Because we’re different from each other, how we feel about each other is different. United’s status and supremacy has seen us develop similarly poisonous rivalries with Liverpool and Leeds, and the pursuit of trophies has occupied minds too, as has the fight to protect the club from various immoral owners – City are but one of several targets for our hatred.
They – the spotty ginger fat kid with a huge library of pornography, forced to watch from the window as his hunky neighbour gets it on with everything in sight – on the other hand have nurtured a festering, obsessive bitterness towards United and the unfairness of it all. Hell, there’s even a book entitled Manchester United Ruined My Life. They characterise themselves in opposition to us, our identity defines them. Everything they do, we do better.