caketastydelish
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2008
- Messages
- 9,721
Before anyone accuses me of sexually objectifying only the men, I'd be happy if the women also played shirtless.
I need the kind of help that only a British person could give me.
- Thread starter caketastydelish
- Start date
Kan' Sharuminar
Fluffy
Atomic Kitten, isn't it? I knew I liked you.
Mega Tsunami
Emperor
The figure of 95:5 was given for Sports Direct, a shop that can be found all round the country. Why would a United fan from the south go all the way to Manchester to buy a shirt when they can pop into the local SD shop?
TF, I have you down as one of the more intelligent members of this forum but your logic has just failed you.
At Twickenham yesterday England (cough) beat Scotland (cough) 61-21 at rugby. There were about 80,000 fans there, roughly the same number as go to Wembley.
So, to follow your logic, there are as many rugby fans in England as there are football fans. Not.
And in Scotland it would appear there are actually more rugby fans than football fans as Murrayfield holds 67K and Hampden park only 52K. Not.
The problem is you are asking the impossible.
Non football fans can’t really help as they don’t know too much about football. And football fans can’t help because swapping clubs is an anathema to us.
I get that in the US your sports franchises flip flop about all over the place, so you are perhaps used to this complete lack of loyalty.
Excuse me if I am wrong about this, but I understand, for example, the Seattle Seahawks could up sticks and become the San Francisco Seahawks over night and get a whole new fan base. With one very much hated, derided, ignoble exception (Wimbledon/MKDons) that does not happen here.
EnglishEdward
Deity
Perhaps you might then consider supporting a women's team in the FA Women's Premier League:
http://full-time.thefa.com/Index.do?league=872938
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
What? No, I mean that people from outside Manchester buy shirts in Manchester. I don't imagine it makes a huge difference, but buying a shirt from the stadium shop is considered the most proper and loyal way to to come by the shirt. I don't know how much of a difference that really makes- probably none, if the figures are from SportsDirect, unless they happen to operate the stadium shop- but if there was really a 19:1 ratio of United to City fans, if the difference really was that stark, I don't think we'd be having this conversation in the first place, so the has to be some element that is not be taken into account, and I'm just throwing out possibilities.
I think likelihood of buying a shirt in the first-place is more probable: that United fans tended to be younger or have more disposable income, so are more prepared to buy shirts and to do so year-on-year.
Local and nation stadiums are entirely different propositions. The former are based on expected weekly or bi-weekly turnout, and assuming that there wasn't a gross miscalculation at the planning stage, they're going to be designed with an eye to economy, to fit as many people as possible while leaving as few empty seats as possible. While they don't tell you how many fans there are in a region, comparing the size of two stadiums gives you a rough estimate of the idea of the comparative size of the local fan-base, assuming that in both cases, fans are equally likely to live locally and to attend games. National stadiums are a different proposition altogether, because in the first place they're multipurpose stadiums, hosting non-national games and even music events as often if not more often than their official home team, so the economics of construction are always going to be different. In the second because the audience for their official home team is national, not local, so attendance depends more heavily on the national distribution of population. The distribution of the population in Manchester is, unsurprisingly, very close indeed to that of Manchester, but the distribution of population in Scotland is very different that that of England, so we wouldn't expect the same sort of comparison to be possible.
Well, even more fundamentally, because he's asking for an English city large enough to support a major football club and a thriving cultural scene, but which doesn't have any poor people, but which is also left-wing. He may as well ask for a club playing out of Atlantis.
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Mega Tsunami
Emperor
@ Traitorfish
What utter nonsense. You are clearly not aware I was comparing a national football stadium with a national rugby stadium in both countries and your theory came up well short.
Your ‘theory wot it is’ assumes there is an infinite size of stadium. The truth is, once they reach a certain size, they lose atmosphere. If United was the only big team in Manchester, I doubt if Old Trafford would be much, if any, larger. (ie even if they had 100% of the fan base).
You also assume every fan can and does go to every game.
Also, Old Trafford has been used for all sorts of purposes from music to rugby league to even Songs of Praise. Just like Wembley.
Anyway, I googled about a bit and came up with this:
From the Sun:
UNITED have more fans in Manchester than City do, according to a poll by property website Rightmove.co.uk.
