Melbourne Heart fans plead Man City owner Mansour to ditch plans to change their kit from red to sky blue



Fans of Manchester City’s Australian club Melbourne Heart have begged Sheikh Mansour not to take away the club’s soul by changing their playing colours from red and white to sky blue.



City bought an 80 per cent stake in the A League club for £6.7million in January and an application has already been made to trademark the name Melbourne City FC.



Many supporters are prepared to accept the name change but have launched a ‘Keep the Red and White’ campaign against proposals to play in City’s blue kit as well.



Original outlook: Melbourne Heart fans don't want Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour to change their kit

In a move that will resonate with fans of Cardiff City, 2,500 placards will be handed out at Saturday’s final game of the season against Western Sydney Wanderers to support the campaign and banners will displayed around Melbourne’s home ground at AAMI Park.



One fan wrote an impassioned plea to City owner Mansour on the Melbourne Heart Supporters Association website, Red and White Unite, pleading with him not to rip the heart out of Melbourne by turning them into a ‘mini Manchester City’, and warning that supporters could turn their backs on the new club.



It read: ‘Please, Manchester City, please, Sheikh Mansour – if you happen to read this, I and countless others are begging you: please, do not erase our club. Please listen to us, the fans and members.



‘This is not about ultimatums or fans having a tantrum over a little issue and threatening to walk away. Our colours are a fundamental part of our club, and without them, particularly alongside the other wholesale changes proposed for Melbourne Heart, many fans, me included, will feel there is nothing left to walk away from.



‘Our club will have been taken from us. Melbourne Heart, the club that I love and am endlessly loyal to, will be dead. I have to believe it’s not too late to stop that.’



Appealing to other supporters, it added: ‘The changes on the cards are a name change – probably to Melbourne City FC – and a change of colours from red and white to something else, most likely sky blue.



Out with the old, in with the new: In 2012, Cardiff City changed their kit colour from blue (left) to red (right)



‘In other words, a ‘brand alignment’ with the Manchester City model. This is undesirable in and of itself, in my opinion, because as others have said elsewhere, this leaves us as a mere plastic ‘brand’, the ‘mini Manchester City’ that the new owners so publicly declared we would not become. It is hard to generate any kind of passion for a brand.



‘Let’s not kid ourselves. The club known as Melbourne Heart, that we have all grown to love, that we have stood by through some of the toughest times ever experienced by any A-League fans, that we have cajoled our family and friends into supporting – that club would be gone.



‘If you change the owners, the badge, the name and the colours, all at once, and from the top down, without the instigation or at least approval of the fans, then that club is gone. It ceases to exist. It is replaced by a new entity.



Blue is the colour: Alvaro Negredo in action for Manchester City (left) and how Melbourne captain Kewell would look (right) if the A-League side changed their kit to mirror Sheikh Mansour's Premier League outfit



‘People have said that it is unreasonable to welcome this with one hand and reject any change with the other. Well, to those people I say that that kind of success would feel hollow to me, like we sold our souls. I never asked for the richest club in the world to buy my club – I was given no choice in the matter.



‘Melbourne Heart is my life, but if it is destroyed and ceases to exist, I will not be able to just ‘switch over’ and support the new club that replaces it. That is not a vacuum that is easily filled.



‘Even if I do choose to keep attending the matches of a club known as Melbourne City that plays in sky blue (and I might, I’m not sure yet), it will not be with a fraction of the passion which I have for Melbourne Heart.’



A statement from the campaign group confirmed the plans for Saturday’s final game that will also mark former Liverpool and Leeds winger Harry Kewell’s farewell appearance.



End of an era: Former Australia international Kewell (centre) will retire from football on Saturday

A statement read: ‘Melbourne Heart supporters will be conducting a campaign to “Keep Melbourne Red and White” at Melbourne Heart’s final season game.



‘In what may be Melbourne Heart’s final game before a name and colour change is made, a number of Melbourne Heart supporters have come together and launched a campaign aimed at celebrating the colours synonymous with Melbourne Heart. This campaign is not to protest any possible colour change, but instead to show the new owners the passion behind the colours red and white.

