Manchester City got the season off to a great start by scoring the first competitive goals of the new season (City’s goals). What was more notable than the result was the effort made by the some 200 City fans to get to the game.

Thomas Cook got the bidding off to a depressing start with an £885 price tag put on the match package tour. We requested a price quote from Atlantic Airways to charter a plane and it was rejected due to a lack of aircraft. Hmm somewhat sceptical, read on.

The most daring and City-esque travel itinerary was put together by the group of City fans who decided that boarding a 72ft fishing trawler from The Shetland Isles would be their best bet to under cut the air fares. This was an inspirational plan. To succeed would result in hero status. To fail would result in hero status. Either way it would be a damn good laugh! This is the stuff of legends (BBC Story)

They set off from Manchester making their way to Aberdeen. From there they took a ferry to the Shetland Isles, where they met the shrewd Scottish islander who has converted his 72ft fishing trawler into a Faroe Islands shuttle service for British football fans. Clever stuff. Scotland is forever getting drawn against the Faroes.

There is one major catch though. The Atlantic Ocean and a multitude of challenging weather systems stand in the way. Bad weather prevented the trawler from leaving port rendering the fans stranded. Enter The Sun newspaper and suddenly the airline with no spare aircraft is falling over itself with Thomas Cook to seize the marketing opportunity. They make it to the game and get to meet new manager Mark Hughes into the bargain!

The story is fantastic and reminds us that City’s cult following is alive and well. MCFCfans.com this month adds a video of the last day at Maine Road to the History Channel that brings a tear to the eye. If you are struggling to get enthused about the new season simply watch this video.

We have also started our push for an MCFC-based charity (MCFC Babies link) aimed at sponsoring youth teams around the world, inspired by the MCFC Babies in Ghana. Get in touch if you would like to be involved.

Can’t wait for the season to start. We're in for a corker.

MCFCfans.com

PS. Message for Magni Arge, President of Atlantic Airways, “Where did the spare plane come from?!”

Telegraph Faroe Story

The Sun Faroe Story

We are undoubtedly in a new footballing era. The English Premiership is at the forefront of a revolution in football that is being led by money, media, and a global thirst for sporting escapism. Football is the world’s favourite sport and large masses are gorging on the entertainment provided by the EPL. Some English football fans, of course, choose to opt out and either move down the leagues back to the grass roots, or turn their attention to alternative sports. And rightly so if they feel that their personal reward for doing so is that much greater than the modern day commercialism that dominates the top football clubs.

Way back when in the late 1800s, before all of the globe’s current football supporters had been conceived, football was evolving in England. As balls were chucked around various pitches in the north of England, clubs made their mind up as to whether “football,” as it was known then, should be played in the form of rugby or football. By and large the lines between rugby and football were drawn due to the separate paths of the professional game (football,) versus the amateur game (rugby).

Professional football as we know it emerged and the first and most immediate issue for the best teams of the day was how to protect the revenue earned from friendlies with other quality clubs versus the bind of playing the riffraff in the FA Cup, the world’s oldest football competition. All these years later, we should not be surprised at the money-grabbing culture that exists in the game for it has always been there, albeit previously with a much more gentlemanly feel about it.

There is something unique about City’s situation at present. City is one of the world’s oldest football clubs, it captured the central Manchester audience, and secured the Manchester City name ahead of other clubs’ attempts to do the same. As fans we don’t want to win the “cup for cock-ups,” that Franny Lee so infamously described, but as we’ve unofficially won that cup we’ve maintained a fan base that is now revered around the world for its’ passion, humour, and sheer loyalty in the face of adversity.

The arrival of Thaksin Shinawatra as the club’s new owner has, being brutally honest, begun to divide the club’s fans. Simplifying the matter completely, we’re like a city population debating over whether or not to develop the skyline with modern buildings ahead of protecting the views of its’ historic buildings. As City fans, the arrival of our new and dramatic owner has brought us face to face with the realities of modern English Premiership football.

