Bluemoon Under The Cartel's Irish Academic Microscope?
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pace89
Well-Known Member
I’m not an academic but even by scanning the research I could pull the methodology apart in seconds. It’s self selecting confirmation of the researcher‘s bias dressed up in enough academic terminology to get it published. Published by the press that is, it would collapse under substantial peer review.
The most obvious failing is the suggestion that the criticism of journalists (presumably Delooney) is not based on fact when it’s quite clear that much of what he has written is factually untrue and has been shown to be inaccurate.
Moreover, the abstract dismisses suggestions of a witch-hunt without providing any substantive analysis to disprove the idea that City are the victim of a concerted campaign to undermine the club. The fact that City were successful at CAS is passed over whilst the unproven charges are weighed heavily as evidence of City’s general badness - although what the charges have to do with the specific question of City fans supposedly supporting human rights abuses in Abu Dhabi is anyone‘s guess - and that is the implication of the research.
The biggest problem is that it treats City as an example of sports-washing and cites other academics as having defined what this is. But it remains an amorphous concept that has to ignore multiple other factors to remain intact as an idea. Nobody has studied City’s business model, the motivations of the owners and then applied that to a strict definition of sports washing, instead people have observed City’s success and decided that whatever City have done must be sports washing because it’s City. They’re looking at the problem from the wrong end of the telescope.
Perhaps the research lead should get on RAWK if wants to see an online community of football supporters defending the indefensible.
The most obvious failing is the suggestion that the criticism of journalists (presumably Delooney) is not based on fact when it’s quite clear that much of what he has written is factually untrue and has been shown to be inaccurate.
Moreover, the abstract dismisses suggestions of a witch-hunt without providing any substantive analysis to disprove the idea that City are the victim of a concerted campaign to undermine the club. The fact that City were successful at CAS is passed over whilst the unproven charges are weighed heavily as evidence of City’s general badness - although what the charges have to do with the specific question of City fans supposedly supporting human rights abuses in Abu Dhabi is anyone‘s guess - and that is the implication of the research.
The biggest problem is that it treats City as an example of sports-washing and cites other academics as having defined what this is. But it remains an amorphous concept that has to ignore multiple other factors to remain intact as an idea. Nobody has studied City’s business model, the motivations of the owners and then applied that to a strict definition of sports washing, instead people have observed City’s success and decided that whatever City have done must be sports washing because it’s City. They’re looking at the problem from the wrong end of the telescope.
Perhaps the research lead should get on RAWK if wants to see an online community of football supporters defending the indefensible.
The Abu Dhabi United Group is a well known private equity firm that has a long partnership with our country. Why is this study about Man City rather than the British government's contracts or the UAE's Foreign Direct Investement in the UK?
No mention of the benefits to the local Manchester community? The employment increase? The infrastructure improvements? The tourism revenue?
No mention of the benefits to the local Manchester community? The employment increase? The infrastructure improvements? The tourism revenue?
bluemanchester
Well-Known Member
Stress inducing abuse, speak for yourself it gives me great joy waking up every day to another article by a journalist and watching his piss boil. As for livarpool, united, spuds and le arse fans unable to get us out of their heads, well I will have another pint of that please landlord;-)
eyalluvitt
Well-Known Member
So last week we have no fans and this week we have an 80,000-strong army of online fans who defend the club and fire out truth bombs that don't fit the media narrative. Sounds like they want to censor us completely like North Korea. The beautiful game, not arf
jim tolmies perm
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Obviously extra curricular activities at UCD are not appealing enough and the governors need to veer undergrads away from Hurling and Gaelic football.
Imagine looking through posts on topics about us winning the first-ever domestic treble, winning our case against UEFA at CAS, and recording record profits, and finding no or little criticism of our owners.
I noticed they didn't look at posts on topics about season ticket price increases, or the transfer forum whenever Tixi doesn't sign a player, or when the Etihad runs out of chips.
I noticed they didn't look at posts on topics about season ticket price increases, or the transfer forum whenever Tixi doesn't sign a player, or when the Etihad runs out of chips.
halfcenturyup
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This has just been referenced on the Wikipedia Sheikh Mansour article Talk Page -astonishing is not the word!
