Moonchester and Fred
The City-United Dynamic in Manchester: Love Thy Neighbour or a Red Rag to a Blue?
The experience of Manchester City supporters is, to a certain extent, defined differentially in relation to what has latterly become the domineering spectre of United. The City-United dynamic is, therefore, a highly significant football and, indeed, social issue in and around Manchester. It is the aim of this study, then, to reflect upon Manchester City supporters' perceptions of their neighbour from Stretford. Perceptions are vital to the creation and maintenance of an imagined identity and it will be interesting to consider how the sharply contrasting identities of City and United are portrayed in City fans' projects. The data for the study are drawn from a wide variety of sources including fans' use of colour, chants, contributions to fanzines and e-zines and popular football writing. Additionally, a recent fictional representation of the City-United dynamic, the film There's Only One Jimmy Grimble, is also examined for the light it sheds upon the conflictual relationship between City supporters and United followers. Ultimately and notwithstanding the full complexity of City and United's identities, it would appear that perceptions of United held by City fans polarise the protagonists in the dynamic and portray them through a series of binary oppositions based on the concepts of local/global, authenticity/inauthenticity and humility/arrogance that serve to establish United as the complete antithesis to City.
The article is published as a chapter in the book Manchester United: a Thematic Study (Routledge, 2004). Edited by David L. Andrews, a leading figure in sports studies currently working out of the University of Maryland, this is the first book to offer a rigorous, theoretically grounded treatment of the "Man Yoo" phenomenon. The primary aim of the collection, in which leading academics from diverse backgrounds have written chapters, is to illustrate how the structure and experience of English football's principal plc are implicated in broader societal shifts, within which the boundaries between cultural and commercial concerns have become increasingly indivisible.
A bon chat, bon rat.