Yep we de real Blue State light Blue flag - jerseys/kits and all.
Even that SOO kit - Blues.

When you go down the rabbit hole of football finance and to the source of City Group money and Silver Lake money it leads to places that aren't exactly above board.

If that sort of money is why the A League even exist then should make people uncomfortable however when you let in the hedge fund suits it shows that they don't really care.  Sure Danny Townsend and the A League club owners are probably above board in their way however I'm sure they don't want to think too hard about things like this.  

They only really did it at the beginning of the AL. Once AAMI was completed, the freebies completely stopped. That was 12 years ago.
As for the colour it goes way beyond the SFC rivalry. Everyone just associates that colour with NSW.

ah the true lines why MV's support got bigger, freebies even to members season in season out.
Played.
I know SFC members do not get freebies like that, maybe some do but not the ones I know.

Agreed the whole SkyBlue is wrong wrong wrong for here - the rivalry had been set.

Funny you mention about any of the links behind a Club, its makes me puke knowing at times MV have had more links with LFC being a LFC/Sydneyite.
Then to see a MV board members Itlaians links close my parents, frigging come on lol.....afl kills me enough hate the game and its one eyed support there but the 2 mentioned are closer to my heart.

To be fair I'd say MV has given out the most free tickets. Difference is that it actually worked. Many of those people (myself included) were converted to full paying members. MV would give two free tickets to members every other week during those peak Etihad Stadium years. I had mates who were members and I went to every home game without paying a cent. Often times members would just give their free tickets to randoms in the ticket queue. MV stopped doing that when AAMI was completed, but managed to keep a lot of paying supporters.

As for the sky blue. It's actually the single worst choice for a club in Victoria. Literally any other colour would be more acceptable. That colour has such heavy association with Sydney in general that it's just not an option in Melbourne.

yer I tend to agree about all this ME links here there everywhere.....
Despite MC EPL having a long history pre CFG they were a small piece in the 1st Div and EPL till Mansour bought them.
Had a few great names but their results we're ordinary to say the least, word in the past was they only turned up once they got winning in the modern times.

From afar I actually liked the Heart symbolism - going sky blue like SFC doesn't fit as well, yep they are back in the UK it was like a FU to all here as well.
I'm sorry for good guy MCG and the few true support base but its all just too fake sorry to say and underhand wherever they go..
someguyfc as mentioned, all these free ticks, yes all clubs do this but they would be having to have thrown out the most for sure, well WU/Bulls wouldn't be far behind but its buying/begging for support.

\\https://www.thenationalnews.com/sport/football/how-manchester-city-developed-a-global-network-of-clubs-1.766476

Despite spelling his name wrong, I know exactly who this POS is mate :) Poor attempt at levity on my behalf.. The face of sportswashing worldwide, not just here and in England.

Everyone is rightly angry at Danny Townsend for the APL GF decision, but IMO, the biggest threat to the future of the is A-League is Simon Pearce.  

The short version is that Simon Pearce is on the board of the APL, Melbourne City and Silver Lake. ADP rightly quit the APL board due to a conflict of interest, but this guy takes the cake.  He is a very dangerous man that is a cancer on Football. And if you delve deeper, he doesn’t exactly have a great reputation in England.

Pearce is basically the reason why Melbourne City screwed over its own fanbase in favour of holding the GF in Sydney. He needs to be pushed out of the game. 

Maybe we will get luckly and this Manchester City investigation implicates him. We can only hope. 

They have a lot of supporters, but they just aren't the "go every week, think or thin, win or lose, rain or shine" type of supporters. If 5k turn up one week, I reckon it's about a 80% different 5k that turns up the following week. The problem is MC haven't been able to convert enough of them into paying regulars.
One of my MC mates was telling me that the free tickets have largely dried up. There are still some but no where near what it used to be. I know a few people that were MH members but dumped their memberships because they were getting free tickets every week anyway.
I reckon the biggest issue is CFG and the branding. If CFG never bought them and it was still Heart, yet they were getting the results they have been over the last few years, I have no doubts the metrics would be way way better.
Right now, they have the results but not the identity nor the personalities.

yer, could have fooled me.
So this quite large supporter base, they go to AFL instead I suppose ? or couldn't be bothered attending ?
All I see most home games is empty seats and pigeons.
Not even a qrtr stad full, always looks pretty sad barring the few big games,  being Champs and how they've played last few years you wonder where this quite large supporter base is being Melb is always quoted as the sporting mad State compared to the rest.
Nothing adds up tbh and with all the resource which is great and time to establish I can't see this mob having a high attendance for yonks and yonks.
Something is not right for seriously, its only looks a shade better in support since the Heart days ?

I grew up in Melbourne- Dandenong not a bad idea. City are competing for supporters and sharing home ground with better established Victory. Wouldn’t just be Dandenong itself that would support City - other large Sth East areas like Pakenham, Cranbourne, even Bayside and Frankston areas might show support if they don’t have to travel to Aami park to see a top AL side play a home game anymore. Less than 5k last week for home game - what have they got to lose by relocating to large outer Melbourne area?!

