period. Football hooliganism was at its darkest and to be a supporter in those days and go to games was something similar to going on a fox hunt today. We were about as popular as The Miners were for that **** Thatcher.

All football supporters were thought of as scum and the game had a terrible name with virtually everyone outside that bubble. There were zero football lovies and the very thought of anyone trendy or 'intellectual' having any interest in the beautiful game was unthinkable

A million miles away from the rock star game we see today....

 

[Dougal]

It was sung to wind them up. It wound them up. Job done. Now, does this paper have a match report too? What's that you say? We won? Job done there too.

 

[riggi]

alright ah la we took 20''000 when we were in div 2....

 

[eddiev14]

They're an easy target.

Not sure i'd give a shit what people were singing if we were winning titles and had players like Aguero, De Bruyne etc.

 

[Sir Henry]

Next time they are in town this needs to be sang for 90 mins, I'd love to see half of them implode.

 

[Dougal]

And it's 'Where were you when you were shit?'. I could just edit the title but I feel this is a major problem that needs highlighting for so many Londoners. Really bugged me that I worked under a Manager and Deputy Manager who used 'was' constantly. I may even get the Manchester Evening News to write an column to set the record straight but Mancs have their own problems.

 

[thinktank]

Looks like the Northern press/City fans didn't take too well to our chant to them on Sunday......

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co...ws/man-city-attendances-average-fans-11975875

Manchester City fans were again on the receiving end of THAT taunt, this time at Tottenham - so how does it hold up to scrutiny?

They were at it again at White Hart Lane on Sunday, fans with no sense of history and no comprehension of irony. “Where were you when you were s**t?” the Tottenham fans sang at the near-3,000 Manchester City fans, questioning the fealty of an away support that had spent a fortune and endured a ten-hour round trip to support their team.

Even when you factor in the truth that football chants rarely have their roots in reality, but rather tend to be a vulgar attempt to hit a nerve, throwing that particular nonsense at City fans is just daft. Especially when, for the past 13 seasons – which pre-dates Sheikh Mansour's revolutionary takeover – the Blues have had bigger attendances than the north Londoners.

Ah, you can hear the the Cockerel crow, but Spurs have been almost at full capacity during that period – and that is true, hence the current re-build to create a new 61,000-seater stadium. But even when you delve back in the history books to when City truly were “s**t” and Tottenham had a bigger capacity, the taunt does not hold up.

From 1982 to 1986 City, and football in general, were in decline. The Blues spent two of those seasons in the second division and did not finish above tenth – they averaged 26,981 in a stadium that held 48,200.

In that same period, Spurs had a thrilling team which included Glenn Hoddle and exotic Argentina internationals Ossie Ardile and Ricky Villa. They won the FA Cup and Uefa Cup, and finished in the top four in three out of five seasons. In that spell, they averaged 28,830 in a stadium that held 52,600. Less than two thousand fans more than the struggling Blues.

Any City fan who can fit that into a riposte chant is a genius! And it's not just Tottenham fans who are guilty of such misplaced ignorance – City's support stands up alongside anyone in the country in terms of consistency. No-one has the right to call them fair-weather fans.

Jealous fans of other Premier League teams have completely re-invented their attitude to City fans, over the last eight years. Back in the day, the Blues were generally well-liked, partly because they were not United, partly because they were no threat to the established big clubs, and partly because their fans had a reputation for not taking themselves too seriously.

As with every other club, success – and rising ticket prices - has brought a new breed of fan to City. But the core of their support remains, even if many of them can no longer afford to go to every game, and tend to pick and choose their games.

And that hard-core of loyal away support tends to be the people who HAVE stuck with City from the lean times, fans who have enjoyed the full football experience, from Barnsley to Barcelona.

They were the people who were still supporting their team as they slipped to their first defeat of the season at White Hart Lane.

And if the wishes of opposition fans come true, and one day City are plunged back into relative obscurity, they are the fans who will STILL be cheering on their sky blue heroes, whether it be Shaun Goater or Sergio Aguero.

