As a Manchester City supporting blogger I have written several times previously on the far-reaching resentment that has accompanied their rise.
This resentment has manifested itself in many forms, namely widespread and pernicious bias in the media (two examples being the recent witch-hunt of Raheem Sterling and BT Sport’s bizarrely negative coverage of City in the Champions League in 2015/16 that resulted in thousands of Blues cancelling their subscription), to pub-bores spouting off about how the club has ‘ruined football’ with its spending.
More consequentially there have also unquestionably been decisions made at the highest levels specifically designed to quash any potential usurping of the established elite. I’m looking at you FFP and UEFA matchday officials.
The articles have led to both positive feedback and cynical scorn but chiefly what I have learned from writing them is that, no matter how hard I strive to structure a cohesive argument and mix persuasive facts with opinion, one of the first comments in the box below will always name-check that apparel of the paranoid a tin-hat. Which is fair enough I suppose, if a little unfair.
It is unfair because fundamentally I do not believe that the whole world woke up in the middle of the night while City fans and club employees slept and devised a convoluted plot to undermine its post-takeover progress. Fundamentally what I believe is far more plausible than that, indeed almost inevitable in hindsight: that from being an underachieving, entertaining ‘second club’ to many, liked for their self-afflicted calamities, they have now come to represent an era where money rules the roost.
Among neutrals and rivals alike they have become deeply unpopular and though the level of that unpopularity may perhaps still be lower than that reserved for Manchester United, it is not balanced out with the respect that is afforded the red half of the city for its trophy hauls and global prestige. So sometimes then, it follows, a line is crossed.
This week the PFA Player’s Player of the Year nominees were announced with David Silva a surprising omission. Throughout 2016/17 the Spanish little genius has once again been consistently exceptional, garnering superlatives and astonished praise from all who have witnessed his expert string-pulling, and once again he has been over-looked, this time in favour of a player in Alexis Sanchez who has essentially gone On strike for the latter half of the season.
If viewed in isolation, Silva’s absence is not cause enough to cry bias. After all, the shortlist is entirely subjective and one man’s supernaturally gifted and influential midfielder is another man’s Romelu Lukaku (another nominee) flat-track bullying Sunderland and Bournemouth before vanishing from sight against any top six side.
But it is fair to say that the PFA awards have hardly been known to justly credit Manchester City since their rise to prominence in recent years. It’s fair to say, in fact, that a pattern of disrespect and oversight has emerged.
For proof of this we need only look at the esteemed list of strikers who have made the PFA Team of the Year for the last five seasons: Van Persie (twice), Rooney, Suarez (twice), Sturridge, Costa, Kane (twice), Vardy. However you pair them up, that’s a strike-force guaranteed to put the fear of God into any back-line going.
But wait, because isn’t there a startling omission here, a forward who has scored 102 goals in that time (averaging over 20 a season) with a deadly prolificacy that has seen him regularly mentioned in the same breath as the world’s absolute elite superstars? That’s right: Sergio Aguero has never been included since joining from Atletico Madrid and becoming City’s third highest all-time goal-scorer in a relative blink of an eye.
What about the managers? Surely Roberto Mancini was suitably rewarded for guiding City to their title win in 2011/12, a campaign so momentous that it shook the planet to its core? I mean it was the club’s first league championship in 44 years. And while we’re at it, surely Manuel Pellegrini was rightfully lauded too for winning a Premier League and League Cup double in his first year in England? After all, title-winning managers are always the ones lazily chosen by their voting peers aren’t they?
Well usually yes, that is the case. But since the award was founded in 1994 there have been four occasions when other coaches were recognised. Two of them, coincidentally, occurred in City’s league winning seasons with Alan Pardew acknowledged in 2012 for steering Newcastle to a Europa League spot and Tony Pulis topping his colleagues in 2014 because his Stoke side finished ninth. Really, I’m not making this up.
When the individual accolades are assessed it gets even weirder. Since 2012 City have seen only one of their talents nominated (Yaya Toure in 2014) despite boasting a multitude of players who have consistently performed at a level that can best be described with some hefty under-statement as utterly outstanding. No Hart, no Kompany, no Silva, no Aguero, from the 36 nominees since City’s first Premier League title triumph. It begs the question: what more do they have to do? When that question cannot reasonably be answered the follow-up is unnerving: does it even matter what they do?
It has been said in some quarters that this string of disrespectful oversights is down to southern bias, but that doesn’t account for several United players being included. Liverpool too. It’s being said by me now that it’s directly a result of City having outsider status even among the football fraternity.
They’re just not very popular and sometimes the line of acceptability that comes from that is crossed. City’s puzzling lack of credit from the PFA awards is certainly an example of this.
The authorities, rival clubs, and rival players cannot stop Manchester City from winning silverware. But when voting is involved they can and they will.
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