We got less then 5k on Saturday. Less then 5k we should be pushing for 10k with the squad we have.

It's just unbelievable to be first on the ladder and just irrelevant off the pitch. I chose this club in 2012 when we were heart so I wanna stick with them. But i feel like the club doesn't care about their fans at all like does Manchester city do things differently?

Where do you see Melbourne city FC in the next five years? 

How is Melb City's live support different from the A L Men in general ATM?

It might be interesting to compare MC to another club with similar success over the last 3-4 seasons.

What were City crowd numbers like before Sydney GF decision? Someone posted those figures on another thread recently but can’t remember which?

anyway pretty sure crowds have dropped for ALL clubs since that Apl brain fart! Cannot fathom why Apl are willing to upset fans and reduce entire season attendances (costing $millions each season) just for a few million bucks payday?! Long term damage is being done ever since…

Also based on this season’s form, it’s almost 100% certainty that City will be in GF - but how many City fans still have motivation, time/money to travel to GF in Sydney when City get less than 5k to HOME game?! There won’t be a sold out GF. 

Melb City need a fresh new lot of supporters together with the ones they currently have. This can only happen if City Group build a Stadium at Dandenong.

If you can only get 5k coming into the CBD for a game, then how many are going to watch a game in Dandenong?

Would actually prefer 2 teams outside Sydney make the final and no bastard turned up to stick it right up those APL pricks.

Are City fans angry at their club over the grand final decision?

The reason why I ask is that you guys are almost certainties to host the GF this year in Sydney, and the management of your team voted for it for no apparent reason.

You could realistically be hosting WSW with 25,000 WSW fans supporting their team on their home ground.

I don’t know about you, but that would make me pretty angry.

Melbourne City suffers from the fact it still has no soul or identity. I wouldnt even call it a soccer club, it is solely a commercial enterprise engaged in commercial transactions with the league and public for the purpose of making money. When they conceived of Melbourne Heart they didnt think about establishing a regional rivalry with the incumbent Melbourne Victory, they thought that a market of 5 million is more commercially attractive than 1-2 million and that was the basis for going ‘Melbourne’, because ‘Melbourne’ = greater profits. Then they thought they could throw money at a good squad and a win a few titles and the fans would come flocking because titles and success = more fans hence more profit. Clearly they dont understand the tribal, emotive element of football or what motivates fans.

The club, excuse me, ‘enterprise’ is the definition of a plastic soulless franchise and is still suffering the same identity crisis it suffered when it was conjured 15 years ago. I would be happy to see MC fall on its sword and replaced with South or even a new team in the East or North. I dont think City relocating would work either because it will still be the same plastic operation with a different name tag. New clubs need to be built from the ground up with genuine locals at the helm and the community behind the name, logo. colours etc rather than the City/Heart model which is rich men in business suits defecating corporatism on everyone. 

Silver Lake the hedge fund own a percentage of the city group and own 30 % of the APL and have a seat on the APL board who all voted for the Grand Final selloff.

And they also own Melbourne City. It would certainly be a hilariously ironic if the grad final was hosted in Sydney against an out of Sydney club if they've never really been able to engage the Melbourne footballing public in any significant way.

Oooh that's interesting. Thought a neo-liberal absolutionist would appreciate some such things.

Perhaps pursuit of the almighty dollar is not the be all and end all Rus?

It's an interesting conversation.
Comparisons with Man City are kind of irrelevant as Man City has over a century of history with fans being passed down each generation.
Heart/MC was always going to be a slow burn when it came to fan growth. IMO the name/branding wasn't quite right from the get go. People didn't mind the red/white, but the name meant nothing. They may as well called themselves Not Victory FC as that was the only real reason for people to jump on board.
Although CFG brought in success through investment and professionalism, they also brought with them a tonne of baggage. Anyone that supports Liverpool, Man U, Chelsea, Tottenham, etc, are very unlikely to get on board with a club owned by CFG. That cuts out a big chunk of the potential fan base in Melbourne. That's a fan base that MV had already been grazing on for a while, so it was already diminished. I know a young family (English migrants), who were members of Heart, but dumped them as soon as CFG took over as they are Liverpool supporters. They are now MV members. Then there is the issue of CFG being UAE owned, which is a whole other kettle of fish all together.
As for the low crowd numbers, some of it has to do with the league itself and Australian football issues in general. Also as you know, it's been a bit weird in Melbourne post lock downs. Many people just haven't returned as a result of not being able to watch their team live for so long. Not entirely sure of the reasons, but things have definitely changed in Melbourne.
The on-field results are interesting. The squad is obviously good and the points are flowing nicely. However that's not always enough, weirdly. Sometimes you need personalities to put bums on seats.
I'll ask you this question, MCG. What was more exciting as a MC fan?
Less consistent points, yet still competitive, and Fornaroli was scoring great goals and frustrating defenders.
Or.
Consistent wins and JMac tapping in goals every week.

Having chosen to see the occasional City game live, I can tell you that it’s one of the most plastic, forced match day experiences I have ever seen. The club is fake and the whole experience reeks of it. The match day MC screeches his head off trying to pump up the crowd of corporate drones wearing head to toe MC blue. It’s a sad, pathetic atmosphere. It is try hard. 

Partly this is a consequence of the slowly-slowly introduction of new franchises into the AL. Unless there is a sizeable geographic that is uncatered, such as was the case with WSW, new clubs will struggle. Most fans will already have allegiance to a club. 

So as a fan I wanna see new young guns which I've got in his and tilio. But also club legends like goody or Jamieson. Personally I feel like having leckie and nabbout who made their name at other clubs kind of boring.

I guess even jmac would fall under that umbrella. There's something special about when we had Bruno he was our player our guy. I want the club to be successful I've had so many good times supporting them. 

That was kinda the point of my post. There is no incentive for City to vote for a Sydney GF. But there is incentive for Silver Lake to vote to relocate the GF as they would be looking for a return on their investment.

So, City voted to make a commercial decision at the expense of their fans and also risk losing a trophy they would otherwise be favourites to win.  

City fans should legit be fuming and asking hard questions of the people who run their club.  


this exactly

It's quite obvious that they nor the APL couldn't give a flying fuck about the fans due to the collective financial hole they find themself in. 

Someone should have told them that nobody has made any money in Australian football ever. 

Probably more if they do it right. They have the training facilities in the south east suburbs, if they focus on connecting with the community in this area, which is one of the most multicultural areas in Australia, and they build a fit for purpose stadium, no reason why they can't get more than 5K to a game. At the moment they are playing at a 30K seat stadium, that looks sparse and empty on TV (still has reasonable atmosphere), and in an area that plays into the "no identity" argument. 

Even after city won the granny they had poor attendance.   First game after the win was the cup against south Melbourne.   Barely any turned up you couldn't hear them at all.  Fast forward to their first game back at aami and once again it was a poor crowd. You'd think you'd want to welcome back your team after being premiers.

This is what I'm hoping for as well.
Not only 2 teams outside Sydney, but 2 teams outside NSW (sorry CCM).

My gut feeling is that it will be a MC/AU grand final. It will be an absolutely epic game, yet the majority of fans will be watching at home, at a pub or at some event their clubs put on locally.

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 🤮 

Wouldn't surprise me at all.  

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

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

New supporters from Dandenong, derr.

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.

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   

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.

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