Despite claims to be the city’s “true” club, only 14.8 per cent of Mancunians
polled say they follow City, compared to 55.6 per cent who support United.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/835257/uniteds-fans-are-mancs/
What utter nonsense. You are clearly not aware I was comparing a national football stadium with a national rugby stadium in both countries and your theory came up well short.
Your ‘theory wot it is’ assumes there is an infinite size of stadium. The truth is, once they reach a certain size, they lose atmosphere. If United was the only big team in Manchester, I doubt if Old Trafford would be much, if any, larger. (ie even if they had 100% of the fan base).
You also assume every fan can and does go to every game.
Also, Old Trafford has been used for all sorts of purposes from music to rugby league to even Songs of Praise. Just like Wembley.
Anyway, I googled about a bit and came up with this:
From the Sun:
UNITED have more fans in Manchester than City do, according to a poll by property website Rightmove.co.uk.
Despite claims to be the city’s “true” club, only 14.8 per cent of Mancunians
polled say they follow City, compared to 55.6 per cent who support United.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/835257/uniteds-fans-are-mancs/
Mega Tsunami
Emperor
Are you serious?
Why would the Sun lie about something like this?Anyway, if you prefer, try here:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/news/articles/rightmove-news/youre-supposed-to-be-at-home/
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
The Sun is just a bad source in general
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That's true. But there's no reason to assume that the upper limit is exactly 75,635. Old Trafford, while large, is only the eleventh largest stadium in Europe, and only the sixth largest that is home to a local football club. US stadiums regularly exceed 100,000; old Trafford would come in at number 30, just behind Fayetteville and ahead of East Lansing. (Granted, US stadiums are more commonly designed to be multi-use, but it shows there's at least an assumption among owners and architects that you can maintain an atmosphere at well above 80,000.) So you might be right, but I can't see how you'd prove it.
Not at all, only that they attend in roughly equal proportions. I'd be very surprised if United and City between them could only claim only the, what, maybe 90,000 fans represents by the home sections in their two stadiums?
Yes, but not frequently enough to be designed with that in mind. National stadiums are consciously designed as multi-use stadiums; their "national" character is as much branding as anything else. At present, Wembley Arena doesn't have a single football match, let alone England match, schedule for 2017, but it does have Boby Dylan, Disney on Ice and the Harlem Globetrotters. In contrast, Old Trafford is primarily slated as host to Manchester United; in fact, of the non-match events listed, the only one that seems to be using the stadium is the SuperLeague final in October, with the rest just using the stadium's indoor facilities. The economics of the design seem clearly different.
Wembley Arena isn't Wembley Stadium, Wembley Stadium has a lot of matches scheduled for this year
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Yeah, aren't all the FA and League Cup finals played there? And maybe the semi-finals as well? Plus international football matches, plus all the other stuff
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
TROTSKYIST.
but okay yeah i didn't realise they were two separate buildings so that does throw a bit of a spanner in my works BUT NONE THE LESS the events listed for 2017 include only one English national team match and a majority of other events are either concerts or non-football sporting events- so it stands that the designers were probably aware that this would be a multi-use stadium in practice if not in name and the economics will therefore be different.
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Mega Tsunami
Emperor
@ Traitorfish
And what has all this utter nonsense got to do with the original argument – Manchester is primarily red (as I have demonstrated) and not blue as you maintained (and have flummoxed about trying to make some ridiculous ‘theory wot it is’ about stadium size). Complete nonsense.
Look, I lived in Chorlton-cum-Hardy for many a year and I just know Manchester is red. Perhaps not quite as red as when I lived there since middle east oil money bought City some silverware recently. Nevertheless, as I have shown, it is still very red. End of.
And what has all this utter nonsense got to do with the original argument – Manchester is primarily red (as I have demonstrated) and not blue as you maintained (and have flummoxed about trying to make some ridiculous ‘theory wot it is’ about stadium size). Complete nonsense.
Look, I lived in Chorlton-cum-Hardy for many a year and I just know Manchester is red. Perhaps not quite as red as when I lived there since middle east oil money bought City some silverware recently. Nevertheless, as I have shown, it is still very red. End of.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I mean, it's a forum about a video game. The stakes for this are super low.
Mise
isle of lucy
Dear Americans: this is why we hate you.
