Stupid Ronaldo back to his old tricks

He has had to adapt to a new city, very different to the London he was used to. Recently he has been Home Alone after his wife and kids had an extended stay back in Argentina; moreover he had several early weeks of critics carping at his supposed failure to get with Rooney, not to mention the ongoing brouhaha over the MSI affair.

Yet nothing fazes him, not even those odd misfiring matches like last time out.

Contrast those lurking over in the other corner, the perpetually unreliable big money buys or much hyped talents who either don’t produce the form required consistently or are unavailable because of their apparent frailty.

“Where do I get another Saha?” Fergie asked the other day, in support of his oft-lame striker. “You’ve got one,” I thought to myself: “Owen Hargreaves.”

They claim it was calf strain this time: I make that five separate injury stints since July and we’re not even into the limb-testing hard midwinter yet.

Incidentally, Fergie also said of Saha: “He could explode in one beautiful moment.” Mmm. You know, given his record for ridiculous injuries, I think we would all do best not to wish “explosions” upon him, surely?

Meanwhile Carrick has hardly set the world alight and I note Bobby Robson joined Fergie recently in suggesting he needed a kick up the posterior; all we need now is for Bobby to join the knights’ rollcall and I believe heraldic law says we are entitled to have Carrick’s oxen confiscated.

Park has become the forgotten man, although he is ominously promising a return, and Darren Fletcher must surely be approaching the career breakpoint whereby a new club might be best both for him and for us. That is if the Scots zealot upstairs can bear to let his new adopted son go. (Fletcher being, in effect, the new Brian McClair, only rather less useful.) But hark at me, sinking to an easy carp. This is not the week for such kvetching, given that unity is required for what is coming both tonight — “into the valley ride the two thousand” — and on Sunday — much of the same, with less farfalle/more phlegm.

And routinely predictable though our win on Saturday was, that was still some weekend for us in the Big Four context: Arsenal and Liverpool lost unexpectedly, succeeding the delightful news of Drogba’s operation (which all the UK papers confidently wrote on Saturday morning wasn’t happening: ha!)

Only Ronaldo managed to spoil it, with his utter stupidity ruining much that he had personally achieved recently. See, he had just about got to the stage where he had convinced us all he was done with cheating; indeed, for the first time ever, we saw media commentators actually complaining that he hadn’t been given a penalty after going to ground the other week.

All that was likely wrecked on Saturday by his dive, and to what purpose? We were running away with the game and the penalty was redundant. But you can rest assured that every ref in the land will have clocked that and now reset their Ronaldometers back to minus-ten.

Expect more yellows for simulation and no penalties unless someone actually breaks his leg. A timely reminder all round: one thing his predecessor George Best never, ever did was dive or cheat — and he was out there relatively unprotected from the hackers.

Some way to go before full emulation, then.

To be frank, though, most of the crowd seemed to have their minds elsewhere by then, more often than not fixed on the Hatton Vegas fight later that night, to which a fair proportion of Manchester’s headcase community had emigrated.

Typical Manchester City fan, in the end: talked a good fight, then saw his supporters disgrace him, and finally got totally outclassed.

T’was the City-Spurs FA Cup quarter-final all over again...

* Richard Kurt’s ‘Red Army Years’ is available for Christmas delivery via [e-mail]