Am I correct in thinking we are the forum members being quoted?
"This paper addresses this lacuna through analysis of a popular Manchester City online fan forum, which illustrates the manner in which this community of dedicated City fans have legitimated the actions of the club's ownership regime, the Abu Dhabi United Group – a private equity group operated by Abu Dhabi royalty and UAE politicians. The discursive strategies of the City fans are discussed, in addition to the wider significance of these strategies on the issue of sportswashing and its coverage by the media."
A view of the Ethiad Stadium. Alamy Stock Photo
From whataboutery to obfuscation: How fans legitimise sports washing
A new DCU study has found fans can play a role in the success in any sportswashing project.
Nov 25th 2023, 8:00 AM
Gavin Cooney
AN OVERVIEW OF modern international sport today is incomplete without an understanding of the motivations and potential consequences of sportswashing, and the term is now becoming subject to academic rigour.
A new research paper published this week by Dublin City University studied Manchester City and found that a football club’s supporters can play a significant role in legitimising a sportswashing project, by loudly defending it online through a mixture of whataboutery and false equivalence. The paper is part of a wider study, which is analysing online hate in football.
Dr Gary Sinclair is associate professor of marketing at DCU and a co-author of the study.
“We were looking at the stress and abuse journalists have to put up with when they have to cover a topic like this,” he tells The 42, “and that led is to to the question, ‘How do fans legitimise this style of behaviour? How do they legitimise supporting an ownership connected to human rights abuses and activities widely seen as unethical?’”
Sinclair and his colleagues focused on Manchester City, which since 2008 has been majority owned by the Abu Dhabi United Group, which was founded by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice President of the United Arab Emirates.
Sinclair and his colleagues distinguish sportswashing from soft power, saying that while both phrases overlap in the sense of using sport to project a positive image, sportswashing involves a more conscious means of distraction, and “to obfuscate or divert attention away from less favourable associations.”
They also delineate different types of sportswashing: event-based – such as the hosting of a World Cup or Olympic Games – and investment-based, with Man City falling into the latter category.
For the study, Sinclair and his colleagues analysed messages posted on a long-running Manchester City fans’ forum, which has between 75,000 and 80,000 users. This begs a question – how can an online fan forum be representative of an entire fan base?
“It’s important to clarify that even if there’s 75-80,000 users on that forum, they do not represent the entire Man City fanbase,” says Sinclair in reply. “Why we felt it was important to look at a fan forum like that – and while they may not represent all the fanbase – they are very influential in terms of what kind of discourses are used when the club is under discussion.
“They are highly committed fans, and that has an influence on the everyday supporters to a degree. It doesn’t represent all their fans and it doesn’t represent all football fans either. Someone asked me the other day if this is the same for Newcastle or PSG, and I don’t know the answer to that question as we only looked at Man City as a case study.”
The study analysed every message posted under three separate threads on the forum:
The report states it found “little or no opposition to – or even criticism of – the Abu Dhabi United Group’s ownership”, and found forum users engaged in multiple styles of arguments to defend their club and legitimate its ownership.
- MCFC’s 2019 FA Cup final victory which completed an unprecedented English domestic trophy treble
- The announcement that the Court of Arbitration for Sport had overturned Uefa’s sanctions on MCFC in July 2020
- A thread discussing MCFC’s announcement of record profits in 2022
The club’s advantages over its rivals, for instance, is framed as the result of the unique savviness of those who run the club. “He [Sheikh Mansour] obviously knows exactly what he’s doing and that really grinds the gears of our enemies,” reads one message.
An obvious source of that advantage is City’s wealth, which the report finds is acknowledged by forum users but is framed as the only means of competing against the most successful clubs across English football history, such as Manchester United and Liverpool.
One forum post reads: “Liverpool, as much as any other club (apart from maybe United and Spurs) were responsible for the monetisation of English football. They helped created the landscape they claim to despise. They formed the honeypot that made the likes of Mansour want a slice of the pie. They just don’t like how it turned out. Be careful what you wish for.”
