Premier League Match 9 - Manchester City 1 Southampton 1

Niall Quinn at City - Trousers Round Ankles Not Pictured

I’ve written this one off to be honest.  When everyone is pontificating at the start of the season about how teams fare on the Sunday after they’ve played an away Europa League game, the usual argument is that you should be given a home game the following week.  The fixture computer gave us a home game after we played Sparta at home and gave us an away game at the Champions after Israel and an away game at the Champions-elect after Milan.  Thanks.  So, the Champions League sides get extra days off and no travelling.  Cheers.

City have Pep Guardiola in charge who has had a silver spoon managerial career being in charge of Barcelona in Spain and Bayern in Germany.  It’s a bit like playing Ultimate Team on FIFA with unlimited funds.  No doubt though that the guy has been brilliant so far and many managers have failed given the advantages that he has used to maximum effect.  It’s a different ball game altogether with City where even a relatively unheralded player who they sign, will cost twice as much as Saints have ever paid for any player.  A quick bit of research shows that they have 5 players in their starting line-up today, who cost more than twice the £16m we paid for Sofiane Boufal.  De Bruyne (£54m), Stones (£47.5m), Sterling (£44m), Aguero (£38m) and Sane (£37m).  Still, I expect they save all that by paying lower wages.

After the Milan defeat, Claude predictably rotated again.  Back came Austin (£4m) for Long (£12m), Clasie (£10m) for Hojbjerg (£12m), Redmond (£12m) for J-Rod (£7m), Fonte (£2m) for Yoshida (£2m) and Davis (£1m) for JWP (£0m).  This all meant that Sam McQueen’s (£0m) first two away games were against Inter Milan and Manchester City.  There was a place on the bench for Jack Stephens (£0m) alongside Boufal (£16m).

Today’s referee is Mark Clattenburg.  Fuuuuuuck…. It still makes me laugh that we requested that the FA’s golden boy referee not officiate any of our games.  One of his crimes was to think that Adam Lallana had turned into a right twat since he got in the England squad.  He wasn’t wrong there was he?

Anyway, a cagey start to the game with City having a lot of possession in front of us.  Fernandinho got a cross in which fizzed across the goal and Sterling tried to put it in with the wrong foot and didn’t get a touch.  We are having sporadic breaks up the pitch and from one of these, Romeu puts Tadic away on the left but he chooses to ignore the overlapping McQueen which was the option he should have taken and instead, blindly fired it across which Bravo saved.

We are playing some decent stuff and finding space high up the pitch.  We pass it around from left to right and eventually tee up Clasie to slice it miles high and wide.  Another good move and Austin gets the ball on the right and puts over a cross which Bravo fields well.  We have obviously been watching how City play and there has been a load of publicity on how City have signed a keeper who is a footballer first and a goalkeeper second.  So, Bravo bowls it out and we’re all over it trying to win it back.  Romeu gets a foot in against Fernandinho but City get it back and continue to pass it around at the back to Stones.  He turns back towards his goal and tries to play it to Kompany who has dozed off, probably wondering what minute he told everyone he was going to get injured.  As it happens, Stone perfectly dissects Kompany and Bravo and Redmond is in, round Bravo and knocking it into an empty net.  Get in there.  If my Under 13’s defence did that I’d find it hard not to lose my rag, especially as my son is one of them and he’d get no dinner.  It’s appalling play from Stones.  People will try and blame Kompany and Bravo but hang on, he’s passed it to someone who wasn’t there, across his own goal, like a fucking idiot.  Cheers mate, 1-0 to us.

Straight from the restart practically, McQueen gets suckered in to giving a free kick away for body checking Silva.  Over it comes from de Bruyne and Stones bundles it in at the back post.  Fuck it.  There looked to be a player offside in the middle but sod it.  The reason I think it’s a goal is because I’m watching Sky and Niall Quinn is slapping his cock about because City have equalised and John Stones has atoned for his error and all is right with the world on Sky Super Sunday Big Club Bonanza.  The graphic at top left says 1-1 and play is going on and we’ve got the ball on the left wing.  They haven’t showed us kicking off because they were showing replays of the goal but then it’s “errrr, it’s still 1-0 to Southampton and they’ve found a reason to disallow the goal”.   It was difficult to hear Quinn digging his way out of it, probably because he had his tongue up John Stones’ arse at the time.  Ha ha ha… cunts!  I guess it doesn’t matter how many monitors you have or how much technology or how many people you have looking at it – you aint gonna see much if you’ve all got your City shirts pulled up over your faces in celebration when the ball hit the net.  Wankers.

