Perverse sight of City in front takes some getting used to

MANCHESTER CITY can sometimes make you laugh for reasons other than their legendary ineptitude.

A banner over one of their Wastelands stands on Sunday read “A Prawn-Free Zone”. Maybe, but not prannock*-free. (Nor mullet-free either — the oft-moustachio’d shell-suited gimps.) Then, interviewed for a ‘Football Focus’ TV vox pop, one City fan rather admirably kept straight-faced as he predicted “it might be more of a struggle than you’d expect tomorrow, as we do tend to make hard work of these teams from the lower end of the table.”

And so it came to pass that the filthy Blue beast in our back garden has not only emerged from the compost heap, as I fearfully suggested last week, but has slimed into the house and is currently making improper suggestions to our trophy wife in the bedroom. Yes, City are top of the league — our league, dammit! — and it’s a sight that takes some getting used to. All around the more blighted parts of south-east Manchester and Stockport, the Blue Moonies** heartlands, their mentally subnormal children are puzzled, holding newspaper pages upside down with their three fingers, trying to decode the unfamiliar tabulation.

“City — FIRST? Dad, dad, I don’t understand...” (Daddy, who’s also his brother, has meanwhile become distracted by a passing Ringway plane, at which he is pointing in awe.)

I suppose one should take it as a measure of the true (non) import of Sunday’s appalling result that we Reds are not, as yet, over-reacting in pants-filling mode. Some are even seeming to get a perverse masochistic thrill out of seeing us at 16th and City top, as though aristocrats slumming it for a night, safe in the knowledge that the positions ought to be reversed come May. Or even October. Well, I hope they’re right but I reserve the right to start pulling out what remains of my hair if this farce continues much longer.

Sven, I must concede, was a model of sweet reason afterwards, freely agreeing with the fuming Red hordes that City had been lucky. (That said, we only had one more on-target shot than the Blues, and playing without a recognised striker seemed somewhat too avant-garde for something as meat ‘n’ potatoes as a basic derby).

As I wrote last week, one has to admit City have had more than their fair share of bad luck over the decades, not least in derbies: Andy Cole missing a last-minute sitter at Old Trafford a couple of years ago to rob them of a first win there in 30 years springs to mind, as does the hilarious Cup-tie-turning penalty won by an amazed Roy Keane in 1996. Fergie always unveils that cliché about such things evening themselves out but in City’s case it’s been a long wait for ‘justice’ — although from our point of view, their 30 barren years is fair exchange for the agony they taunted us over during the 26 title-less winters post-1967. Anyway, as far as this City resurgence goes: in the words of the Blue mutant offspring we met earlier to his dad/brother come 11pm — “stop it now, it’s hurting me…”

Yes, yes, boo-frickety-hoo, that was very sick. Welcome to Manchester attitude: this is how it is here. Mancs also don’t like whingeing and blame-games, so I will only very briefly suggest that, in light of our goal-drought, Rossi shouldn’t have been allowed to leave. Former unaffordable target Torres also made a very eloquent point an hour later at Anfield, doubly-telling given Tevez missing six good chances in two games. As I predicted last week, we were expecting perfection too soon from him. A suddenly-reborn Spurs confidently await on Sunday: and we are praying for Saha to leave hospital for once?

*prannock= Lancastrian fish-based insult, means ‘prat’

** Blue Moonies = delusional one-song followers of the eastern mystic ‘Doctor Death’ i.e. City fans

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