This, the report states, is a means of City fans retaining the club’s historic identity as an unfashionable underdog, and their owner’s wealth is the only means of competing in a system set up against them. As one forum user posts, “Uefa’s unfair and elite protectionist Financial Fair Play regulations […and…] the established and jealous European elite Premier League clubs who collectively over the years rigged the PL and CL so they would profit and suppress any other PL club’s ability to challenge their dominance.”
The report also states that human rights abuses associated with the UAE government are dismissed through “moral analogies”, or whataboutery. “I always find it interesting that ‘human rights’ are banded about as though it’s only a problem in certain countries. […] some people who throw accusations at City should read what their owners countries get up to. Glasshouses and stones springs to mind,” reads one forum post quoted in the report.
All of this, the report states, shows a potential benefit of sportswashing: “the recruitment of a body of aggressive, emotionally invested supporters.”
I ask Dr Sinclair is this is proof that sportswashing works as intended.
“My answer to it is I think it can work,” he replies.
Equally, the research shows that sportswashing need not be inevitable nor inexorable, as it is often portrayed. If supporters have the power to legitimise their club’s ownership, do they not also have the power to reject it?
“Football fans are very powerful”, says Sinclair. “Look at the Bayern Munich fans around the sponsorship with Qatar Airways – they did not accept it. That’s down to the ownership structures around already: fans have power in the sense of having a vote, along with social and metaphorical power. Look at the Super League: fans do have an influence if they can be co-opted, which is very difficult to do. There is enough power among fan groups that if they don’t like an ownership, it is difficult to turn around. But the question is what happens if a nation state owns you, as opposed to, say, a factory owner from Burnley?”
The full research can be read here.
Author
Gavin Cooney
gavincooney@the42.ie
@gcooney93
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brian o'leary6m
Nov 25th 2023, 8:36 AM
Silverware can paint over even the largest or cracks?
1
brian o'leary6m
Nov 25th 2023, 8:44 AM
Human rights in some faraway land aren’t important, its braging rights down the local that matters.
1
Paul Ennis6m
Nov 25th 2023, 9:48 AM
@Brian o’leary: It’s more than bragging right. Supporters in England dedicate their lives to following their team – it becomes all they live for. It also provides them with an escapism identity that is deemed not just socially acceptable but many of their peers would deem you a bit odd if you don’t identify with a football team. The big issue with this is that football creates the environment for armies of fans who can then be collectively recruited by extremists. Think about the NF or BNP in the 70s and 80s or Brexit more recently and how extremist or racist views can spread like wildfire amongst disadvantaged white men. Nick Hornby wrote about this 30 years ago and still it continues.
2
Alan Kennedy10y
Nov 25th 2023, 10:04 AM
Hahaha! Man City don’t have any fans!
1
Rob O'Connor6m
Nov 25th 2023, 8:26 AM
Can’t wait to see the comments on this one… if any.
1
Dermott Russell12y
Nov 25th 2023, 12:55 PM
Researching manchester city.. Hasnt he little to be doing
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Didn't read past the second paragraph. No discussion of what, in his mind, a "sportswashing" project is, or why the ownership of the club qualifies, again in his mind, as a "sportswashing" project. Just the acceptance that it is a "sportswashing" project and start from there. Third rate discourse.
They should have quoted @Damocles 's analysis a few years ago of the reasons why Mansour may have bought the club and an assessment of whether it was, or wasn't "sportswashing" if they wanted to learn something.
I'm With Stupid
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I'm just reading the introduction, and the name "Delaney" was referenced in two separate sources. Nah, it can't be. This is a proper academic article. Yep, there are two references to Miguel Delaney's articles in the Independent.
