AustinBlue said:
When you try and manipulate the press like that, it almost always blows up in your face. The media are more interested in your desire to change the story and make you look ever worse in the process. What you have described above is no reflective of the reality of how the media works and what power a club might have to frame the story. It also ignores the fact that if we try and shame any single person, then we make a real enemy. It is far more effective to work quietly and behind the scenes and build long term relationships.. and sometimes take some public punishment so someone can save face, but build in loopholes so the impact is minimal. It's not clear this was poorly handled. It could be this was brilliantly handled. How can you ever know?
You CAN know.
You look across the media landscape: From every tabloid to broadsheet to blog. You speak to people in the pub, in your work, and to fans of other clubs. And you take a general average of how many factual accuracies vs inaccuracies dominate the media and public opinion, with regard to City.
Until 2 weeks ago, when City clearly decided to change their policy, break their silence and start briefing journalists on this subject, 95% of ALL popular public opinion did not reflect the truth: That these ‘rules’ are a huge lie by a powerful mafia and have
nothing whatsoever to do with ‘fairness.’
There were just one or two voices in the media questioning them, and they were drowned out by a media and public opinion that had been sold - and bought - UEFA’s bullshit, lock, stock and barrel.
And yet, in the last 2 weeks, a number of journalists, clearly briefed by the club have FINALLY started to chip away at the bullshit - writing/tweeting about the hypocrisy, comparing our debt-free status to the joke that passes for the Glazer debt ‘model’ and pointing to the huge regeneration in East Manchester as a reason for us not to be punished. But that little bit of good work will now be buried now by the avalanche of coverage about us being found ‘guilty,’ ‘caught’ and ‘stopped from spending’
It was too little, too late. It was a failed media strategy.
WHY did we wait almost 3 years to start fighting back via the press? Because we were VERY naive. We gave those lying, greedy hypocrites a 3 year head start in the PR war, when they had a huge advantage over us to begin with.
We lost the battle for hearts and minds, hands down. Yet I often read in these pages that Simon Pearce is such an influential PR man, and Vicky Kloss is a lovely person.
As others have said, our owners come from a completely different media culture. The media in Europe is dominated by sleaze and the interests of a handful of powerful people. When those same people are out to get you, and are playing dirty, sometimes, you have to fight back. Sometimes the high road doesn’t take you where you need it to.
So the only conclusion to be drawn is that anyone who's advising our owners that total silence is the right PR strategy against a media full of extremely powerful people who are out to get us is wrong, and probably out of their depth at this level.
The financial sanctions may not have affected us, but the soon-to-be worldwide belief that UEFA have won a ‘just’ battle or a ‘fair’ fight against our owners (Or even worse, we were caught out trying to 'cheat' the rules) is a
huge defeat for us, in my opinion.
