Manchester City’s Boxing Day defeat at Leicester brought furious indignation from their bitter rivals down the road.
“We put them in their place for two decades,” United fans railed online and at tense family get-togethers over leftover turkey. “You lot managed one season”. There was no reply to that. For once they had us.
The ‘them’ in question of course is Liverpool who, following City’s unanticipated wobble and the continuation of their own incredible unbeaten run through the festive period, now seem likely to be crowned Premier League champions for the very first time next May and the prospect of this happening is not only filling Mancunian hearts with abject fear.
Going to keep watching Bandersnatch until there’s an option for Pickford to tip it over the bar in the derby which results in them not winning the league.
— Darren (@nsno_83) December 30, 2018
Everton, Chelsea, Spurs; hell even fan-bases who have no historical cause to hate on the Reds are all quaking at the nightmare scenario playing out before our eyes and though it’s impossible to gauge the temperature of a nation full of entirely disparate views we can safely surmise that the number of non-Liverpool supporting folk currently rooting for Jürgen Klopp’s men to ultimately succeed would struggle to fill a Vauxhall Corsa.
The reason for this seems borderline-tolerable when written down in prosaic black and white but will be unendurable in actuality. It’s because we will never hear the end of it and no-one will be spared. Not a soul.
Should City somehow pull back a seven-point gap and retain their title an open-top bus will crawl down Deansgate while the back pages of tabloids will – for one day only – have blown-up pictures of Sergio and company hollering out pure joy through multi-coloured confetti. On Twitter meanwhile a few memes will pop up on rival’s timelines trumpeting the fact that Raheem Sterling has once again silenced his critics.
That all seems pretty reasonable. Restrained even.
Liverpool – 54 pts
⚪️ Spurs – 45 pts
City – 44 pts
Chelsea – 40 ptsThe Reds top the pile with a 9️⃣ point advantage on Spurs and ahead of ‘league favourites’ Man City
— LFC Transfer Room (@LFCTransferRoom) December 29, 2018
Whereas if Liverpool did it (and ‘it’ has yet to be given a name but rest assured there will be a nauseatingly grandiose name; and the media will happily play along and forever call it thus) then books will be written, enough to fill a section in Waterstones. Plays will be put on, actual plays with passionately delivered monologues about Jurgen and the lads. In time there will be a cinematic release based on the play.
As for the players every member of the Liverpool squad can expect an avalanche of laudatory blog-posts, each more exaggerated and ridiculous in their claims than the last while in due course a petition will start up demanding that a statue of ‘Big Virg’ is erected in Parliament Square. The reverence will be relentless, the mythologies will slowly solidify, and the only way to avoid the hysterical, all-encompassing exultations will be to dig an extremely deep hole in the middle of a field and take several years’ worth of supplies down with you.
“Keep hearing about how "unbearable" and "insufferable" Liverpool fans will be if the Reds win the league,” a supporter tweeted over Christmas. “Quite insulting really, considering we'd be so much worse than that.”
What a way to start the new year for Liverpool and Man City pic.twitter.com/0xVHuAFYdu
— Goal (@goal) December 30, 2018
All of which leaves Manchester City in the slightly surreal and unprecedented position of being the good guys for a change; the People’s Champion; the Ben Kenobi who can offer the only vain hope of preventing the drawn-out torment of everybody being subjected to a comprehensive and sensationalised Liverpool love-in for the rest of our living days.
This is quite some turnaround in narrative given that only a few short weeks back the club was being widely castigated for making the league uncompetitive – a charge that is only marginally more farcical now than it was then – while a series of questionable ‘leaks’ had them dismissed as cheats. It’s even more remarkable given that City are hardly a popular institution in wider football circles due to their funded rise to prominence.
I get it though. I really do. It’s a case of better the devil you know or, more accurately better the devil who will only boast a little bit before getting on with their lives so allowing everyone else to get on with theirs. If I was unlucky enough to be raised a United fan I’d be reluctantly urging on Kev and the boys right now. The same goes if I supported Arsenal, Scunthorpe or Solihull Moors.
At stake at the Etihad this Thursday is a six-point swing that will go a long way in determining the destination of the Premier League trophy. But there is far more to it than that. A summer of sanity is on the line and beyond that the chopping at the roots of cloying poetry and ludicrous songs drenched in folklore. It used to be said that City were ruining football. It’s now down to them to keep it palatable for all.
