Media coverage 2018/19

[Colin Bells Boots]

Kante never played for City. You must have your wires crossed.

He still plays for us surely ?

 

[blue b4 the moon]

He still plays for us surely ?

Saved me the reply :)

 

[SebastianBlue]

Come on Sebastian there is very little in that article which is negative with the main theme being how fantastic our team is, how better we are than everybody else and with us having the potential to dominate for years to come the race for the league would become boring (which it would).

I think the only narrative prism here is shoehorning every article into an atack on City.

Yeh, I’m with you Frank, there’s not a lot in there to get upset about. The only issue is the potential for the wider narrative....

I agree if we win everything it would be boring. I’d be bored. We’re not United fans.

I’ve not read the piece in question but, do they point to really poor missmanagement at other clubs?
We’re no doubt excellent but other teams should be performing much better.

It’s not our fault Sours won’t spend money, Arsenal kept Wenger for 7 years too long or United have been woefully mismanaged and Chelsea have zero continuity and Liverpool have a wacko in charge and their fans make succes a near impossibility with the pressure they apply on themselves.

I think a few are missing how these types of narratives (for sport, politics, business, or elsewhere) are seeded.

It usually begins with vague, thinly sourced and/or reasoned articles making a tenuous assertion but still including positive aspects so that it can interpreted different ways by different readers from opposing factions of thought (or even those in the same “tribe”, such is happening on BM). That is the case for the article I referenced. This allows it to have more legs, as they say, increasing circulation and consumption. Then come the more direct, unabashed write-ups referencing the original assertion, proclaiming it to be correct based on—at least on the surface—less questionable evidence. As these pieces mount, more people start to believe it to be true based almost entirely on the influence of repetious information (humans are more likely to believe something to be correct if they have heard it multiple times from different sources, regardless of whether that something has any factual basis, even makes sense on a basic level once scrutinised, or all ultimately came from a single original source). This is a very straightforward propaganda campaign model.

Now, I am not saying the piece was meant to start that process off by any means. Or that ESPN specifically means to spread propaganda. But it does fulfill the seeding step for such a momentum narrative to take off. And ESPN most definitely encouraged it to speak to their sizeable United readership (among others), for clicks and engagement, knowing they would most assuredly agree with the base sentiment (even with the cursory reference to the league being boring when United wee dominating, which I think most would agree is merely lip service given I do not recall much gnashing of teeth by fan, clubs, or the PL wigs at the time). Now that sentiment can be stoked, creating the much coveted engagement magnifying cycle. Other outlets will join the procession (some already have, mind) and that narrative prism gets bigger. It can be a centralised effort, but most often it is a haphazard but just as—if not more—effective meandering march to shaping the opinions of interested parties outside of the “tribe” or entity you are vilifying.

Read these quotes (again, sprinkled amongst more positive statements about City, which was absolutely intentional), and it is a bit more difficult to assert I am merely shoehorning this as a negative article. Some times you cannot take things at face value.

Manchester City are a problem for Liverpool -- but are they also a problem for the Premier League?

Not only could City win this year's title at a stroll, but there's a strong chance they'll completely dominate the division for years to come. They have a set of superb, broadly young players, a manager regarded as this generation's great coaching genius, a behind-the-scenes structure to rival any in the world, a decision-making team that have barely made a wrong call in the past couple of years, virtually limitless cash, and as we've been reminded recently, a willingness to push UEFA rules of governance to their breaking point.

But if we only concentrate on that, then we're not really watching sport anymore. Sport relies on competition, but if City are too good for the competition, we're just watching exhibition football. You might as well cancel your TV subscriptions and fire up YouTube to watch those people do absurd tricks in cool urban locations, for all the competitive drama the Premier League could bring.

Manchester City are a majestic football team. They can play football the like of which we've rarely seen. They have the potential to be the Premier League's dominant side for years to come. If they do, it's great for them. But ultimately it's bad for the rest of us.

 

[waspish]

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...fans-defence-uae-sportswashing-tribal-loyalty

This piece really annoys me. It is one thing criticising the club, another City supporters.

I read Hattenstone's article and defended his yesterday, and now I find that the Guardian is alleging we're taking sides in a legal case when in fact if anything it's just the opposite.

