For United fans there can only be one winner of the Premier League

For United fans, there can be only one winner of this title

Manchester United won’t win the title this season, but they can have a big say in where it finishes up, starting tomorrow when Liverpool visit Old Trafford. But which is the lesser of two evils for the United faithful? Liverpool ending their famine or neighbours City scooping another pot? For most of the fans we canvassed, the answer is easy...

Ruby Walsh: I have far too many friends who are Liverpool fans

Not living in Manchester, I don’t know very many Man City fans and so I would prefer if they won the league.

I’m sure if you lived there you would probably prefer Liverpool to win it, but I have many friends that are Liverpool fans — far too many of them, you might say — and I would have to listen to all of them if they managed to win it.

It’s been a long time for them, and I can only imagine what they would be like were they to end almost 30 years without the title. I shudder to think.

That said, as a sports fan I have huge admiration for both Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola.

I think they are two brilliant managers and their teams play great, entertaining football.

I think it’s fair to say that either would be a worthy winner but, just so I don’t have to listen to a lot of my colleagues and friends who are Liverpool fans, it’s got to be a Man City win for me.

All that said, I’d be more concerned about where Manchester United are at the moment.

You can become preoccupied with what others are doing rather than concentrating on your own team, but I’d be more interested in our progress than what our neighbours and rivals are doing.

Yes, we’re in a better place now than we were a few months ago but when you look at the Champions League match last week against PSG, it’s clear there’s still a long way to go.

We’re used to challenging for all the big prizes and it can be hard to be out of the equation but sometimes you have to take seasons like this on the chin, congratulate Liverpool or Man City or whoever wins the title, and trust that the right people are in place to get your team back on track.

Maybe this time next year we’ll be back in the hunt and I won’t have to worry about City or Liverpool or anyone else winning the title. Here’s hoping — but for now I’d prefer it went to City.

Paul Galvin: I think City will win, but they haven’t the weight of tradition

There’s a futility to football rivalry debate which means I try stick to Manchester United.

Looking at the title race through Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp, the respective managers of Manchester City and Liverpool, I only see one winner.

I think City will win the league because of Pep.

When I hear Jurgen Klopp speak, I sit there thinking, ‘why are you telling me all this?’ He’s all speedy articulations and braindumps as if talking is therapy for him. It’s hard to trust that.

Guardiola is measured and sure. He doesn’t feel the need to over-explain himself. He keeps referring to each remaining league game as a cup final knowing Klopp’s record in cup finals is poor in recent years.

Restructuring the league campaign into a cup competition to unsettle a rival? Maybe, maybe not. If this is a mind game it’s an intellectual one.

I trust Pep. Having met him, I found him polite and just as to-the-point as he appears on television.

As much as I like how City work and play and admire Guardiola, it’s still hard to regard City as a serious rival. They haven’t the weight of tradition of Liverpool. Liverpool celebrated 18 league titles on banners for many years and now they’ve been stuck there for nearly 30 years. Where is number 19? They’re a little closer to it for sure.

I’ve reckoned lately that us United fans celebrate winning 20 league titles but we might just get stuck there too. ‘20 times, 20 times Man United’ goes the terrace chant.

I’m more interested in number 21 and number 25 and 30 so I’ve stopped singing the 20 times chant to myself.

Liverpool are the side that get United blood pumping. They have the thing that can win you a big game on a given day; weight of tradition.

That said, I think City will win, I’d like Pep to win but even if Liverpool win it might just spur United to title number 21 next season.

Richard Kurt: ’Pool ever overtaking United’s title haul would hurt way more

Ask Mancunian Manchester United fans whether they’d prefer Liverpool or City to win the league, and most will respond by channeling Mercutio: “A plague on both their houses”.

Before then reaching for a Spurs rosette, and offering an unconvincing chant of ‘Up The Lilywhites’. Unconvincing because, of course, few of us really believe that Potless Poch can somehow come up on the rails and steal the prize from the northern giants, however fervently we might wish otherwise.

Mind you, suppose Poch were to achieve such a stunning feat? How would that impact United when it comes to appointing the new Old Trafford boss?

Could the ‘Give It Ole’ movement resist what might become an overwhelming temptation for Ed Woodward to appoint a champion? But could Poch even be tempted to leave in such circumstances?

I digress, but you see my point; this is not just about rooting for one team or another to beat an even more dreaded rival. The title race result will have wider consequences. For example, imagine the state of mind at Anfield, and especially inside Jurgen Klopp’s head, if LFC end up ‘slipping’ again, having been such favourites?

The German’s certainly not going to be all “sunshine und smiles” then, is he? Might he quit?

Equally cromulent is wondering about the state of Pep’s head if he’s the one who ends up the loser. If he fails, and also doesn’t win the European Cup, will we perhaps be able to look forward to one of his famous ‘funny turns’? Would it be too much to hope that it might prompt him to take another sabbatical? Alright, yes; that last one is probably straw-clutching, and also subject-avoidance.

“Answer the question!” roars the editor and, through gritted teeth, I have to respond “come on, City”.

And that’s even though I regard City as being our eternal number one rival; I am not only from Manchester, but was raised at a time when City and United were as Montagues and Capulets, with ‘foreign’ Liverpool above and beyond us both.

The simple reasons? LFC ever overcoming United’s title haul will hurt way more than City merely buying their petrodollar way to a few more tainted gongs.