In fact the opening paragraph of the introduction is a cracker. It contains one reference to an Amnesty International report (which is a legitimate academic source), two references to articles in the Independent, one Athletic article, and one Forbes piece. Elsewhere in the research, we have the Guardian and New York Times referenced, as well as Human Rights Watch, which is actually a Washington Post article. There is nothing wrong with using media citations in particular circumstances (e.g. if you're trying to demonstrate prevailing media trends), but they are citing them as if they're factual, academic sources. As someone who is currently undergoing a research methods module in advance of my master's dissertation, we have been repeatedly warned about what is and isn't a legitimate academic source. Hell, even in my undergraduate degree we were warned against using magazines and newspapers as sources, so how an academic, presumably teaching at a university can get away with citing newspaper opinion pieces to this extent is beyond me. Maybe education research has more rigorous standards than the sociology of sport.
Let's carry on:
"The club's financial dealings had previously been sanctioned by European football governing body, UEFA, but those charges were overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in July 2020 on the basis of a statute of limitations."
Not true. Some of those charges were overturned on the basis of the statute of limitations. The majority were overturned on the basis of the evidence presented. No citation given, and it's not like the judgement is hard to find. So far, not looking good.
"It is a strategy that has attracted criticism from several prominent human rights groups, who view it as a major cause for concern (see Amnesty International, 2020; Worden, 2022)."
'Several' claimed but only two cited - and neither are studies into the amount of criticism that human rights groups have given, they are just two examples of human rights groups that have criticised it. I don't really have much of a quibble with the claim itself, but it's just bad scholarship to make a claim and not back it up with proper academic sources.
"While sportswashing attracts scrutiny and criticism of such violations, its aim is that this negative attention will be ultimately outweighed by the positive associations accrued (Delaney, 2020)."
While you could forgive the use of limited non-academic sources in the introduction as just setting the scene, this appears in the literature review. Miguel Delaney, who has done no independent, peer reviewed research into the matter, is cited as if he has. Actually, I assume it's Miguel Delaney. It turns out that this citation (Delaney, 2020) doesn't actually appear in the references list, despite appearing again later in the article. Just to mention, this article has nine authors from three universities. How is this sort of thing not being caught?
"Notably, several sport journalists have attested to instances of fans of a sportswashed club aggressively defending their ownership regimes via social media and other online platforms (Cohen, 2021)."
No context given, no comparison to 'non-sportswashed' clubs. Presented as if City are a special case. Are journalists not getting abuse from fans of Man Utd? Arsenal? Liverpool? Almost certainly. But again, a single source from a newspaper is given. The other source in the previous sentence makes no mention of sportswashing and gives a far more balanced view of the situation regarding online abuse, not singling out individual clubs.
By the start of the methodology stage, I'm not sure they demonstrate that Sheikh Mansour (who they don't actually mention themselves at any point) and the ADUG are engaging in sportswashing rather than old-fashioned investment. It's not even a question they consider.
Their train of logic is:
UAE has a bad human rights record > City are owned by ADUG > ADUG are owned by UAE royalty > sportswashing exists as a concept > City are sportswashed
Essentially sportswashing is an accusation about their motivations, yet other possible motivations are never explored at any point, and sportswashing is just assumed. The idea that it's a legitimate business investment is never brought up. There have been multiple other theories for Sheikh Mansour's investment, even amongst those who have a problem with it. Firstly, that it's not a serious investment, and it's just a billionaire's plaything (he'll get bored any minute). And secondly, and more credibly, that owning Manchester City makes it easier for him to make various other property investments in the UK. And finally, the argument that owning a football club is a status symbol among the ultra rich that leads to various opportunities. Kinda like how billionaires will buy newspapers even if it costs them money, a lot will buy sports teams because of the cultural capital it affords. None of these are explored, the motivation is just assumed. And this means the entire rest of the study is built entirely on a massive assumption that most City fans don't necessarily share.
The biases of City fans are addressed at length, but the biases of the journalists (not academics, remember) that they cite are not. Football journalists are football fans, usually of rival clubs. The best ones might try to be impartial, but they also have a clear financial incentive to be as sensationalist as possible. They have little to no oversight when it comes to the factual credibility of their claims. And that's why it's not a good idea to based a significant portion of an academic study on their work. I've genuinely never read an academic study that has so many citations from newspapers.
