Manchester City have moved quickly to defuse the embarrassment of discovering that a club employee has been using the internet to mount a personal hate-campaign against Manchester United in the buildup to tomorrow's derby. Ged Coyne, a full-time member of City's groundstaff, has closed down his Facebook account after describing United as "scum" in a series of abusive rants.
A senior club official contacted Coyne and the 31-year-old admitted he had been responsible for dedicating the public page to his antipathy towards United. His explanation was that it was intended as "banter" but his employers have made it clear they do not see the funny side in a week when Greater Manchester police have already contacted both clubs to make sure they are aware about the importance of not inflaming tensions ahead of the game. The police have also launched an advertising campaign in an attempt to dispel tensions between the clubs ahead of the derby. Instead of a personal picture for his profile, Coyne used a photo of a wall with the graffiti "Fuck MUFC." In several passages about United, Sir Alex Ferguson was depicted as "Alex purple-head Ferguscum", and there were inflammatory references about Gary Neville and the club's fans.
Old Trafford was described as "the Theatre of Complete Tosspots" and Coyne refers to a party which was organised by United fans at Manchester's Walkabout bar, only to be cancelled after police intervention. He writes: "This was due to the fact that Manchester is completely Blue and the fact that City fans were not only gonna storm Walkabout but burn the shithole down."
The abuse was returned by some United fans and comes at a time when City have been trying to educate their staff, including the players, about the perils of using social networking sites in light of the recent Twitter controversies, most notably Liverpool's Ryan Babel being fined by the Football Association for posting a mocked-up photograph of Howard Webb in a United shirt after Liverpool's 1-0 defeat at Old Trafford last month.
The club have put together a booklet reminding users of sites such as Facebook and Twitter about what is acceptable and what is not, and the importance of realising that individual accounts can reflect on the club as a whole. Coyne, a City employee for 15 years, is understood to have been admonished and to have accepted that he was in the wrong.