500 Manchester City fans were told in October they can’t sit in their seats next season. Many of them are frustrated at not being able to find a new home yet
06:00, 28 Feb 2026
Manchester City’s North Stand expansion is almost finished
In October, 500 Manchester City fans were stunned to learn that they were being relocated away from their seats behind the goal in the North Stand to make way for a new corporate section of the ground. Four months on, hundreds of them still have no idea where they will be sitting next season.
Such a decision was always going to be unpopular, especially because it was so unexpected. Nowhere in the plans for a new top tier of the family stand did it mention that once it was done they’d be turfing out loyal fans on the bottom tier to make way for people who pay more. Change is usually upsetting but also usually argued as necessary – the club did something similar to make room for the Tunnel Club hospitality section before Pep Guardiola arrived.
The change was announced early in the season with the intention of giving the affected supporters as much time as possible to be sorted in time for the new campaign. There is also the promise of a price freeze for two years for anyone relocated and the claim that fans will be able to move with friends and family who they sit with.
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However, while the new corporate section is being advertised – fans are being told they can keep their seat if they want to pay roughly £2,000 more per year – there has been frustration from supporters at the lack of progress over their options for next season. Coupled with that is concern over whether there will actually be space to move all the groups who want to stay together.
City insist that they have regularly updated affected fans and given access to FAQs that tell all that is needed to know, and there have been meetings that senior club representatives have attended where they have heard the frustrations of fans. There have also been more than 4,000 new season tickets announced as part of the expansion, with half of those ringfenced for Under-18s.
But lots of fans – many of who are having to face up to leave the seat they have sat in since they moved from Maine Road – have not felt the support or communication they expected from a club they have given their love (and money) to down to Division Two and back. After the shock of the news in October that their days in their seat were numbered, too many have sensed even in the wake of meeting the club privately that there is not enough drive from City to make sure they are happily relocated.
Having all been asked to fill in a survey of preferences for relocating by early January and told that results would follow, many expected to hear back from the club in January. Instead, as March approaches there are lots who remain in the dark about where they will be sitting, and while many do not want to be publicly critical of the club that they have given so much to, they have genuine worries about where they are going to be rehomed and how much say they will actually have.
“I’ve been going to City since I was 11 so 35-36 years. The current crop of guys who we sit next to in the North Stand have all been sat in the same place for 15-20 years,” Shaun O’Brien told the Manchester Evening News. “I don’t mind that we’re moving because I know that this is progress and City need to make more money. We sign the best players in the world and we’re one of the best teams in Europe so that’s fair enough.
“But it sticks in the gut a little bit when City are promoting the new seats for the corporate tier when we don’t know where we’re going. We haven’t picked any seats, my dad is disabled so we need to have somewhere that’s near a disability section so we’re all together. We’re all in limbo, just waiting.
“It would be nice if we got an email and could all come down and pick our seats or say where we want to go or find out where we are going and then we could all stay together. The guys who we sit next to at the match—we all go to Wembley together so it’s an extended family. There’s about 19 of us who go to the match and all meet up.”
Accommodating all seating requests is going to be difficult for the club from a practical point of view, and there are also financial and emotional concerns to think of. As the North Stand expands, will it still be the family stand if different generations are being moved out to make way for guests who pay more?
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Ricardo Middleton moved over from the Colin Bell Stand a few years ago because it was becoming too expensive to go with his two sons, but now could have to go back there – and then face a price increase in two years. To add to the confusing messages fans have been getting, he was offered and accepted three seats together in the family stand in the tier above but was then told it wasn’t possible anymore.
Currently paying less than £100 a month for his three season tickets, he would expect that to double in the Colin Bell Stand given he was paying £80 a month just for himself – or £840 a month to keep his seats in the new City Hall.
“I still want to go to City but I’m looking forward to going and having a pint with them before the game, I want it to be something that me and my sons do forever but if it wasn’t for my kids, I’d have knocked it on the head,” he said. “You might take them swimming or trampoline places at the weekend [when they’re younger] and then they grow out of it and they’ve been going to City for the last 12-13 years.
“This is our little thing that we do so I’m stuck because I’ve actually said to my kids should we knock it on the head, and they don’t look best pleased about it so I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. If we set up a similar thing to FC United, I would happily walk away and never step foot in there ever again. That’s how I feel.”
There is an obvious place where many of the 500 fans could go – especially if they do not want to move into any spaces in the rows ahead of them that are uncovered and so prime position to be drenched whenever the Manchester weather acts up. The new upper tier of the North Stand will boast 7,000 new seats and while the views may be worse the pricing will presumably reflect that.
One problem is that it is not finished yet, so fans cannot go and get a feel for the seats while it is still a building site. Even then, supporters would welcome being provisionally booked into seats or lined up for them in the new stand but are beginning to worry that they won’t even have first access to them.
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“We’re happy to look at relocating to the section opening above us and no-one has got tickets there at the moment so they know what the plan is,” said John Killeen from Manchester. “Even if they can’t show us around, they can say these seats would be good for us and offer us them.
“They just keep saying they’ll come back to us when they are ready. They don’t indicate if it is a month or a month after. We’re getting to the point where they’re going to be opening up the season ticket window for next season and they keep saying they’ll offer us a priority before then but that’s all we get out of them.
“You’d think surely they could give us a date but they don’t. We’ve had some of the reps from the City Matters group asking these questions and they just get palmed off that they’ll come back to them without anything concrete. It’s just one thing after another and I’ve never felt so distant to the club as I do now.”
How reasonable the club have been during this process is obviously down to opinion, but it does not seem unreasonable for supporters who have been told they are being moved out of their seat (unless they want to stump up an extra two grand every year) to have had more movement in the last four months to finding a new home.
With the North Stand expansion marking the last major piece of the Etihad jigsaw, how the 500 fans who are being moved feel will be another test of the club’s relationship with its most loyal supporters and the extent to which those Blues feel they are being listened to.
“As fans you pay good money every year to go and you deserve a service. The club are very good at sending emails out about tickets for sale and new kits and merchandise but when you need answers you don’t ever seem able to get them. You get a generic response, and it is just tiring and frustrating,” said Ciaran Henshaw.
“It’s the first time I’ve felt like that because the club have always been great with fans and the service has been brilliant but surely somebody somewhere is reading all this who works for the club and is thinking hang on a minute. There’s not one fan I’ve seen online who agrees with it but nothing seems to be done. If they’re going to go ahead with it that’s their decision but I just think it is a dangerous game and it leaves fans like myself unsure and stuck and puzzled.
“There’s just so many unanswered questions that we were hoping would have been answered by now, and they haven’t. We’re a little bit stuck and we don’t really know where we’re up to. It’s not like we’re in October anymore; the season is coming to an end pretty quickly and we don’t really know where we stand.
“It is a worry and surely the club are seeing this and thinking they need to do something but it doesn’t seem to be the case. We’re stuck. We’re trying to get answers and support but it doesn’t seem to be there.”
City decline to directly comment when approached by the Manchester Evening News.
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