There's a basic irony in the methodology section, in that they use a legitimation framework to categorize the messages from City fans into how they legitimize the club's position, but they seemingly fail to apply the same scrutiny to their own views about our owners' actions. Ours is seen as 'legitimizing the status' of the club, whereas theirs, with no reflection whatsoever, is seen as an accurate appraisal of the facts. They also don't go into what each of the nine authors did, so I'm still not sure why it took nine people to write. They also don't go into a great deal of depth about how posts were chosen for inclusion in the study.
The findings contain absolutely no suggestion that City fans might be making legitimate points. As evidenced in the introduction, where they think that City got off at CAS because it was time-barred, they show little knowledge of the wider debates in football. In the context of City being cleared by an independent arbitration court, City fans are accused of trying to "absolve MCFC of allegations of financial impropriety." There is no consideration that such views are legitimate conclusions of fans who have seen their club accused and cleared before. Having presented sportswashing as the sole possibility for Sheikh Mansour's purchase of the club, they then go on to present the opinions of City fans on the forum as some sort of delusional groupthink that bears no relation to reality. The idea that buying City could be a legitimate business decision is dismissed without discussion, despite the off field success of the club being widely reported.
This phrase in particular is bollocks: "The club's vast wealth is tacitly framed as proof of, and reward for, its administrative and footballing excellence, rather than as an advantage which facilitates the achievement of this excellence."
Literally every City fan will tell you (on here) that success breeds money, which creates a virtuous circle. In fact, one of the biggest criticisms most City fans have is how all of the wealth is concentrated at the top of the game, making success a self-fulfilling prophecy, and harming the competitiveness of the game. That's been one of the main criticisms of FFP in the first place.
"The success and expertise of MCFC's hierarchy is based on the premise – implicit in some comments and explicitly discussed in others – of a meritocratic football economy, wherein the cream naturally rises to the top."
Again, absolutely bollocks, unless you're cherry-picking in the extreme. Every City fan recognises that money is necessary for success in football. But equally, it's undeniable that the hierarchy at City have done a good job, when you compare them to teams spending similar amounts. The idea that you could read significant numbers of posts from City fans and come to the conclusion that City fans think football is a meritocracy is hilarious. Every criticism of FFP is a criticism that it allows the already rich clubs to spend more than everyone else. City fans overwhelmingly believe this even though their club is now the main beneficiary of it. And when our club signed up for the European Super League, they were met with almost universal disgust from City fans.
"Elsewhere, users tacitly concede a degree of perilous escalation to the distorting effects of money within the game, but depict this as initiated by MCFC's competitors who are now reaping what they have sown in being overtaken within the ruthless world of modern football."
Absolutely, but is that not true? Again, it's presented as a delusion of City fans trying to justify the sportswashing of their evil owners, rather than a genuine opinion based on the facts.
Another issue not really addressed is how little of this has anything to do with sportswashing and the ownership. Attacking the FA, UEFA, and sports journalists? Do the same study on any fan forum in the country, and you'll likely see the same results. That's the nature of football fandom. It's openly tribal, and that's the point of it. Yet in our case, it's presented as an explicit defence of our owners in the full knowledge that they only own the club to launder their human rights abuses. This is never actually established in the article though, and so what you have is nine people spending an inordinate amount of time to show that football fans might be a bit biased.
I mean I know this will be characterised as another City fan aggressively attacking critics of the club as I 'rationalize the immoral,' but I've just spent the best part of this academic year being forced to critically evaluate shite academic articles, and this one makes so many basic errors that it's hard to take it seriously. I mean it doesn't even contain a 'limitations' section, which is the most basic aspect of a reflective piece of work, and mirrors the lack of reflection and criticality throughout the rest of the article. It's a hit piece masquerading as an academic article.
There you go, Kearns et al. That can go in the 'delegitimization' section of your next journal article. Hopefully you include a few more academic sources and a few less newspaper sources in your next one.
