"No one cares about Man City". I think you should.
You've been sportswashed
If Manchester City manage to win the Premier League this season, it will be their ninth title in the last 15 years. For pretty much all of those wins, most supporters of other clubs have preferred them to the alternatives.
Their first league title of the modern era came with high-stakes drama, as Sergio Agüero scored in the 94th minute to win the trophy ahead of Manchester United. At the time, this was an easy thing to enjoy. United had been dominating English football for the past 20 years, and seeing them succumb to their local rivals, new at the top, so late on was pretty funny. It wasn’t particularly that people were thrilled at City winning, but everyone laughed at United’s loss.
The next win in 2014 felt both similar and different. City were up against Liverpool, another “old money” traditional power in English football, but one that had gone over 20 years without a league title. Again, it wasn’t that neutrals felt great joy at City’s victory so much as they found Steven Gerrard’s slip, followed by the 3-3 collapse to Crystal Palace, funny. In the popular imagination, City didn’t “win” that title so much as Liverpool lost it. And that was funny.
After three underwhelming years, City swept all opponents aside to set a record-breaking 100-point season in 2016-17 under Pep Guardiola. This one felt less like a race than a procession, though Man Utd were their closest challengers. And, again, fans of other clubs generally wanted City to win it. The prospect of United getting good under José Mourinho was scary, and the concept of that whole project failing was funny. City becoming an all-time great team, by comparison, didn’t really scare anyone because they had no innate dislike of the blue half of Manchester.
City won the title again the next year, though it was a much closer affair with Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool finishing just a point behind. This was the first season when I really heard a version of the current narrative set in. Liverpool fans, many felt, were really annoying, and they would be absolutely insufferable if their team finally won the Premier League. City represented a feeling of beige nothingness by comparison. Liverpool fans would never shut up about winning the league. City fans… well, there aren’t too many of them about, so no one would have to hear from them.
Liverpool won the league the next season, though Covid forced them to wait a few extra months and do it behind closed doors. This prompted endless cries and jokes about the title having an asterisk next to it, because the season was delayed, because some of the games had no fans, because any reason you’d like. If City had won the league in 2020, I can’t imagine anyone would care enough to create an asterisk narrative. In fact, we know this because City won the title the following year, in a campaign played almost entirely behind closed doors, and no one disputed the validity of the win (well, they did, but for other reasons we’ll get to later). No one cared enough for that.
In 2021-22, City beat Liverpool to the title by a point again, and they were broadly favoured by supporters of other clubs keen to avoid the unbearable gloating of Liverpool fans. After that season, City’s primary title opponents shifted from Liverpool to Arsenal. But the narrative stayed the same. Arsenal “bottled” the league in 2022-23, and everyone found it very funny. Again, no one really cared that City had won the league as much as they found it funny that another club had lost it.
City won their fourth consecutive league title in 2023-24, making them the first club to ever do this in England. There were definitely some concerns about one side dominating the league, but not enough for a majority of fans to support Arsenal’s title challenge. Their fans would’ve been so annoying about it, and that matters more.
City had a mess of a year last season, but they’re back in contention now, sitting level on points with Arsenal as we have just four games left to play. Once more, the narrative has been loud and clear: “everyone” would rather City win to avoid insufferable Arsenal fans. The thought of the Arsenal supporters in your life experiencing joy is apparently just too much to take for most of you. Yes, Mikel Arteta’s style of football is absolutely dire, but Klopp’s wasn’t and you were saying the same thing, so you’re out of excuses. Man City winning the league isn’t a good or bad thing because it doesn’t count. City winning the league essentially means “no one” won it that year.