IT IS perhaps a testament to Alex Ferguson’s Sun Tzu-like mastery of the art of psychological warfare that Manchester City are still being referred to as the “noisy neighbours”.

The pundits were talking about it before last Sunday’s Community Shield, the football websites were referencing it after, and you can bet it’ll pop up again over the next week in pretty much every football talk show that touches on the match.

It makes me wonder why it was so darn hard for Leonardo DiCaprio. If Fergie was in Inception, the movie would’ve been over in 10 minutes. He’d hold a press conference and bingo. Idea planted. Case closed. No sequels. Simples.

Unfortunately for City, that idea seems to be festering, multiplying as quickly as Piers Morgan’s ego with every vain, self-absorbed yet fawning episode of Piers Morgan Tonight. As much as I was impressed with the Arsenal fans at the club’s open training session in Malaysia, singing all the players’ songs and showing genuine passion for the club, I couldn’t help but think – these people support the same club as Piers freakin’ Morgan? Unfortunate.

While Arsenal have built a reputation for themselves as the football purists’ choice thanks to Arsene Wenger’s unyielding faith in his philosophy, City’s reputation has been forged for them by Ferguson’s careful positioning – nay, inception – of two words in the minds’ of the public – Noisy Neighbours. It’s even an alliteration (two words that start with the same consonant)! Did Fergie think that through or what?

Now, every player that signs for Man City, every player that puts on the sky blue shirt – heck, even the tea lady at Eastlands – knows they would be pre-conceived and judged by everyone else as the noisy neighbours.

It eats away at the soul of the club, even one with the tradition and support base of Manchester City.

When Jose Mourinho arrived at Chelsea, he couldn’t be bothered planting any ideas about other clubs. It was all about planting ideas about himself, about creating that aura of invincibility surrounding the Special One, which coupled with unlimited financial resources and an already promising squad turned out to be quite the recipe for success.

Manchester City have the latter two ingredients, but again, thanks to Fergie, they are also saddled with a reputation as a club that makes plenty of noise over potential marquee signings, flaunts their new-found riches, and promises much but delivers little.

Incidentally, another common tag that Manchester City have now is that of the nouveau riche of the Premier League, a term used to describe the newly rich, mostly in a derogatory sense – those from a lower social standing who have recently come to money, and therefore tend to spend it gauchely.

Quite similarly, City can boast loudly, for instance, over the ridiculous amounts of money they spend on players like Sergio Aguero, but in terms of their true status in football, they will remain pariahs in the eyes of the neutrals, at least in the foreseeable future.

Players like Mario Balotelli will still see City as just a stepping stone – and retirement plan, perhaps – towards playing for his dream team AC Milan.

And for all the money in the world they throw at him, Carlos Tevez, their own captain, is still not convinced enough about the project to want to stay.

Those unwanted tags will also leave every player who decides to join Manchester City having to deal with being called mercenaries, even though most of them (I believe) had genuinely joined for footballing reasons.

And it panned out much the same way in the Community Shield. City made some noise at first, with their fans singing and doing that silly hop with their backs facing the pitch (which effectively means they’re all staring at each others’ arses) at half-time because they had gone two goals up.

It didn’t matter that in terms of football they had just been given a lesson in passing and possession, and were genuinely quite fortunate to have scored.

United promptly emerged in the second half to show them some real class, winning with a combination of skill, attacking endeavour and good old fashioned determination, bagging three goals while fielding youngsters like Tom Cleverly, Danny Welbeck, Phil Jones, Chris Smalling and Fabio.

So this season – while Manchester United continue to draw compliments that winning is “in their DNA”, Chelsea retain that aura of impenetrability established by Mourinho, Arsenal rake in the plaudits for their seemingly never-ending pursuit of footballing perfection and equilibrium, and Liverpool hang on to the promise of being a sleeping giant – Manchester City will simply remain in the minds of most as the Noisy Neighbours. Even if they end up winning the title.

Sometimes, you just gotta hand it to Fergie.