ETA: spelling
In fact the opening paragraph of the introduction is a cracker. It contains one reference to an Amnesty International report (which is a legitimate academic source), two references to articles in the Independent, one Athletic article, and one Forbes piece. Elsewhere in the research, we have the Guardian and New York Times referenced, as well as Human Rights Watch, which is actually a Washington Post article. There is nothing wrong with using media citations in particular circumstances (e.g. if you're trying to demonstrate prevailing media trends), but they are citing them as if they're factual, academic sources. As someone who is currently undergoing a research methods module in advance of my master's dissertation, we have been repeatedly warned about what is and isn't a legitimate academic source. Hell, even in my undergraduate degree we were warned against using magazines and newspapers as sources, so how an academic, presumably teaching at a university can get away with citing newspaper opinion pieces to this extent is beyond me. Maybe education research has more rigorous standards than the sociology of sport.
Let's carry on:
"The club's financial dealings had previously been sanctioned by European football governing body, UEFA, but those charges were overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in July 2020 on the basis of a statute of limitations."
Not true. Some of those charges were overturned on the basis of the statute of limitations. The majority were overturned on the basis of the evidence presented. No citation given, and it's not like the judgement is hard to find. So far, not looking good.
"It is a strategy that has attracted criticism from several prominent human rights groups, who view it as a major cause for concern (see Amnesty International, 2020; Worden, 2022)."
'Several' claimed but only two cited - and neither are studies into the amount of criticism that human rights groups have given, they are just two examples of human rights groups that have criticised it. I don't really have much of a quibble with the claim itself, but it's just bad scholarship to make a claim and not back it up with proper academic sources.
"While sportswashing attracts scrutiny and criticism of such violations, its aim is that this negative attention will be ultimately outweighed by the positive associations accrued (Delaney, 2020)."
While you could forgive the use of limited non-academic sources in the introduction as just setting the scene, this appears in the literature review. Miguel Delaney, who has done no independent, peer reviewed research into the matter, is cited as if he has. Actually, I assume it's Miguel Delaney. It turns out that this citation (Delaney, 2020) doesn't actually appear in the references list, despite appearing again later in the article. Just to mention, this article has nine authors from three universities. How is this sort of thing not being caught?
"Notably, several sport journalists have attested to instances of fans of a sportswashed club aggressively defending their ownership regimes via social media and other online platforms (Cohen, 2021)."
No context given, no comparison to 'non-sportswashed' clubs. Presented as if City are a special case. Are journalists not getting abuse from fans of Man Utd? Arsenal? Liverpool? Almost certainly. But again, a single source from a newspaper is given. The other source in the previous sentence makes no mention of sportswashing and gives a far more balanced view of the situation regarding online abuse, not singling out individual clubs.
By the start of the methodology stage, I'm not sure they demonstrate that Sheikh Mansour (who they don't actually mention themselves at any point) and the ADUG are engaging in sportswashing rather than old-fashioned investment. It's not even a question they consider.
Their train of logic is:
UAE has a bad human rights record > City are owned by ADUG > ADUG are owned by UAE royalty > sportswashing exists as a concept > City are sportswashed
Essentially sportswashing is an accusation about their motivations, yet other possible motivations are never explored at any point, and sportswashing is just assumed. The idea that it's a legitimate business investment is never brought up. There have been multiple other theories for Sheikh Mansour's investment, even amongst those who have a problem with it. Firstly, that it's not a serious investment, and it's just a billionaire's plaything (he'll get bored any minute). And secondly, and more credibly, that owning Manchester City makes it easier for him to make various other property investments in the UK. And finally, the argument that owning a football club is a status symbol among the ultra rich that leads to various opportunities. Kinda like how billionaires will buy newspapers even if it costs them money, a lot will buy sports teams because of the cultural capital it affords. None of these are explored, the motivation is just assumed. And this means the entire rest of the study is built entirely on a massive assumption that most City fans don't necessarily share.
The biases of City fans are addressed at length, but the biases of the journalists (not academics, remember) that they cite are not. Football journalists are football fans, usually of rival clubs. The best ones might try to be impartial, but they also have a clear financial incentive to be as sensationalist as possible. They have little to no oversight when it comes to the factual credibility of their claims. And that's why it's not a good idea to based a significant portion of an academic study on their work. I've genuinely never read an academic study that has so many citations from newspapers.