So, Twattenburg got it right and it was offside but he’s still an oddball fucker.  Fernandinho wipes Austin’s legs out with no attempt to play the ball and gets nothing bar a free kick against him.  Then Clasie goes in for a tackle, wins the ball clean as you like with the tiniest bit of follow through on the end of a City players toe and gets booked.  Still, even the Twatt can’t spoil my mood as we defend superbly for the rest of the first half and don’t really give City a sight of our goal and we get to the break 1-0 up.

You know that Pep isn’t going to take it lying down and so on comes Iheanacho for de Bruyne.  Anyone who thinks this is a good thing obviously missed Iheanacho scoring twice against us last season at SMS in a game where the rest of the City side didn’t give a shit.  They’ve also swapped Sterling to the right and he’s giving McQueen a bit of a hard time but you can always rely on him putting a cross blindly into the box and in front of anyone rather than picking anyone out.

We are defending really well but we can’t string enough passes together to put them under pressure and for the first time in a few matches, we’re just launching it from the back with no real plan.  McQueen does well to bring the ball out and finds Davo who loses it on halfway to Fernandinho who plays a great ball to their left to Sane who is behind Martina who has dozed off.  He has time to pass it across the box and Iheanacho arrives to sweep it into the net.  It’s kind of similar to the Inter goal in the week in that Martina doesn’t cover himself in glory and a low cross is dispatched first time before Fraser can move.  Also on both goals, Virgil is the closest defender to the goalscorer.  Today though, the root cause is Davo losing the ball.

For a couple of minutes, it just looks like a matter of time with Sterling sliding in a good low ball to Iheanacho and his cross is begging to be put in but José just does enough to scramble it for a corner.  Predictably, Hojbjerg comes on for Clasie but it’s still all City and Fraser has to pull out a decent one handed save to deny Gundogan.  It’s amazing that Gundogan is still on the field after a horrible leg breaking effort on Romeu but then maybe it’s not surprising as Twattenburg was staring right at it and three yards away.  Can’t fault his positioning, just his refereeing.

We are now beginning to break out with purpose and have a 3 on 3 break but Tadic butchers the final ball to Austin and it runs straight through to Johnny Bravo in goal.  Whether it was because of that or something else, Claude removes Tadic and brings on Boufal.  He goes wide left and jinks across the top of the box before playing a superbly weighted ball to Austin who hits it straight at Johnny Bravo who saves easily.  We needed that to fly in the far corner really.  Another break a minute later and some more decent play from Boufal and Steve Davis has a shot.  Yep.

Niall Quinn chooses that moment to cream off about how good City have been this half which is true, however, for the last 5 minutes it’s been all us so he’s picked the wrong moment to jerk off.  It’s embarrassing.  Anyway, I bet there was a market with Ray Winstone or whoever on which minute Fraser would get booked for timewasting in and he duly wins some punters some money.  Aguero bursts through the middle after Boufal gets caught in possession and luckily for us he’s in greedy bastard mode and and screws a shot across goal and past the far post.  Soon after we get the dreaded ‘added minutes’ which tends to be up near double figures when you’re drawing away at a big club and it’s 5, fuck off!

JWP is on for Ausrtin as we pack the midfield and to be fair, City don’t get another sight at goal but there’s a panic as Sterling accidentally twats Romeu in the face and then Boufal clears it, just before a Iheanacho forearm catches him in the face.  He’s down but Twattenburg is happily playing on.  I have visions of Arsenal away all over again but we get a boot to it and smash it up the wing.

