MCFCHOWELL said:
A lot of the members on their forum. They're all Everton, Arsenal, Scum, Dippers and Spurs fans who seem to already hate us. At any opportunity they love to slag us off, most MCFC fans who go over to their forum get abused 24/7.
It's only for MODS like Falustur that stop them from becoming anti-mcfc FC.
Yeah, and it wears me out, although it has to be said that it's not entirely one-way - the NYCFC forum has a good few MCFC fans (native and English) on it and they are both more than capable of giving as much as they take.
CityFan94 said:
I don't understand the fuss personally.
He was a free agent after being released from Chelsea, free to sign for whoever he wanted.
It's not like we avoided the transfer fee by letting NYCFC buy him, just to loan him back to us. NYCFC signed him on a free and loaned him to us, where we are paying 100% of his wages.
Where in this deal are we avoiding ANY cost at all?
Mourinho releasing Lampard could cost him the title - Lampard's goals have won us 4 points already (Chelsea home, Leicester away).
The issue at hand here is less so the case of what MCFC are gaining and whether they are being dishonest, it is what is happening in NYC to make this work. That is to say, NYCFC was announced with due pomp and promptly signed its first two players, deliberately finding world-renowned players to draw attention. NYCFC staked its very image on Lampard - he was the poster boy for a lot of their early advertising, he was bandied about to NYC media (moreso as Villa doesn't speak English), and he was supposed to be loaned to Melbourne but the Aussie FA ruled it out because Villa was already there.
When he came over here, people got a little wary, but they accepted it because they were told that he'd be back in time for the start of pre-season. Now the talk is of the loan being extended, it's starting to affect the club's preparations. He wasn't around to do a lot of the media stuff that they had planned on recalling him from Australia to do, so Villa got pulled from Melbourne after only four games, causing a lot of tension over there. The stories started circulating that he'd miss the pre-season games and people got disappointed because that is supposed to be their gauge stick of how the team is going to play when the season starts - we all know that a player who misses pre-season will take another month or two to learn how to play with his teammates, especially when he's moving to a team when the other players aren't as good as him and need a certain level of adjusting for.
Then, as moomba said, CFG continued to make absolutely no comment on his future all the while Pellegrini keeps talking about how important it is that Lampard plays in Manchester rather than New York, and now has gone a step further by usurping Lampard's right to stay silent on the matter by broadcasting that Lampard actually would prefer to stay here. Now, we are all used to CFG refusing to comment on anything whatsoever, but in the US they know nothing of how CFG operates, and it's making them suspicious. The only thing they're hearing from CFG is what Pellegrini says and they assume the whole organisation is singing from the same hymn sheet so they assume that he will stay. They think that CFG has something to hide and are too ashamed to speak up, and they think that Lampard is looking for a way to back out of his contract. It's not that they specifically demand Lampard and would be disconsolate to see him, but rather Lampard's signing was almost the very first statement of intent CFG made over there and now it looks like we're trying to find a way to back out. When you go back on your word on the very first occasion, it makes people unwilling to trust you, and that's the atmosphere which is building in NYC.
That's what the problem is with all this. Of course, there will still continue to be journos who say that the issue is that CFG is an accounting scam to fool FFPR, but the real issue is that from the NYC point of view, it looks like they are being played for fools.