1) Pick a club and stick with it. That's how football works.
2) Your characterisation of Manchester is ridiculous.
3) There is literally nowhere in the country that would even remotely fit your criteria. Nowhere that has a population capable of supporting a Premier League club would be as you desire, and without any of the elements you decry.
4) If any city outside of London has even a remote hope of meeting that criteria, it's Manchester.
5) PICK A CLUB AND STICK WITH IT UNTIL YOU LITERALLY DIE.
1) Pick a club and stick with it. That's how football works.
2) Your characterisation of Manchester is ridiculous.
3) There is literally nowhere in the country that would even remotely fit your criteria. Nowhere that has a population capable of supporting a Premier League club would be as you desire, and without any of the elements you decry.
4) If any city outside of London has even a remote hope of meeting that criteria, it's Manchester.
5) PICK A CLUB AND STICK WITH IT UNTIL YOU LITERALLY DIE.
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warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Unless that club is Wimbledon F.C. and they relocate and change the name, then feel free to start following a new club.
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
I've seen fairly many people change clubs when they move
Mise
isle of lucy
Expanding on the "pick a club until you die" thing:
Irrational loyalty to a football team you arbitrarily chose when you were an ignorant child is the core, sometimes even sole, vehicle through which you derive any sort of enjoyment or satisfaction from supporting a club at all. Of course, we all love it when our team plays well, and we get to watch some really outstanding football. But if our only enjoyment was in watching high quality football, we wouldn't need to support a team at all. We would simply look at the fixtures and pick the most exciting game that was playing that day, and watch that game. And, honestly, 90% of the time when we watch our teams play, they are not playing good football. They very often play terrible football. If we only supported teams because of the football they played, we would be left quite disappointed, quite often.
Which is why we don't. We support football teams not because we admire the cities they hail from, nor even because we admire the footballing "philosophy" they adhere to. We support football teams because we want to feel something when the team wins or loses. Irrational loyalty for a football team is why the defeats feel so bad, and why the victories feel so good -- even when the football they play is total gash. If you don't feel viscerally the gut-wrenching heartbreak of defeat, you won't also feel the exuberant, life-affirming adrenaline-filled thrills of victory. These things don't come from a thoughtful, considered attitude to a club you have picked through careful analysis of values-alignment. These things come from precisely the irrational loyalty, born of sheer ignorance, forged through years of two-way taunting and piss-taking, that the OP denigrates and belittles in his fruitless and counterproductive search for some sort of soccer supporting "purity".
Truthfully, the purest form of support is the highest form of loyalty -- that irrational, inexplicable, ignorant, baseless, barbaric, gut-wrenching, soul-destroying, adrenaline-filled spiritual bond between a supporter and our club.
Irrational loyalty to a football team you arbitrarily chose when you were an ignorant child is the core, sometimes even sole, vehicle through which you derive any sort of enjoyment or satisfaction from supporting a club at all. Of course, we all love it when our team plays well, and we get to watch some really outstanding football. But if our only enjoyment was in watching high quality football, we wouldn't need to support a team at all. We would simply look at the fixtures and pick the most exciting game that was playing that day, and watch that game. And, honestly, 90% of the time when we watch our teams play, they are not playing good football. They very often play terrible football. If we only supported teams because of the football they played, we would be left quite disappointed, quite often.
Which is why we don't. We support football teams not because we admire the cities they hail from, nor even because we admire the footballing "philosophy" they adhere to. We support football teams because we want to feel something when the team wins or loses. Irrational loyalty for a football team is why the defeats feel so bad, and why the victories feel so good -- even when the football they play is total gash. If you don't feel viscerally the gut-wrenching heartbreak of defeat, you won't also feel the exuberant, life-affirming adrenaline-filled thrills of victory. These things don't come from a thoughtful, considered attitude to a club you have picked through careful analysis of values-alignment. These things come from precisely the irrational loyalty, born of sheer ignorance, forged through years of two-way taunting and piss-taking, that the OP denigrates and belittles in his fruitless and counterproductive search for some sort of soccer supporting "purity".
Truthfully, the purest form of support is the highest form of loyalty -- that irrational, inexplicable, ignorant, baseless, barbaric, gut-wrenching, soul-destroying, adrenaline-filled spiritual bond between a supporter and our club.
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