Well, to be fair, mate, I did say “most of the time, not all”, and I said it “sometimes includes United and Liverpool fans.” I was careful in my wording.
A good lad I've now lost touch with, genuine Manc (that's always an improvement, I find, on someone who comes from Ulan Bator and purports to be a United fan) who was a life long rag, always had good exchanges with him. I recognised what United had done in the past, he recognised what we were doing in the present (was also well aware of ‘distant’ history of the late sixties and the seventies, when we were more or less on an equal footing. I once said to him, “You know, John, I have cognitive dissonance with you. My default position is that all rags are cunts, by definition. But you're not. It gives me a problem!” He took the banter in good part. The night we beat Liverpool at the Etihad in that utterly monumental game (last minute Sané goal, Johnny clearing off the line when two more centimetres would have made it a goal and Liverpool would have taken a point), we both watched the match together, and he was made up for me. Serious guitarist, too. So we always had music to talk about when football was too touchy.
I'd also notice, by the way, that if you ‘prod’ people, well, they tend to react aggressively. That includes City fans.
