Typical lies from the Manchester Evening Blues. An article written by the most of bitter of blues for all bitter blues in what has no doubt been a crushing week as United were once again crowned champions. I mean, really, is this the best that you can do to try and diminish United's achievements, Mr Keegan? I despair.
OK, on behalf of United supporters i'll expose the lies and put a few facts out there:
Firstly, the headline is misleading. It states that city had "five times the turnout" - they simply did not. The numbers on the streets were actually identical. I work in Manchester, and the crowd was two deep from Albert Square to Eastlands for the whole of the route, with simply the same 8,000 supporters who were in Albert square walking after the bus. city's figures are only boosted when you include those who were inside Eastlands and who were therefore not part of the actual parade itself.
United didn't have the luxury of a reception at Old Trafford. If they had, it's a knocking bet that their turnout would have far exceeded city's. Secondly, United's parade started at 10 o'clock in the morning, rather than city's evening affair. In addition to this, over 30,000 United supporters had still yet to return from that weekend's Champions League final. And that's without mentioning the atrocious weather conditions.
This newspaper always has, and always will be, heavily biased towards city. If this piece of 'journalism' was ever going to be worth reading, there should have been a comparison between city's 2011 parade and United's in 1999 (which GMP stated that over 750,000 supporters attended) surely proving that United have more than ten times as many supporters in Greater Manchester as city do.
If it's comparisons you want then let's see how many attend United and city's parades this year, now that the playing field is level and United have an evening parade once more.
But then why would 'Manchester' city (the club that was formed OUTSIDE of OUR city) or the Manchester Evening Blues ever let facts get in the way of the truth? 'Manchester' city - the whole club is built on lies.