 

[jonnyrotten]

tbf always saw Citeh and Everton for that matter as similar to us ..... but inevitably when the the oil money came rolling into town
they acquired a whole new fan base and a general sense of entitlement both of which are pretty distasteful.

Are you sure the same thing isn't happening/going to happen to us? Success breeds tw@ts and tourists tbh, regardless of who the club is.

 

[spursgirls]

IIRC they sang it at our fans first, and our fans sang it back at them?

 

[StartingPrice]

Jaysus really did weep! What it with us, chants, bantz and oppos fans? I swear, anyone and everyone who were pursuing another team has sang "we're coming for you", we did it last year and Leicester fans got all wobbly chin boo hooing upset about it. Everyone and everyone has sang about a club who went through a period of decline and then success has had "where were you when you were sh*t" sang at them. We do it to Citeh, and there's wobbly chin boo hooing about it. Despite singing "you're sh*t and you know you are" at us for decades, I'm still kinda expecting a summons from wobbly chin boo hooing United fans because we dang it at them at the Lane last year when we gubbed them 3 nil.

What the fahook is wrong with people!

Hmm not sure some of that stacks up. For a start, we averaged over 30k when we were in division 2 in 77/78, the very definition of "where were you when we were shit? At the fucking game".

Also we averaged 35k when we won the cup in 82, so he's chosen a specific time period to make his point. That said, we seem to have had some appalling average attendances in the mid-80s, starting with the UEFA win, when we had a great team, competing in the league and getting to cup finals. Anyone know why that was? I have a blind spot in my memory/history as I was very young.

http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attnclub/toth.htm

But to be fair, I can see why it's hit a nerve. They're not a Chelsea, who have attracted loads of complete celebrity non-Chelsea fans to a club that was always a top tier club but a bit shitty, at just the wrong time. It's given them, through the Sky propensity to act like nothing pre-Premier League happened, the illusion of historical importance that isn't there, but their fans and the media are all too happy to buy into.

Yes City are an oil money club, but it's Manchester City, no one suggests they're historically important, they came through on the second wave of investment, and support doesn't seem to have been infiltrated yet to that degree. Most City fans I know are real football fans, old-school City, who have a slightly "well, what do you know?" approach to the whole thing. It's almost like a pure experiment in 'has finance fucked football'.

I really don't hate City as, like Qatar getting the World Cup, it feels to me like if they win, they just prove what we all know to be true but people don't want to admit.

But anyway, bantz innit. Don't take it so seriously, chap

This is not a definitive answer, just a suggestion, but the hooli problem really hit attendances in the 1980s. That might have had something to do with it.

 

[npearl4spurs]

Someone is quite butthurt

 

[Chilli]

It's one thing to see a fan bite at a football chant, but a newspaper dedicating a whole article due to it biting...wow lol

 

[Gassin's finest]

Just a larf innit?

 

[Ironskullll]

I stopped reading the article when it said our capacity was 52,600 in the early to mid eighties. What a load of bollox

The last time WHL capacity was over 50k was way back in 1977 when we got over 50,000 v Bolton

Yes, and that was in the old second division. (We did have a few crowds over 50k after that though, right up until the old west stand was rebuilt.) What happened in the 80s was that people were getting killed at football matches and followers of the game in general became hugely disillusioned with the whole culture of supporting teams and going to games. It hit Spurs worse than most, IMHO, because of incidents such as supporters getting thrown from trains - there was at least one such Spurs related death during the 80s caused by this.

 

[youngyids]

And it's 'Where were you when you were shit?'. I could just edit the title but I feel this is a major problem that needs highlighting for so many Londoners. Really bugged me that I worked under a Manager and Deputy Manager who used 'was' constantly. I may even get the Manchester Evening News to write an column to set the record straight but Mancs have their own problems.

May I propose the official Spurscommunity Grammar Thread to you? http://spurscommunity.co.uk/index.p...onents-fans-are-saying-about-us-16-17.125680/

 

[tony0379]

Apparently there was an Asian guy with a Man Utd shirt on in the away end on Sunday.