Is Manchester City or Manchester United the most local club of Manchester?
Posted by ChevalierDuTemple@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 73 comments
Hi from Argentina.
Anyhow, i heard that Manchester United have more followers outside of Manchester, while City is bigger inside of Manchester.
Thanks in advance.
Cute_Plate_3407@reddit
It can be understandable if you get to hear more fans speak about City in recent years due to their dominance, but if you look more closely, you will notice United has a wider fan base due to history and culture.
No-Slip7236@reddit
As a Southerner, all I ever heard was how United weren’t really Manchester and City were the proper local team. Only by visiting did I realise how close to the city centre United were. By contrast, Spurs must be a good 4 or 5 miles from London centre.
luujs@reddit
Technically Man Utd are in Trafford not Manchester, which is what people mean when they say they’re not really Manchester, but Old Trafford’s right on the boundary of official Manchester anyway and Trafford was only created as an amalgamation of Manchester’s suburbs in 1974
thirty1twenty1@reddit
Chelsea is also in Fulham. The founders of the club considering calling it Kensington Football Club, which would have made us KFC lol
NaturalHighPower@reddit
Like Kingstonian! Who Chelsea kicked out of their ground in Kingston so their women’s team can play there.
Professional-Test239@reddit
Old Trafford football ground sits pretty much where Salford, Trafford and Manchester boundaries meet. It's only over the ship canal to Salford. But, yes, it's in Trafford.
jaymatthewbee@reddit
The boundaries of Manchester are weird. The boundary between Salford and Manchester basically runs through the city centre.
Professional-Test239@reddit
Salford and Manchester historic city centres are basically the facing banks of the River Irwell.
Old Salford city centre (basically Chapel St) used to be bigger than Manchester.
Salford nowadays is functionally West Manchester but don't say that out loud because they don't like it.
neilm1000@reddit
In fairness, that's because at that point the boundary is the Irwell.
Vehlin@reddit
Half of east Manchester used to be in Cheshire.
happybaby00@reddit
Because it's in Tottenham?
Topinio@reddit
No, it’s because Tottenham, the place, takes a couple of hours to walk to from Big Ben or anywhere in central London.
No-Slip7236@reddit
Listen, a word of advice, if you’re expecting sensible,rational debate when it concerns London football, I’m afraid you’re gonna be shit out of luck.
Topinio@reddit
Tottenham are 7.1 miles from the official centre point, the statue of King Charles at Trafalgar Square.
Arsenal 3.4 Fulham 4.6 West Ham 5.2
kilgore_trout1@reddit
Charlton QPR Brentford Barnet Bromley Leyton Orient AFC Wimbledon
:
Are we a joke to you?
Topinio@reddit
No but was on mobile and going into a film. Didn’t have the time to do every club. Why didn’t you do any?
ChevalierDuTemple@reddit (OP)
Ehh, why do you have a statue of king you end up executing?
kilgore_trout1@reddit
Honestly, we all felt a bit bad about the whole affair.
A statue really was the least we could do.
No-Slip7236@reddit
Blimey, that’s even worse! And they call themselves a London club!
rybnickifull@reddit
A weird amount of people insist they play in Salford, which is an incredible stretch.
Professional-Test239@reddit
If you leave Old Trafford and walk 5 minutes crossing over the ship canal you are in Salford. So it's a stretch of 5 minutes.
rybnickifull@reddit
If you leave and go to a different place, it's Salford, yes.
jaymatthewbee@reddit
The stadium is in Trafford
Nizz_Lord@reddit
I’m from Manchester, generally speaking United are more supported in the north and west of Manchester and city have more supported in the south and east
I’m in south Manchester and surrounded by far more city fans than United unfortunately
allewiseu@reddit
I’m from south Manchester (Stockport) and I’d say it’s pretty equal. Purely anecdotal but at school we’d frequently play city v United football games for fun and it always seemed evenly split.
Nizz_Lord@reddit
Im in didsbury and most of the people i know near me are city fans, however where i grew up everyone was United
ExcellentBasil1378@reddit
Yeah it definitely depends, I’m from south Manchester ( about as south as it goes) and its majority United fans, maybe 70-30.
Glass_Minute4753@reddit
Can confirm. Grew up on the east side of Manchester, more City fans there definitely.
TheDawiWhisperer@reddit
Gutted.
I've never met a city fan in the wild on the other side of rye Pennines. I'm convinced they're fictional. United fans are everywhere though.
