To be fair to SHMMMEEE he's consistently proposed innovative thinking on this matter ,the club would do well to engage him ,but not to perpetuate the charade of a new ground .
I'm blushing!
Football fans are very conservative. I've been suggesting shutting the top rows almost as long as we've been at the Ricoh. Certainly since crowd average hit 15k. I was derided repeatedly for "thinking small time" and "making us a laughing stock".
Similarly with ideas for fan engagement, often shot down as "cringeworthy" or "americanised". It means that we do virtually nothing to get fans through the door.
The way I see it, we sell McDonalds. The product is pretty poor, often not enjoyable, but people get hooked early and find it very hard to break the habit. Jimmy Hill had it right: get the kids in, make it a special day for them and you've got them for life.
I have no doubt that I'm still as passionate as I am about City because I was lucky enough to go into the changing rooms in my first game. I wasn't even massively into football at that time, the game was boring as hell, but that day will stick with me forever. Similarly the memory of hearing the away fans banging at HR. Or of getting a bag of crisps at half time.
The club should be pouring everything it has into getting kids through the door and making the day memorable. Free shit. Meeting players. Improved atmosphere. All within the clubs grasp. It frustrates me.
Similarly, they need to be widening their view of the "matchday experience" to cover not just in the ground, but around it, in the pubs beforehand and on the trains/buses/canal barges on the way. Make the rest of the experience so good it doesn't matter about the result.
What do people talk about when they talk about Jimmy Hill? Pop and Crisps. Sky Blue Specials. Jimmy out in the community drumming up support. It's not changed in 50 years, clubs have just focussed everything on signings and farmed out the rest to uninspired corporate interests.
Sorry, that post turned into a rant!
