SINGING THE BLUES

Nick Timothy (“This Sporting Life”, November 2021) writes that “not many fans like Manchester City, but City are disliked more because they are not deemed a Proper Club. Their success is bought, their history is limited.”

Some facts. It was City who turned Manchester, at the end of the nineteenth century, from what was then a rugby city, to a football city.

For some years into the twentieth century, the FA Cup — and not the league — was the real prize. City were the first Manchester club to win it, around the time United were formed. City also won the FA cup some 60 and 30 years before that history reeking club Liverpool.

City also won European honours before “Proper Club” Liverpool and were the first English club to win a domestic and European double. We have also had the largest crowd at a club stadium (84,569 in a sixth-round FA Cup game against Stoke on 3 March, 1934).

It is also dispiriting to read that old canard about the Etihad stadium. “But Man City, who inherited their stadium from the taxpayer after the 2002 Commonwealth Games, have lost what little soul they once had,” Timothy writes.

But without City agreeing to take the stadium over after the Commonwealth games, there was a danger of the games either not happening or being hugely diminished.

We enabled the Commonwealth Games and the huge boost to the local economy they brought about, we pay rent on the stadium and have partnered massive redevelopment of what was, in reality, a vast and decaying scrap yard.

Success was bought. And United and Liverpool and Chelsea and Arsenal did not do the same? Mr. Timothy should take a look at United’s books for Ferguson’s first six season — they made huge loss after huge loss buying up all the best British players. And then won the league. But didn’t “buy it”?

And not even a mention of what has been some of the most extraordinary football the English game has witnessed, changing the way we play the game right down to lower divisions.

Jeremy Poynton

mells, Somerset