Fresh from the disgraceful, if predictable behaviour of Manchester City fans at Eastlands on Saturday, supporters then beat up Mame Biram Diouf’s brother after the game. Proof, if required, that nouveau riche millions rarely changes clubs or their fans for the better. But reputation does matter for Abu Dhabi’s Royal Family.
City’s acquisition by Sheikh Mansour and co was the very definition of a vanity purchase. The club, much like Chelsea before, bought at the whim of the ultra rich with little interest in its history. Even profit appears to have little relevance, with more than £300 million spent on transfer fees and losses locked into the business plan for many years to come.
Rather, the ‘glory’ of owning a Premier League club for the world to see, with the associated prestige and glamour attracted Abu Dhabi as much as Roman Abramovich to Chelsea years before.
Saturday’s victory at Eastland was Manchester United’s third over the local rivals this season but in each City’s supporters and players have brought embarrassment on the club. From fans throwing lighters at Patrice Evra, to Carlos Tevez insulting Gary Neville after the United defender’s innocuous column, to Craig Bellamy thumping a restrained pitch invader.
Little else is expected of a club who’s “small minds” launched the season with the now infamous ‘Welcome to Manchester’ Tevez poster. Even Tevez dismissed the idea as little more than a cheap insult.
Led by the hapless ceo Gary Cook, City’s behaviour is not that of the ‘big’ club the owners wish it to become. It’s hardly possible to image Real Madrid or Barcelona wasting time with a media campaign designed to humiliate the other. Hatred may run deep on the Iberian peninsula but there are far bigger prizes at stake.
It’s a fact that Brazilian Kaká knew well when he rejected the club in favour of Madrid a year ago. Cook’s assertion that Milan “bottled it” an insult both to an organisation that remains a cut above and a player that could never sign until City joins the big boys. Both metaphorically, and in terms of Champions League qualification.
Then the dénouement, with City fans’ attack on Abdul Biram Diouf Saturday night. Supporters kicked, punched and left Diouf in a shrub after the game. The 28-year-old brother of United’s Senegalese striker wore his sibling’s Carling Cup final shirt at Eastlands, leaving no doubt about the attack’s motivation.
It marked a night of trouble in the city, with more than 20 arrests on both sides of the divide after post-match fighting.
Perhaps little surprise though with City fans engaging in now typical United-baiting during the match; singing songs about Munich and launching blow-up aeroplanes into the stands. Ignorance of their own club’s history perhaps but management has done little in the intervening years to rectify its supporters’ behaviour.
To fail to condemn is to tacitly condone, after all.
Sheihk Mansour should worry. After all what’s the point in a glamour buy if the club’s ceo, players and supporters bring shame on the family?
But perhaps the Greater Manchester Police sum up the difference between the two clubs better than any condemnation on this site. GMP report that one City fan, arrested on Saturday night, picked up and threw fresh horse manure at United supporters with his bare hands.
Elbow high in faeces while United fight it out for a 19th domestic title and a record fourth in a row.
Great article.Right on the money.
Money can buy you the opportunity to compete but it can’t buy you success; that takes determination and good management; to achieve prolonged success year-after-year is even harder.
Even Chelsea were a reasonably successful club before Abramovich took them over; City are starting from a much lower base; to my knowledge they don’t have any club veterans like a Scholes or a Giggs to remind the new players that the club had values before they joined.
This club will surely provide us with many years of self – destructive entertainment before they finally cop on that the Sheikh expects a few trophies for his money. United should concentrate on their own football and leave the freak show to the clowns at Eastlands!
Success, even if it means 4th place, still won’t bring them any class. In those stakes, theyare decades behind.
We all know While gary Cook is the face of City they will have no class, but by posting articles like this, are we not in danger of becoming as obsessed with them as they are with us?
Fair enough to point out an attack on Diouf’s brother, but I have seen United fans attack AC Milan fans. not all of our fans are holier than thou.
City fans threw lighters at Evra, which is true, but it is also true that Craig Bellamy had coins and a bottle thrown at him at Old Trafford.
By not including this it makes the article sound blinkered.
Also, does this kind of article not sound a bit whinny? the kind of thing that I’d expect from the Dippers. The whole ‘our feeling are hurt’ tone.
The fact is, like Chelsea, City will become a threat. They cannot fail to with the amount of money they can throw at players.
But we all know that these Sheiks will tire of their plaything sooner or later and when they do City will once again be relegated to their default mode of being forever in our shadow.
As a lifelong blue I do NOT condone any of the disgraceful actions mentioned in this ‘article’, in fact I’m ashamed that fans wearing the same colours are involved, and I’ve nothing against rivals (and United are JUST another rival these days)having a go at our mistakes or failures.
However, taking some sort of moral high ground as a United fan is either ignorant or more likley hugely hypocritical.