This league is a commercial enterprise and in order to carry on its’ relentless march it needs to create, innovate, attract new money, and continue to keep the global media in an almost hypnotic trance ahead of other prominent football leagues. Manchester City either targets pole position or falls away. The wall of money that Frank brought with him convinced our previous board that it was the only viable option to survive and succeed. Well maybe the chosen solution wasn’t required for survival. For success, however, it almost certainly was. Frank wants to be at the top table when all is said and done and that’s the end of it. Whether Frank was the right investor remains an open question.

Furthermore, whether or not the most virulent strains of commercialism will be acceptable to City fans in the long run is also debatable. The Ronaldinho debate rolls on. Frank believes that this man will raise our global profile. Too right he will. But is it a good trade? Will he flop and do a footballing equivalent of Nick Leeson on us? There is no doubt that every City fan would want to see Ronny pulling on a City shirt in the flesh just for the buzz in one game, and better than that see him scoring a City goal. But is it in the best interests of the club? If not why not? Well because he might well be past it and we might well win the cup for transfer cock-ups if we sign him.

Urgent summer transfers in and out aside, bottom-line, can Hughes prize us away from the dominant influence of the chairmen in recent City history, and become the manager that beat the City system?

He’s got more than Sven in that department. We’re in for an exciting season. There is a lot of work to be done but the future remains extremely bright. We’re on the up and don’t forget it.

Lets' aim high and go for the big guns. Bring it on and keep the faith.

MCFCfans.com

(History sourced from “Manchester – A Football History” by Gary James)

P.S.

MCFCfans.com is supporting the Manchester City Centenary Supporters Association (MCCSA) appeal for funds for their Ghana branch, which runs a series of youth football teams in Ghana called Manchester City Babies. Please lend your support to this appeal for the three teams to equip themselves to enter leagues and raise the profile of Manchester City globally. You can do this by sending a cheque payable to MCCSA, no matter how small, to :

Alex Channon
'Penalty Spot'
81 Milner Street
Swinton
Manchester M27 4AS

You can also support the appeal by bidding for an original Platt Lane penalty spot being sold to the highest bidder by Alex Channon. MCFCfans.com intends to support the auction by placing an ad on eBay and advertising the sale on MCFCfans.com.

There we have it. After weeks of speculation, when most of us got tired of watching out for news, Sven makes his departure with the usual lorry load of cash that seems to follow him around. It was a PR disaster but it has now finally been concluded, Sven is history.

Waiting for all of this to pan out, having the head buried in Gary James’ book, “Manchester – A Football History,” has maintained a sane state of mind (book review and opportunity to win a copy will follow later this summer.) In many respects the club was fortunate to get going in the first place but did so thanks to a combination of luck, geography and believe it or not, some good decision-making.

Fans’ patience is being tested to new levels now. But this is a broad Premier League trend that is making football history today. It’s just that City’s way of entering into a new phase of football history must, by historic definition, be more comical relative to our rivals.

Enter Mark Hughes. Welsh chappy isn’t he? So the 72 caps suggest anyway. We all kind of knew that one of the big big names such as Mourinho were beyond our reach. So who better to turn to than a man who left school and joined Manchester United. Lets put the United thing to one side for a second.

He’s a young manager. He became Wales manager in August 1999 and managed the team fairly well for 5 years. He then took over Blackburn Rovers on a miniscule budget, survived relegation, made an FA Cup semi-final, and then managed a top 6 finish in the Premiership having made some good value purchases in the transfer market. The subsequent UEFA Cup performance was reasonable given the resources available. A 10^th place league finish was followed by a 7^th this season. All in all not bad.

He is someone who we can expect to put the fire in the belly of our players. Most fans point to the second half of the season when we dropped off after the derby game, and we can speculate that this would not have occurred under Hughes. His knowledge of the Premiership is better than Sven having played and managed in it for longer. His transfers have been good on a low budget, but he may not have much say in the bigger names being targetted anyway. There is an argument for saying that Sven could attract big name players, but there’s a counter-argument for saying that Hughes would have avoided some of the players who don’t always put the effort in. Sven has a much more distinguished club career behind him plays the counter-argument that he may not be appropriate for today's Premiership where some of the younger, grittier managers seem to be succeeding outside the top 4.