Not entirely true. They have quite a large supporter base. Problem is they don't seem to go regularly.

So you reckon Melbourne City's future is to focus on getting support from Dandenong?
Riiiight.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6-rRqr21_k

Who is this "Simon Pierce" that appears implicated in all of the dodgy emails??? His name sounds familiar?

They don't have that many current supporters to lose though, will hardly impact them in that way. MC need a whole new area to embrace them..

Like last year's A-league GF costing the league money, closed tiers of the stadium and freebies thrown around all over the place. 

Hold on. That was an all Melb GF played at AAMI!! 
😳😳

I hope (for MCG's sake if nothing else) that this doesnt lead to CFG pulling the plug on their sport washing exercise.. I mean they own clubs all around the world and even 30% of the APL now?!?!?!?!? Might consider this "loss of face" a bridge too far and pull the pin entirely..

Lets remember the Qatari women's national football team and lament the fact that they now (surprisingly within days of the 2022 men's world cup ending) appear to not exist anymore? Who would be so incredulous as to believe that the very reason Qatar even created a women's national team (and league I think?) in 2009 was to win hosting rights to a one off event?  

Need to move to the South East as soon as possible.

They have zero connection with the Metropolitan Melbourne fanbase. Their crowds are fabricated as well. My sister works at AAMI Park and she said to me that they are adding on at least 2000 to the publicised attendance each match. One of the games last season she mentioned that they had a sub 2000 attendance. The staff at AAMI park always have a laugh about what is the publicised figure. 

Build a 12,500 seat stadium in Dandenong and play all games out of there. They wont sell that out for 15 years. Playing at a 30k stadium in the heart of Melbourne, which is actually Victorys stadium, is such a bad look. 

They will dominate this league for the forseeable future on field. 

Yep
Some guy on Twitter suggested giving a 15 point deduction to every team owned by City Football Group.

Speaking of Manchester City...... 

Out of all those things number ten hit us hard. We really struggled with losing Bruno 

Historically Heart/City have made some poor choices which would've impacted a fickle fan base.
Just off the top of my head there was:

1) Absolutely no identity from Day 1 besides anti Melbourne Victory
2) They had an outspoken CEO in Scott Munn who petrayed an untitled arrogance early days when really they should marketed themselves as the working class club
3) Despite being anti Merrick, Muscat FC they proceeded to sign ex Victory players like Fred & Harry Kewell
4) The original name Melbourne Heart didn't actually mean anything, I remember a great suggestion at the time being 'Sporting Melbourne' which actually would've appealed to the Victorian public and they could've marketed themselves as a club that has harmonious relationships with liking AFL, cricket, tennis, basketball etc.
5) They didn't offer a point of difference by having cheaper memberships than MVFC. Not sure why they did that...
6) Once Melb City took over it didnt alienate the fan base that liked Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool etc as they felt they were betraying their 'own' clubs by supporting a City backed club.
7) Once CFG took over they progressively became a well off club which almost changed their identity from the 'Ice bin' club at Latrobe Uni where they were battlers.
8) The David Villa fiasco. What a brilliant signing on paper, all of us generally got excited for him and he played 3 games in total out of the 10 he was supposed to?
No wonder fans would've felt short changed on that.
9) The FFA blocked them signing Lampard and MV would've signed Diamanti at his peak. How awesome would've that been for the league!
Opportunities missed
10) Had a club hero in Bruno Fornaroli and Warren Joyce proceeded to freeze the bloke out while playing dire football
11) Warren Joyce in general, such a dire manager. Had one of the best squads on paper with the biggest outlay we've seen, full of attacking swagger and he had to implement dross.
12) Joyce then proceeds to bench national hero Cahill which the above went on, eventually forcing him out.
13) Moving from Latrobe (inner North) to Casey Fields (outer south east Melb). There were calls to do this from day 1 but the club never engaged with the south east until now.

That's just off the top of my head but I'm sure there's been more instances in the past 4-5 years.
Understandably they've had great on field success recently but the above would've turned off fans in it's early days and as we know it's much harder to regain fans once they are off side with the organisation.

I reckon the numbers of new supporters in the Dandenong area would outnumber what they'd lose in the West and North (which wouldn't be huge numbers anyway), provided they did it properly and really tried to connect to the local community. The proposed site of the new stadium would be right next to the train station, so easy to get to. Doubt it would happen, but to really forge an identity, changing the clubs name to South East Melbourne City   

Of course, but they would also lose supporters from the West and probably North.
I live in the inner northern suburbs and have a few friends who support MC. The ones that live west have already said they will abandon the club once it moves east. The ones that live in the North have said, they'll wait and see, but aren't too happy about it. I also have a group of friends that have said will just return to supporting Knights in the NSD if they get a spot.

New supporters from Dandenong, derr.

Maybe not, but you (and many others) would have considered making the trip over to Melbourne if it were in Melbourne.

We do tend to have fascinating contests I'll say that much.
At least if this transpires we would never have hosted the game anyway aha

Wouldn't surprise me at all.  

Agree with Aami park MC being a wanker on the mic - very American style over the top verbal diarrhea that you get at basketball games 🤮