City floored by Dong’s late stunner

AS belated birthday presents go, it wasn’t too shoddy. Just when Alex Ferguson might have been forgiven for thinking that turning 70 wasn’t worth the bother, there was Martin O’Neill, bearing gifts.

Blackburn having ruined his latest coming of age with a 3-2 victory at Old Trafford, the Scot’s mood will have lifted somewhat at the way Sunderland found a way past a Manchester City side that on paper at least, they had no right to live with.

Due to City’s increasingly global pull, this latest instalment of their attempt to wrestle footballing supremacy from their not so noisy neighbours was broadcast to large parts of Africa in Swahili. Whatever the language, this was a huge missed opportunity, and another feather in the cap of O’Neill — one of the game’s great motivators.