When the advertising campaign was launched in town, I wasn’t alone in pointing out how small time it was for City to attempt to wind up United fans. Had a fan got out a pot of sky blue paint and made the same point you would have to applaud them for it. But for a football club to sink to such behaviour highlights more strongly than ever just how small time Manchester City is.

MCFC employed a London based advertising agency, Grey London, to come up with the slogans to get under the red half of Manchester’s skin. This is the company that does the advertising for Hugo Boss, Flash, Samsung, Pringles, Toshiba, Bold, Febreze and Fairy Liquid, amongst others, so would have cost an arm and leg. Apparently they can’t put a price on trying to wind up United fans though, sadly.

‘There’s only one team in Manchester!” is a favourite bluenose retort. Either denial or ignorance prevents them from acknowledging that Manchester United were given their name as a club from Newton Heath, before moving five miles to Old Trafford. City themselves have moved a similar distance from the crack den that is Moss Side to the Wastelands they now call their home. What a waste of council tax.

City don’t have any advertising boards for Adebayor, Santa Cruz or Barry, just their £25m striker who scored five league goals last season. The only player they have “advertised” is Tevez, using a picture of him joyfully running towards United fans, who he claims he will always love. They seriously forked out thousands of quid just to try and wind us up. I really struggle to think of such small-club mentality shown before. Sir Alex agrees.

“It’s City isn’t it? They are a small club with a small mentality,” Ferguson laughed. “All they can talk about is Manchester United, they can’t get away from it. That arrogance will be rewarded. It is a go at us, that’s the one thing it is. They think taking Carlos Tevez away from Manchester United is a triumph. It is poor stuff.”

If City are so small, why is Ferguson talking about them? It’s not rocket science. In China, Fergie was asked what he thought of the advertising boards. Him answering that question doesn’t make him scared, it doesn’t make him obsessed and it doesn’t make him paranoid. I know that seems fairly obvious but with the deluded bitters we’re about to see infiltrate camp, some things do need to be spelt out.

Ferguson admitted this week that Tevez wasn’t worth the £25m being asked, given he scored just 15 goals from 51 games for the best team in England, but offered the money because the fans had formed a bond with him. So we thought. Whilst Tevez still claims to love us (something I imagine City fans will do their best to pretend hasn’t been said) that bond has well and truly been shattered.

City fans claim that “proper Mancs” support City. It’s funny. When United and City are playing at the same time, which game do the pubs show? If they were honest enough, they would admit their boss/girlfriend/cousin/work mate/uncle are reds… but they prefer to remain in their deluded bubble. Stockport is blue, Manchester is red.

Given that I have a few mates from the local that are blues, I’m not going to tear a strip off them. Sensible blues know they’ve paid well over the odds for all their players and know that they’re mercenary bastards. Sensible blues admit they were chanting Mark Hughes was a “Munich bastard” before it kicked off against Everton last season. Sensible blues know that United are probably going to win the league. Sensible blues don’t have 1958 as their pin number.

Sadly, there are enough bitter blues to make us forget about the reasonable ones, who sit with us during Cup final days and hope we beat the cockney/German/Spanish opponents. To the sensible blues, best of luck next season. To the bitters, I join Sir Alex in pitying you. Talking about City means we are levelled with criticisms of being “obsessed” or “scared”. Truth is, we’re football fans who love banter, who enjoy having a laugh, and can’t resist poking fun at the smaller team in Manchester, who are so obsessed with United they bring out an advertising campaign to prove it.




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