There's a basic irony in the methodology section, in that they use a legitimation framework to categorize the messages from City fans into how they legitimize the club's position, but they seemingly fail to apply the same scrutiny to their own views about our owners' actions. Ours is seen as 'legitimizing the status' of the club, whereas theirs, with no reflection whatsoever, is seen as an accurate appraisal of the facts. They also don't go into what each of the nine authors did, so I'm still not sure why it took nine people to write. They also don't go into a great deal of depth about how posts were chosen for inclusion in the study.
The findings contain absolutely no suggestion that City fans might be making legitimate points. As evidenced in the introduction, where they think that City got off at CAS because it was time-barred, they show little knowledge of the wider debates in football. In the context of City being cleared by an independent arbitration court, City fans are accused of trying to "absolve MCFC of allegations of financial impropriety." There is no consideration that such views are legitimate conclusions of fans who have seen their club accused and cleared before. Having presented sportswashing as the sole possibility for Sheikh Mansour's purchase of the club, they then go on to present the opinions of City fans on the forum as some sort of delusional groupthink that bears no relation to reality. The idea that buying City could be a legitimate business decision is dismissed without discussion, despite the off field success of the club being widely reported.
This phrase in particular is bollocks: "The club's vast wealth is tacitly framed as proof of, and reward for, its administrative and footballing excellence, rather than as an advantage which facilitates the achievement of this excellence."
Literally every City fan will tell you (on here) that success breeds money, which creates a virtuous circle. In fact, one of the biggest criticisms most City fans have is how all of the wealth is concentrated at the top of the game, making success a self-fulfilling prophecy, and harming the competitiveness of the game. That's been one of the main criticisms of FFP in the first place.
"The success and expertise of MCFC's hierarchy is based on the premise – implicit in some comments and explicitly discussed in others – of a meritocratic football economy, wherein the cream naturally rises to the top."
Again, absolutely bollocks, unless you're cherry-picking in the extreme. Every City fan recognises that money is necessary for success in football. But equally, it's undeniable that the hierarchy at City have done a good job, when you compare them to teams spending similar amounts. The idea that you could read significant numbers of posts from City fans and come to the conclusion that City fans think football is a meritocracy is hilarious. Every criticism of FFP is a criticism that it allows the already rich clubs to spend more than everyone else. City fans overwhelmingly believe this even though their club is now the main beneficiary of it. And when our club signed up for the European Super League, they were met with almost universal disgust from City fans.
"Elsewhere, users tacitly concede a degree of perilous escalation to the distorting effects of money within the game, but depict this as initiated by MCFC's competitors who are now reaping what they have sown in being overtaken within the ruthless world of modern football."
Absolutely, but is that not true? Again, it's presented as a delusion of City fans trying to justify the sportswashing of their evil owners, rather than a genuine opinion based on the facts.
Another issue not really addressed is how little of this has anything to do with sportswashing and the ownership. Attacking the FA, UEFA, and sports journalists? Do the same study on any fan forum in the country, and you'll likely see the same results. That's the nature of football fandom. It's openly tribal, and that's the point of it. Yet in our case, it's presented as an explicit defence of our owners in the full knowledge that they only own the club to launder their human rights abuses. This is never actually established in the article though, and so what you have is nine people spending an inordinate amount of time to show that football fans might be a bit biased.
I mean I know this will be characterised as another City fan aggressively attacking critics of the club as I 'rationalize the immoral,' but I've just spent the best part of this academic year being forced to critically evaluate shite academic articles, and this one makes so many basic errors that it's hard to take it seriously. I mean it doesn't even contain a 'limitations' section, which is the most basic aspect of a reflective piece of work, and mirrors the lack of reflection and criticality throughout the rest of the article. It's a hit piece masquerading as an academic article.
There you go, Kearns et al. That can go in the 'delegitimization' section of your next journal article. Hopefully you include a few more academic sources and a few less newspaper sources in your next one.
ETA: spelling
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