{"id":1506,"date":"2019-05-19T19:18:01","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T19:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/?p=1506"},"modified":"2019-05-19T19:20:26","modified_gmt":"2019-05-19T19:20:26","slug":"manchester-city-fans-are-obsessed-with-us-but-were-getting-that-way-about-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/manchester-city-fans-are-obsessed-with-us-but-were-getting-that-way-about-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester City Fans Are Obsessed With Us, But We\u2019re Getting That Way About Them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Footballing rivalries can do funny things. There are plenty of Evertonians that point-blank refuse to wear anything red, for example. Come Christmas time, they\u2019ll genuinely buy blue Santa outfits rather than have to wear traditional ones. That Father Christmas has nothing to do with Liverpool Football Club is an irrelevance, for whatever reason they fear that if they wear the traditional red outfit then they\u2019ll soon have to stop booing every time they go to Goodison or they won\u2019t get irrationally excited over a corner. The idea of being seen to have anything to do with LFC terrifies them, so they avoid it at all cost. It\u2019s fun to laugh at them, but Liverpool supporters aren\u2019t immune from their own ridiculousness. I\u2019ve seen grown men refer to Manchester United\u2019s ground as \u2018Old Toilet\u2019, for example. Rivalries make you blinkered to certain things, willingly ignoring things at your own club whilst simultaneously criticising a team you don\u2019t like for something similar.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-partner=\"tweetdeck\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Imagine slating Liverpool for finishing one point behind this incredible Manchester City side when everybody else is 20+ points behind. We\u2019re the only reason it\u2019s not becoming a one-team league.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Matt (@FalseFMatt) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FalseFMatt\/status\/1129808033238925312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 18, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This season has been the perfect example in many ways. Very real accusations about their financial dealings have been levelled at Manchester City to the point that most people simple accept that they\u2019re true. Yet as Liverpool took them to the final day of the season in the race for the title, the majority of non-Reds in the country seemed to want Pep Guardiola\u2019s side to win because our supporters enjoy celebrating the team doing well an would therefore be \u2018unbearable\u2019 if we won. Forget the unbearable nature of the Premier League turning into the sort of thing we see in France and Germany, with one dominant team buying all of the best players and everyone else playing for second-place, the blinkered nature of rivalry meant that people were happy to see a side with realistic accusations against it win their second title in a year. Yet as we all talk about how City are obsessed with us, aren\u2019t we at risk of being accused of the same thing?<\/p>\n<h2>They Desperately Want A Rivalry<\/h2>\n<p>Manchester City will always see Manchester United as their main rivals, just as most Liverpool supporters will look at Everton in the same way. When a club is based in the same geographical location as you it\u2019s impossible not to view them as the side you most want to beat and least want to see do well. Yet it says plenty about how fan Manchester United have fallen as a football club that City view them in the same way as we view the blues: an annoyance but not a threat. Right now, the club that Pep Guardiola calls his own is desperate to be seen as legitimate on the big stage. They don\u2019t have the history of success that the likes of us and the Red Devils can boast, so the fans feel inferior and don\u2019t know what to do with themselves. At the same time as the Spaniard asks why nobody is talking about his side\u2019s historic achievement, everyone associated with Manchester is busy talking about us. They need a rivalry to make them feel legitimate, to give their success added meaning because buying success feels meaningless otherwise.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-partner=\"tweetdeck\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">A Manchester City fan has just burst into the press seating area here at Wembley, and was being escorted away by security.<\/p>\n<p>He screamed &#8220;We&#8217;ve won the f****** domestic treble! &#8230; but you will ignore us. You will all have Mo Salah on the back of the papers tomorrow.&#8221;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/MCFC?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#MCFC<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/LFC?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#LFC<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Joe Prince-Wright (@JPW_NBCSports) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JPW_NBCSports\/status\/1129812322401304576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 18, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>They see Liverpool as their most likely challengers right now on the pitch, but more important than that is the fact that we have the unspoken thing that they don\u2019t. Watch the trophy celebrations from the other night and compare that to when we won the Champions League in 2005. Even more than that, see how City\u2019s fans acted when they won the Premier League again and see how Anfield responded to not winning it. We were more passionate in sending the players off to Madrid than the crowd at the Etihad was to have seen their side become the first team since their neighbours to win back-to-back titles. They don\u2019t know how to act like a big club right now and they\u2019re trying to engineer a rivalry with the team that look most likely to threaten their dominance, which is us. They had to perform at an incredible rate during the second-half of the season, losing just one of their final nineteen games, to make sure that they pipped us to the title, so it\u2019s little wonder that they\u2019re concerned by us right now.<\/p>\n<h2>We\u2019re Just As Guilty Of Displaying Signs Of Obsession<\/h2>\n<p>Just as we can point to Man City constantly talking about us and referencing us in everything that they do, up to and including their players singing about us in the aftermath of winning the title, so too can their supporters point out that we seem to be talking about them all of the time. I\u2019m just as guilty of it as anyone else. The problem is that when you watch your club miss out on its first title for nearly thirty years, it\u2019s difficult not to feel bitter about why. When you start to look at the financial dealings of the Manchester club and the accusations that surround them, it\u2019s difficult not to wonder whether things might have been different had the Football Association and Premier League been quicker to clamp down on what they\u2019ve been up to.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-partner=\"tweetdeck\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">They won the treble yesterday, already have one of the biggest squads in the country, have spent \u00a31.3bn in a decade, and you&#8217;re actually hearing stories that they&#8217;ll look to bring in up to 4 &#8220;upgrades&#8221; this summer. If you can&#8217;t see a problem here, you&#8217;re blind (or a City fan).<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Mike Rotchburns (@seeingredonline) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/seeingredonline\/status\/1130022975632269318?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 19, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>So whilst our supporters do talk about them almost as much as they talk about us, it is at least slightly more justifiable. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Nick_Vanhelsing\/status\/1129831043060707331\">As I saw Michael Lennon say on Twitter<\/a>, it\u2019s more impressive when you climb to the top of a mountain than when you\u2019re flown up there, so it\u2019s little wonder Liverpool fans are struggling to give City\u2019s achievements much respect. My fear is that soon the lines become blurred and we\u2019re just talking about them all the time in the same way that Evertonians talk about us. We run the risk of becoming obsessed about them in a manner not dissimilar to how we\u2019re talking of their fans right now. If we win the Champions League, won\u2019t some people take to social media to tweet City supporters about our success? It\u2019s easy to imagine. Loyalty\u2019s admirable, but if we want to live in our glass house we should be careful about throwing stones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Footballing rivalries can do funny things. There are plenty of Evertonians that point-blank refuse to wear anything red, for example. Come Christmas time, they\u2019ll genuinely buy blue Santa outfits rather than have to wear traditional ones. That Father Christmas has nothing to do with Liverpool Football Club is an irrelevance, for whatever reason they fear that if they wear the traditional red outfit then they\u2019ll soon have to stop booing every time they go to Goodison or they won\u2019t get irrationally excited over a corner. The idea of being seen to have anything to do with LFC terrifies them, so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1506"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1509,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions\/1509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andcouldheplay.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}