No mention here of the bottles raining down on Bellamy at OT, the list of objectional missiles United fans tried to bring into Eastlands for the Semi-Final(and GMP asserted this was United fans), the cynical behaviour of Ferdinand(semi at OT), Neville and Ferguson or indeed the hypocracy of a xenophobic comment attacking Germans for surrounding the referee and asking players to be sent off followed days later by an exact replica of this behaviour by United players trying to get Barry cautioned?.
Having money hasn’t bought United love or class for many years.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, and thankfully there are many shining examples of great fans and great players at both clubs that restore faith in football and mankind, but please don’t try to take some sort of moral high ground here….we’ve all got our idiots!.
At last a comment from a City fan I can actually post but unfortunately exactly the same tone. The article doesn’t claim perfection at Old Trafford. United’s players and fans are always in a goldfish bowl so nothing is hidden from view and the club’s failings well covered in the mainstream media. That’s what happens when you’re a proper big club.
The issue – and its a perfectly fair one to bring up – is that City’s fans and management still behave like United’s spoilt little brother. Money will buy success. Not your own money mind you. But will City grow with it? I doubt it.
how bitter and twisted (and a bit of a scruff) do you have to be to pick up a load of horse mannure with your bare hands and throw it at people.
“City’s fans and management still behave like United’s spoilt little brother”
Couldn’t agree more to be honest. The behaviour is disgraceful, especially the blow up airplanes. this was the same at OT when Leeds came in the FA Cup. It was ridiculous and hurt even more because we lost so badly.
Yes success is a 4th spot. We have to start somewhere! My fellow blue Kompany states that both clubs have idiots and that is indeed true, a point which it seems you cannot accept. Whilst in Koln when you were playing Leverkeusen, your fans were singing “City’s going down like a Russian submarine”. Where’s the class that you seem to think you have? You’re great fans aren’t thinking of the families of the 180 + Russian sailors that died. You weren’t even playing City! Who is obsessed with whom? Your singing of Hillsborough and Heysel songs to liverpool fans, or do other clubs imagine it?
The money that is in football now is vulgar I agree, but it was YOU with YOUR money that started it all, all those years ago. You state that Cook is hapless and a figure of derision, yet you fail to remember the allegations against Martin Edwards, the fact that his father made his money selling bad meat to school children and was subject to investigation into tax irregularities before his death.
It must be fantastic sitting in your ivory tower taking such a high moral stance as you do.
Well done in the result we can’t argue with that, facts are facts, and yes I think your players wanted it more and have the big game mentality that our players lack. No doubt about it. I went to my first City game in 1969, been there through thick and thin and will continue to do so until they put me in the ground or burn me.
But don’t be so niaive as to believe that ANY football club can stand on the moral high ground.
Prior to the inception of the EPL you were not a wildly successful team, many a team were on a par with you. Remember football has been around a lot longer than your recent success’. Having said that a lot of you fans will be relative newcomers to the game of football now they can get it on sky or the internet.
Good luck to you all, not bitter just BLUE!!!!
We all have our demons, wasn’t exactly the point of the article but don’t worry a couple of hundred City fans have pointed them out! This isn’t the BBC though, there’s no need to give equal space to every possible argument. Although I’d challenge you on the Hillsborough songs charge – I, like you, am long time fan – and I’ve never heard it.
Not sure why you think most United fans are new comers though – we’ve had bigger average gates than City in every post war year bar none. Even when you had some success and football was played in black & white 😉
So the fans that attend now are the same fans that have attended post war?
A classic case of burrying your head in the sand with regards to Hillsborough me thinks.
Yes in deed we all have demons, even your wonderful manager could not show respect to your fallen heros at Munich as he chewed gum all through the silence. Quality!!!
And we have no class?
Football as you no doubt know from all your years of watching goes in cycles, maybe just maybe ours is starting. And do you know what is really stupid of you all? Your criticism of your owners, won one EPL title and possible another under them. What’s the problem? Surely all is rosie in your garden? Or is it as I suspect you are realising that you are now (admittedly for the first time in a long time) unable to compete financially with your spoilt younger brother.
If we’re a spoilt younger brother then you certainly are the spinster sister.
I don’t believe that City as a club can do no wrong, we have made mistakes, monumental ones at that for all the world to see and I accept that because of a plane crash you were immortalised, but don’t come over with this holier than thou, moral high point that you have a manager that doesn’t respect his clubs history, you have a player in neville that comes out with I hate scousers and a talented player in rooney who feels he has to dive and roll about to get a player booked. If that’s class i am glad we have none.
Thank you rant over.
We keep reminding them in the most cruel (and satisfying) way possible that they are not to be mentioned in the same breath as United!! I have to admit, those stoppage time wins are so sweet knowing just how much agony it puts them through! 🙂
City fans can claim that United fans threw stuff at Bellamy and made machine gun gestures towards Adebayor. There are idiots who support every single football club in the country. Hopefully the people who caused the raucous get what’s coming to them though.