A Cut Out & Keep Guide To Demeaning Manchester City's Achievements.

Manchester City have won 20 games on the row. Manchester City are 1/200 to win the Premier League. Manchester City have gone on a record-breaking run in the middle of a pandemic. Pep Guardiola has brushed aside all criticisms of him and is on the verge of leading his team to a third league title in four years. Manchester City, unlikely as it is, could still win an unprecedented quadruple this season.

Quite impressive, I’m sure we all agree.

Well not so fast with the praise, please. Because this is 2021, deep into the era of social media and football tribalism. And naturally it cannot be acceptable to many rival fans to praise Pep Guardiola’s achievements.

This has been a difficult situation for the bald fraud brigade to handle. This is because all the evidence just three months ago suggested Pep was a busted flush. That he had been found out, and that money does not guarantee you success. But then they won a few games, so everything went a bit quiet as they were not out of the title race. Then they won again. And again, and again. And their rivals kept dropping points. And after the worst start to a season under Pep Guardiola, by the end of February, City had somehow fashioned a 12 point lead in the league. Awkward.

But don’t worry, we are here to help. We have put together a handy “cut out and keep” guide that will help you demean the achievements of Manchester City however many games they keep winning. This guide will help you in any situation, socially or online. And most importantly, it will help you deal with the situation, and hopefully make you feel better.
Here are the steps you can take to assure yourself that your club>Manchester City. Enjoy.

 

Make It Clear You Don’t Care

You’re a busy man (almost always a man). You don’t have time to commit all your spare time and energy to dealing with Manchester City winning the league again. So take the easiest, most direct route to self-fulfilment. Simply exclaim that you don’t care.
Marvellous, now you can get on with your life.

City win 20 games in a row?
Don’t care.

City win the league?
Don’t care.

City sign Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe?
Don’t care – sick of this financial doping.

Pep Guardiola cured cancer?
So what? Someone was going to eventually anyway, get your head out of his backside. Don’t care.

There are other important steps you must take though if this is your desired approach. You must remember to repeatedly tweet you don’t care just so everyone is well aware that you don’t care, leaving no room for confusion as to whether you care or not. If you don’t do this, rival fans may mistakenly think that you do care, so you must be clear on this. You don’t care – got that? Naturally your caring about City is inversely proportional to their current success levels. The more they win, the less you care, which is handy.
When they exit from the Champions League, don’t forget to briefly start caring again, as is your right in a democracy.

As an example, see this article. I mean, I don’t care about barbs against City and have demonstrated this by writing an entire blog on the subject. I never tweet on the topic either. We’re all part of the system, and there’s no escape.
And I can’t go out much, so what else am I going to do?

P.S. It is also important that you make clear that not only do you not care if City win the league, but every other fan base does not care either. Construct a strawman argument that the likes of United and Liverpool winning the league would garner far more attention and unhappiness from other fan bases. It is crucial at this point that not for one moment should you stop and consider what a self-own this comment is. Instead, commit to it, and congratulate yourself on a point well made. Get those sweet likes in from your own fanbase. Do not allow yourself to ponder the fact that City success is easier to accept because it is more commonplace, and that the reputation of you and fellow fans might just be a factor in why so many fans across the globe hope you never win another trophy ever again.
Maybe City fans would be as insufferable as any other in the same situations, but as they have no fans we will probably never know.

 

Wilfully forget the definition of English words

There are a wealth of options available to you here, as English is such a flexible and easy to misunderstand language.  So for example, claim City’s 25 man squad is bigger than every other club’s 25 man squad. Obviously you mean deeper but using the correct term isn’t as effective in demeaning City’s achievements.

Next, claim a club that was formed in the 19th century have no history. The point you were trying to make is that City have no history of success, though that’s a lie anyway of course. But this fits in nicely with cherry picking specific parts of history because it has been drummed into you and your fellow fanbase that the only acceptable way to grow as a club is to utilise revenue gained from success during a certain period in the past and only that way, hence ensuring that investment by an owner is considered utterly unacceptable and akin to doping and cheating.
After all, even MK Dons have a history.

