Do City leave you cold?

I can't believe I'm saying this, but they're actually too good for their own good.

No one watches their games. Even the home fans on away games don't turn up when they're in town. Tells you everything there is to know.
 
I feel I'd hate them more if Liverpool weren't the second best team in the country.
The fact they are stopping Liverpool from sweeping up does comfort me somewhat.
 
Yeah the only thing they’re good for is holding the dark forces of Liverpool at bay. Pep wont last forever there though so we better get our act together.
 
The fact that United fans were hoping they'd win when Liverpool made those couple trophy runs should tell them how little they mean. If City wins the PL it's sort of like no one won. Leicesters title win means 10x more than all the past 10 years of City trophies imo.
 
As a football club they're devoid of meaning - I feel nothing for them in that respect. They had more personality when they were just a grubby fingered laughing stock that showed glimpses of gallows humour.

As a team, they're composed to the point of being sterile. Despite the historical rivalry, I can even admire the way they play, as they feel more like a glossy hologram than a result of actual human endeavour.
 
I honestly couldn't tell you how many league titles they've won because it doesn't matter to me.
 
atkar83 said:
The fact that United fans were hoping they'd win when Liverpool made those couple trophy runs should tell them how little they mean. If City wins the PL it's sort of like no one won. Leicesters title win means 10x more than all the past 10 years of City trophies imo.
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To be fair, that title win means more than anything United, Chelsea, or Liverpool put together as well. It was just such an unlikely win built on shrew business off a fraction of the budget of those other teams.
 
It'll always sound bitter coming from us but yes because they have no personality and there's no joy to their play.

Their model, while very successful, has basically been to copy Barcelona's era of dominance, right down to getting the same exact manager and DOF. Only they lack a large portion of the footballers who made that team charismatic and at least somewhat likable (Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Valdes, Puyol, Ronaldinho, etc).

Their presence outside of the pitch is one of apathy. A far cry from clubs with genuinely proud and passionate fanbases like Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool, hell even Newcastle.

They've bought their success and done a good job of it but in perhaps the most remarkably dull and ruthlessly corporate efficient way.

For me they're like the footballing equivalent of a T-2000 and I wasn't exactly jerking tears when he died at the end of that movie (sorry for the spoilers).
 
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Vidyoyo said:
It'll always sound bitter coming from us but yes because they have no personality and there's no joy to their play.

Their model, while very successful, has basically been to copy the era of Barcelona's dominance, right down to getting the same exact manager and DOF, only without a large portion of the footballers who made that team charismatic and at least somewhat likable (Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Valdes, Puyol, Ronaldinho, etc).

Their presence outside of the pitch is one of apathy. A far cry from clubs with genuinely huge fanbases like Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool, hell even Newcastle.

They've bought their success and done a good job of it but in a remarkably dull and efficient way.

They're the T-2 version of a footballing team and I wasn't exactly jerking tears when he died at the end of that movie (sorry for the spoilers).
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How dare you?!
 
Vidyoyo said:
It'll always sound bitter coming from us but yes because they have no personality and there's no joy to their play.

Their model, while very successful, has basically been to copy the era of Barcelona's dominance, right down to getting the same exact manager and DOF, only without a large portion of the footballers who made that team charismatic and at least somewhat likable (Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Valdes, Puyol, Ronaldinho, etc).

Their presence outside of the pitch is one of apathy. A far cry from clubs with genuinely huge fanbases like Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool, hell even Newcastle.

They've bought their success and done a good job of it but in a remarkably dull and efficient way.

They're the T-2 version of a footballing team and I wasn't exactly jerking tears when he died at the end of that movie (sorry for the spoilers).
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Bastard. Next thing you’ll be telling me Marley doesn’t make it.
 
I agree with the poster who said that if you put the man city players in a line, I wouldn't be able to tell them apart!

There doesn't seem to be an individuality or personalities in the city team. Even de bryune seems underrated. They are well drilled and you pretty much know which way the game is going to go. So I wonder how many people actually what city play

With the likes of Liverpool, United, Chelsea, arsenal...games alway feel more alive! Because a win is never guaranteed!
 
