I don't think that picking a particular lie is really instructive. All of them are spun to create an overarching narrative and are connected with one another thus:
We have no history - i.e. we're a small club who've never been of much consequence (and by implication are undeserving of success), which feeds into
Empty seats / no fans - i.e. as a result, we have a small support (and by implication are thus even more undeserving of success than you might think from our lack of history alone), which feeds into
Financial doping - i.e. as a result, we can't generate the finance from our tiny support base to compete with the more deserving big (or 'proper') clubs without someone pumping vast amounts of cash in, which feeds into
State-owned - i.e. as a result, no one would buy no-fans and no-history City as an investment so we're reliant on funding from a state desperate to use a winning football machine to burnish its image worldwide, which feeds into
Sportswashing - i.e. the only kind of state we can attract to this end is one desperate to hide its abhorrent, widespread use of torture and its commonplace murdering of gays from a furious andAs morally upright onlooking world (which nonetheless uniformly had never previously given a fuck), which feeds into
Cheats - i.e. as a result, constrained by the noble construct that is FFP (brought in with a view to stopping immoral owners such as ours), we blatantly cheat the system and get away with it because we can afford the best lawyers and accountants, which feeds into
Nobody cares - i.e. as a result, the footballing world believes that our success is hollow so they ignore us (despite writing vast reams of material to make sure that everyone's aware of just how much they actually don't care), which feeds into
Boring - i.e we aren't saved by the fact that we achieve our success with football that's the direct, linear successor of Rinus Michels's style in the seventies and Pep's Barca (probably the best club side ever seen) because our game is in fact sterile and dull.
The whole thing is both laughable and yet pernicious in its mendacity, but remember the words: "organised and clear". This is the PR aspect of the campaign against us.
The other aspect of it was shown in someone hacking our servers to order. That was followed by a trawl through the resultant material to find something that could bring us down, with client-journalist media cheerleaders, egged on by rival clubs, wilfully misrepresenting the negligible nature of what was found in an attempt (which nearly worked) to create a febrile atmosphere in which the authorities would feel unable to decline to punish us.
I hear what City fans say when they argue we should just ignore the media. But actually, when you look at what this bullshit represents and who's behind it, then those of use who elect to do so have every justification IMO for taking it seriously.
