A mural to Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola in the shadow of the Etihad has been vandalised again in the build up to the Manchester derby. The mural on 63-year-old Lesley Kelly's house was vandalised hours after its unveiling last week (September 22) with red paint and 'MUFC' scrawled over the artwork.
It City and United prepare to face each other at the Etihad this afternoon. Those making their way to the ground condemned the 'mindlessness' of the vandalism. "Why would you do that to somebody's house right next to the ground?," one asked.
Lesley is using the mural as a way to raise awareness and money for charities on match days. Today, she was collecting for and handing out leaflets for Papyrus who work to raise awareness and prevent suicide among young people, something close to her heart as she lost a son-in-law to suicide six years ago.
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"It's just so frustrating," she told the Manchester Evening News . "It's mindless thugs at it again, a neighbour managed to shout at them this time so they quickly got away on bikes.
"It has nothing to do with football, it's vandalism which is just stupid. United fans have come up to us and said it's not on, it's here to brighten up and help the community.
"We put this hear so we could collect for different charities and raise awareness of some really important causes. We've already spoken to a few young fans who've come and said they didn't know much about Papyrus so it was great to give them a card and let them know there's people to speak to if they're ever struggling.
"It really means a lot to us. We've previously collected for MIND and next home game we're going to collect for a homeless charity, it's here so we can give back to the community but these people doing this just don't understand or think about that.
"A fan who said he was from Dublin just put £10 in the box saying that it's something that's not talked about enough and how it was great to see us doing this which was really nice. Despite what's happened we really want to make it a positive day with this."
The mural was created by Murwalls, founded by CEO Mark Silver in 2019. The collective together some of the country's best street artists and works with a number of different brands and organisations to create bespoke pieces. Mark was made aware of the vandalism this morning and his team is set to travel to Lesley's house to get it fixed as soon as possible.
"It's really frustrating this to be honest," he said, adding that the next step is to cover the wall in anti-vandal paint so graffiti can be cleaned off easily. Although costly, 'it's a lot cheaper than fixing it every time this happens', he said.
"It's just really annoying again," Mark added. When it happened straight after we finished it neighbours came out and Man U fans saying how disgusted they were.
"It's frustrating because we wanted this in place for the big derby day and now we're trying really hard to have it fixed before the game. One of the reasons we wanted to do this is because of Lesley wanting to use it to raise money for charity.
"There's prints of it in the club shop from today with the money from them being donated to the City in the Community charities. Football is used as the excuse for these acts but if you are a genuine fan you'd be against this.
"Hopefully something positive can come from this and with the charity work some good can come from the bad. This should be the last time we have to come back to fix it."
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