A day has passed...

Well a day has passed since City failed to get the fourth champions league spot and my original disappointment is turning to annoyance, and maybe even a certain calmness, in the fact that it is probably going to be City's best ever Premiership finish, and probably the highest finish I can remember in the top division.

The annoyance is aimed pretty squarely at the media and their coverage of the game, and the general back slapping to Tottenham and Redknapp in particular.

I will laugh so hard the day he is taken down for being the devious, conniving, back hander taking, swindling git that he is.

His knocking up of players is a disgrace, his holier than though view on his own team is annoying, his hysterical ranting at others is despicable, and his dodgy dealings make Terry Venables look like a saint!

There is a reason Portsmouth went into administration, and it isn't Peter Storey!

But all of this has been forgotten by the press today. Add to this their playing of the "Money bags City" being pipped at the post by poor lowly Spurs with their English players and wonderful team spirit?

... So Spurs haven't spent anything on players? I seem to remember them being just a few million short on city in the last couple of transfer windows?

Also, City may have foreign owners, but to imply that City just have expensive foreign imports? - tell that to Wayne Bridge, Gareth Barry or Michah Richards, Shaun Wright Phillips, Nedum Onuoha or Adam Johnson.

I hope a year in the Europa will do us good. I hope we don't go mad and try and buy another new team. Just one or two new faces and lets see what we can win next year.

Not "aim for 4th" but actually win.

Let Spurs struggle with the extra games - I want to see some silverware!

Chin Up.

Gutted..Absolutely Gutted

Oh Well, I am so gutted about tonights resilt in so many ways...

role on next season....

Doesn't time fly...

...when you should be updating your blog on a regular basis? I know I've said this before, but I really am quite poor at this, and I do have every intention of updating this thing once if not a couple of times a week.

I think the single biggest problem in my desire to be the most cutting, witty, informative social columnist/blogger in the known world, is the fact that I seem to be surrounded by those far better at it than me!

As mentioned previously, when I want to be all anti media and knocking the daily Mail outrage brigade, there's Charlie Brooker doing it far better than me!

If I want to be all funny and satirical there's "The Daily mash", for all things nerdy there's "Topless Robot"

When I want to talk about my beloved Manchester City there's a particularly good blog I read - "The Lonesome Death of Roy Carroll"

I suppose the one area not fully covered yet (or that I've managed to stumble across yet) is a good blog knocking all things Man U****d.

I know they are pretty good at doing it themselves, but the recent Green and Yellow scarf "protest" at their owners is making me chuckle even more than normal. That along with their current and past players lining up to point out how they would never play for City no matter how much money we were to throw at them.

I think it's also worth pointing out , Mr Neville and Mr Beckham... errrmm we don't want to sign you, and by the mere fact that you both work for the minimum wage and live in housing association flats proves that you are not in it for the money.

Oh no, that's right you've spent the bulk of your careers playing for the richest clubs in the world! - I guess they must pay you peanuts. (okay, maybe they do in Neville's case...)

I was drawn to the following comments on the Mail on Sunday website within a column by Piers Morgan -

"Beckham’s been a treacherous, money-grabbing, club-hopping, fame-hungry, egotistical little weasel"

I would like to point out how disgraceful the above comment is and totally out of order, to the point of being completely offensive...to weasels, never mind the fact of Piers Morgan calling someone else a weasel!

Everything else seems okay though.

The above comment was in response to "Becks" wearing a Green and Yellow (sorry Gold) scarf at the end of the recent U****d, Milan match.

As touched on above the whole "protest" movement at Old Trafford is really quite comical, and if they really want to look at football clubs pulling themselves apart they couldn't do much worse than looking at their richer neighbours throughout the Swales era.

Anyway, the merits or otherwise of their protest will be far better documented elsewhere, but they only real point I want to raise, is the general stupidity of the fans.

These Green and Yellow(sorry Gold) scarves are being given away free? I don't think so. Other than some sweatshop knocking them out and Salford scallies selling them on, it would only be funnier if it was actually the Glaziers producing them. (At least City's original batch of Blue and white scarves were a Free gift of Frank Shinawatra - okay the fact he's an international fugitive maybe waters this point down...)

I actually saw someone (presumably on their way to OT for the game the other night) wearing a green and yellow (sorry gold) Hat, scarf, shirt (and presumably socks). Yes, he looked like a jester.

