The Home End : Away Fans - a City fans perspective

In this piece we will be revisiting the fixtures I attended at the Etihad this year, specifically focusing on the ‘Away’ end and what they offered. I was fortunate (or in some cases, unfortunate) enough to sit metres away from over 20 sets of fans this year, and in part 1 we will be exploring the worst of these. Now, what makes them the worst? How do we judge this without it simply becoming a smear piece? The factors I’ll be judging are things we can universally understand and that measure to a relative extent. I cannot express this enough – this isn’t about rivalry and it isn’t about longstanding animosity. Nor is it about the result or wider narratives that can surround the teams – this is the match itself, on the day. How did they represent their teams? People reading this and expecting to see certain teams in Red on here just because I’m a Bertie (bitter old Blue) will be disappointed. If they bring it on the day, you’ve got to recognise that.The factors we will be looking at include:

Volume – It does what it says on the tin. If I couldn’t hear myself think but all they were doing is repeating their club’s name over and over, they’re still getting a 10 here.

Chants – The quality of their chants. The spontaneity, the creativity, the humour. Look away now, Arsenal and Chelsea – this one isn’t for you.

Vibe – The general attitude, environment and behaviour of fans. Whether they’re lighting a few flares and getting violent outside the stadium, or having a party in the stands whilst their team are being punked by 4 first-half goals, I’ll do my best to mark this.

Stepping Up – Did they get behind their team when they needed it? How did they handle the context of the game? Again, lot of nuance here but we’ll do our best.

Attendance – Bums on seats. Note, this isn’t a counting exercise – It will be judged in accordance with the size of that club’s fanbase and the difficulty to attend the fixture.

3 of the worst

Starting off with the bad stuff so we can end on a high, and to all you cynics, It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact you all love a bit of animosity and kicking off with a bit of spice is just good marketing – that’s just a happy accident.These are just the fixtures that, after some reflection simply stood out. In no particular order……

United

03/03/24 – MCFC 3 – 1 MUFC

No, I know. You’re rolling your eyes, and I get it. But hear me out. They didn’t bring it on the day. They didn’t sell out, they barely sang and then plenty of them slunk out. Part of me can’t blame them – few teams outside of Manchester have experienced a greater change in fortunes (for better or worse) so it must be hard to watch, and getting behind a team so unlikeable and insipid must be tough on the psyche after a long train ride. Regardless, this is a derby, so the standard has to be set higher.

Volume – Barring a 10 minute spell after Rashford’s 8th minute goal, and a brief period of frustrated anger early in the second half brought on from one of their players getting involved in an off-the ball incident – Fernandes I think – there wasn’t much to write home about here. 3/10

Chants – Normally I would consider United to have one of the more creative and funny fanbases in the PL, but the order of the day was sadness. A few bitter renditions of “You know what you are” from the lower tiers and a couple of anger fuelled anti-Glazer chants couldn’t carry the day, leaving this as one of their more listless days out. 4/10

Vibe – Sadness. Resignation. Pre-determined glumness. You’d expect it from Burnley fans awaiting their annual stomping, but United? They were winning for most of the match but if the scoreboards were hidden, you would never have known. 0/10

Stepping Up – No definitive relationship with their team to be seen, unless we’re including the sort of relationship where one person is stood in the driveway at 7:23am on a Saturday morning whilst the other yells obscenities and throws clumps of clothing haphazardly out of an upstairs window. 1/10**Extra mark awarded out of sympathy. No-one should have to watch Anthony sober.

Attendance – They didn’t sell out. On a derby day. significant portions of the third tier were empty. I have seen fixtures that were restricted for safety reasons and recognise when orderly sections of the seating has been vacated, but tier 3 looked like my hairline – patchy and thinning progressively, particularly after Foden’s equaliser early in the second half. 6/10

Fulham

02/09/23 - MCFC 5 – 1 Fulham

It saddens me to write this particular part, as I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Fulham later on this year. A club with a very unique identity and community, and a stadium with its own smorgasbord charm. On reflection, my own personal surprise and disappointment has them on this list, as they really stood out in this fixture, for all the wrong reasons.

