Man City fan group 1894 celebrate landmark with fitting Newcastle game as their voice grows louder

A group of Manchester City fans are celebrating 10 years of ups and downs as they aim to help supporters and players

“If we thought that starting at 3am would be good for football, make it stronger and we could all leave the club and go straight to the game, we would have put it there.” We Are 1894 exists not keen on starting the game in the middle of the night but stressing that the decisions they make are in the best interests of the team and the fans.

There has been criticism of their recent decision to boycott the Community Shield at kick-off, which did not include the Blues’ trip to Wembley, and while some wear it as a badge of honor to be out all night, the reality is that they shouldn’t be wearing it.

Despite the club’s lack of recognition, the protesters scored two big points by raising nearly £15,000 for local food banks, while the sell-out crowd at Wembley Stadium was packed with supporters who weren’t normally present on match days and couldn’t see I stay up to date with the team.

Definitely chants or songs. The team’s support is why the group was formed 10 years ago, a group of friends who grew up in Kippax and wanted to make sure Etihad weren’t overcome by complacency after their first Premier League title.

They have started raising money for flag-raising at games and organizing a singing department to create noise barriers. They work with the club on match day logistics but also feel they could offer something different.

From banners in support of broader fan initiatives such as security, to displaying ribbons and large cards, fans have gone beyond chants to restore an identity to the stadium and team that can help all fans every matchday. “It’s either in you or not.” We do it because we care about the club and if we ever feel like we’re doing it for the good of the club there’s no point in doing it,” a spokesman told the Manchester Evening News. “

There’s an emotional.” connection to what we’re doing, not club shows, they’re doing things for the viewers, while we’re doing things for the people underground because they can make noise underground.

“The club can do things that look good on the TV picture – that’s not criticising them, and they have a big budget and do the light shows and the loud music – but we try to do something that we think will raise a smile or have a sarcastic tone to reflect where we live.

“We don’t really slag off other clubs with banners, you have mutual respect.”

Something different doesn’t always work, as the group found out to their cost during the pandemic while the club was banned by UEFA from competing in the Champions League. The dislike of UEFA from Blues had never been stronger and supporters were happy to contribute towards a giant banner that would be displayed at the next Champions League match when football returned to some kind of normality.

1894 had canvassed opinions for their enormous 42mx20m poster and found that 65 per cent of responses just wanted the words ‘F*** UEFA’. They tried something a bit more creative, mocking the process City had been subjected to by portraying UEFA senior executives as characters in The Muppet Show.

There are those that still think the banner would have worked if it had been unveiled at a big match in front of a full house once the club had been vindicated at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, instead of the grim cocktail of circumstances it ended up being debuted. With no football and no fans in grounds owing to the pandemic, it was displayed via drones at Heaton Park but the reaction was brutal enough to see 1894 move away from the reactionary and incendiary Twitter and build up their presence on Facebook and Instagram instead.

Equally, sometimes different has really worked. The ship design that sailed across the stand before a Champions League game against Schalke in 2019 was a creative decision that really paid off while the branding of manager Manuel Pellegrini as This Charming Man (another Smiths lyric) gave the club a priceless branding opportunity for someone whose public persona offered little personality otherwise.

Things have gradually improved again, and the Etihad has never been louder ahead of its first game of the new campaign. Ironically, it was more serious charges that sparked the stadium into life last season with 1894 organising their first coach welcome of the year in the days after City were hit with grave allegations from the Premier League and creating another banner.

“Paninka on the streets of London” was dismissed by some neutrals as a group of supporters who treated the lawyer – David Pannick KC, who is employed by the Malicious Complaints Handling Association – like a forward, but anyone who did even the slightest bit connected with the fans and the city got the message: it was just F*** Premier League but draw on Smith’s lyrics to playfully convey the sense of anger and rebellion.

The next big banner should have been for the Champions League quarter-finals against Bayern, but a classic dose of Manchester weather ensured it was used in the Premier League play-off against Arsenal.

‘We follow you everywhere’ They conquered one of the season’s songs before City blew up their title rivals. The club has never looked so good, but since 1894, as its success has attracted growing numbers of fans around the world, there has been a growing sense that local identity needs to be protected.

Far from being opposed to new fans, and working with a variety of fan groups around the world – Blues Japan send their own version of the Follow You Everywhere banner to a Fulham game after loving the original so much – Blues Japan work with the The Shield community has also revealed that the cancellation of key player games has deprived the side of the support they can normally count on

“We can only talk about what we know about so we’ve been brought up on Manchester songs. We were that group that went out at 11am in the morning and went to the match then drank on Oxford Road and went on to 42s or The Venue,” they said.

“That’s our life but we accept donations from all over the world so we can’t take £500 from some guy in Australia but not listen to their opinion. For them, it’s to feel closer and more involved for something the players might see.

“They think we’re helping the team so we have to give them that way of helping the team indirectly. That’s a positive but we wouldn’t want the club to lose a lot of what it was over the years.

“We’re not saying we want to go back to Maine Road and it was better when we were s***, we’re just saying there are some things that are uniquely City. It reminds the wider audience that there’s a civic identity of who we are – Manchester culture.

“We can be a worldwide club but someone in Japan or wherever would still want to know. Barcelona focus on the voice of the region. There’s nothing wrong with saying this is our identity and here we are, and people can buy into it.”

Keeping that local identity while adding more global followers is something the club itself is wrestling with, and 1894 are confident enough in their position among the fanbase to take a stand against the club if it thinks it is harming the supporters or the atmosphere. It felt like a big deal when they did it publicly for the first time – the disastrous European Super League – but the Community Shield boycott showed the impact that the right call at the right time can have.

As well as having new ideas for banners and songs, using prominent fan accounts effectively to promote new chants that then spread across matches, 1894 also want to represent those fans who love City but can accept that not everything is always done with fans in mind. The North Stand redevelopment is on their agenda given the latest plans appear to prioritise revenue over atmosphere, while season ticket prices and kick-off times are also still relevant.

It is fitting in a way that 1894 will celebrate their 10th anniversary against Newcastle, a club still enjoying the glow of a takeover and ecstatic at being back in the Champions League. There has been no co-ordinated response from the Geordies protesting an 8pm kick-off time that won’t see them back home until the middle of the night, and while they have every right to enjoy the journey they are on with their club it would be wise for them to pay attention sooner rather than later to the lessons City fans have learnt.

“We don’t get shot down as much as we used to and people accept we are speaking up for the right reasons rather than for the sake of getting likes on Twitter,” they said. “There’s loads more we can achieve.

“We’re quite proud of the fact we’ve been going ten years and we want to say thank you to everyone that has supported us and got involved and we’re always looking for new help and donations to keep us running along. We couldn’t have been going for ten years without support in both donations and nice comments.

“We don’t get everything right but we come through that and when we’ve had a bad day at the office we’ve not disappeared and I think people like the fact we’ve kept going because sometimes we will be the independent voice to say something that needs to be said.

“When we started we didn’t think we would do it for ten years, we just enjoyed it and wanted to make a difference. After a while we realised that people did really like what we were doing and they wouldn’t want us to stop.

“We need new blood coming in but it’s not a chore so we will keep going as long as we keep enjoying it and as long as there are enough people to help and feel like everyone wants us to be there.”