Level playing field

Easy one this. An open goal for Raheem Sterling, if you will. Simply claim that there is no way that any team can compete with a squad that finished last season 18 points off the pace and was considered by many to be out of the title race a mere 3 months ago, thus meaning that any achievements from City are essentially meaningless. Don’t forget to quote net spends, limitless wealth and how Pep has personally spent half a billion pounds on defenders alone. Every injury your team suffers is simply more evidence of how this season must be written off as a non-event, as it was never fair in the first place.

Proclaim that there has always been a certain inevitability about City’s success due to their spending, whilst ignoring any examples of when huge expenditure hasn’t automatically led to success, such as most of the past 18 months. Regularly quote how much City’s team cost, especially when they play a team that did not cost much. Never do the same when your team is in a similar situation. If City rest players, quote the value of the bench instead, which is easier this season as 9 substitutes are allowed. If you’re a Liverpool fan, don’t worry about the clear dichotomy of calling City’s success inevitable whilst proclaiming each of your players to be the best in the world in their position. If this does trouble you, just blame injuries and VAR or Icelandic volcanoes for everything.

 

Exploit The Current Climate

Look, we’re all in a middle of a pandemic here, watching games on TV played in empty stadia. Clearly football does not matter, though a good cup run by your team permits you to change your mind at very short notice. You’re a football fan, don’t worry about it. Obviously there should be an asterisk next to all of Manchester City’s achievements, which have all come after 2008, but there must surely be an even bigger one for anything won this season? Reiterate that City are used to playing in front of no crowds, and that normal service will still be resumed when your particular team has its passionate fans cheering the players on and when your club’s appalling luck and appalling injustices suffered due to VAR come to an end.
Again, the null and void argument can be abandoned with a good cup run for your team, but hopefully Covid cases will be down by then, so no hypocrisy is involved.

In other areas you can be consistent whatever is going on in the world. Undermine any genuine concerns on human rights issues by weaponizing your fake concern in the name of football tribalism. Drop in oil comments, talk about “Arabs” as if they are 2nd class citizens and generally cock your nose at the entire region, whilst pretending to be an expert in Middle-Eastern geo-politics.
As an aside, you may wish to call them Citeh, even if you are from Manchester yourself. And don’t forget to patronise them occasionally by recalling how you used to have more respect for City’s fanbase before they were taken over, and were shit.

 

Call City Boring

Continue to watch their matches though just to ensure that you do indeed find their playing style and recent domination really boring. Then tweet positive thoughts about your team’s 7th 0-0 draw of the season.
Like not caring, it is important that everyone is aware of how boring you find City. And anyway, whatever they win, their fanbase will never have what YOU have. Perhaps reiterate this point in video form stood outside your ground after you have narrowly defeated Sheffield United.

 

Raise the bar

OK, City are doing better than three months ago, and are looking to walk away with the league. But is that REALLY such a great achievement? With their limitless wealth and financial doping, the league should be the minimum of requirements, every season. Now demand that anything less than a never-before-achieved quadruple should be considered failure. Even a quadruple is little more than a par score. Demand that Pep Guardiola manages Burton Albion to prove once and for all that he is a great manager. This is the only way Dave from Aldershot will truly respect him.

Cherry pick stats

This is how when City spend big on an out-and-out striker for the first time in a decade or more, you can allow yourself to be disgusted at their expenditure and wonder once more how anyone else is expected to compete. You can cherry pick virtually everything, though a personal favourite is picking a specific number of transfer windows to ram home a weak point, slicing off the windows that rather undermine your argument. Convert City expenditure into US dollars or even better Indian rupees to really strengthen the discrepancies in modern football. Cherry pick which articles you read online too, namely from journalists that clearly dislike City and worry about the death of competition every time City win two games in a row. This way you can decide with a clear conscience that you hate sportswashing but have no opinion or knowledge of inner-City regeneration in Manchester.

