The Fiver, rather amusing about Manchester City this evening...

ACTS OF DAFTNESS THAT WOULD MAKE CHRIS SMALLING TUT

Children, as we all know, are stupid. That isn?t their fault, because they are still developing, they haven?t learned much yet, and their wee brains both can?t and don?t have to contemplate much more than swapping Pogs and watching Rocco?s Modern Life on hip new TV kiddies? station Nickelodeon (check these cultural reference are up to date ? Fiver Ed). They even get things like food, shelter and clothing supplied for them, knowing all they have to do is scream to be provided with them. What a racket! It?s no wonder they?re such dunces. This intelligence deficiency is why a truculent child, if told he or she cannot have a thing, will happily smash that thing into many pieces just so no other child can have the thing. It?s a behaviour pattern that most children eventually leave behind, once they develop things like common sense and decency, but it occasionally resurfaces after these children graduate to being adults.

This phenomenon occurred at the Etihad (or, as assorted social media LOL-merchants call it, ?the Emptyhad? ? ho! What japes!) on Wednesday night, for after it became clear that City were going to lose in shambolic fashion to CSKA Moscow, a few of their number reacted by simply booting as many opposition players as hard and as high up in the air as was possible. Samir Nasri notably somehow managed to escape any sort of censure for hoofing Georgi Milanov like he was a smaller boy?s sandcastle, and that?s before we even get to Yaya Tour? and Fernandinho getting themselves dismissed for acts of daftness that would make Chris Smalling tut.

Of course, the other thing that children are is unintentionally funny. If they say a silly thing or do a little dance, everyone has a good old chuckle and the room lightens a touch, something that again brings us back to Manchester City. If football can?t be good then it should be funny, and if you can?t laugh at a team assembled for a gajillion pounds not being able to achieve basic competence and win a single game in the competition they spent those pounds in order to win, then act like bawling brats when they don?t get their way, then frankly you?re in the wrong business. Adding to the funny was Manuel Pellegrini, who seemingly doesn?t have the first idea what?s gone wrong, why it?s gone wrong or how to fix what?s gone wrong. ?Of course we must try to find what happened with this team in [Big Cup],? he I-dunnoed. ?The mentality of the players, all of them are important players, so I don?t understand why they cannot play in [Big Cup].?

City must now beat both Bayern and Roma, and will have to do so without Tour?, Fernandinho and possibly the knacked David Silva, to have a sniff of avoiding a third first-round exit in four years, a prospect more embarrassing than the time a young Fiver suffered a Tip-ex calamity involving a whole bottle of the white fluid spilling on to the front of our adolescent trousers, forming a spread and pattern that could only be described as ?suspicious-looking?. Pellegrini was brought in to replace Roberto Mancini on the basis that: a) the players wouldn?t hold him in open contempt and; b) he might stop them being European football?s equivalent of a cartoon character attempting to fire a blunderbuss, having no success, checking said gun by peering directly down the barrel and ending with a scorched face and no hair. If he can?t manage that, then City will be looking for the biggest Acme bin they can find and politely inviting Pellegrini to hop in. Brendan Rodgers has been smacked around town with a wet slipper this week for having the temerity to pick 11 professional footballers, but while Liverpool lost in Madrid, at least they didn?t carry on like cross toddlers.

Posted By: Arizona Bay, Nov 6, 16:38:43