Feel the same about Chelsea too
Do City leave you cold?
- Thread starter Pogue Mahone
- Start date
They don't really bother me other than when they beat us. The reality is that we've not been close enough for me to care about them for a long time, maybe if that changes my attitude will too. That said, even when we were competing, I was never as bothered about them as I was Liverpool, it's not even close. I must admit, I don't like many of their fans a great deal, there's a sort of mouthy Scouse-like pride in the suburbs of Stockport and Reddish which feels more about having one over on Manchester United than anything else.
The whole City experiment is cold. They're a clinical robotic football machine. It's not what football is about, there's so little to feel excited by. They're great because they should be, because everything has been finely tuned so they could be that way. There's no level of risk or danger about their existence.
Truth be told I don't even watch their matches unless it's against one of the better teams these days, there's just better things to do with your time.
I feel like their success has hurt once, and it was the obvious moment. Everything since is just a bizarre empty feeling. It doesn't register as a big deal. They're not the Man City I grew up knowing as our rivals, they're just some bizarre corporate invention. A total different entity.
Truth be told I don't even watch their matches unless it's against one of the better teams these days, there's just better things to do with your time.
I feel like their success has hurt once, and it was the obvious moment. Everything since is just a bizarre empty feeling. It doesn't register as a big deal. They're not the Man City I grew up knowing as our rivals, they're just some bizarre corporate invention. A total different entity.
Is that before or after you lot joined together drinking and singing anti United/Manchester songs in the cup final of 86?
Incredible...
You were no marks back then. I’m going by my own experience in 6os and 70s into the 80s. It always Everton. Richest team. Crosstown rivals. united were not in the picture back then because you were that bad. It will always be Everton then united to me anyway.
We were no marks yet you all celebrated together. Drinking together, singing anti United/Manchester songs. Some rivalry lad..
Two teams from the city of Liverpool reached the cup final and the Manchester teams (United really) were nowhere to be seen. It was such a wonderful, harmonious scouse occasion. Liverpool and Everton scouse brothers, united by the great city of Liverpool.
Tinpot rivalry.
Ok. You’re a rival. Happy? Bigger since 90 when you were obsessed with catching us. So of course we were forced to have you as rivals and that’s here to stay . Ok?
Just acknowledge the Merseyside derby is a crap rivalry and you're shared hatred of United eclipses the said derby.
I mean why else would Liverpool fans and Everton fans drink together in pubs before the game and sing anti Manchester songs. Don't you think that's remarkable?
Rivals side by side singing anti Manchester songs.. Okaaaaaaaaaay then.
Pal I grew up in Huyton. Again united meant nothing. Nothing at all except the odd cup game and Best. We were too busy winning leagues, playing in Europe and dealing with a dominant Everton. You came later. Don’t be so offended.
Exactly.
I just can’t even bother with tribalism when the game is being damaged irreparably.
I mean, Bayern have won the league nine years in a row and will probably go on to win their tenth consecutive title this spring. You can't look at the points tally at this exact moment and conclude that Bayern aren't dominating. They have an utter monopoly on the top of German football. There are very, very few leagues in the world where one team has won that many titles in a row in the modern era. Bayern's dominance over the Bundesliga is miles ahead of City's in the PL. City have yet to even win three in a row.
Celebrating City for being a blocker to Liverpool is exactly what Sportswashing is. You’re attaching caveats and finding joy somewhere.
If City hadn’t been taken over, we may have picked up Kompany, or Yaya, or Aguero. And certainly been in the market for a while host of others.
At a crucial time in our rebuild, a team can along and said “Right, every player in your squad needs to be First-11 ready” that’s another barrier to us, post Fergie.
Liverpool managed to challenge for just two seasons. To do so they needed a truly brilliant team AND an unbelievable lack of key long term injuries. That’s unsustainable.
If City hadn’t been taken over, we may have picked up Kompany, or Yaya, or Aguero. And certainly been in the market for a while host of others.
At a crucial time in our rebuild, a team can along and said “Right, every player in your squad needs to be First-11 ready” that’s another barrier to us, post Fergie.
Liverpool managed to challenge for just two seasons. To do so they needed a truly brilliant team AND an unbelievable lack of key long term injuries. That’s unsustainable.
Personally I love the way Pep’s teams play….. really annoys me he manages the noisey neighbours
They are right, this is peak PL.
90s PL was clearly behind Serie A and La Liga, now you have Chelsea and Liverpool between the favorites to win UCL, despite not challenging for the league.
