Caveman said:
LoveCity said:
Everything they do or say seems to be with City in mind. I mean this was even on their TV channel. Did you see anything remotely like this by our club last season? That our club congratulated them on Twitter shows the huge gulf in class.
[bigimg]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BIfNfJZCYAAlqmt.jpg:large[/bigimg]
They're utterly obsessed!
There is no escaping from this fact.
It would be fundamentally dishonest for most (if not all) City fans to suggest that our rivalry with united wasn't important to us. It patently is. I also think it's fair to say that during the dark times the levels of pre-occupation with united reached mildly unhealthy levels, but as I say only marginally so.
Their levels of obsession with us are beyond parody: they sing endlessly about us at games - more than we ever did about them, they are unable to enjoy regaining the title without using us as a perpetual reference point: Ferdinand; that (not totally unfunny it has to be said) screenshot above; their fans being interviewed after the game.
I have to be fair here and say that I am viewing this through a City fan's eyes, so maybe, just maybe, the truth lies in the middle: maybe we both think about each other too much. If true it is, I guess, an inevitable consequence of both clubs finding themselves at the top of the English game together.
What is so utterly preposterous, however, (even if I concede that it is a mutual degree of pre-occupation) is the complete and utter tissue of lies that we don't matter to them as much as their other rivals. That Liverpool are, in fact, their big rivals and that their games with Arsenal have a heritage and tradition which Derby matches cannot match. This claim does not stand up to any form of objective scrutiny.
My dad is a united fan and he talks of little else other than City. Liverpool, Arsenal and to a lesser extent Chelsea hardly ever occupy his thoughts. He talks endlessly about decisions he thinks we have got from referees, the conduct of our players (I know!) and the utterances of our manager. I have supported the club for 37 years and yet before we won the FA Cup in 2011, it was the occasional quip and piss take - not an endless conveyor belt of obsessive comments.
It's not like I'm a rabid anti-united merchant. Some of my closest friends (and family, obviously) follow the club, but they seem collectively to have adopted this form of double-think about our place in their minds. They are completely in denial about their levels of obsession with us. I like to think I've been round the block, but it really is a source of bafflement to me how a group of people can be so deluded, collectively and individually, about something that is so apparent.
Very odd.