In short Hughes looks like the best choice we have right now and actually could be an interesting choice given a bit of cash to spend. We need to get on with it though because time is running out before the new season starts. We need to lock down the uncertain players and get the new management in. Another frantic pre-season beckons.

In the meantime, it remains to be seen that worrying about Hughes is really the burning issue of the day.Sure it’s a concern that if things don’t go too well under his management for a while then he is more vulnerable to a fans reaction because of his past. However, it is clear that Dr.Thaksin’s “learning-on-the-job” will be of much greater importance to the club’s success as the next few years roll on. He must give the new manager a chance, and not give in to the temptation of becoming the man making all of the signings.

Vote in our manager poll now : Link 

Manchester City are in Europe !! Dust down the passports and get ready for another European adventure. What a result and a pleasant distraction from all of the recent speculation. We were fairly sure we had it in the bag. It would have taken some seriously harsh "respect" markings from officials for us not to get the place.

In the meantime, the Manchester City media roller-coaster rides on. It's becoming clear that because Shinawatra controls everything himself and is usually engaged in all manner of non-City related functions, it leaves a communications vacuum in the media. This in turn results in an absolute frenzy of speculation that is not confined to us fans, if Micah Richard's BBC column (link) today is anything to go by. Who knows how his latest PR company has been involved lately. Not at all by the looks of it.

Where does this leave Sven? Well as has already been suggested, it would appear more likely that Sven will stay now that we're in Europe. But this is by no means a certainty. The fire sale of players has thankfully been firmly denied today but that won't stop clubs swarming all over our best players until the manager situation is resolved. But if Shinawatra isn't completely bonkers, then perhaps he is taking a rationale approach to working through last season's issues with Sven in order to feel comfortable that Sven is the man for the job. Then again maybe he's just waiting for answers from prospective managers. The more time goes on the more it looks like the most obvious trick was to keep Sven for the Asia tour so that he has a plan B.

Either way the last few weeks have been a media disaster. He can't continue to run the club in this manner as it's unsettling to all and sundry. However, he probably will so you'd better get used to it.

The current MCFCfans poll seems to send a simple message: if you don't have Mourinho lined up then it's Sven or else. Scolari and any other potential managers get minimal support. Our poll closes on Sunday so please vote now by clicking this link if you haven't already done so.

Have a great weekend.

Manchester City fans are hanging on tenterhooks today waiting to hear the outcome of both Sven Goran Eriksson’s future and the final calculations of the Premier League Fair Play League, which will ultimately decide whether or not City pick up a UEFA Cup spot next season. However, it looks like neither decision will be forthcoming until the end of the week at least as reports emerged that Jose Mourinho’s return to coaching is imminent.

Yesterday’s drubbing at Boro and the ongoing manager saga has begun to leave a bitter taste in the mouth over an otherwise successful season. It’s a depressingly well-trodden path of turmoil for the club and we can only hope now for a swift resolution to the Sven situation.

Perhaps fuelled by yesterday’s result, a divide of opinion is now opening up among City fans with some unhappy that Sven appeared to have given up yesterday. Questions are now being asked about his motives over the last couple of weeks. Others prefer to point to the inevitability of yesterday’s collapse following the recent events. We can’t escape the difficult truth that our new owner has in one season both rescued the club financially and then thrown it into immediate end-of-season turmoil.

Whatever happens, Thaksin Shinawatra needs to act swiftly and decisively before the situation at the club gets any worse. We’ve lost the credibility we had built up over the season in the space of a few weeks. The club is in a sensitive situation, needing ongoing nursing out of the depths of lower league football. The vultures are circling around our best players, some of whom we’ve been nurturing for years.

As if the script-writers hadn’t already been second-guessed enough, a UEFA cup spot is a possibility through the Fair Play league. There appears to have been a fair amount of mis-reporting on this subject. Certainly Richard Dunne’s red card didn’t help. However, the latest Fair Play league table doesn’t include the penultimate game of the season when Fulham picked up two yellow cards and City had none. In any event when the numbers are crunched these cards will not make a huge difference. It’s the more subjective scores around respect for officials and opponents that will make the difference. The final decision is not expected to be announced until the end of this week, or early next week.

