City or United and Why?

Last season the atmosphere was universally derided as rubbish, both the home and away fans almost completely silent. Ferguson was quoted in various tabloids this morning as saying the City support were too quiet. I think this goaded them into singing, and obviously beating their most hated rivals 3-1 would have helped.

why is Old Trafford mainly quiet? I just don't get it. I've heard of the legendary Stretford End of the 70s and 80s. Where is that atmosphere now?

A combination of factors. When they knocked down the Stretford End in 1992 the club seemed determined to go upmarket and get rid of the type of fans who sang on the terraces week in and week out. I don't just mean price rises - these have happened everywhere else too (but the impact can't be overstated - I paid £7 to stand on the Stretford Paddock in 1992, and it cost me £30 to get in last season). I mean deliberately sticking an Exec section and a Family section right in the middle of the Stretford End, renaming it the anodyne 'West Stand', and dispsersing its former inhabitants all over the stadium.

All-seater stadiums have a worse atmosphere full stop, because you don't feel like singing so much when you're sat down, and because everyone is allocated a particular seat and has to stay there, so you can't go wandering off to join up with likeminded fans. This has been made worse at Old Trafford by the diluting of the support with glory hunters who have never stood on a terrace in their lives, don't know the words to any of the songs, and have never known United finish lower than third.

In the wake of the Glazer takeover several thousand fans have left Old Trafford to set up and follow FC United. Judging from the noise at FC United games I think it's fair to say some of the most vocal fans in the past are the ones who are at Gigg Lane rather than Old Trafford this season.

Why don't people stand up when their team is playing well at OT? What the f... is wrong? Why? They say there are restrictions for standing but I didn't see that today at City, or for that matter at Anfield.

There have been campaigns for the return of the terraces by United fans ever since the terraces were scrapped. Most of the mid-90s saw United fans standing up en masse at Old Trafford, and heavy-handed stewarding resulting in ejections of people who stood. Eventually Trafford Borough Council threatened to close the ground, though strangely they don't seem to bothered by people standing at pop concerts in football stadiums. The United supporters still stand for the whole 90 minutes at every away game, and several clubs (notably Middlesbrough and Sunderland) have responded by cutting their ticket allocation.

They're all all-seater - it's the law. After the Hillsborough disaster the government said that all clubs playing in the top two divisions must have all-seater stadiums. There haven't been any terraces in the top flight since about 1994.

I didn't see any fans being ejected there.

The zealousness of the stewards seems to vary from club to club, and from game to game. Also, they are unlikely to televise a fan being ejected for standing.

No, I have no statistics to back that up. I also hate Man U, so make of it what you will.

And as someone who started going to games in the '60s and who has supported his team ever since with no hint of anything resembling glory, I am uneasy about the glory hunter allegations, with the real fan idea, on other levels. Dave Boyle articulated this idea better than I could in the keynote article launching FT's sports section a while back.

I'd like to point out that the record attendance at Old Trafford wasn't for a MU game at all - it was a Cup semi-final, Grimsby vs Wolves, I think in 1939.

This isn't strictly true - Chelsea's support has risen and fallen in line with the team's performance, and when their crowds surged they were 'successful' by their own standards. Average crowds of about 23,000 when they head the Kerry Dixon / Pat Nevin team in the mid-80s finishing 6th in division one, falling below 16,000 when they were last in division two (1989), stagnant in the early 90s at about 19,000 while the team stayed steady in mid-table, then suddenly leaping to 34,000 with the arrival of Vialli, Zola & co and the team nestling in the top five, winning the FA Cup, and charging into Europe, and now up to 42,000 with them as invincible champions.

I know all clubs have seen a rise in attendances since the Premiership started, but Chelsea's have more than doubled since 1995. Compare this with Spurs, a similar club (historically) that haven't had the rise in fortunes over the same period: average crowds of 28,000 have slowly risen to 36,000.

I'm not denying that Man Utd have lots of glory hunters - it was me who said this above - but Chelsea clearly do, too. {I await abuse from the usual suspects}

I thought this thread would be about Oxford, or Cambridge.

The additional factor is the break in communities forming. People go where they are allocated, rather than with people they know. I've been to OT twice since it became all-seater ( a,limited pool of games, I know) but the beauty of a terrace is that birds of a feather flock together, creating the dynamic for the song to get going.

20 people together at the heart of a group can really generate atmosphere; scatter them all over and it just doesn't work.