And if City have to expend huge energy wresting the title away from Liverpool’s imploring hands, one would hope that’ll cost them in Europe.

Because above all else, I do not want to see City winning our Champions Cup. Now that, as Bart would say, truly would both suck and blow.

Oisín McConville: Gerrard’s slip gave me so much pleasure

Definitely City.

I think it has to do with my age and Liverpool being the dominant team when I was growing up but mostly because I don’t know a lot of Man City fans and the couple I do know I can tolerate.

Whereas the majority — and when I say majority I’m only talking about 99.9% — of Liverpool fans sicken my ass so much that I don’t want them to win the league, simple as that.

They are the first people to ring me, text me, Snapchat me, or whatever when United are in an absolute hole.

And, do you know what, I’ve never seen any group revel more than Liverpool fans during the Mourinho era at United.

A vivid memory for me is the night they lost the league to Arsenal in Anfield in 1989 — and I have to say I really enjoyed that.

Steven Gerrard’s slip a few years back gave me so much pleasure and my hopes for his further demise came more into focus when he took over Rangers.

It’s a bit of banter and a bit of craic but Manchester City winning it would have less of an effect on me because most of my nephews are Liverpool fans too, for some reason.

Of the old Armagh team, Benny Tierney and I would have gone to Old Trafford together in the past.

But then there would have been Stevie McDonnell who is a huge Liverpool fan. And in the club, there were the likes of Jamie Clarke, Johnny Hanratty, and Rico Kelly.

A lot of them wouldn’t be slow in getting in contact after a bad United result.

And it goes both ways. I remember in 2005 dropping lads to a pub in Dundalk for the Liverpool-AC Milan Champions League final.

Down 3-0 at half-time, I said to myself I just had to go back out and have a good old laugh at them but I got delayed and by the time I arrived in Dundalk it was 3-2 — so I turned the car around home.

Ephie Fitzgerald: Reds go about things in the right way

If I had a choice I would say Spurs! But from a serious football point of view I would have to say Liverpool.

Where would Manchester City be without the millions and millions pumped into them over the last few years?

If their backers pulled out tomorrow where would the club be left?

But Liverpool, like Man United, are a club which has generated their own income and go about things the right way.

Liverpool as a city has struggled with unemployment and issues and the one thing that keeps them going in tough times is their football club. I’d consider them a real working man’s club and there’s a lot to admire in that and so for them I think the Premier League title would mean so much more.

And it wouldn’t just be in Liverpool but here in Ireland also.

Look around Ireland, how many City fans do you know?

How many dyed in the wool supporters are there from before the money started to come in?

I’m a born and bred Man United fan and a lot of my buddies are born and bred Liverpool fans and we have good slagging.

Tomorrow we want Man United to win — and then Liverpool can find their own way after that!

Ken Doherty: I’d get some amount of stick if Liverpool won it

It’s a simple answer. I’m in a Whatsapp group with a few lads and two of them are Scouse fans who have been giving me grief all year. They’re both good friends of mine and we all love football but I’d get some amount of stick if Liverpool went and won it so I’d like to see City win it just for that.

I’ve gone with them to Liverpool and United games at Anfield and sat in with the Liverpool fans. And they’ve come to watch the games with me in the United end. They had to be escorted out one time when Michael Owen scored and they reacted. They were getting spat on and had lighters thrown at them that day.

I’m a big United fan but I love good football and it doesn’t matter who is playing it: Madrid, Barcelona, City, even Liverpool, although it definitely hurts more when it’s Liverpool. I like to see the game played at its best. Schalke-City the other night was brilliant but it isn’t always easy.

When City won the league under Mancini (in 2012) I was watching it with John Virgo who is a Salford lad and a huge United fan. You can nearly see Old Trafford from his house. We were watching that day on split screens and we couldn’t believe it (when Sergio Aguero scored).

We’re coming to a big moment in the season now for Liverpool after the draw with Bayern and United could well throw a spanner in the works for them in the league this week.

City have had their wobble and Liverpool have drawn a few games, but they’ve only lost the one game in the league so far, so they haven’t had that rough patch yet really.

Ideally I’d like Tottenham to win it. Unlikely? United have come from further down in the past. I just wish this run they’re on had started sooner.

Tom Kenny: Liverpool fans conform to the stereotype - and getting worse

I suppose there just aren’t as many Manchester City fans around, so I’d say Man City. It’s funny, even though they’ve been very successful, you don’t have that same level of support for City that you have for teams like Liverpool or Arsenal or Leeds United, going back further. Maybe the generation of kids coming up will be Man City supporters.

I know they’re in the same city as United, but I wouldn’t feel as bad about the City fans. They don’t seem to be as bad. Or maybe they just aren’t as noisy as the Liverpool supporters; the Liverpool supporters I know certainly seem well able to make noise.

I’m kidding, really. I’m not that bad about Liverpool fans — I regard them as human beings behind it all. For the most part. I’ve a few cousins who are Liverpool fans and well able to talk about it, a few lads who play for the club at home who are the same. Shane O’Neill who I played with for Cork, another Liverpool fan. They’re everywhere once you start taking notice of them.

Do they conform to the stereotype of the Liverpool fan? They certainly have in the last few weeks, and I think they’re getting worse all the time.