They're kind of a perfectly drilled team. When we played them the other day, I was astounded by how inch perfect their passes were almost every time. Long, short, mid-range, on the ground, in the air. It doesn't matter, the pass is perfectly executed down to the centimetre. There's very little jeopardy in their play, so essentially you're just waiting for one or two of the neatly executed moved to end in an inevitable goal.

I don't find them boring to watch per se, but I'm not particularly enamoured with their football either.
 
OverratedOpinion said:
I swear someone else started this thread a couple of weeks ago.
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It was me. I was pleased when I saw I beat Ken Early to the punch. :lol:

Pexbo said:
The fact we so freely got behind them when it was them or Liverpool in the title race tells you everything.

Absolute nothing club on all levels. Literally nobody cares or takes their “success” seriously.
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I'd agree with this. I'd rather they win ten titles then Liverpool win two and go ahead of us. Liverpool are an actual club and are our rivals. City just exist in the same league but aren't a football club so them winning doesn't bother me.

Shane88 said:
Early is an insufferable twat.
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He definitely is and I think he knows it tbf. I still love listening to him talk about football though.

Mike Smalling said:
They also seem to be completely devoid of personality, to the point where all the players just feel the same. If you lined up Laporte, Dias and Rodri I’m not sure I could tell you who is who.

Liverpool make it much easier to hate them with the likes of Robertson, Horrenderson, Salah, Firmino, etc.
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I think Guardiola hates players with personality. Aguero and Ibra all got shunned by him and he was happy to see both leave. He really does prefer schoolboys as Ibra called his old Barca side.
 
Of course. It has to do with them basically being a skeleton club that won the lottery to become the richest club in the world (without any sort of support to do so like other big teams), and then went and splurged on the best coach, players, and infrastructure. So it's just kind of like a machine like club. Barca was completely different in that they had numerous styles even within the XI. Iniesta, Messi, Villa, Alves, Eto'o, etc. Sure during their later days of Pep they were a bit boring as they just tried to walk the ball in constantly, but at least there was history behind the club and many of those players were home grown and developed. Now it's more like "Oh our fullbacks aren't quite good enough? Alright lets buy some more." and they just repeat the process with every position.

Football wise they are much more systematic in their dominance compared to other Pep teams. He's basically figured out that if you can correctly space an entire XI of technically elite players and have them make the runs into space on the byline to whip in crosses, you'll create plenty of chances. And on the other end they just compress the field with their defenders and foul you "tactically" if you play out of them so they can reset.

I still maintain these uber pressing teams would get absolutely punished and have to adapt if officials took a harder stance on tactical fouls being immediate yellows. Fecking Fernandinho has made an entire decorated career out of fouling people .
 
I find this iteration of City more boring than a few years ago. When they had Sane they were more dynamic imo and their football was much more entertaining. Even then there was something off about them though. They aren't exciting.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Ken Early did. And I have friends of a similar age that support other teams with similar opinions. United were a team with huge characters, relentless but occasionally flaky. The whole “Fergie time” meme was a real thing. How often do City need last minute winners in an average season? So much more pantomime to those United sides than there is to Pep’s faceless techno-midgets and their sterile brilliance.
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If that is his (and your personal) view then absolutely fair enough, but correlating the fun in football to unpredictability or the presence of flaws, from a neutral's point of view, is a bit reductionist. That may be persuasive for some, others may like the way City play football from a technical perspective.

And to show how flawed Early's thesis was, were they more "fun" to watch when they were relatively shit in 19/20? Or in 06/07, when all I remember about them was we had to score a penalty against them to seal the league that season?

Pogue Mahone said:
I think he is. And he’s right about our floundering giving joy to millions. I mean, isn’t that obvious? We’ve become comedy gold.
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That makes sense!

If you're a Liverpool/Arsenal/City/Leeds fan, watching us stumble in the league must have been hilarious, but to an actual neutral with no allegiance, I can't see how anyone would spend 90 minutes tuning into our matches unless we were up against a superior team or there was nothing else to watch on the TV.
 
