Hollow, meaningless, tainted… the Mailbox reacts to Man City’s charge towards the Treble
Much of the Mailbox isn’t impressed by Manchester City blowing away Real Madrid while City fans aren’t crowing yet. Also: the FA’s hypocrisy over Ivan Toney…
Get your views in to theeditor@football365.com…
Hollow, hollow, hollow
I sat down to look at the City Madrid match tonight and as half time arrives I find myself thinking football is definitely broken. City playing arguably the biggest football club in the world off the park as if they are Accrington Stanley. They have created footballing perfection through financial doping. How do city fans feel about this in their heart of hearts? I find myself rooting for Madrid as if they are plucky underdogs, not a team who benefits from unequal Tv rights and historical government support themselves in Spain.
How did Arsenal and Liverpool the last few years even attempt to keep the pace with this footballing Frankenstein? It all feels so hollow. City could very feasibly win the treble only to have it stripped from them following investigation. What does this achieve? Everybody knows City are the best team England has ever produced and awarded titles wlll be tainted anyway. So we have two options, City win undeserved titles through cheating or the best of the rest win undeserved titles through default. What a wonderful world.
Chippy.
…Even a performance like that is irredeemably tarnished by the fact it is entirely created by cheat codes.
As meaningless, plastic and unearned as every other City win.
As fake as the flags that magically appeared in suspiciously organised blue and white stripes at the final whistle.
As empty as City’s financial reports.
It’s worth….. nothing.
Tim Sutton (Mitrovic for PM)
Boo Moon
Just wondering if City fans will boo their team when they eventually lift the champions league trophy.
Because they don’t care about anything related to UEFA right?
I guess they won’t even tune in to watch the final. That’s what really having principals is about.
Will (if they put a star above their badge hopefully City fans will boo every time they see it)
Treble? Meh
Man United’s treble, Arsenals Invincibles, the miracle of Istanbul, no matter how you feel about the clubs involved there will always be a respect for those achievements, regardless of how begrudging that respect is.
However, when Bernardo Silva bangs in the first goal and the camera pans to Guardiola raising his arms and celebrating with the crowd, it just looked so contrived. So utterly corporate, bland and devoid of any real substance. Apathy and indifference are the emotions that it generates. Disinterest. Detachment.
And disappointment. Disappointment for not allowing myself to just enjoy good football and the realisation that is the game for the foreseeable future.
To the old school Man City fans who lived through the dark times of the football pyramids third tier, these past few years must be nice to experience and I don’t begrudge you these moments. I just can’t get myself to become excited about it.
Eoin (the irony of caring enough to write this mail) Ireland
Fair?
I’m a United fan. And sometimes, all you can say is ‘fair f*cks’.
Fair f*cks indeed.
That was impressive.
Jim, Manchester
Read more: 16 Conclusions as Manchester City book their UCL final tickets for Istanbul
View from a blue
City fan here. Some random points.
Just heard Stuart Pearce say that this is both the best City side and the best City display he’s ever seen. And let’s face it. Who are we mere mortals to argue with the likes of Stuart Pearce?
And before any of the ‘usual suspects’ point it out, City haven’t won anything yet. We know that peeps, which is precisely why there are few, if any, gloating mails from Man City supporters on F365. Ever. Sorry to disappoint but it’s just not in our DNA to be arrogant entitled assholes.
To quote Robert Louis Stevenson:
“Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”
A quote, I think, that Arsenal fans will also appreciate.
Oh, and for those that love to bang on about it, how many vacant seats did you see at the (ahem) ‘Emptihad’ last night?
Mark (Just checking.) MCFC.
Bottle context
I challenge anyone that just watched what City did to Real Madrid – in the European Cup no less – to continue to sit their bloviating about bottled league titles when up against this team with what was never more than a 5 point lead with same amount of games being played.
MAW, LA Gooner
…City cruise in to the final, did Real Madrid bottle it? The financial doping and 115 charges gets bought up on these pages a lot by fans, but I saw recently someone question why the main broadcasters and written press seem to ignore this completely. It is literally never reported on or even caveated.
Compare this to most other sports, say athletics for example. A 100m runner wins all before him, he then faces accusations of cheating, and is charged with cheating the rules – whilst the case is bought he carries on competing and carries on winning. The reaction would not be one of superlatives, admiration and praise it would be one of huge scepticism and sub-notes.
Do the Premier League not want it talked about because it hurts the brand, but they’re the ones who bought the charges? Do Sky not talk about it because it hurts the brand they sell around the world? Who knows, but for such a potentially seismic set of charges to be laid at the door of the most successful club in recent times surely deserves some debate? If when the charges are heard it is a watershed moment for the league, fail to make them stick and it is carte blanche for anyone to ride roughshod over the very rules the league has set up. Make them stick then what is the punishment? a fine would be pointless? even a points deduction would be pointless because it might mean one bad season but validates everything before and after. Relegation and stripping of all titles…..hmmm.
Anyway, in an attempt to move on from the ‘Arsenal bottled it’… ‘no they didn’t’ debate, how about the mailbox focusses they’re collective analytics on the teams that really did fail this season. Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs and maybe Man U if Liverpool pip them to Champions League.
Surely Chelsea have had quite possibly the worst season of any big side ever in the premier League era. They are almost certainly going to finish in the bottom half of the league and only mathematically escaped relegation last week, and if this wasn’t bad enough they’ve spent £600m on a squad that is a total mess. But yet there seems to be quite some confidence that Poch will turn it around, this is a manager who did well when dealing with a young, hungry, non-superstar squad but ‘failed’ at the very much ego-driven, highly paid and under-performing PSG.
