No offence 2Sheiks but when other clubs are criticised it is always with the caveat it is for this reason or that. A lot of City fans do not rate Pellers so if he gets slagged off next year will it be fair game because a lot of city fans do not rate him? Or will it be part of an agenda/media bias?
The sterling one is a tough one. He has been a figure of hate, for some, when he was still at Liverpool however not unsurprisingly it has been exacerbated once he has transferred to us. Arguably the level of hatred would have been worse if he had set foot in Old Trafford instead. The other thing I would say is City have not been really criticised for the way they conducted the transfer or how they behaved in negotiation. The fee gets mentioned obviously but the criticism is personal o the player not the club.
I am not sure I have seen City players being constantly put up in polls either. You have given one example and particularly in Delphs case that circus, and the accompanying criticism would have been avoided if he had signed in the first instance instead of declaring his loyalty to Villa.
With regards the noteworthy stuff we did receive a lot of positive press for our academy and once we start integrating the those players who have benefitted from it into the first team squad the not producing young players bone we often get hit with should be taken away. Also we always get listed as having the cheapest season tickets £299 even though we know in previous years the actual number of value cards is few and far between. Again I am playing deveils advocate with you a bit I think there are other elements we deserve more praise. Notably the way both Pellers and Mancini avoid criticising the ref constantly. The behaviour of our players such as Komps, Aguero, Silva etc. The way the club, players and last two managers have conducted themselves should be a benchmark for all other clubs.
I will accept that the Sterling situation was born more out of him wanting to leave one of the media's holy cows, than because he wanted to join City, although I would argue that once it became obvious that the Etihad was his preferred destination, it fanned the flames further. It was certainly convenient for the Scouse media mafia, as it enabled them to focus almost entirely upon the player's greed and City's millions as the cause of the problem, rather than (God forbid) training any negative light on Liverpool and their growing irrelevance as a force at the top end of the English game.
You are also correct in your assertion that City's conduct was a distant second to the player's behaviour when it came to primary media scrutiny. However, we were far from ignored on that score, and I remember that cnut Jason McAteer claiming - without one iota of evidence - on Coco the Clown's show on Talkshite, that we had orchestrated Sterling's sick absence. Unsurprisingly this libellous statement was allowed to stand unchallenged. Then there is also the cumulative effect of all the criticism, all the bullshit polls, all the one-sided debates, etc, etc. As a case in point I have just finished watching Arsenal vs Wolfsburg on BT Sport, a game in which Kevin De Bruyne was booed throughout courtesy of his mere association with us. If you think this would have happened to say Sergio Ramos, who has been strongly linked to a move to the Swamp, had Sterling joined the rags rather than City, then I fear you are beyond help. And on that hypothetical score, using United as a yardstick for the treatment Sterling has received at the hands of the media since joining us, is disingenuous in the extreme. Any player leaving the dippers for Old Nafford would receive bucketloads of abuse simply because of the historical enmity that exists between the two clubs.
With regard the other issues you mention, there were plenty of journalists who managed to even put a negative spin on the Academy opening - those rag cockroaches Jamie Jackson and Mark Ogden for example, whose sneering focus was on the odds of it ever producing anyone for the City first team. And whilst, as you say, Pellers certainly deserves more praise for his treatment of referees, the reality is that on the one occasion he openly (and correctly) criticised an official - that idiot from Sweden, who gave Barcelona every decision at the Etihad 2 years ago - he was savaged in the media, with Alyson Rudd of the Times going on television to incredibly declare it the 'worst thing any manager has ever said'.
