by johnny crossan » Wed Nov 07, 2018 9:15 am
(notice the 'allegedly' squeezed into that contemptible bile)
Anyway The Times' very own high priest of morality is now describing City fans as vicious rats - here's a small extract
Hypocrisy of Manchester City fans whose loyalty is blind to truthMatthew Syed
Some fans increasingly resemble vicious rats, fighting for their own piece of turf on the deck, as the ship goes down in flames.
The most recent reminder of this metaphor came when Der Spiegel published allegations that Manchester City had egregiously violated financial fair play rules.
Almost every fan on the planet can see that these allegations, if proved, would be a powerful indictment of the club.
They can see that, while the rules themselves are not ideal, that is no excuse for breaking them.
They can see that the entire point of competitive sport is that the codes of conduct are agreed in advance, and that participants obey them unless and until they can convince the other participants to change them. They can see that the allegations of deceit and false accounting are a grubby indictment of the game.
But there is a small group of people who cannot see these truths. Who are somehow blinded to what is going on. Who have poured online in vast numbers to argue that, if Manchester City did break the rules, it was enlightened; that City may, in fact, be charitably risking their own reputation to overturn the status quo; that the campaign to see them punished is some plot dreamt up by people jealous of their success, and of the way they play.
You guessed it: this myopic minority are Manchester City fans. They are so blinded by loyalty that they have lost sight of morality. Yet it is not just City fans who are afflicted by this seemingly virulent form of selective blindness. No, this is a problem that exists throughout football, and explains the abject inability of the game to present a united front, whether against alleged financial wrongdoing or anything else.....
Mr Syed, who describes himself on his website as one of the world's most influential thinkers, has never had a good word to say about a club with Arab owners. Not surprising really for the planet's leading authority on hypocrisy.