Volume – Started off with the typical gusto of an in-form team ready to witness an upset, but this did not survive the first 10 minutes of possession. After the first half an hour, the fans around our area devolved into small groups of people yelling obscenities in the direction of the nearest home fans. 2/10

Chants – Some half-baked attempt at Marco Silva’s black and white army which got put back in the box once the ‘London Special’ came out and they chanted their club’s name repeatedly in some monotonous drone. Cairney got a little love too. 5/10

Vibe – Awful, and this is how they got on the list. Reports of trouble all the way from the station to the ground, some pretty despicable behaviour inside, and more trouble on the way out. It became quickly apparent that this was basically several thousand teenagers who had brought a few lagers and bags of powder for a train ride. No humour or fun about this, and (luckily for them) the football quickly became secondary. 0/10

Stepping Up – Large sections gave up watching the match and instead spent over an hour doing their utmost to cause trouble, hanging over barricades and trying to goad any home fan they could into a confrontation. Police finally arrived, though not before a few of the home fans who had brought their kids (cos, y’know – it was only bloody Fulham) had been forced to relocate themselves or leave. They didn’t care about their team or match that day. 2/10

Attendance – They actually had fans in the third tier this year, which is actually pretty impressive for a club with their footprint. It showed the difference a game being held on a Saturday makes, as we are so accustomed to having one of the Sunday TV slots. Even with a semi-convenient train route with two switchovers, travelling across the country when you have work the next day is never to be envied, so all in all a good showing for them when it came to bums on seats. 7/10

Wolves

04/05/24 – MCFC 5 – 1 WWFC

Again, an eyebrow raiser for most. Wolves are a historic club, with a strong following and a consistent history of representing in the top league. On our way back up through the leagues we met Wolves many times, the most memorable being in the 01/02 season, where they won the first half of the season, but we won the second. There wasn’t really too much bad blood then, and both recognised each other for what they were – big clubs in a less than ideal situation. However, this is 23/24, and it seems that mutual respect is now confined to memories of Wolves fans who weren’t in attendance on this overcast Saturday. Volume – I cant pretend otherwise, they were loud. They were obnoxiously loud. If a loud bunch of fans its your thing, then feel free to consider me a fool. All noise is not equal however, and their noise had the qualities of a particularly old central heating system. 8/10

Chants – Repetitive to the extreme, and you can barely put together what they’re saying. What tickles me about Wolves in recent years is it seems they use the same chant for every manager. “We’ve got super “********” feels like an absolute given in this fixture, along with the droning “By far the greatest team, the world has ever seen”. They did, however, showcase a deliciously bizarre Traore chant to the tune of “Baby” by Justin Bieber that got a couple of chuckles – due undoubtedly to his haunting of us in prior fixtures. 5/10

Vibe - Again, what a stinking vibe they brought. Had several extremely unpleasant and unwarranted exchanges with them, and the vitriol and hate they had as a collective was scouse-tier. I think what really stood out for many of us in the home end was that none of us could seem to make out exactly what they were so darn miserable about. I asked a Wolves fan on the opposite side of my barrier at half-time and he simply shrugged and said they were always like that. God help you sir, wherever you are. Hope you and the Old Gold will see better days. 2/10

Stepping Up – Little bit of a surrender from them. For context they were shorn of their greater counterattacking threat in Neto, whilst Hee-Chan and Cunha struggled, but some teams rise to the challenge whilst others follow the same boom & bust pattern of hopeless anger. Wolves were definitively in the latter camp, with a large contingent leaving after Haaland made it 4-1 just before the hour mark, which again was quite shocking for many in the home end. Some late defiance in the form of anger at referring decisions couldn’t deflect from this. 2/10

It isn’t a long trip from Wolverhampton to Manchester, but it isn’t the easiest either. The bottom two tiers were packed out, with the third being mostly full – all pretty expected for a club that holds themselves to the prestige that Wolves do. The issue is that whilst they sold plenty of tickets, at least a third of them didn’t get to the 80th minute. Given the football they were intent on (not) playing, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was pre-planned by some of them. 7/10

And there we have it, my fellow football fans and fantasists. A quick and conversational review of the objectively worst showings by fans in the 23-24 season. It was a challenge to reflect back and pick out a worst 3, as these things can be decided as much by the context of the match than the intrinsic values and qualities of ‘the collective’, but these truly stuck in the mind this season in terms of the lack of virtue on show. Here are a few that came oh so close to a podium finish;

Burnley - Arrived hopeless and left bereft, but its understandable given their absolutely heinous record to us home and away. You’d have to have some severely masochistic tendencies to even want to read the match report as a Burnley fan.

Everton - A fine annual reminder as to why you should always pack a waterproof when Everton are in town. Unpleasant, bitter and aggressive

Arsenal - More enthusiasm than usual, a younger demographic than usual, and more noise, but their chants are almost MLS-tier in originality apart from the Saka/ESR one, and they handle setbacks as well as Di Caprio’s love rival at the end of the Titanic.