Redmond6 sent Vital Manchester City the following:
The Dark Side, The Evil Empire, The Scum, The Rags, Stretford Rangers, Singapore’s biggest club.
The Bitters, Iddle Ciddy, Stockport’s biggest club.
Ah the joys of football rivalry. I find as I get older that I still detest everything about that team from Stretford but I would struggle for mates if I stopped speaking to fans of that persuasion.
However we, as City fans will just have to contend with their exaggerations until we win trophies over a number of years just like they’ve done. One trophy will not stop them calling us bitter, it will bring their banner down but they’ll still level bitter at us, not matter how much we laugh at their jibes, ’35 years and we’re still here’. ‘Wembley, Wembley, it’s a crappy place in London that we finally get to see’, they still accuse us of it, but you know, history is written by the victors and in terms of trophies they are the winners, in terms of everything else, that my friends is us.
Try this for bitterness…one day in May 1995 my mum parked her Mini outside a village pub and popped inside. When she came out somebody had put a plank of wood on the roof of the car, spat at the window and knocked the wing mirrors. Given that on that particular day they had won the league and we had just been relegated. It takes a whole different level of genius on our part to lower ourselves to imagine the mentality of the perpetrator of that action?
The Scum fans are so stupid that they bully, physically and verbally abuse anyone who doesn’t support ‘nited into supporting them, not realising that part of the glory of winning games is the chance to rib someone else who supports the vanquished team. That is why I am pleased that as a kid I stood up to it all, laid down my marker as a City fan and that was that.
They were all unknowns to the older cool kids, me? I was well known albeit as ‘that blue bastard’!!!!
They still try to goad us with ‘we are still your biggest game of the season,’ well that’s true enough, but only because Fabio Capello drew out their ball, if not, it would have been Stoke or Bolton.
They also do not get the irony of singing ‘this is how feels to be City’, ‘Ryan Giggs, loved by the Reds, feared by the Blues’ the famous build a bonfire song and then sing, ‘City, nobody knows their name.’
They do not get that we sing ourselves about going 35 years and we’re still here. One of the first songs I ever learned watching City was ‘we never win at home and we never win away, we lost last week and we lost today, we don’t give a (bleep) cos we’re all p**sed up, MCFC ok.’
That we are portrayed as bitter, whilst despite their trophies over the past 20 years they still have a banner showing how long it is since we won a major trophy? Hilarious isn’t it? You couldn’t make it up.
In my old local, I now view it as a point of principle that win, lose or draw a derby we are seen in the pub because we (me, Steve mc, Boyley and Ant- my match travelling companions) know that they won’t be seen for weeks when we win a derby, this despite knowing all the goading we will experience (the four of us each have a different bête noir that gets under our skin more than any of the others!).
However, what still does get my goat about City fans is the continued use of ‘m*nichs’ to describe them. It plays right into their hands and to the outsiders looking in we would be tarred with the same brush. We cannot win any argument using that – it demeans us and all our struggles, I honestly believe the police should do more to stop these chants as should the club.
They talk about 35 years; please remember that they went 48 years without a pot.
They talk about their attendances being bigger, well you see more dog sh*t than diamonds don’t you?
They talk about their Cup games being better attended; well they don’t get a chance not to go like we do do they? Their cup scheme is compulsory.
Just after the final whistle after we beat Reading, I text my ‘nited supporting mate and asked if I could borrow a map to Wembley, he replied, ‘Watling Street, same as it used to be.’ (He’s Posh so he knows his history.)
Just remember, no matter what they do, they’ll never rid themselves of us. As for us? Well I quite like seeing them around, it makes me feel better about myself. I view matches at the Swamp much like I do when I go Knowsley Safari Park – all those animals milling about, close enough to touch but we know that most of us have evolved and they’ve still not got opposable thumbs.
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