No doubt there were one or two City supporters somewhere on the Internet who said soemthing to justify this piece but in the main if you read the comments on here most have refrained from commenting about a legal case which we know nothing about and it is opposition supporters and the Guardian itself who are making the noise.

I tried to defend people like Conn and Hattenstone yesterday but now their colleagues are critcising City fans. I have lost respect for them, and will no longer be reading their opinion.

Yep agree notice the Narative changing slightly recently and turning it on City supporters it disgusting and the majority of the media are only out to get clicks and Harm Manchester City image just like our owners said when the leaks came out.

 

[Marvin]

Batten down the hatches. Fuck the media and fuck the red cnuts. Hope we dominate the league for a century.

My conclusion too.

Criticising City fans is just too far. I read that paper all the time. I respect some of their journalists like Conn and Hattenstone and the irony is that I posted links to their articles yesterday and defended them on here. I will never do that again. I didn't see one comment criticising Matthew Hedges, and you couldn't comment on it online on the Guardian so on what basis can they shoot us down now? This is just grandstanding to make themselves popular amongst Utd, Liverpool fans etc. I'll read it online, what alternative is there, but I'll never advocate their stories again.

City fans have always been at their best when we are under pressure so bring it on.

There are hundreds of thousands of City fans. A lot more City fans than there are Guardian subscribers. We can respond in two ways:

Boycott them, or inundate their post match comments and make it an admin nightmare for them. I will think about it.

 

[kaz7]

Great post nicked off someone on bluevibe
Matthew Hedges is imprisoned in Dubai, not Abu Dhabi. Although part of the same relatively loose confederation, Abu Dhabi has no say in local Dubai jurisprudence. “But they have strong economic links, Abu Dhabi must have influence” I imagine Simole Simon saying. It’s true, but so does the US but I didn’t hear anyone asking the New York Yankees to get involved.

The owner of Manchester City is a member of the Royal Family in Abu Dhabi but he is not the ruler. Manchester City is not owned “by Abu Dhabi” but by this one member if the Royal Family. Abu Dhabi is a dictatorship, the owner of Manchester City doesn’t get a vote on the final decisions made by the Ruler of Abu Dhabi, he is a single person in a very large and politically complicated family. He is a second tier Royal in a neighbouring state. Expecting him to impact jurisprudence in Dubai is like expecting Prince Harry to intervene in a French judicial decision.

@City & Blue Brazil

 

[Marvin]

The annoying thing about that Barney Ronay article is that he says
Naturally you’d assume that these voices of authority were professors of Middle Eastern jurisprudence, or at worst a set of official Emirati propaganda bots. But no. They were Manchester City supporters.

Who does this guy think he is, and we are. Does it matter whether we are bricklayers, nurses, Doctors, professors, accountants, idiots or mastermind, we are football supporters and most of us have a lot more integrity than he clearly does.

That's it enough time spent thinking about this. Annoyed, but hoping even more for a City win at West Ham and then on to the home game, and woe betide any opposition fan who raises this with me. Strange thing they never do. It's always football, although they do talk about money a lot.

 

[laserblue]

Made a forlorn, wimpering shell of a man out of me. 10 goals at home all season ffs. We expect that many by half time these days.

5 of them were in two games (3 against Fulham and 2 against Everton). The other 5 were in the other 17 games. What a joyful season that was.

 

[Fred_Quimby]

Batten down the hatches. Fuck the media and fuck the red cnuts. Hope we dominate the league for a century.

How many posters do we have on BM? You all hate the media and yet you cosey up to it every day looking for anti-City rhetoric. Why? I don’t buy papers, nor do I watch any Sly Sports unless City are playing and even then I turn the sound down and I haven’t listened to Talksh1te since I was driving home after CL game and some tit was actually crying that his beloved rags were not through to the KO stages. Why do you bother? We play the best football this country has ever seen and that is what matters not the snivelling sh1te that is produced by this country’s so called media.

 

[moomba]

5 of them were in two games (3 against Fulham and 2 against Everton). The other 5 were in the other 17 games. What a joyful season that was.

I missed the Fulham game too.

I still look back at those times with fondness though, god knows why.