Legitimate-Soil7109@reddit
It depends - my family are Irish Mancs from Partington (South West) and, as Old Trafford is on the bus route from Piccadilly, Carrington is right next door, it's under Trafford council, and (I think) United have a larger Irish fanbase, every single person there is United through and through.
Renew3DUK@reddit
The fact your in Manchester is the unfortunate part there mate. 😜
theotherquantumjim@reddit
It is known as the Empty-ad…
Nosworthy@reddit
I'm not a City fan and have no skin in the game but the 'Emptyhad' crack is absolutely lifting and pisses me off no end. It's quite pathetic.
The genuine City fans are as loyal as they come. They were getting crowds of 30k in League One whilst their biggest rivals within the same city won the treble and dominated the Premier League. It would have been piss easy for any kids growing up in the 90s to fuck them off and support United instead but they continued to pull in excellent crowds at their lowest ebb.
The club was taken over and became rich overnight in 2008 but the fans didn't become rich. Maine Road was in Moss Side, a relatively poor area. The fans who followed them in the bad times couldn't afford to go deep into Europe and multiple trips to Wembley every year. City don't have the millions of tourists following them like United and Liverpool do so when fans have to priorotise which games to go to there isn't the army of plastics there to take their place and fill it. That doesn't make their support poor though. The true test of a fan base is what they get through the gates when they're struggling and only Sunderland beat their League One attendances.
Spoke to a City fan earlier in the season who's been going since the 60s - he paid £750 for his season ticket then the club decided they were going to turn his block into corporate hospitality and wanted £2k to renew.
Professional-Test239@reddit
When City got promoted in 1999 it felt like a bigger celebration than them winning the titles decades later. I remember you couldn't drive down Wilmslow road because of all the City fans celebrating.
Nowadays when City win the league it feels like the town just shrugs.
(Just my observation as someone who lived in Manchester on and off for years and don't support either team).
Grandma-Try69@reddit
More than 1.3 million tickets were sold for men's matchdays across all competitions and the average home Premier League attendance was up on the previous campaign at 53,346 ....
For the 2024–25 season, the combined stadium capacity of the 20 Premier League clubs was 816,170, with an average of 40,809. At the end of the campaign, the league recorded the highest average match attendance of any association football league in the world, at 40,421 per game
jaymatthewbee@reddit
Why do so many turn up dressed as blue plastic chairs?
Milita_leorio@reddit
still a silent ground. Go to any proper football league stadium thats a 1/4 of the size and you'll hear a better atmosphere.
Competitive_Rub_9590@reddit
Growing up I always knew Manchester City as the local club, not sure if this was to do with united being the bigger side with more success and having a international fan base which may have made city being the ‘local’ team
Professional-Test239@reddit
This is exactly it. Supporting City supposedly used to mark you out as being a proper Manc because all the Utd fans were from outside Manchester. It's never been true though, Utd have more fans inside and outside Manchester.
Professional-Test239@reddit
Their grounds are both a couple of miles out from Manchester city centre in different directions, so they are both local.
United has the most support in the city by far. The idea that Manchester locals support City and United fans are from anywhere but Manchester is a myth that City fans tell themselves to make themselves feel more authentic. For evidence compare the size of the crowds for the various bus top parades over the years.
Source: I lived in Manchester for 25 years and don't support either team so have no dog in this fight.
flazinho@reddit
City can’t fill their stadium even for big games despite being in their most successful period ever. This is despite for years creating the myth all people from Manchester support city 🤔
Picklerick4670@reddit
Mate it’s not even close man united dominate the fan base in Manchester and anywhere in the world.
BertieR-Drizzleflap@reddit
Agree…I backpacked around India 20 years back…all the kids had UTD tops on….in the middle of nowhere like…20!years ago..can’t remember seeing any other tops from anywhere…couple of Barcelona….1 QPR..I’m QPR so it’s stuck out🙏
kingslayyer@reddit
beckham and then ronaldo. they were huge in india
Party_Advantage_3733@reddit
I'm not sure having your stadium full of tourists every week makes you 'the local club'. More fans from Manchester? Yeah probably. But fans from Manchester in the stadium on matchday? Absolutely not.
Picklerick4670@reddit
When I was a student couple years ago, Man City were offering me student discount deals to watch champions league at the Etihad. So let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Party_Advantage_3733@reddit
Yeah, I don't think City have good support but did you hear Old Trafford last week on TV when they played Leeds? It sounded like the game was at Elland Road! I don't think the fans in the stadium for United know any of the chants or songs at all.
neilm1000@reddit
Literally, it is City as they're in the city boundary. United aren't actually in Manchester.
