WHILE other fans have spent this summer getting tans and enjoying the silliness of transfer rumours Manchester City supporters have entrenched themselves on Twitter taking on a small coterie of journalists and a human rights researcher hell-bent on disparaging the club and annulling its recent, considerable achievements.
All told it has been a bizarre state of affairs – unprecedented in so many ways and reaching a ludicrous nadir when the human rights researcher in question went into a tail-spin and accused a number of fans of being ‘bots’ – and if the relationship between the media and Blues was fractious to begin with it can now sadly be deemed beyond repair.
Identifying the roots of this discord takes us right back to the skewed, snide coverage of City’s rise that contrasted wholly to the more reverential tone reserved for other successful clubs but to highlight this is old news now even if the inequality persists to this day. Indeed looking back on belittling headlines and jibes about ‘oil money’ brings on an almost nostalgic glow akin to recalling political strife prior to Brexit as too does the inevitable accusation that City fans were’ paranoid’ and should all adorn tin-foil hats.
They were in hindsight simpler times when City was merely – as per Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror – the ‘whore of world football’.
“Sportswashing.” Now there’s a new word.
“The UAE’s enormous investment in Man City is one of football’s most brazen attempts to sportswash a country’s deeply tarnished image through the glamour of the game,” said Amnesty International’s Gulf researcher Devin Kenney.— Ian Roger Pickford (@IanRogerPickfo1) November 24, 2018
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Because last year’s Der Spiegel leaks, that came courtesy of ‘hacked or stolen’ emails according to the club, saw City condemned without trial as cheats and that was followed soon after by an allegation from Amnesty International that City’s Abu Dhabi owners were trying to ‘sportswash’ their country’s ‘deeply tarnished image’. It mentioned in part the club’s ‘close relationship with a country that relies on exploited migrant labour’.
Suddenly it was open season on Manchester City and what several journalists concentrated on was the UAE’s involvement in the war in Yemen and for this to be absolutely relevant to Manchester City it was necessary to factually claim that City are ‘state owned’ despite there being absolutely no evidence to back this up and indeed only evidence to the contrary. When Blues pointed this out via social media – and furthermore baulked at the heightened criticism of their club – certain corners of the media turned on them too. Again I can only use the word unprecedented.
What we were told – in the most condescending, pious and hostile manner imaginable – was the following in abridged form: Look, we’re telling you that the club you’ve loved and supported all of your life is evil and you’re just going to have to take our word for that. If you do not immediately disavow yourself from it and go and watch Stockport County then you also support human rights atrocities and have no moral compass.
How stupid are you Luke? Seriously?
A hideous state buys a club, uses said club to sportswash blood from its hands. Man City are the team Sky of football, cheat to win at any cost.
No morals, deny everything, 4 Governing bodies with cases against them. Time for serious action— 6Times (@BigBigVirgil) May 19, 2019
I am ashamed of distilling such a serious subject into the trivialised paragraph above. Yet scarily it also happens to be accurate.
Uniquely, Manchester City were now viewed as a single entity and entirely condemned. The team’s brilliance was routinely dismissed as evidenced by the Independent’s shocking FA Cup final review that insisted the only relevant factor was City’s ‘immense resources’ before namechecking a war in Yemen that – to this writer’s knowledge at least – Kevin De Bruyne has played no part in. The club’s hierarchy were cast as Machiavellian villains. As for the fans they were initially portrayed as ‘blind apologists’ with the egregiously insulting ‘Trumpian’ trope soon following suit (the latter insinuating that intelligent individuals with just as much moral fibre as those casting aspersions on them were being ‘triggered’ by their club’s public defence of its reputation. As if – purely due to being ‘fans’ – we are straw-chewing hicks incapable of independent thought).
Then along came an intriguing character named Rabin on Twitter who delighted in exposing the hypocrisy – and in some cases the presumed ulterior motives – of those throwing the biggest rocks and panicked by this journalists besmirched he and others as being ‘shills’. Again, is it so staggering that a fan-base has such insightfulness contained within? Just how far down have they looked on us all these years? Every rebuttal of their criticism incidentally has commonly been referred to as an ‘attack’.
This man is a straight up genius. Exposing those scum of the earth journalists one by one for their continuous slanderous, racist and shit peddling tripe. Will the real @city_rabin please stand up! https://t.co/kpv9Ps9llz
— SBC1985 (@ScottC1985) June 5, 2019
I find all of this incredibly concerning for two interconnecting reasons.
The first is that what City supporters have been doing all summer is adhering to one of the most fundamental principles of journalism, that of considering the source. In this instance, the sources have invariably been previously distrusted individuals working in an industry where even an innocuous transfer scoop is treated with severe scepticism. Given that here a 125-year-old institution is damned as fundamentally nefarious thus rendering five consecutive trophies essentially meaningless I think it’s perfectly legitimate to demand definitive proof, just as its right to query the credentials of the accuser. Frankly, it would be extremely odd if this wasn’t so, regardless of fan-base.
My latest for @unibet on why it's time that City fans fought back against the relentless witch-hunt. Would REALLY appreciate any RTs or feedback Blues! https://t.co/sO7IKTI3oI
— Stephen Tudor (@SteTudor123) March 11, 2019
Furthermore, the language employed and the vehemence minus substantial corroboration strips away all debate and nuance. It doesn’t just assume they are right. It insists so and holds no truck with the dissenting opinion that is labelled an ‘attack’. Such dissenting opinion is in fact offensively caricatured.
Tactics such as this from those with the power to publish should worry us all. It amounts to a dictatorship of perspective and is the opposite of what good journalism really is: the ability and desire to see the whole story.
While other fans have spent this summer getting tans and enjoying the silliness of transfer rumours Manchester City supporters have entrenched themselves on Twitter. They have been demeaned, insulted, pestered and smeared. The resuming of the Premier League cannot come soon enough.
