Right through my life, and I am an FOC, I have generally felt that other clubs fans have a soft spot for us (rags excluded), I think due to some extent to our under achievement, partly due to generally being a team that tries to play football, and largely due to the loyalty of our fan base.
This never felt more so than after the qpr game in 2012, where after the match I was literally inundated with text messages from mates and colleagues from different places I’d lived and worked, fans of different teams. The general tone was that people were delighted that we had won the league, how we’d won it and who we won it over. Also there was a genuine appreciation of the fact they all knew I was a loyal fan of a likeable club, someone who had followed them home and away for decades, many of those decades empty of success and full of under achievement. I didn’t get the sense that anyone begrudged us our success.
Roll forward 10 and a half years and the feeling towards us is so different. Every premier league we have won has had the rags or dippers as runners up, teams that I reckon are generally disliked by all apart from their own (admittedly huge) fan bases. I would have thought that this would have enhanced our popularity, particularly when you think we have brought the likes of Kompany, Zaba, KDB, Yaya, Sergio, the Silvas, Haaland etc etc etc to the league, and all for fantastic prices. The Mancini, Pellegreni and Pep teams have all played beautiful football, and I am sure I’m not biased in saying that.
So why the fuck are we so widely unpopular, what have we done wrong?
Have we become horrible fans? I don’t think so. I get it that we aren’t as passionate as we once were, not alone in that. But I think we still have a fair bit of our typical City humour, and a large proportion of our fan base is still traditional.
Is it just plain jealousy? I think that may be part of it, but it wasn’t evident in the emotions expressed to me in 2012, so would winning another 5 premier league titles in 10 years cause that? Not sure it would.
Is it how our football club conducts itself? Well, our owners have invested millions in the area, have generally been low key and polite, we have CITC which remains best in class, we always treat people with respect and decency as far as I can see.
So I can only think it’s 10 years of constant digs at us, from all of the newspapers, from Sky, BBC (tv, radio and online), BT, Talk Shite etc. Why they do this is beyond me but can only because we are not united or liverpool, maybe also because we are Arab owned not USA owned. But I think 10 years of their snide and negative comments, aided by awful treatment from the premier league and uefa, has eaten into the consciousness of the general footballing public.
Since Monday I don’t think, in fact I know, that our football club has never been more alone. No one likes us, but I can’t say I don’t care, because I don’t really know why, and I know it isn’t deserved.
We are only just into an even longer and more sustained period of City bashing than we have ever known, the refs and VAR will feel even more at liberty to shaft us on the pitch, so let’s do one thing as CITY FANS, let’s get right behind our club and our players, for as long as it takes, win or lose, get behind the players and the management. I have ALWAYS been proud to be a Blue, and remain so as much today as the day I was born into a Blue family.
CITY TIL WE DIE
