Why can nobody be happy for Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City?
On Saturday, Pep Guardiola and Manchester City claimed an unprecedented treble in the men’s game when they won the FA Cup, adding it to the Carabao Cup and the Premier League.
For the remaining fans of the FA Cup, it was also a sobering day. City’s crushing 6-0 defeat of Watford demonstrated, not only their dominance, but the dwindling relevance of the competition.
“The lie that the FA Cup is worth watching came to an end today,” Fanning says on the latest Football Spin and he describes the game as a glorified end of season friendly.
Many fear for Watford after their humiliation, but Fanning says there will be few consequences to their defeat and it certainly isn’t on a par with what Leeds United will be going through this week.
As the goals went in, it was possible to watch in real time the FA Cup lose its battle with relevance.
For Manchester City fans, this attitude might be a further example of the refusal to hail their achievements.
They are English football’s dominant side but it seems that nobody can be happy for them – or at least that is how their supporters see it.
“Anything that emphasises their vast superiority leads people to question why they have such superiority,” Dion Fanning says on show, where he claims they are a club which is easy to admire but hard to love.
It was a point underlined by Tony Evans, who said he recognised their brilliance but felt there was something dispiriting about them too.
They have had a triumphant week and yet because of UEFA’s investigation into FFP and the controversy about the official party singing an anti-Liverpool song on their way home, it seems as if City aren’t enjoying it as they should.
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