Will Thaksin hold on until the UEFA Cup spot is announced before he makes his decision? Will it make any difference? Is there any chance at all Mourinho will sign up? Who knows anything any more? It’s easier to predict a 10-game accumulator on the coupon than to figure out what might happen next at City. Ric Turner sums up well in the Times Online. Balloons, Thai politics, hanging on the Fair Play league, maybe sack the manager. We’re breaking new ground here. But lets keep a sense of perspective. The sun is shining and we’re still in the Premiership.

Finally, our poll asking if City fans would consider a home games boycott closed this morning. 83% said “Yes” they would consider boycotting home games next season if Sven is shown the door. We’re looking to guage a fresh view in our new poll. Please take a look and vote now by clicking this link.

What impact does the potential for UEFA Cup football next season have on Thaksin’s decision?  Well if Thaksin has any sense left it will prompt him to enter into a “clear-the-air” discussion with Sven and his managerial team.  A discussion that should include an apology for the way Sven has been treated, a commitment for investment in new players, and a return to "the project" that all concerned signed up to at the beginning of the season.  MCFCfans feels that Thaksin’s comments in recent days show that his position is weak and a climb-down is possible.  Sure we might be dreaming but  nothing is cut and dry in this saga (Eriksson In?, King of the Kippax).  How frustrating though, that our club’s future could rest on a wealthy man’s ego.

MCFCfans supports a peaceful but vocal pro-Sven protest on Saturday when a petition that currently has over 18,000 signatures will be handed to the club.  The Support Sven Rally will be held at 2.30pm at the City of Manchester Stadium. 

This weekend is the last chance for all concerned to give our end-of-season panto a happy ending: for the fans to protest on Saturday; for Sven and the players to play fair and win on Sunday; and for Thaksin to back down.

Last chance Thaksin, the game’s up, leave our Sven alone.

Over 95% of fans polled so far by MCFCfans would consider boycotting home games next season. But lets be honest, we believe City fans will only follow through on their threat to boycott if Thaksin fails in his risky attempt to replace Sven.

The show of support for Sven has put the pressure on Thaksin to deliver. Lets keep it up so that he knows what is at stake.

Scolari may help to bring Bruno Alves from FC Porto if Portugoal.net is to be believed. We might need him if our own Richard Dunne, awarded Player of the Year for the 4th year running, decides that the Thaksin era is no longer to his liking.

Scolari has been asked to decide on a £3.2m a year contract before he takes Portugal to the European Championship finals next month. The Times report seemed confident enough to back up the story first reported in Portugal's "Record" newspaper.

What do we think about Scolari ? Well he has effectively only managed largely Portuguese-speaking teams. His domestic club record is only in Brazil. Since 2001 he has managed international teams. He won the world cup with Brazil and took Portugal to the Euro 2004 finals, losing to Greece. He decided not to take the England manager's job citing that money wasn't his only consideration in his career and that the glare of the English media put him off. MCFCfans simply can't see the logic in taking this huge risk.

Timing is now everything. Or is it? Even if Scolari says yes, he still has to take Portugal to the Euros leaving us with another summer of rushing around under new management. No time to buy players, plenty time to lose those players that we've nurtured for years. MCFCfans will not be surprised if Scolari says no. Why work for an owner who doesn't understand football, in the glare of the English media, with no experience in European club football, and no experience of the Premier League? Well only for the money and the knowledge that it is so much money that he can take a short-term punt on coming to City. If it all goes wrong there will be plenty of excuses for him to use and plenty of cash to pay the bills.

Did Thaksin commit Sven to the Thailand tour so that he has a plan B? We can only hope so but believe the damage is done. If Scolari says no then the alternatives don't bear thinking about.

