DaveT

Agree with most of this. Even at City, he inherited a world class spine - Kompany - Fernandinho - de Bruyne - Silva - Aguero. Sterling's about the only player who has obviously imporved - but we was on an updard develoment curve anyway. Other players e.g. Stones have gone backwards. World's greatest coach, my arse.

Not just that, tried to do it by his throat. Horrible twat, Xhaka. When he’s not fouling, he’s diving, in the classic Arsenal tradition

And yet it was only a terrible decision by Anthony Taylor of Greater Manchester that separated us from them in the final analysis.

Somebody should tell that fucking prick that those were exactly the tactics used by their U18s team against our lads on Saturday. What a terrible club that's become.

Should have tested him for rabies while they were at it

Brilliant bloke. He lived in digs in Wavertree when he first came to the club. Used to ambush him regularly as he came out of the local bookies, must have got his autograph about 10 times. Always had time for the kids, even though we must have been complete pests.

He did buy their success, but at least Jack Walker was a local businessman, and Blackburn was the team he grew up supporting. The money he put into Blackburn (est £50m ) would get you one City full back.

Poor thing. Suppose he'll just have to bunker down in his multi-million pound house and count his money with Shakira.

One of those games where both clubs are just horrible and you desperately want both to lose. Can't see anything other than a City victory in the tie. Some non-trivil injuries for both sides would be nice.

Yeah, this whole ‘poor little hard done to Chelsea’ thing really gets in my tits. They spent £100m in 2019, including £40m on Kovacic during a transfer ban (how did that work?!), Fwank inherited a strong squad including 3 World Cup winners, multiple PremierLeague winners, more international midfielders than you can shake a stick at, £71m goalkeeper, and a crop of outstanding youngsters (by virtue of dodgy youth recruitment practices that got them the transfer ban in the first place). Yet Fwank is portrayed as some sort of plucky underdog!

Ake is presumably Kompany's replacement, as that now brings them back to 4 centre backs. But - he clearly doesn't rate either Stones or Otamendi (who does?!), so he's probably still in the market for another one, Koulibaly maybe. If not, Ake and Laporte - an improvement on this season, but a big step down from Kompany & Laporte.

They won’t acknowledge that when the season was suspended out GD was better than City’s by 8 goals. The title was done within 5 days of restart and we’ve been coasting since.... while City have been doing their flat track bully party piece against teams who had mostly given up. That would require some rationality and balance.

Great round-up as ever. Totally agree on Watford. Any team losing 12-0 on aggregate to City should be dissolved let alone relegated. Didn't watch last week's game but at City, they just didn't try, didn't even attempt to keep the score down. All the more galling when they have the tools to damage City - quick players like Sarr and, earlier on, Deuloufeu who could exploit that wide open defence on the counter. You're right about refereeing being a seriously tough job and I've no idea why anyone would want to do it. But the current crop (or should I be using word of the year 'cohort'?) make it much harder than it should be and are so crap that slagging them off should be mandatory.

Don't know if anyone has mentioned, but Trent's cross for Bobby's goal was the 19th pass of a move where we moved the ball slickly around them from one side to the other until the opening was created. I don't know why Marriner hesitated before giving that absoultely clear-cut foul against Kovacic. It was similar to the penalty appeal against Burnley in that the defender may have got the slightest of tounches on the ball but the attacking player was still in control - until cleared out by the defending player. Hence we should have had a penalty against Burnley and the foul was correct here. Marriner seems to hate giving any decisions at all these days, just likes to keep his head down and breeze through a game - should have been put out to grass years ago. And the Azpilicueta barge on Mane woud have been given outside the area. We played some lovely stuff in bursts, and it was really satisfying that we scored five whilst hardly ever getting into top gear against a good side desperate for points - including doing their best to rough us up. How did that work out for you, Frank?

That Ramsdale goalie for Bournbemouth looked quite good a while ago, pulling off some decent saves. Just like Henderson. The more I see of both of them, the less impressed I am. The two disallowed goals against - you guessed it - the two Manc teams just underline how useless the refereeing community is. If it's that close a call that you can't measure it and spend minutes on end jiggling about with the graphics, surely you just call it leve with the defender? Far too common sensible for those idiots. Also during the City game, there was a shout for a handball/penalty against Silva, when he stopped a cross (throw-in?) hitting his face with his hand. Penalty all day long for me. Commentator says - 'that's allowed, he's protecting his face'. Completely different to the Doherty situation, with the flying boot. I'd have been embarrassed to come up with that excuse when I was playing for my junior school team!