In the 90s, the likes of Blackburn,Aston Villa, Newcastle, and Leeds did nothing in Europe, always knocked out in CL group stage,even eliminated in the pre-qualifying games, and not going far in the UEFA Cup.
City dominates 2 teams (Chelsea and Liverpool) that are favorite to win the UCL.
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They've redefined how to win titles, but IMO I thought the football that previous champions played was good, if not better than City's style. Partly because there was a fragility, but there were players who were worth the admission fee alone.
It's incredible to think 97 points wasn't enough for them to win the title
I think most United fans won't care. We're not competing against them. We haven't for almost 10 years now. I only cared about their results when we had any chance of beating them to the title. If they win, it changes absolutely nothing for us.
Watching Liverpool is way more entertaining. Theyre a great team. They play amazing football, but they also have flaws that other teams can exploit. City dominate every game and rarly give anything up. The result is mostly predetermined.
Watching Liverpool is way more entertaining. Theyre a great team. They play amazing football, but they also have flaws that other teams can exploit. City dominate every game and rarly give anything up. The result is mostly predetermined.
This is a key point that always gets missed. When we needed to do our rebuild the market got hugely inflated by City flashing the cash. In essence they stopped us being able to buy 6/7 players in a summer when we had lots of cash to spend. A £30m player went to £50m in one summer because of them.
Rarely watch them play, and feel close to zero emotion when they lift a trophy, so I hope they keep winning until we get our shit together
They also raised the number of £50m players needed in a 30 man squad to be competitive.
All the while they spent the same off the pitch as anyone else did ON the pitch.
We’ve spent an obscene amount. Still less than them. But had to neglect the stadium to do so. They haven’t had to do one or the other. They did both.
Nothing they do is a gamble as a wasted £50m can be replaced by £150m with impunity.
PSG did that, not City. Plus LVG has the chance to buy players at the right price in our first failed rebuild. I think the rebuilds in itself are part of the issue. A club like ours should never have done one in the first place. We needed a retooling, but instead we decided to scrap everything
I would love to be “left cold” by uniteds football if it meant them dominating virtually every match and challenging on all fronts season after season.
Great point that. So many short memories here. Everyone loves to blame the Glazers, but “No value in the market” started the minute the Arabs took over City.
It was the same for me with Barca and Spain for me during their glory years'.
Hats off to Pep as, regardless of spend, he does know how to put a footballing machine together. However, it isn't enjoyable but then what is better, if we're all being serious? Winning and other people not liking you/saying you're enjoyable to watch or winning consistently with relative comfort?
I know what I would take.
I definitely enjoy them. For me their style is the pinnacle of the sport. It is sort of a guilty pleasure obviously because of the source of their wealth.
I can see where the boredom notions are coming from but I can't agree. I love how methodically they operate as a collective, how they find subtle solutions under pressure or to unlock defenses where other teams rely on forcing a goal.
I can see where the boredom notions are coming from but I can't agree. I love how methodically they operate as a collective, how they find subtle solutions under pressure or to unlock defenses where other teams rely on forcing a goal.
@Pogue Mahone
You say you don't care about Manchester City but you have started a thread about them. If I didn't care about someone or something I would just ignore it or them.
I think they have got under our skin, when we used to laugh at them and mock them for years that has now turned to anger and bitterness as they seem to have turned the tables on us.
They are still irrelevant.
You say you don't care about Manchester City but you have started a thread about them. If I didn't care about someone or something I would just ignore it or them.
I think they have got under our skin, when we used to laugh at them and mock them for years that has now turned to anger and bitterness as they seem to have turned the tables on us.
They are still irrelevant.
I do not like their style nor I enjoy watching them but I would trade places with them any time, win almost every match, win titles, challenge for the CL, etc
They have the best manager in football right now, that annoys me the most
They have the best manager in football right now, that annoys me the most
I’m in an absolute minority (potentially the only one), but I’m pre-Abu Dhabi City fan who despises what we’ve become; the inevitability of outcome has killed any passion I had for the games, and the style in which the Pep-era success has been ‘achieved’ bores the life out of me.
Guardiola’s acquired so many mercurial individual footballers, and yet somehow managed to zombify them into nothing more than conforming cogs of his anti-competitive machine; Grealish is the latest one undergoing the lobotomy to neutralise the innate qualities that made him special in the first place.