Cherry picking is essentially the greatest tool you have with which to demean City’s achievements. It allows you to argue that City are making football uncompetitive despite them not winning the league last season and allows you to ignore the large swathes of history where a single team not called Manchester City dominated English football. And remember, City are crooks and cheats. But definitely do not remember all the times that other teams have been found guilty of misdemeanours, including multiple FFP failures, hacking databases, illegal acquisitions of youth players, and more. It’s not the same.

You can even cherry pick a person’s character. Thus you may wish to point out that Pep is a hypocrite for daring to support good causes whilst working for horrible people. He would be better therefore never supporting good causes to avoid such accusations of hypocrisy.

 

Delete old tweets and opinions

We all suspected, City fans and rival fans alike, that City might be experiencing another disappointing season and that Liverpool were on course as recently as the New Year to retain the title. So now that we have all completely changed our opinions, it may be best to delete all your tweets and Facebook posts from September-January.
Better safe than sorry.

 

Lie

To paraphrase @burnagedaydream on Twitter – by applying your own rules irrespective of the evidence, then you can define any club exactly as you wish them to be, rather than what they may actually be. There can be no better coping mechanism.
City have no history, never sell out for a game, Pep inherited a great City team, and so on. It’s up to you which lies you choose. Do you really believe them? Of course not, but once more, you’re “owning” City fans, without accommodation costs, so it’s well worth the effort.
Above all, ignore the fact that City only spend from their revenue, that their revenue is not even close to being the highest in European football, nor is their wage bill even the highest in the Premier League. Ignore all of that. Facts can be very pesky. Better to believe that, as everyone knows, City cheated FFP, have unlimited wealth and paid off CAS (who you used to respect, but now don’t).

 

Show Commitment

It is important that you put aside enough time around childcare duties, family life and your full-time job to be proactive online on Lad Bible. Sporf, Twitter, Footy Banter, Facebook and elsewhere to remind other adults, (almost exclusively men remember), that City are an oil club, plastic, have no fans, all used to be Chelsea fans, and are above all a small club. Try to put aside at least an hour a day to make these comments online, including cry more, and rent-free. Give yourself a regular pat on the back for your mastery of banter and the frequent burns you hand out, not least their originality.Then strut around the house as if you are a 30-year-old Hugh Heffner. Always assume you are the first ever person to come up with any joke you make (Emptyhad LOL). You may wish to personally insult footballers too on their social media accounts, as they will definitely read anything you say. These insults really hit home with City fans and will leave them pretty wounded and will almost certainly take the shine off the club’s achievements. It will also help validate your own club’s failures and cover up your own insecurities. A total dedication to living in the past whilst ignoring the present and the future will certainly make the process much easier for you and try not to make it too obvious you’re having a mid-life crisis and are currently going through a messy divorce. #theweans

P.S. A proper commitment to the cause can only be achieved if you reply “oil club” below every team announcement on City’s social media channels within 10 seconds of their release.

 

Reassess Your Entire Life

A final option is to decide that you have fallen out of love with football in recent times. By sheer coincidence this may well coincide with a downturn in your own club’s form, as perfectly demonstrated by the lack of football-related Facebook activity from Manchester United fans since 2013. If you’re really desperate, publish the odd tweet about Rugby Union instead. State repeatedly that since your club stopped winning everything (or anything), football has become sterile, has been ruined by money and that you are not going to renew your season ticket.
Then quietly renew your season ticket.

 

But more than anything, just be yourself. Don’t feel guilty peddling your thoughts on Citeh on a daily basis. Many neutral observers may claim that what you are doing would be deeply embarrassing for a child, let alone an adult, but that rather misses the point. Most fans of teams considered rivals to City are doing exactly the same thing as you, so you will actually be respected and could get considerable “traction” online. And as long as you think you are winning online debates, then essentially you are.

And you are definitely winning. In every sense of the word (apart from your teams results, trophies etc). You’re only saying what most people believe. So you’re just telling the truth. Don’t ever give up. Good luck, and keep fighting the fight, especially if you’re the sort of person that read this article and detected no sarcasm whatsoever.
Or just wait until the oil runs out.