“I’m not an “agendas” guy but that gets me thinking…”
That's a cracking OP Fitzy (one of many interesting topics you've started over the years).
I agree we will always show some selective bias. This is partly because it's what fans do, but I also think it's because we have a far more deeply ingrained sense of injustice due to the way the city and fans have been treated in the past - by the government, the police, and the justice system. Decades of being fucked over will naturally lead to a greater scrutiny over decisions, and suggestions of a wider conspiracy and dark forces deliberately working against us.
I'm personally more in the 'refeeres are shite' camp rather than systemic and deliberate anti-Liverpool decisions, but I can see why others get so angry and suspicious.
However, your post speaks to a much wider and overlooked point, which is that many are far too obsessed with the minutiae - whilst overlooking the real elephant in the room. Too busy raging about the micro issues in a game, when the macro state of football is an utter shitshow.
This is evident no more so than in the toxic criticism of players, the owners, and many other factors - even during Jurgen's reign when we've had some of the best moments of our lives, whilst up against the biggest cheats in sporting history. Dozens of pages and topics have been filled with people crying into their keyboards about net spend, FSG, signings, performances, players, and tactics. Some of that is natural on a discussion forum, but it's reached obsessive and unhealthy levels at times, which massively overlooks possibly the biggest determinant of our success under Jurgen and why we don't have an even bigger haul of trophies - which is Man City.
It's so obvious it shouldn't need saying, but without City's cheating we'd have been head and shoulders above the pack for at least 4-5 of the last 7 seasons. We'd also have suffered less burn-out as we wouldn't have been trying to rack up 95+ point seasons just to be in with a chance of the title.
Sportswashing oil clubs are the biggest common enemy by a mile - not the referees, or FSG, or our performances, or whether a player meets the requirements of the many impatient and entitled fans on here. The logic isn't hard to grasp - take City out the equation and the referee mistakes are less important or impactful. FSG's perceived prudency is no longer such a big issue. A player or the team can have an off day without getting slaughtered. We don't need to spend, spend, spend to compete. We'd have less injuries, as we wouldn't have spent 7 years pushing our squad to the ridiculous limits required in this new landscape of cheating and state ownership.
I'm all for debate, but as you so eloquently point out, many seem to have forgotten who the real enemy is that we're fighting - and the one that has had by far the biggest impact on our success than any other factor during all of Jurgen's reign.