The football season is back, and so are all the jokes about Manchester City fans and empty seats.
With Pep Guardiola taking charge of his first competitive game of the club at home to Sunderland on Saturday, many expected the Etihad to be full to capacity as City fans welcomed in an exciting new era for their club. However, with a few clusters of unoccupied seats visible on TV, it wasn’t long before tweets such as this one were doing the rounds…
https://twitter.com/Ash_DC_/status/764520296078598144
Having beaten Sunderland 2-1 in their Premier League opener, City have travelled to Romania for the first leg of their Champions League qualifier against Steaua Bucharest. But not even a trip to the other side of the continent is enough to spare City supporters from being the butt of the empty seat jokes.
When this Bucharest-based journalist’s tweet started racking up the retweets, you had a sense of what was to come.
City got 3 000 tickets for Steaua, returned 2 500. So, only 500 Manchester City will be at the National Arena in Bucharest tonight.
— Emanuel Roşu (@Emishor) August 16, 2016
And sure enough, minutes after the game had kicked off, the predictable happened. An image of (some of) the ‘450’ City fans that had made the trip was being circulated.
There's more Stewards than City fans 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/3X7WdqY37C
— ManUtdMindset (@ManUtdMindset) August 16, 2016
https://twitter.com/UnitedJosh/status/765629159787859968
https://twitter.com/EFCFansCorner/status/765625107486216194
MAN CITY SCORE AND THE 13 FANS GO WILD pic.twitter.com/cyNPRQImby
— 🤘🏼 (@EFCal97) August 16, 2016
https://twitter.com/RobertFulton78/status/765618050821394432
https://twitter.com/KemlynRoadStand/status/765625139048411136
https://twitter.com/TheAnfieldChat/status/765621814013952000
Those City fans that did make the trip saw their side take control of the tie in the first half. Goals from David Silva and Sergio Aguero put them two goals up at the break, despite the Argentine missing two – yes two – penalties.
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