Just when you thought he couldn't be any more of a bell-end, I give you the oracle that is Jamie O'Hara ...
"Manchester United and Liverpool are going to be the biggest clubs in the UK forever because of their history – it’s as simple as that.
I don’t care how many trophies you win – you could win 10 Champions Leagues and you are never going to be as big as Manchester United. There’s only one team in Manchester, and that’s Man United.
History is what matters. Never in a million years are Manchester City going to be as big as Manchester United. We could be playing in 40, 50, 100 more years, we could even be playing on another planet, and United will be bigger than City. City can’t even fill their own ground! Football goes round in cycles – Manchester City are having their time now because they’ve got Pep Guardiola in charge – but I believe Man United will come back, because they’re Man United.
You can’t compare Manchester City to the likes of Real Madrid. Real Madrid and Barcelona are always going to be Real Madrid and Barcelona, and Liverpool and Manchester United are always going to be Liverpool and Manchester United – no matter what decade. They’re still the biggest clubs in the world. Manchester City are owned by a state and they’ve got Pep Guardiola as their manager, but let me tell you, that will eventually change.”
I wonder if the media were saying this about United and Liverpool in the 1930s?
Top 10 Honours, by 1939
Aston Villa: 6 league titles, 6 FA Cups (12 trophies)
Arsenal: 5 league titles, 2 FA Cups, 5 Charity Shields (12 trophies)
Everton: 5 league titles, 2 FA Cups, 2 Charity Shields (9)
Blackburn: 2 league titles, 6 FA Cups, 1 Charity Shield (9)
Sunderland: 6 league titles, 1 FA Cup, 1 Charity Shield (8)
Newcastle: 4 league titles, 3 FA Cups, 1 Charity Shield (8)
Sheffield Wednesday: 4 league titles, 3 FA Cups, 1 Charity Shield (8)
Sheffield United: 1 league title, 4 FA Cups, 1 Charity Shield (6)
Huddersfield: 3 league titles, 1 FA Cup, 1 Charity Shield (5)
Preston: 2 league titles, 2 FA Cups, 1 Charity Shield (5)
Bearing in mind that was about the midway-point of English football history when you think that Sheffield FC were formed in 1857 and 1939 was 82 years after that and 1939 was 84 years ago!
There’s no such thing as ‘forever’.
Nothing lasts forever. Einstein’s Second Law of Thermodynamics means that, as time and space move into the future, things always change. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that the idea ‘United and Liverpool are going to be the biggest clubs in the UK forever because of their history’ will be true.
In the 1930s, there was no comparison in the size of City compared to United. City were
the club of Manchester, a chasm a size that wasn’t seen again until the 1990s when it was the other way around… and it was the same in Liverpool, Everton were
the club of that city but over the decades that changed, because, things change!
Yes, United and Liverpool have won more trophies than anyone else at this moment in time. But it’s not that much more. Nobody in England has really won
that many trophies. 20 and 19 league titles and 3 and 6 CLs isn’t out of the reach of anyone given a few good decades. English football has always been changing. Teams come, they win things, and then they go. Nobody in England has ever always won things.
When Ferguson took over United they’d had a very similar success history to Aston Villa (1 European Cup, 7 First Division titles and about half a dozen FA Cups). Look at the difference now, over three decades later.
Give City another few decades and we can match United and Liverpool, not just in terms of success but in terms of
everything (look at City getting 85,000 crowds and United 4,000 in the 1930s… things change!).
Give Newcastle 30-40 years and why couldn’t they become the biggest club in the world? Newcastle were a big club before United and Liverpool were big clubs.
In 100 years, for all we know, the most successful clubs in the country could be City, Newcastle and Tottenham (like we’ve mentioned in another thread in this part of the forum, they’re probably prime candidates to have the next big investor in England) because they might have sustained success though being better run than United and Liverpool ever were. Those two could be down in 6th and 7th for all we know, with lower crowds, their success a very distant memory.
People could look back and think
‘United and Liverpool had period where they biggest clubs in the UK for about about half a century but they weren’t the biggest clubs before then and it didn’t last for either of them after that half-century’.