Wait, watch, and make yourselves heard.

www.mcfcfans.co.uk

Manchester City's fans showed loyal support to Sven Goran Eriksson at Anfield today, with many holding up the "Save Sven" back page of the Manchester Evening News, Sven masks, and Swedish flags.

The City players hardly helped their manager's future, however, giving the ball away far too freely in a game that Liverpool should have won by more than the 1-0 scoreline. Liverpool allowed City to come back at them in the latter stages of the game and were denied more goals by Joe Hart's excellent goalkeeping.

The weak City performance was a blow to those backing Sven, but MCFCfans believes the support being shown for Sven should continue into the final game.  Whatever Thaksin's final decision turns out to be, he should be made aware of the way the fans feel.  Reports that Thaksin has been surprised at the impact that club ownership has had on his wallet add to the farce. We all know that sacking Sven won't be cheap.

Eriksson refused to be drawn on his future but everything in his body language suggested that the end of his short managerial career at City is just around the corner.  “I have been told nothing regarding that. At my age I do not need to be told these things, I have my own ideas."  And it's these ideas that most City fans believe in.  Building a team around talented young players.  A long-term strategy that happens to reconcile with sensible financial planning.  But no, that would be too straight-forward. 

We have one of the country's most successful Academies, one of the world's best club managers, and have made significant progress this season. Fans should continue to show support for Sven is so that Thaksin Shinawatra understands the gravity of the decision he is making.  Manchester City is a football club with a beating heart - lets continue to show Sven our support - even if we believe the decision is made.  Fans may be irrelevent in today's Premier League, but that shouldn't stop us from having our say.  

As Manchester City fall over themselves to remain tight-lipped about the Sven saga, City fans are mobilising support for Sven and various protests are planned.  MCFCfans continues to cling onto the hope that Thaksin Shinawatra sees sense and backs Sven for another season.  However, it seems that a major recruitment search is well underway and we speculate that Thaksin's ego won't back down.

While Thaksin is frantically searching the globe for a replacement, City fans are doing everything they can to support Sven.  Last night's impromptu protest near St.Peters Square in Manchester, seemingly arranged online, was reported on MEN to be fairly poorly attended.  The Save Sven page on MEN's website carries a video of a fan at the protest.  MCFCfans is not sure that the protest had quite the right speaker leading the event.

However, The Save Sven Goran Eriksson from the sack petition will have over 13,000 signatures before the day is out.  A rally is planned by the MCFC Official Supporters Club (supported by CSA, MCIVTA, and King of the Kippax) on Saturday 10th May outside the City of Manchester Stadium.  The away end at the Liverpool game on Sunday looks likely to be dominated by Save Sven protests.  There must be flag sellers shipping in large batches of Sweden flags as we write.  Get your Sven mask here for the Liverpool game.

The decision when it comes will be a leading indicator of how City's new owner intends to run club affairs.  What is so baffling to many is that his original objective of a decent league finish in season one has been achieved.  Fans are questionning whether Thaksin would have run one of his businesses like this.  Achieve objective, sack manager. 

Conspiracy theories aside, two themes have emerged.  The first is the belief that Thaksin has a basic lack of understanding of how a football club is run and what it takes to make a club successful.  As an owner of a business this is usually fairly important.  Successful leaders tend to surround themselves with personnel who do have the expertise and can therefore guide affairs in the right direction.  By most accounts this advice was, and still is, forthcoming but is being ignored.

The second point is simply that Thaksin's ego is not going to back down following the less than cordial meeting that took place between the pair.

MCFCfans continues to believe that a change of heart still offers Thaksin a solid face-saving option, particularly if big Phil says no.  The list of reasons of why not to sack Sven are endless as are the list of reasons why not to hire most of the rumoured candidates.  If Sven is shown the door we will have witnessed one of football's most ludicrous management decisions.  Only at City.

P.S. Currently our poll shows that most fans would consider boycotting home games next season if Sven is sacked.  Keep your votes coming !

There are reports filtering around of a protest planned for this evening in Manchester to protest the potential departure of Sven. MCFCfans is keen to hear any reports from readers about the protest if it goes ahead.