Pep’s the most insecure coach in football history; only takes jobs at clubs that win by default, stockpiles unprecedented squad depth to further stack the odds in his favour yet is still so paranoid that he has to play dull, risk-averse football. If he really backs his methods, he wouldn’t need the resources he’s had everywhere he’s been, and he’d take a job that’d give him the platform upon which to overachieve for once, and legitimise his philosophy.
Most City fans deify him as if he dragged the club up from division 2 himself, when in reality he’s simply had the job without the shackles of FFP that Mancini and Pellegrini had to work with; if we’d given them the depth of quality Guardiola’s had they’d have delivered just as much domestic success, probably more in Europe and in a far more spontaneous, entertaining manner too.
3/4 of the Champions League semi finalists last year were Oil subsidised.
The mass outrage towards the Super League baffled me; football is dead anyway, and that proposal was the only way to neutralise the petrodollar supremacy, and restore a degree of sporting authenticity to the top level of the game.
You pulled out of the SL as you were getting less money than the big clubs. You would have also been unable to artificially inflate your revenues as you do now, as your books had to be available to scrutinise at all times. It was a wise move on your part as you would have been giving up your financial advantage over the rest of the league.
The whole aim of your owners is to make the league as uncompetitive as possible.
As an opposition fan, it is easy to downplay all their success, but in all honesty, this period of success will go down in history as the period of most intense domination of the English game.
Whether we like it or not, history will judge them as the best PL team ever.
Whether we like it or not, history will judge them as the best PL team ever.
Nah, Fergie’s reign is the most dominant.
Also, City have (thus far) not managed a single CL…
What is exciting/interesting about fragility?
Man City is nothing more than a vessel of a corrupt and ruthless regime.
They're still a far better run football club than we are, objectively speaking.
They're still a far better run football club than we are, objectively speaking.
That’s easy to say when they’re pelting so much cash about that wasting £50m on the likes of Mangala makes no difference whatsoever.
Never mind the fact that their ridiculous spending has made the transfer market inordinately more difficult for us and every other legitimate club.
This is a philosophical question worth it's own thread...
What I find interesting in these discussions is that it is automatically taken as fact (and not a matter of personal opinion) that the more "fragility" or flaws there is in a team, in terms of tactics, personalities, management, etc... The more interesting said team is. And that City, by being more "perfect" than the rest, is inherently more boring because they have less of that fragility.
Case in point: the 18/19 title race between City and Liverpool. I have heard some call that race boring, in part because it just consisted of two teams winning until the final day. Definitely different from previous title races defined by slips and stumbles over the finish line, but full of so much quality and grit from the 2 contenders that I find it fascinating that it is found "boring".
One more related point: Guardiola is on record speaking of how he hates to see his teams engaged in matches that many fans would find interesting: matches with lots of transitions, end to end stuff, last gasp defending... And over the years his City team has become better at limiting those moments, because frankly, that's a very effective way of winning matches. But I don't think there is any manager on earth who desires to concede tons of transition opportunities just to make the game interesting for fans. I don't think Klopp in his title winning season, was secretly wishing their games was way more open to give opponents a chance and have the fans going crazy. But the mystique/romance (for non-United fans) of seeing Liverpool win their first PL trophy was enough to forgive the plenty of one ended games. With City, there isn't that mystique or romance. It's just this rich club (reprehensible source of wealth of course) that bought a bunch of great/good players, managed by a fraud/excellent coach respectively, depending on who you talk to... And when said coach is one of the best at making most games one way traffic, devoid of fast paced, brexit, 'ave it!!! football... beyond tactics there's little to keep you engaged.
So in a roundabout way, this thread makes sense.
I'd ask if people felt this way about Serie A football in the 80s/90s, but even with defensive football you had plenty of individual stars, and overarching stories that kept viewers hooked and engaged, I'm sure.
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If they heavily outspent us, you’d have a point.
It's so frustrating that we've spent millions upon millions only to go around in circles for the past decade.
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Same but Chelsea is a lot worse IMO, I don’t know how to explain their tactics but i feel they are very defensive and somehow win by creating few chances and sometimes by earning penalties.
Whenever I watch them, I notice all their players especially their defensive line (they play with 8 defenders anyways) makes most out of the small fouls and earns crucial set-pieces and penalties. Not sure if thats their gameplan or its player choices.
On the other side, City players mostly plays pragmatically and finds that one killer pass by making 46 useless passes.
They're like the giant buildings they put up in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, etc.
Historyless, shallow, and a bit meh. A bit impotent really.
Historyless, shallow, and a bit meh. A bit impotent really.