Tyrion said:
I think Guardiola hates players with personality. Aguero and Ibra all got shunned by him and he was happy to see both leave. He really does prefer schoolboys as Ibra called his old Barca side.
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Good point. Makes you wonder if he has conflicting thoughts about bringing in Haaland, who has a lot of personality.
 
horsechoker said:
We'll get someone coming in and saying "yeah we'll I'd love us to be robotic and excellent"

The thing is they've achieved an almost robotic boring excellence like when you play fifa career mode and win nearly every game.

The only genuine moment they've had is the agüero winner against QPR.

They've had no real climb to the top.

Moreover their squad is just full of bland personalities who can play football well. At least Toure, Balotelli, Hart and to some extent Aguero had that.

The only real character I see there is Foden.
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I'd rank Kompany's goal vs Leicester there too, not as dramatic but they were 20 minutes away from giving Liverpool the advantage.
 
Sayros said:
To be fair, that title win means more than anything United, Chelsea, or Liverpool put together as well. It was just such an unlikely win built on shrew business off a fraction of the budget of those other teams.
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OK, maybe a bad example. Their FA Cup win in the 60s means more than all their trophies from the past 10 years then.
 
All of their success is thanks to them luckily being chosen by their owners. They wouldn’t have won a single trophy (since being bought) but for them. It’s all hollow, no offence to them.
 
Feel just the same about them as if the sheikh had bought Bolton/Blackburn/Burnley or whatever other North West nothing club.

I get the impression that most of their fans would much rather watch us lose a game than them win one every day of the week as well.
 
Uninteresting club and a lack of fans. There's no banter about City because no one gives a feck.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The always excellent Ken Early has put himself in the firing line recently by saying that City leave him cold. He just can’t bring himself to get any enjoyment out of their undoubted excellence.

I’m the same. I just don’t care about them. I should hate them and every goal should be a knife through my heart but it’s all just “meh”. Their football is amazing. Probably the best the PL has ever seen. But it’s all about establishing total and utter dominance. Which ruins games as a spectacle. It’s just relentless crushing of butterflies on a wheel.

Knowing how much money they spent to get where they are now takes away the sting from their constant accumulation of trophies. They basically looked at the best team on the planet - Barcelona - and rebuilt their entire outfit in another country. Personnel and all. That’s a once in a lifetime financial flex we’ll never see again. So everyone else is just feeding off the scraps from their table. Dull dull dull.

I’m old enough to have lived through bitter rivals rubbing our noses in it before (Liverpool) and never stopped caring the way I do now. I despise Liverpool but the Klopp squad is definitely more entertaining and interesting than City. Possibly because they have more flaws? They definitely don’t leave me numb like the berties do these days.

Particularly interested in thoughts from non-United fans. Do you find anything entertaining or exciting about the Manchester City project?
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Completely numb. The fact that my acknowledged apathy irks City fans doesn't give me any residual enjoyment either. City scarcely exist.
 
I dont really give a shit about them. Stopping liverpool so that is a positive. Its pep i despise ever since he beat us in the CL.
 
Since a state was allowed to bankroll them (and Newcastle and Chelsea to some extent, and given the problems in Ukraine right now that's another conversation to have, how the feck we allow Putin's pals any leverage in the UK I will never understand but if it stops those pscyhos nuking us maybe allowing them Timo Werner is a small price to pay) everything they have done has been tainted. How can anyone go to a City game and cheer on their sheikh sponsored mercenaries with sincerity. It's not the football that's sterile, it's the club itself, and no amount of paid for propaganda will ever convince anyone otherwise. They're literally spending millions at American universities and colleges (handing out free shirts etc) and people still prefer a real club.
 
I think they’re seen as the second team who got mega rich owners out of nowhere like Chelsea and everyones ridden that rollercoaster with Chelsea and it feels more of the same when City got took over. Chelsea seem to have prospered by being the first since their fanbase has increased.

And the fact that they’ve basically moved heaven and earth to get everything Barcelona in the last 2000s into their club, so they‘ve basically gone into FM Editor and moved Guardiola, Begiristain and Soriano from the Barcelona team into the City team… a move that is pretty much impossible for every other club and nor would those clubs make such drastic changes, especially the established big clubs.

City seem to be treated with indifference by football fans. Liverpool and Utd fans both hope City win to the detriment of the other and while that Ken Early article takes a jab at us, it clearly shows that Liverpool fans are more interested in what we’re doing, scrapping for Top 4 most years compared to them being in a title race with City the past few years.