Full time and thank Christ for that. We were seriously blowing out of our arses for the last 20 minutes but on the whole, we defended well with very few alarms. When you consider the advantages that City have got, given that they had extra days to recover from their European game, not to mention that their squad cost fucking billions, a point at their ground is a pretty good achievement. It also answered a niggling doubt that I had that we wouldn't be able to play in the same manner against the really top boys. For the first hour we played it perfectly, being patient and then looking very dangerous when we attacked on the break. That all went to shit in the last half an hour when we went into defence mode aside from a little three minutes spell when we had a bit of possession in their half.

City are of course hyped to death and so is their manager but in reality, how good are they? Sure they will blow some teams are away but they've been able to do that for the last five years courtesy of having Aguero in their team and De Bruyne can be brilliant on his day, which today clearly was not but other than that they have a lot of players who cost a hell of a lot of money and have price tags way beyond their actual ability. Raheem Sterling is a classic example, costing 50 million quid and he is a player who puts in some decent crosses when it's all instinctive and he has no time to think but give him time to think or give him a couple of options and he's fucking useless. I like John Stones as a footballer but he's not Franz Beckenbauer which is what the hype machine has turned him into since he joined City.  It was amusing post match seeing the pundits scrambling to not blame him 100% for the goal he gave away.  Sorry, as a defender you have to be 100% sure before you pass it across your own goal.  You have to look and you have to make sure the pass gets there.  If he looked then he’s just fucked up the pass and if he didn’t look then he’s a twat and it’s crap play anyway.  You can’t play blind passes in defence and as there was nothing on he should have just turned and hoofed it out for a throw. 

As for the manager, well Pep has always had the odds ridiculously stacked in his favour at whatever club he’s been at and he does at City as well.  Little Southampton have gone up there and got a point so maybe that says that our manager was better today given that the fact that our players cost a fraction of theirs, a very small fraction.

As often mentioned, I watched the game on Sky and after I got past the half an hour build up which didn't even mention Southampton, I had to put up with quite possibly the most biased co-commentator ever in Niall Quinn. He was fucking ridiculous all the way through and if Sky have any sense, that’s him done with commentating on City, Sunderland or Arsenal games.  I remember seeing an interview with Matt le Tissier were he said he was not allowed to cover the Saints game on Soccer Saturday because his natural allegiance would show through. That's all well and good, so why do Sky subject to viewing public to two hours of completely biased arse from that lanky streak of piss Niall Quinn.

Anyway, we totally deserved the point and Oriol Romeu deserves it all on his own for the way he just rolled the midfield and for the way he didn't react to the attempt by Gundogan to break his leg.  How the fuck Mark Twattenburg can miss that when he was 3 yards away staring straight at it is incredible.  I also thought that Steve Davis had a great game on the left (losing ball for the goal aside) and all the forward players did their bit until they all got tired in the second half.  Unfortunately, Tadic was having one of his ‘choose the wrong option’ days.  It was a difficult afternoon for Sam McQueen and Sane and Sterling both gave him problems but he stuck at it and it was another decent performance from the youngster.  I also thought that Jose Fonte was magnificent and the way he organised and in the way he was always in the right place. Virgil was good again but he’ll be disappointed in Iheanacho’s goal as he got in front of him again like Candreva did on Thursday.  However, on both goals, the cross from our rather non-existent right side.  Remember though, Cuco cost as much as City paid for their guy who puts the bins out and a team that cost billions hardly had a sight of our goal when we had our third choice right and left backs playing.

Next up is the fourth round of the League Cup against Sunderland at home. I think it’s called the EFL Cup now.  The Mackems are of course utter dogshit in the league so we should see them off quite comfortably but we are going to be considerably different in our lineup. I can't see any of Virgil, Oriol, Charlie or Fraser starting for example and there will be a chance for Alex McCarthy, Harrison read, J-Rod and maybe Sofiane Boufal will start. Either way, we should beat Sunderland so hopefully a decent crowd will roll up at St Mary's to watch us push David Moyes one step closer to the sack and Sam Allardyce one step closer to getting his old job back. They played Adam Johnson when I knew he was a proper wrong’un so there's no way they are going to take the moral high ground and not employ Allardyce again.