Pep is spot on. Now its probably hypocritical of me to side with him over the fans as I haven't been to a City game in over 10 years (as I used to bring my mum but she's in her 70's now and the trip from Ireland is not easy) but he's right. I don't even think he was on about the number of supporters as much as the complete funeral home the stadium felt like. We were playing a CL game, which had 9 goals, 2 goals ruled out and a red card. Hugely entertaining and the atmosphere was atrocious. I know there'll be City fans who read this and are like "I was there it was great" but it was fecking dead, end of story. Its sad. This was Pep's "prawn sandwich brigade" moment imho and one the support brought on themselves.
The numbers we can do nothing about in truth, We haven't a big enough supporter base to fill the stadium consistently, we have a very similar number to what we had 10-15 years ago. It is what it is, it takes time to build a global fanbase and to get the regular day trippers etc.. and we'll need another 10-20 years. We consistently are in or around the top attended team in the PL but we absolutely have one of the quietest atmospheres, the irony to this is we don't have a lot of the glory hunters that United, Liverpool, Arsenal etc.. do, so they can't be blamed for the lack of atmosphere, its down to the hardcore regular support. A lot of our supporters are so used of losing they've never adapted to winning and they are "only happy when its raining", they just live to criticise, moan cry and talk shit about other clubs instead of supporting our own especially the groups around my age (40ish)
What hilarious is some of our support wanting Pep out for this, saying they don't care if he walks. They've been given everything over the last 10 years, one of the best teams ever to play in English football, one of the best managers ever to grace English football, some of the best players ever to grace English football and they still can't lose the little man complex. They need to suck it up, we're not United, Real, Barca, Liverpool etc.. and we are still many years from being those clubs, they need to suck it up, get the chip of their shoulder and accept that. We are decades from being one of those clubs and as Chelsea have found out winning those global/day tripper fans is harder as time goes one as they already have a team from parents etc...
These whinging crying cnuts are not going to back down and they could well drive Pep outta the club when his contract is up, such is the pettiness of some. I'm glad he didn't apologize for speaking the truth. The place was a morgue on Wednesday night and I'm sure it didn't go unnoticed with the players.