The Glaziers being consummate business men, I imagine U****d's away kit next year will be... Green and Yellow(sorry Gold) and they'll all be queuing up at the megastore to buy it!

The Green and Yellow (sorry.. this is getting tedious isn't it?) protest is in part in support of the Red Knights consortium of 70 leading business men looking to buy U****d back from the Evil Glaziers. I believe one of the 70 is a certain McManus - the same Irish racehorse owner - who sold his shares (for a massive profit) to the Americans in the first place!

You really couldn't make this up its like something out of Monty Python!

The choice of Green and Yellow, is showing how great the club was before it went Red, and turned it Manchester United from Newton Heath. The reason for that reformation? Because they were going out of business! Priceless.

Anyway, I'm going to put on my black and white Maltese cross scarf in celebration of St Marks Boys club in protest at the next City game... well, maybe not!

SNOW! END OF THE WORLD! A MAYAN CONSPIRICY!

Well, what a day its been in drizzly Manchester! 5th of January 2010 will go down in history as not the day the world ended due to the Large Hadron Collider being switched on, or the end of the Mayan calendar - but the day it snowed in Manchester. Quite Heavily.

Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate we are not really set up for snow to interrupt our usual drizzle, and it was quite heavy ( about 5-6 inches) but I haven't seen a city and its people attempt to grind to a halt seemingly at the say so of the media who went into immediate panic mode as soon as they all got into their studios.

You really would have thought a giant meteorite was about to hit the earth!

I left to go to work at 0520 and stepped out of my door to see the full extent of the snow. The first thing I thought was "Gosh, it's been snowing".

I picked up two workmates and drove into the centre of Manchester. We were all in agreement that it had been snowing, and at times, things were a bit hairy on the roads, due to the thickness of the snow.

We had a bit of a dilemma once we arrived in town, on trying to decide which car park to park in. Once this was decided, we parked up and walked to the office, slipping a little on the way, we arrived with damp shoes and wet socks and settled down for a days work.

That really was the level of our concern at the weather.

Within an hour or so the media had woken up and started spreading panic amongst the general population (and in particular the rest of my staff due in at the office).

The phone calls started.

"I'm not sure I can make it in my cars stuck!"

"The radio says all public transport has been suspended!"

"The TV says that the emergency services are no longer functioning!"

"The Internet says the Airport is closed - THE AIRPORT IS CLOSED!!!"

Now, how Manchester Airport being closed affects anything I'm not too sure; as far as I know, none of the guys on the service desk fly in to work.

The airport seems a strange barometer for the weather - "It was that bad, they closed the airport"

Now forgive me if I'm wrong, but Ringway has two mile long stretches of concrete, which when it snows, will quickly get covered. It then isn't really wise to send airplanes hurtling up and down those stretches of concrete to either land or take off. You can't really ask the Ryanair flight to Didcot to tootle along at under 20mph in case its a bit slippy.

No you close the airport (or more importantly the runways) clear them, and then get things moving again. Oddly this doesn't really make the news.

As it turned out we managed to cajole/ bully pretty much all the staff into the office, and they all arrived quite safely in one piece. I'm sure they'll all have better excuses worked out for tomorrow.

A special mention should go here to Dave "Cold - that's not cold, let me tell you about cold" Hardisty, who arrived from somewhere past Bolton half an hour early for his shift wearing a short sleeve shirt!

I was then most annoyed to see the City watch was postponed for tomorrow night! How can they postpone a match the day before - and a derby at that! Surely it should have waited until the actual day of the game - it isn't as though the fans have got to travel far - oh actually, scratch that I was forgetting the united fans coming up from the home counties - and the disruption to the Irish ferry crossings.

I despair!

Anyway, where did I put that orange football!

Happy New Year and All that...

Well another year comes and goes, and after 2001, we're into our second special Sci-fi year - and there's still no sign of any flying cars!

Were the authors / makers of those books and films miles off course, or are these amazing products being kept from us. (We may have computers in a mobile phone - but where's the 3 course meal in a single pill?)

Anyway, I guess the next milestone year is 2019, and the world of Bladerunner? Will there be androids running about a rain swept California and yet more flying cars? Well we've got the rain here in Manchester so if everyone else could just catch up please.

