Thoughts from yesterday.

Am not one but surprised that Man City are where they are, they are unbelievably good. They did not allow is the ball for the majority of the game and when we did get it, our options to move it to anyone else where severely limited and our players would panic. As soon as a Man City player lost the ball, there would be another three who could pick it up. It almost felt as if there were 22 of them and 11 of us and my God, are they quick! Nasri's run to chase the ball the the corner flag, beating Morison (?) who seemed to have a five foot headstart.

Leaving aside our inability to get the ball, or to pass the ball to our own player, and the chances we missed (Morison's in particular, I thought Barnett was unlucky), I thought we did well to ensure it stayed 0-0 for so long. They have torn apart even the strongest teams this year and we were always going to lose. We worked and worked to no avail and, if nothing else, it was an education. The players will have learned a lot and the result isn't going to affect us come the end of the season, as our goal difference is fairly respectable.

I had two Normals sat behind me, who would one minute be saying how Man City were mesmerising and the next minute, how "pathetic" and "embarrassing" it was that we couldn't compete. Firstly, we need to remember we've come up from league one I'm the space of two years, Man City have world class players, we don't have their budget and, actually, we are competing. Nobody is beating City this season and we were lucky to leave with only a four-goal deficit as they could have been 3-0 up after ten minutes.

Not that I give a toss what the Normals think (Ruddy is 'worse than Theoklitos', apparently), I enjoyed the day, enjoyed our effort, loved doing The Poznan when we scored (incidentally, the Normals reckoned 'we deserved that goal' after having said we were orherwise 'pathetic'). And I love our team.

Criticisms- Hoolahan and Fox absolutely MUST start and I think we've been missing them while they've been on the bench.

Posted By: tim berry, Dec 4, 12:39:18