Manchester City will round off their Champions League group stage with double cause for celebration this week when they host Sevilla.
Pep Guardiola's side have already confirmed top spot, guaranteeing a better position for the draw for the first knockout round. And if the manager will not let anyone play down that achievement, plenty at the club are delighted that Wednesday's dead rubber will be played in front of another crowd of over 50,000.
General sale tickets have sold out for the fixture, leaving just a few hospitality waiting to be taken in the final hours before the match kicks off. The ground will not be full, not least because only 150 Sevilla fans are making the journey, but with plenty of their allocation of 2500 snapped up by home supporters City can expect another bumper crowd in the sort of game where they may not have got one in the not-so-distant past.
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For City, the consistently good attendances and atmosphere in the Champions League this season have shown the wider progress being made with the fanbase. If you can fill the place in a competition that supporters have not traditionally liked and at a stage of it where the jeopardy of the Blues crashing out is slim to none, a lot of things are being done right.
Guardiola has been thrilled with the noise and numbers this season having never previously been shy to call for more from the fanbase, and anyone who has been has noticed a difference: not only are there more bums on seats, but there are more bums jumping off seats to celebrate a goal - more likely than not scored by summer signing Erling Haaland.
City's new No.9 has had a marked impact on the crowd. There has been a surge in demand for tickets from Scandinavia but many more closer to home are also keen to clamp their eyes on the goalscoring phenomenon who has already blasted in three hat-tricks at home this season.
From the invigorating 4-2 comeback win over Crystal Palace to the derby annihilation of United that even had Haaland's dad joining in with a stadium-wide Poznan, City are certainly serving up excitement this season. The fact there is more of a local element to it is making it even more enjoying it for the core fanbase.
"This season has been fantastic," says Colin Savage, a lifelong fan who has represented season ticket members for the last four years in the City Matters group. "We're obviously seeing Erling Haaland who is the goalscoring phenomenon who we've lacked for a few seasons since Sergio Aguero left us.
"This is our real chance to win the Champions League, we've got a real goalscorer who can make a goal out of nothing. As City fans we used to get quite frustrated at players throwing balls into the box and Raheem Sterling and Phil Foden trying to get on the end of them but now we've got probably the best goalscorer in the world so it's a really exciting season.
"He's a City fan. He may have been born in Leeds but he's a City fan, like Phil Foden is. That again makes it more exciting because we have someone who understands City, who has been there and watched us when we were only just back in the Premier League and then the Kevin Keegan days and the Stuart Pearce days. He understands the fanbase and he's such a character that has a way about him. He's endlessly cool with his zen celebration and there's just something about him that excites people."
While City are growing globally, the club feels there is enough local support for them to look at an expansion of the North Stand that would take the stadium capacity to 60,000. Planning permission has been in place since the South Stand was extended in 2015, and with City operating at 99 per cent capacity across the stadium and with increased demand the feeling is that the time could be right to add more seats in.
Ticket prices have regularly gone up over the last decade, and with the cost of living rising there will be more and more people who have to consider whether football is still a luxury they can afford. As a club with one of the traditionally poorest fanbases in the top flight, City do need to make sure that they are not pricing their local community out.
From the noise coming out of the Etihad, there is plenty of the Maine Road spirit still in a group of supporters that followed their team down to the third division and sometimes still question if they are really here at the top of the English game. When the predictable chant arrives from the away end of where the home supporters were when the team wasn't very good, the answer is swift and emphatic.
"Our fanbase is a relatively old demographic, it's provable," explained Savage. "I know people have dropped off over the years but we have still got an older, loyal fanbase.
"It's not that we've got a bunch of 60-year-olds who have suddenly become City supporters, it's because people have stayed. I know because I see the figures every season, and it's becoming a bit like United where there is very little churn and the chances of getting a new season ticket are few and far between because nobody is giving them up."
With Haaland, City have arguably never been better placed to go all the way in the Champions League. And if the club are filling the ground for dead rubber group games even without their star name, they will not have to worry about their support roaring them as far as possible at the Etihad just as they have done in the Premier League.
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