When Sheikh Mansour resolved to ruin football one summer’s day back in 2008, little did he know how globally reviled Manchester City Football Club would become. With their willingness to pay the most exorbitant prices for players, far in excess of their actual market value, they continued the work started by the hated footpads of Chelsea upon their formation some five years earlier. Combined with Arsenal’s relative privations forced upon us by the move to the new stadium meant that we had very little power to stop the northwards drain of our best players, and Gael Clichy.
Farewell, gormless galloper Emmanuel Adebayor, (£16m) now being studiously avoided by football clubs the world over. Adios, double-chinned spunkflute Samir Nasri (£25m), now being studiously unrecognised by Mr. Orwell in the tunnel this Monday last. The aforementioned Gael Clichy, The Wandering Twat (£7m), location unknown. Kolo Toure, aged 57 (£16m). These players are a far cry from 2003, when we allowed David Seaman to retire there.
Manchester City aspire to be an elite club, and they have certainly achieved this aim. They are in an elite of the hated. These clubs are propped up by the largesse of their owners, without whom they would sink like a stone to mid table or worse. They have not been successful through their own endeavour. They do not live within their means. They are on life support systems. City, Chelsea, & Paris St. Germain, you are abhorred. Spending billions of someone else’s money, casting aside propriety and prudence, these foul, ghastly beasts are the lepers of world football.
Yet spending somebody else’s money does not always reap rewards. Especially when you spend £42m on a defender like Mr. Quim Mangala, who was sent running one way, then the other, then finally toward the padded cell at the County Asylum on Monday night. Similarly awful was Nicolás Otamendi, who arrived at a cost of £32m, but looked more like he was worth £32 plus eleven pairs of socks. Aleksandar Kolarov, some kind of strange Serbian sloth, looked like he’d be outrun in an over 60s game. This De Bruyne cove looked very average and certainly not worth the £54m that City paid for him. I am aware that there is a premium to be paid for joining Manchester City, being an unpopular and unglamorous home for mercenaries and glory-seekers (known as the ‘Cunty Cost’), but those prices are absurd.
It was deeply pleasurable then to dispatch this band of unpleasant codpieces back to their Lancastrian mansions.
There were periods when City were on top in terms of possession, but without a cutting edge they were unlikely to score – their £122 million strike force were unable to find a way past our £10 million glove butler until very late on.
Plaudits, of course, to the magician Melvin Orwell, who did not so much take this game by the scruff of the neck, as take it by the scruff of its neck, march it to the gallows, truss it up whilst he had a pint with the hangman, then pulled the deadly lever with his hand-like foot. For the umpteenth time he answered the cry of the dunderheads who claim he goes missing in big games. I’ll tell you who goes missing, you unspeakable fools – your mum. And she is popping round to Orwell’s place for some good news.
Mr. Pellegrini’s ragtag group of chancers arrived in London, with their faces pressed up agin the glass of the team coach (“>Look Sergio! Restaurants!”) proving that in addition to love, money cannot buy you away goals (none in their last three) – they had not won away from the Shitty Hat Stadium since mid-September.
Little Kevin de Bruyne chugged up and down the flank with gusto but to no avail. Messrs Silva, Fernandinho & De Bruyne all attempted to beat Harry the Helmet but none could – either over the bar or directly at Harold.
To Fenton then, whose lack of footballing brain (copyright Chris Waddle, for whom commentating on anyone’s brain seems like something of an impertinence), upon receipt of yet another gentleman’s favour from Mr. Orwell, took the ball around the hapless Sagna, and unleashed a merciless rip-roaring curler rocket into the top corner for 1-0.
An early Christmas gift from City’s £42m lump of mediocrity Mr. Mangala, whose hilarious clearance reached Mandeville, who found Orwell – yet again providing the penultimate delight, with Mr. Goring-Hildred the provider this time.
Up until the 82nd minute the slightly slimmer Touré brother had been listless and ineffective but demonstrated his quality with a strike past The Helmet. It was tin hat time for Woolwich but we stayed steadfast and strong.
We are second heading into Saturnalia, and things are looking just splendid.