But it doesn't really work like that.
Vehlin@reddit
It used to be City when Man U were attracting all of the glory hunters. Now the tables have turned.
rybnickifull@reddit
A common misconception - City supporters in fact all live in Stockport. Or one of several places called Heaton followed by a random noun.
2muchroom@reddit
All 35 of them
Time-Mode-9@reddit
When I lived there circa 2005, City were more popular with people from Manchester proper. United s seems more popular with people from the surrounding areas.
Otocolobus_manul8@reddit
Know a guy from Salford, this checks out.
Obvious_Phase5446@reddit
although im not from manchester or live there from what i know and have heard city is the local club and united is the global club
jaymatthewbee@reddit
28% of 1 million is more fans than 49% of 100,000
lokodiz@reddit
This statistic just tells you which of the two clubs has more of a global support. A more useful statistic to judge which of the two locals support is the ratio of United supporters to City supporters in Manchester.
CharlemagneKidding@reddit
Man city fans aren't even local to England, never mind Manchester. It's not even a football club, it's a laundering front for a genocidal regime.
thirty1twenty1@reddit
It's disappointing nobody had made the old joke about Unite supporters all being from London yet. Game's gone
jaymatthewbee@reddit
It’s probably about 50/50 inside Manchester.
United have more global fans than City which is why you’re more likely to meet a United fan outside of Manchester, but this doesn’t mean United aren’t also well supported in Manchester.
Furicist@reddit
From South Manchester. Out of 43 kids in primary school year 1 was a city fan, 1 a Leeds fan, other 41 were united.
Everywhere I go it's spotty, some are more city, some are more united.
United has for the past 40 years been the bigger club, by far. It's had a far larger following.
I don't follow football. My dad was a city fan, but I just liked playing. Watching football I found boring.
Honestly it can be tedious living in a city like that when you don't follow football. Nearly everyone wants to use it as an ice breaker.
Defiant_Ad_4088@reddit
United aren’t in Manchester, case closed.
MatMcMashadar@reddit
The smaller clubs in any given city claim to be the biggest in that city. I don't know why that is, perhaps it's the only thing they can cling to. Everton claim to be the biggest club in Merseyside, Man City claim to be the biggest club in Manchester, Rangers claim to be the biggest club in Glasgow, Arsenal claim to be the biggest club in London. Always the little brother trying to outdo their more successful sibling I suppose.
Emyr42@reddit
Neither. FC United of Manchester was a set up as a fan-driven response to the purchase of MUFC by the Glazers.
Yuji_Ide_Best@reddit
Lived in Manc on & off for 3decades now, so often get a unique perspective every time im back as the differences are more noticeable.
20-30yrs ago was overwhelmingly United. You got pockets of City fans, but itd be something like meeting 10 or 15 United fans for every 1 city fan you come across.
These days its far more divided. Particularly its the kids you see wearing City kits rather than United whenever you go to a park or something.
So anecdotaly, City appears to be appealing to the younger generation for whom the '00s is 'retro'. In my day to day, so places like work, its a lot more divided too, then again my colleagues work from all over the country (and abroad). In terms of all the Manchester based ones we are 12 for United with only 1 lonely city fan who dares not talk football!
Not a clear answer sorry. Just adding my own perspective so you can come to an average answer when combined with all other comments
Intrepid-Address-511@reddit
City, not a fan of the sport so no bias, but City is the local team.
Honeybee0109@reddit
I’m from manchester and I’d say city personally but that could just be my circle. We have a city store in arndale and not a united one if that means anything?
lost-in-midgard@reddit
As you'll probably have noticed from the other answers, it doesn't really work like that.
Realistic_Bus_4547@reddit
The Manchester United fans I knew "stopped bothering with the football" 3 seasons after Ferguson left.
Flavourifshrrp@reddit
People from Manchester tend to support City.
Utd have a bigger following because in the past they have been more famous.
Several_Cold_7160@reddit
Id say its fairly split. I include Greater Manchester when talking about this. Greater Manc resident of 30+ years
TapeDeckSlick@reddit
I'm a Manc and I'd say United
Tight-Principle-743@reddit
It’s probably Manchester United - most of City’s fan base tend to potentially be younger due to recent successes, but United have the history and very strong ties to Manchester.
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