A couple of comments.
I don't expect — still less need — fans of other clubs to like my club. It's water off a duck's back one way or the other as far as I'm concerned. But looking in on their forum, I am slightly taken aback.
This from their thread:
“I lived in Manchester for 3 years when I was at University. It's a great place and a more of the locals I encountered (taxi drivers, bar staff and people I worked with in kitchens for a few quid) were City fans as opposed to United. They were probably the most "soulful" club in the Premier League back them (mid 90s), great unwavering support and a team that would sometimes spark into life and turn in great performances.
Fast forward 20 years and they are a horrible, gold plated mutation of what made them such a great club. A horrible mix of a rich man's toy and a PR machine to paper over human rights abuses.”
I'm really nonplussed. Has he met any of us recently? We've barely changed. Still the gallows humour there, still happy to have a drink with opposing fans and talk footy if they're not being absolute twats. I don't remember seeing any of us giving it the big one walking down Wembley Way after the F.A. Cup final, which we could easily have done, given the score and performance. What I
do remember is being on the platform and a Watford fan on the opposite platform (going the other way towards Watford)
starting to give us shit, when we hadn't said a word to him! He got a fair bit back, at that point, obviously. Everybody at my end in the stadium was complimentary and impressed about how their support continued to sing and stay right through to the final whistle.
We, the fans (the older ones) haven't changed all that much. We're looking on, a bit amazed, drinking it in, a bit still wondering when it will all come to an end, when Swales will come back to own us and Stuart Pearce to manage us.
Yes, we got rich; yes, we won the lottery.
Are we supposed to go on fucking apologising for it for ever and a day?!
The other thing. The opening post. I presume that that's by one of the mods. Now I believe that the thing about a “presentation” post is that it's supposed to have a bit of
gravitas about it. Not frothing and drooling like a dog out in the midday sun with rabies. (Leave that to us — or some of us!).
Think of our own
@MAG and his presentation posts (I miss those, by the way, mate — too time consuming, I suppose?). I don't recollect seeing one in which he stoops to the kind of stuff that you see from this mewling, puking infant on their forum. They were always exemplary in their clear-eyed balance. It's not the function of a presentation post: just present the other club, present our record against them, present recent form, present plausible outcomes, and leave the rest (including the bile, if necessary) to us.
As I say, nonplussed…