It feels like everyone quietly knows they’ve got the cheat code enabled. I remember when Utd dominated in the 90s and we were the evil empire and no doubt Liverpool were that in the 80s, and I accepted that the majority of neutrals and oppo fans wanted to see us get our ass kicked. You don’t really get that vibe with City… they’re just there.
 
Another thread full of the usual bitterness about City.

The same forum has a combined orgasm when united manage to score similarly well worked goals. And which will similarly lose their collective minds if united went on to play that kind of style, dominate teams similarly and pretty much destroy the rest of the league every season.
 
Moby said:
Another thread full of the usual bitterness about City.

The same forum has a combined orgasm when united manage to score similarly well worked goals. And which will similarly lose their collective minds if united went on to play that kind of style, dominate teams similarly and pretty much destroy the rest of the league every season.
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There are two different issues here. One is whether or not you enjoy watching teams play their style of football. I know I do. Whenever someone starts a “does City’s football bore you?” thread I consistently argue it’s great to watch. Football being played the way it should.

This thread is about their whole “project”. Is it interesting/entertaining to the neutral (or rival fans) And that’s where it falls down for me. I just don’t care. Neither positive nor negative emotions. A big bunch of “meh”.
 
GazTheLegend said:
Since a state was allowed to bankroll them (and Newcastle and Chelsea to some extent, and given the problems in Ukraine right now that's another conversation to have, how the feck we allow Putin's pals any leverage in the UK I will never understand
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England sells military weapons to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, plus half of London property(buildings, hotel,resorts,etc) are owned by chinese,american, and russian magnates.

It's not hard to imagine England giving total control of their football to some cheeky sheikhs and a russian oil baron.
 
We are the only team that can beat them and we will. You know, to keep the interest going. They are like a machine that doesn’t stop and it does take a team like Liverpool at the top of their game to win against City. Ole did it but that was just unexplainable given the gulf in talent between united and City.
 
Well people see it for what it is, a state backed lottery exercise shelling peas, undermining over a hundred years of history and riding off the earned success of others. It's well executed self sponsorship but has no emotion or worth to it. The success of the PL is attracting this kind of thing.

At least this odd exercise is stopping Liverpool picking up more titles. It's like the PL is on hold while this Abu Dhabi operation looks to prove a point and upstaged it all. We'll be having the same thing at Newcastle soon.

Already I look a the bottom of the PL, Newcastle would naturally be going down probably and if they could survive on their own it would be a great story for the league. Now with this lottery win they're trawling the football world to tempt any fringe player at the cost of other clubs down there without similar means. All of a sudden midway through the season a club doing poorly and can be hooked clear by some dodgy regime taking over. Another club having just done enough and spent years building up to do a better job than Newc will now face the drop instead.
 
We should hate them as the noisy neighbours, the financial doping, the dull style of football etc.

But the truth is they're doing us a great service in keeping Liverpool away from the league while we're so pathetically off the pace.

However, hopefully we can time sorting ourselves out for when Klopp and Pep go, and before Newcastle properly get going!
 
Ladron de redcafe said:
I don't think they're as dominant in possession as that side was, but I'm curious to see how they match up with that Barcelona team statistically.
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Mmm. Free we only have basic stats to compare, like wins, points, goals for and against, etc. Anyways, barcelona had 87(+70), 99(+74), 96(+74) and 91(+85). City 100(+79), 98(+72), 81(+67), 86(+51). Have to account for Covid for the last two seasons, and liverpool for 19/20 going like 26 weeks unbeaten with like 2 draws...

We have understats imperfect xP model, but it doesn't go far back enough for barcelona. City put up truly monster seasons in 17/18(91+) and 18/19(90+) but both pale compared to MSN barcelona
 
Sad thing is they will eventually roll all the records as well, their dominance will one day progress into Europe as well.

This model is designed to dominate the game we love forever. Financially only PSG and Newcastle can match them but it's clear the City business men are light years ahead of the game and what they've built is designed to kill competition.
 
City are like that T-1000 robot from Terminator - ruthlessly effective and devoid of emotion.
 
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