Fortunately for me, the coach I got up to Glasgow landed outside the Old Fruitmarket at about 12, just before another few coaches and trains rocked up to the city to get our tickets for the match. I queued for about 15 minutes in total and within about 30 minutes of parking up on the coach I was sipping a pint of Guinness. I was lucky compared to a lot of City fans. I was unlucky in Madrid back in May when a large chunk of our travelling allocation turned up at the same time for the same reason - but as frustrating as it was to waste an hour or so out of a bar, at least the weather was alright.
These measures that the club have put in place for the picking up of away tickets for a European fixture started earlier in the competition. The first time I came across it was in Paris, which I thought was down to the fact that Paris is a bit bait at the time, only months after the terrorist attacks. But obviously not. This afternoon the club have posted the reasons why these measures were put into place:
- Supporter feedback that the current ticket sales process does not work and access to tickets is becoming more difficult
- Supporters that qualify are buying tickets with no intention of attending the respective match and selling them on
- Inappropriate behaviour of a small number of supporters when at the away ground
The first two points are kind of interlinked so I'll have a look at the third point first. I'm unsure what they're referring to here. I think the club are being really unspecific because it's a given within football club support that, "there's always a few trouble makers" or words to that effect. There isn't anything that stands out in my mind which has increased the the 5/6 years of continued appearances by City in Europe and as far as I'm aware there is not an increase in bans to our supporters. (I could be well off the mark here as I rarely visit the scaremongerfest of football forum's anymore.) Putting a system in place where people have to queue up for an hour in a hotel 5 hours before kick off will not effect supporters from acting like Brits abroad. There will be people heading out to Barcelona next week looking forward to drinking excessively and generally acting up - I'm not condoning it, but how on earth is picking up tickets as opposed to receiving them in the post going to change a persons behaviour? If you want to go abroad and act like a dick because of St. George or whatever then you're going to do that ticket in bag or ticket in hotel lobby.
So to the first two bullet points. As it stands the format for obtaining away tickets are the following:
- You have a customer number which is linked to your membership with the club.
- On this customer number you have points which are gained by buying tickets to football matches.
- When tickets go on sale for a new game, the criteria is broken down by those with x amount of points being able to purchase a ticket on a particular day. e.g. Supporters with 10,000 points can buy a ticket on Monday, supporters with 9,000 points can buy a ticket on Tuesday, supporters with 8,000 points can buy a ticket on Wednesday and so on.
Quite straight forward, really.
Before I go into detail about the negatives of the system, the biggest negative of all is these points being called "Loyalty Points". What is loyalty? How do you define loyalty? Is one guy more loyal to the club than someone else because he can afford to go more? Is Liam Wright of 2010 more loyal than Liam Wright of 2016 more loyal because I've gone from living 160 miles away from the ground to 1.6 miles away from the ground? And what's worse, the club introduced a £50 charge to double your points per game a.k.a. Platinum Membership.
The club's golden period has come at a time where a lot of people are hard up, to the people at the top of the club £50 is loose change, but to a lot of people £50 is a lot of money which you can't just part with. People have families to feed. A season ticket at a football club is expensive enough considering coming bottom of the Premier League means the club are given more money than I could possibly comprehend. Where does that extra £50 go? It certainly doesn't keep out City's latest official Asian tyre sponsor from getting a handful of tickets at Anfield. That extra £50 gives you the piece of mind that some poor sod has to go to double the amount of games you do to creep ahead of you in the points system.
Where the loyalty points system falls down is the following:
An away allocation of, lets say 3,000, will not be solely sold through this system.
Why?
Corporate tickets i.e. freebies players get and sponsors get a slice. How big this slice is is unknown but for anyone who has stood in the corner of The Emirates or Stamford Bridge will know that these 'types' seem to be everywhere.
Supporters Clubs. I have run a supporters club before and unless things have changed in the past two years there was nothing in place to say that I had to give the tickets we were given as a branch to supporters over a certain number of points. i.e. my branch were given 10 tickets for Liverpool away and the points sold out at 10,000, I could distribute these tickets to people 10 people who didn't even have a season ticket, just a "Blue Membership" because they were members of the supporters branch. Again, I would only be guessing the % of the allocation which is given out this way.
The second point on the clubs statement is an issue. The "points whores" as we call them, live amongst us. People have bought tickets with no intention of going to the game. I don't think anyone is completely innocent when it comes to this, though. "Liam, are you going to West Ham away? I'm desperate for a ticket as I'm meeting up with my mate from uni and I'm going to a party in London that night, I don't have enough points for a ticket but can I use yours if you're not going?" - this is an example of a message I might receive off someone. If I'm not going to the match I can't really say to him "Sorry mate, but I think you should respect City's loyalty points system" - I'm doing my mate a favour, the points don't really come into it. I'm not whoring myself out for the points, but I'm letting someone queue jump.
The points system has been in place for approx 15 years. So if you went all the time between 2004-2009 that is just as relevant as going from 2011 onwards. Now you could argue this either way here - if you went all the time when Musampa was the man then that could make you seem more 'deserving' than going in days of David Silva. But, so what if you went all the time under Keegan? You've basically fucked it off for a decade.
Another issue is the younger fans. I was chatting to a mate in Glasgow who had gone up to the match on the chance he could pick up a ticket. I see this lad everywhere but he's in his early twenties and had to get a ticket on other peoples membership for years. This is something which has been an issue. A lot of my best mates don't want to take risks on tickets for certain games going down to their points when two of our mates who used to go all the time but now have other priorities have higher points. Lad who has gone to 50-70% of away games for the past 8 seasons will use someones ticket who went to 90% for 4 seasons but now doesn't bother with it. Your Dad's mate who's got 17,000 points is moving to Majorca but keeping his season ticket, you're free to use his ticket for away games - do you use the easy way and beef up his points or do you concentrate on the 8,590 you've got?
From my point of view, despite their being flaws, I'm all for keeping the system as it is. This will sound very selfish, but it is what it is. Watching City away and being in different towns and cities with my mates is not a chore, but I have put a lot of work into getting into the position I'm in. For every 6-1 at Old Trafford there's been a 2-0 loss at Portsmouth, 1-0 loss at Charlton, going to West Ham, Moscow, Chelsea and Newcastle in the space of 10 days. Enjoyed all these days, but there's reasons why some of us at the top of the pile don't want to surrender our position. I know I'm not alone in fearing the alternatives like Chelsea's points system restarting at the start of every season, or United's dreaded ballot. If anyone from the club reads this; please do not do a ballot. The club is struggling enough at losing it's fan identity without you making it worse.
I believe a rolling 10 year format would be more beneficial for younger fans and for fans who may only now be able to afford to go to our former working class passion. The club have the information at their finger tips and to be honest, why should going to Reading for a 1-0 loss on a Monday night in September 2006 bare anything on whether I get a ticket for West Brom in a few weeks? For the points whores; it's going to be hard to eradicate them, especially with the new £30 away ticket rule, but would a ballot or a fresh points system stop that? Most away tickets go on sale 4 weeks before the match, out of 20 people that buy it a month in advance 1 is more than likely to either get the curly finger treatment from their partner, get too pissed the night before the match or something else unforeseen come up.
For those that want to get up the chain; don't buy your ticket off someone else. Use your own points. You won't get a ticket for everything, but more often than not away games do go down a lot to achievable points. You've just got to do a few Swansea and Crystal Palace's away before you can get Liverpool or United away. That's the way that anyone with a lot of points has had to do it.
