It’s not just us; fans of a lot of clubs go through
it.
Stoke City fans often accuse a lot of being
‘Stokeist’, even when they sometimes
change their “typical” style of play; Manyoo fans
have often churned out “ABU” (Anyone But United) and Chelsea
fans find themselves having their club described as having ‘no class’.
If they win 1-0, Arsenal
fans get accused of watching a boring team and, in a positive light, fans of North East clubs get labelled as being part of the
‘hotbed of English football’, which has always been an utter joke!
Our turn (again)?
UEFA
strike again! Reports this morning suggest that the relaxing of the F(not-so)FP rules – where clubs can now-again spend beyond
FFP limits as long as UEFA can see that the club has a viable
business plan – will NOT apply to those club who were punished last season!
In other words – and as the Manchester Evening News points out – FFP has been relaxed to allow clubs to do
exactly what Manchester City F.C. have done (and were punished for)!
Now I try not to swear in my blog postings and so I’ll just
say…
W.T...?!
Are we
City fans right to suspect that UEFA have a not-so hidden agenda to keep ‘upstarts’ like little
ol’ City ‘pegged back’ and slow (or attempt to completely scupper) their
progression to join ‘the big boys’ at the big table; whilst at the same time clearly and SO very obviously allowing past
elite teams who have slipped-up in recent years to catch up again?
Well I
would love to hear the argument of anyone who thinks we are unjustified
in our belief of that very theory…and I hope like hell Jean-Louis Dupont manages to expose the
organisation for exactly what they are.
I hope
the courts decide that the well-intended
FFP rules have been wrongly used and, therefore, is / has been completely
illegal. I hope they get heavily fined for it and that ‘due compensation’ to
those clubs wrongly punished are considerable also.
And the others…
I’ve
been following City for 30+ years now. Although the story goes about our
‘Invisible Man’ song that Glauber Berti, who made just one, 85-minute substitution appearance after being
on the bench for almost half the 2008 / 09 season was, indeed…’The Invisible
Man’ himself (and that one fan dressed in bandages and dark glasses at an
away game some time later); others then-used the song to lament the fact that
we were very often overlooked by being shoved into small corners of newspapers whilst
often being the victim of being ‘last on MotD’…and even then only in very brief highlights (I’m sure that’s why I recall
us-singing this years before good ol’ Glauber arrived…and disappeared).
I can
recall many of those seemingly-ignorant & cruel occasions but one in
particular where we’d beaten Huddersfield Town, albeit in the second tier of English football, 10-1…only to have the report of that match shoved a few pages in
from the ‘back page’ by one Sunday publication at least. Who was on the back
that day? Manyoo of course…and I don’t
think they even won that Saturday!
Were we
overly sensitive or even paranoid back then? Are we now?
No I
don’t think so…and although it might be abating slightly I do believe also that
in the media there has been an elitist ‘London Liverpool- ‘lovies’ on TV an’ the like.
In
fact it’s slightly sad to say that I think the most even-minded / unbiased
pundit on TV is Gary Neville (although I do find
ex-Liverpool midfielder and [later] Manager Graeme Souness
likewise).
But
what I have noticed in those 30+ years is that these ‘City bashing sessions’,
when they come around, rarely come in singular incidents; nor from just one
source. There’s often a lot of ‘band-wagon jumping’ and further ‘dirt digging’
by several other parties who are often, seemingly, out to not only have a pop
at City for what we’ve done but to sour anything we’re trying to achieve.
- We build our Academy and almost within a few months I’ve heard press-pundits crying, ‘Where are all these so-called home-grown kids?!’
- Similarly my mate quite recently reported that there were a bunch of Crewe Alexandra fans watching their reserves play our EDS lads; and who were reading the Manchester City team-sheet line-up and scoffing at the foreign-sounding names whilst asking, "Where are the local lads". Thankfully my mate was on hand to point out to them that the majority of the lads they were skitting about WERE 'Manchester born'...
- Our new owners steadily build our fan
base and raise the profile of our club worldwide in general; we then build
a new stand (not even finished yet) and expand the seating otherwise
around the Etihad for
the long term and there are cries from embitteRED fans and elsewhere that, “We’ll never fill it”!
Now
also…
- Wolfsburg are doing their very best to scupper
our plans to sign Kevin De Bruyne
by offering him an even BETTER deal than he’s on…even though he only signed
a new, 5-year contract with the German Bundesliga
side last year.
- Even though they can’t purchase anyone
this year due to a transfer embargo;
- …going back to UEFA, it could be a
whole 3 weeks - just 3 weeks before the start of the flippin’ season -
that currently-imposed
sanctions, let alone the recent revelation that we are to be excluded from the relaxing of last season’s F(not-so)FP
restrictions, before
we find out for sure if constraints on wages & spending are indeed to
be lifted! What’s that all about?!
Okay…I
get the Wolfsburg
But
when it (and they) fly at you all at once as this latest, momentum-gathering ‘bashing
crowd’ seems to be doing; the old City ‘spider sense’ does start to tingle a little.
Apart
from the odd ‘dig’ that comes our way in respect of and similar to what Chelsea / Chelsea fans have to tolerate; I
think we are generally seen as a club with class who does things in the right
manner both on & off the pitch for the most part.
In Ferran Soriano,
Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Manuel Pellegrini & Txiki Begiristain I trust; and I believe that we’ll
ride, with style, the waves in the murky UEFA waters and that we’ll achieve most of our transfer
targets…and, if not, we’ll have a pretty decent Plan ‘B’ & ‘C’ ready to
spring into action. 'Early business' is
'good business' but if needs be, in the transfer market, ‘we’ll fight to the end’…
On TalkSport the other day someone in the studio
suggested that 'we City fans' were starting to panic [about the summer transfer window]. Us? Having been through most of the divisions in
the last 18 years like a dose of (whatever)?
Really…
We endured the FA and Premier Leagues hidden agenda's against us and we will do thesame with UEFA, nothing or no one will stop us from rising to the top of World Football. WE ARE MANCHESTER, WE ARE CITY.
ReplyDeleteP.s. Added your Blog to my Blog's City site list.
DeleteWell said CityBlue; totally agree. Thanks for commenting...and thank you for adding me to your Blog site list!
DeleteCheers.