“We’ve done the domestic fucking Treble. No-one’s ever done it before,” said that Manchester City fan who broke into the press box at Wembley Stadium yesterday. “‘But you’ll all have Mo Salah on the back of the fucking pages tomorrow… City! City! City!'” It wasn’t light-hearted, either. On the contrary, you could have imagined the far right rabble-rouser Tommy Robinson AKA Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Utter rubbish, of course, but don’t allow a twat and his bitterness to be separated.
I read this today after watching the FA Cup final yesterday on a telly in a Wetherspoons pub in Liskeard. The result of that game left me as dispirited about the state of the game than anything else that’s happening in ‘English’ football in recent years. I found it impossible to enjoy or even feel comfortable with what I had watched. Manchester City had not just beaten Watford: they had utterly destroyed and, yes, humiliated them. This was less a football match and more sending lambs to the slaughter. They never had a chance.
I don’t need to remind my loyal reader that the Premier League is an out of control cash monster. It generates vast sums from Sky and BT (which means you and I), it fleeces its supporters with extortionate ticket prices, it pays moderately talented players large fortunes. Need I go on? In Manchester City, the Premier League plays host to the wealthiest ‘club’ on the planet, Sheik Mansour, the deputy prime minister of the UAE, has more money than all the Gods put together. They have acquired one of the great coaches in world football and handed him an open chequebook to sign any players he fancies. Yesterday, a team that cost well over £1 billion annihilated Watford on what used to be one of the big set piece football occasions of the year.
I say used to be because the FA Cup is not what it was. It’s been relegated to a tea time kick off, teams rarely put out their strongest line-ups, it doesn’t matter as much as it did. And so it came to pass that a club owned by the United Arab Emirates took on a club owned by an Italian businessman. Only four Englishmen started the match, rendering the playing of the national anthem at the start absolutely farcical.
It is hard to blame Pep Guardiola for always managing the top clubs who pay him the most money and allow him to spend the most money on players. That’s just what he does. He won’t be turning up at Burnley anytime soon. The system that has allowed it is broken and some would say – I certainly would – that that system is broken, irretrievably so.
Watching City v Watford was a calamitous mismatch. As soon as the first goal went in, I said to my son, “this could be six or seven nil’. The commentator salivated, as if this cup win, alongside the league and league cup wins, was somehow a footballing miracle. ‘City crush Watford with a epic haul,’ screamed, of all papers, the Observer. But as the goal rush continued, as the game ended with Watford players lying broken on the ground, with the supporters deprived of any of the glory, never mind the spoils, who could be satisfied by that?
I have had my own issues with football win a more local level, as I have seen my club Bristol Rovers owned by a succession of people I would not trust to run a whelk stall, to the point where I can no longer go to watch them play. Everywhere, I find ugliness in the ‘beautiful game’. If I thought I could enjoy both the occasion of an FA Cup final and City’s ‘epic haul’ I would have been seriously deluded. Of course, I didn’t enjoy it at all.
It is not just Manchester City’s fault, but they are an integral reason football is losing its sheen. Take away the top six Premier League clubs and you are left with a sea of mediocrity. And those six clubs are set to dominate forever.
Guardiola, for all his greatness as a coach, can buy any player on earth. The so called rules of fair play are meaningless when the manager has access to untold billions at the snap of his fingers. If the Premier League was always unequal, it’s bordering on farcical now. Except that farces are usually fun. This is anything but fun.
Expect in the summer, Guardiola to strengthen his squad as City aim to retain the treble and add the Champions League to the trophy cabinet. And expect City next season to dominate once more, unless someone like Liverpool, 14th in Premier League net spending in recent years, can somehow close the gap.
“We’ve done the domestic fucking Treble. No-one’s ever done it before,” said the gobby, aggressive City fan. Any idea how you managed it, mate, given not that long ago you were shit? Oh, that influx of middle eastern money, that’ll be it. I get the impression your man does not confirm to the image of ‘no one likes us, we don’t care’ because plainly he does care. And for as long as clubs like Manchester City can call on the oil millions to help them win trophies, it’s unlikely many of us will be warming to him and his shitty club.