Liverpool, highly tipped for the title and tipped to be City’s only challengers this season have only just started to claw back any semblance of respectability from a terrible campaign. There were days when another humiliating away defeat were simply greeted by a ambivalent shrug of the shoulders given the inevitability of it. Liverpool were expected to finish no worse than 2nd , are currently 5th and Arsenal who most predicted wouldn’t make top 4 and are now 2nd. If Arsenal have bottled the last 7 games then Liverpool bottled the entire challenge this season. I do find the ‘we were a much better bridesmaid to City than you were’ arguments quite odd.
Then we come to Spurs, perhaps people don’t stick the boot in because it now feels cruel, ‘stop it, he’s already dead’. But after the false high of last year anyone with any football sense could see that Conte’s precarious 2 year contract and penchant for regularly reminding people he was doing Spurs a massive favour by even turning up, would see him flounce off as soon as things went pear-shaped. Conte with his demands to be backed with oven-ready players has built a squad unsuited to most managers’ playing style, centre-backs who barely function in a 5 man defence, let alone a 4 man one, and a collection of wing backs not good enough to be either full-back or wide attacker. Zero creativity in midfield, Son looking a shadow of the player he was, Kulusevski’s early promise a fading memory, their hero Kane either one his way now or on his way next year for free and probably the worst signing of the season in Richarlison who has more yellow cards for celebrating chalked off goals than he does for actual goals.
I won’t dig in to Man U too much as I think given time ten Hag will improve them more, he’s one of the few sensible things Man U have done post-Fergie, they have a trophy in the bag and a (slim) chance of another, but they still have a lot of work to do with that slightly aging squad and a lot of work to do with their awful away form – lets see if they bottle the Champions league places and bottle the cup final.
Ah, glad that’s off my chest.
Rich, AFC
Armstrong analogy
To paraphrase Levenshulme Blue’s words, I think Andy D is also guilty of lazy assumptions and being blind to the truth when it comes to the (somewhat tortured) Lance Armstrong/ City analogy.
He wasn’t necessarily taking performance enhancing drugs to ‘gain an unfair advantage of everyone he was competing against’ as it’s now established that maybe 80-90% of the peloton was doing the same thing (read Tyler Hamiltons book and others). They were all dirty, complicit and cheating so it became almost the norm. Doesn’t make it right, but there you go.
Armstrong’s bigger crime in what I would say are the majority of peoples eyes, is that he lied and bullied his way for over a decade in denying any wrong doing. So he lied to team mates, the sports governing bodies, courts, family, employers, sponsors etc. I say the majority of people because the majority don’t care about doping in cycling but they do care when a someone who got very rich on the back of doping lies to their face.
To add to that, he ridiculed and vilified people like David Walsh and Tyler Hamilton who knew the truth and asked Armstrong publicly and privately to come clean. And he did so using the same language that Levenshulme Blue uses in his missive of ‘lazy assumptions, inaccuracies, false accusations’. In other words, I’m innocent because you have no proof.
And to paraphrase Blue again ‘it’s easier to carry on, blind’, especially if you’re a city fan, isn’t it?
Steve (ex-Flixton red), Ontario
Toney and City
I see Ivan Toney is being banned for 8 months for betting offences, on the same day Manchester City are due to play in the semi final of the showcase of European football against Europes most successful club.
The phrase “if you owe the bank one hundred thousand pounds it’s your problem, if you owe them one hundred million it’s their problem,”comes to mind.
Take home lesson from football today: it doesn’t matter anymore if you break the rules, punishment is inversely proportional to the legal team you can afford it seems.
Dave LFC
Toney and cake-ism
I think lots of us will agree that it’s f*cking disgusting that Ivan Toney has been banned for so long. FA having their big f*ck-off gambling cake and eating it too. Hell mend them with a sh*tty stick.
Finlay x
It’s not over yet
Just a quick thought. What if Man City lose the next three games and Arsenal win the last two? I know that’s mental but it isn’t actually finally nailed down is it..?
Would be a lovely way to silence the critics.
JazGooner (my hope is like a dead cat bounce)
Where’s the fun?
Hands up who enjoys football?
The mailbox seems full of misery and despair on an almost daily basis. I watch football because I enjoy the game. I don’t start the season expecting Arsenal to win trophies and I’ll take any, even the Carabao Cup, as a bonus, but if there’s no silverware at the end of the season, who cares? If people only watched football to see their club win trophies 99% of the clubs in the world wouldn’t have any fans. I’m not sure of the rights or wrongs of what Man City have done or how their club is funded but I certainly don’t blame their fans for celebrating their success. There will always be haves and have nots. Eventually someone will come along and take City’s place and then there will be a lot more moaning about how they’ve done it and it’s not fair. I would’ve celebrated Reiss Nelson’s injury time winner every bit as much if Arsenal had been sitting in mid-table. I just enjoy football but it seems to be an alien concept sometimes. Supporting a team just for the love of the club and the game? What a weirdo.
Also…Stewie Griffin. I’m sure you have said in the past that you’re an Arsenal supporter. Is this correct and if so WHY? I’ve known a lot of rabid fans of other clubs in my time but none of them seem to hate Arsenal football club as much as you do. The football and players that Wenger had in the first part of his time at the club was some of the best that I’ve seen yet all you seem to do is aim digs at him for the things that he got wrong in the latter years rather than appreciate everything that he did. What drew you to the club in the first place and why do you persist when it obviously makes you so angry/miserable? Surely it’s not good for you.
Anyway, if this letter makes it into the mailbox I would just like to say, enjoy the game, enjoy the players and skill on offer and try not to sweat the small stuff.
Thanks
Dave (AFC)