Having read the last ten pages of the thread, I am quite surprised by some reactions to the interview.
I think some—who I otherwise considered fairly astute individuals—are being blinded by personal frustrations and anger over the abuse they get from rival fans.
Those seemingly calling for a ‘scorched earth’ type of campaign from our management against the forces trying to teardown the club are being quite naive. If you study such strategies, you’ll find that they often ultimately harm the entities carrying them out nearly as much as those entities on the receiving end. Any gains are almost always short-lived; the resulting losses are felt more acutely and for longer, as well.
Our management is aware that they operate in the same environment as our enemies, and simply burning it to the ground is not going to benefit the club, as we would just then struggle to operate in a wasteland.
Could they expose the corruption, collusion, and criminality of the Premier League and UEFA? Knowing our management and owners, I imagine they likely have enough evidence to do that, if they wanted. But doing so would harm the club almost as much as our rivals and attackers. They understand that the club’s revenue right now is largely dependent on the overall success and legitimacy of the leagues we play in, even if the current brass of the leagues are trying to tear us down.
We can’t burn down the factory because management is trying to nefariously get us sacked and then expect to keep working at the same wage.
But we can slowly, quietly, methodically cull the elements within the leagues, organisations, and rival clubs attempting to destroy us, thereby reducing the harm to our club whilst preserving the benefits.
And to those wishing the club would be more vocal about the organised attack we have experienced for many years now—and “not leave it to the fans”—that is not how this type of combat works. Quite a lot of what the club could do will be subject to legal, regulatory, and commercial consequences.
We as fans are free to say and do whatever we want, with mostly only our own individual responsibilities and consequences to consider. Yes, we can reflect poorly on the club—and even directly expose it to negative consequences—if we act irresponsibly, either on our own or collectively, and I have talked about the harm that can come to the club from that.
But, generally, that does not compare to the jeopardy the club can experience if they act in the same overly-aggressive manner. There are potentially sweeping and comprehensive consequences to that tactic that they have to be very careful to avoid. Many that would impact we the fans, as well.
We may not like the ‘softly, softly’ approach as fans, because we have to live with the ignorant, often vitriolic abuse from rival fans every day. But there is no real alternative that does not pose penalties on our club that we would also decry. Our management are not patronising or misleading us. They are acting in the only way that balances fighting the collective action against the club with maintaining a strong and successful enterprise, capable of continuing the fight long after most of our enemies have sunken back in to the dark depths from which they came.
Just as our owners, management, staff, and players do, we have to assess the complexities of every battle individually, whilst also never losing sight of the war itself.
And the war must ultimately be ended with our club being one of the entities standing in strength, not by destroying everything, including ourselves.
Every fan has a right to be an armchair general. But I don’t think we are in a better position to understand the full complexities, challenges, consequences, and opportunities of the theatres the club are fighting in. Even those of us that have worked directly with the club in various capacities will not be aware of all of the variables and pieces in play. Nor could we fully predict the possible outcomes of various strategies. Only our management team is in a position to be able to do that to any decent level, and even they struggle with it at times, I am sure.
As someone that has a background in fraud detection and prevention, and has worked in the fraught environments and situations in which such investigations and interventions take place, I can say with experience that bombastic approaches almost always fail miserably.
I, for one, think City’s brass are doing an exceptional job in an extremely hostile environment. In fact, given the outcome with the UEFA charges and the Super League debacle, I am not sure they could have done any better, really.
I personally think we all need to meditate on the proverb “be careful what you wish for”. It may help us feel better about how the club are choosing to go about things.