That said, I suppose it could all finish in the year 2012 so maybe I should just start building my own ark!

As to a new years resolution - I promise to write more.... but don't hold your breath - I may just be finishing the prototype astromech droid to serve drinks at my next bar-be-que!

Happy New Year all!

FOOTBALLER CELEBRATES GOAL!!!

As a footnote to a couple of my previous blogs, and as I appear to be on a bit of a run in updating this at the moment, I woulds like to touch upon the antics of a certain David Nugent.

Mr Nugent currently plays for Burnley, and was a substitute in their recent game at Eastlands. Throughout his warm up in front of the corner of the South Stand where I sit he was continually jeered and abused.

Nothing to serious, or say to the Cantona level of abuse, but every time he jogged back toward us he woulds have a big grin on his face ands maybe even a wink for us.

Needless to say he was subbed on and set up the equaliser with 4 minutes to go.

As all his team mates rushed to the Burnley fans, Mr Nugent made a slight detour in our direction to again smile and wave to those who had been mocking him all game.

Adebayor it wasn't...but it was nice he remembereds us before going to join his team mates.

In defence of our wayward striker - that is what football is all about. It's about passion, it's about putting one over on the other team, its about talking points.

Bring on Arsenal in the Carling Cup!

I Really am an Old man. Part 35

As mentioned in my previous blog (Yesterday - I know - amazing!) I am currently on a two week break from work to settle in to the new house, get some jobs done and spend a bit of quality time with the family.

With this in mind I decided to take the chaps from work up on an invite to a night out in Manchester, leaving the wife, one grouchy and one poorly child at home(!)

What a strange and disturbing experience it was.

It was a good crowd I was out with, about 10 of us, of which one female, 4 gay, 3 over 30 (No I wasn't the oldest!) the rest in their twenties, and we started in a bar cum restaurant in the Printworks in Manchester. We all caught up on what had been happening in work and my holiday so far in a nice atmosphere, even if the music was a little loud.

As the beers slowly went down for every one relaxed and a couple of the younger guys got all excited when the song "Since You've been gone" came on - an old, somewhat upbeat AOR track I remember from my youth. After some head scratching the mobile phones came out as people hooked up to the internet to find out who the band singing.

We'd clearly be no good cheating at a pub quiz, as about half way through the next song we finally found out / realised / remembered it was Rainbow, Ritchie Blackmores band from the late seventies/early eighties. Half the guys rocking out to it weren't even born when it was released.

Oh well. I guess around then it was decided that as we could all still hear each others conversations and we had been there for more than two drinks, we'd better move on somewhere else. I've noticed this as a feature of the odd nightout I've been on in the last few years, no one stays put any more! It's like a constant view or feeling that the grass is always greener, and the next bar will be that little bit more exciting.

Why can't people just stay put? Whatever happened to finding yourself a corner in a friendly pub or bar and settling in for the night?

We all trooped out of the bar and around the corner and stood about in the cold trying to decide where to next. So many of these nights seem to revolve around standing about outside wondering what to do next.

I managed to show myself up again in front of a couple of the young guys (even one of the gay chaps) by not standing with my tongue hanging out as two young ladies, in two very short glittery dresses. All I could think was - "Where's their coats? They'll catch a cold dressed like that in November!"

Now that was either the Dad in me coming out, or I've just been exposed to too much porn and don't feel the urge to oogle girls in the street.

Anyway, into "Norwegian Blue" where you really couldn't hear yourself think for the loud music. This again is a bar cum restaurant. Why oh why would you want o have your ears bleed with it?

There was a group of 10-15 middle aged women all wearing matching pink top hats which, believe it or not, didn't need the legend "Hen party" written on them - we could tell.

After a drink or two a song came on, a cover of the intro song out of the film Pulp Fiction. Although recognisable as the song, every bit of it had some singing or rapping or something else going on over the top of it. a couple of songs later and I discovered that all teh music was like this. Every second of every song had to have lots going on, like everyones attention span is that short if you just pause people will wander off.

On my way into town earlier that evening I'd been listening to "Loveless" by My Bloody Valentine, an eighties/nineties indie band. There are 5 minute tracks of just distortion on a single note with slight tonal changes every so often. You can just let it wash over you as you sink deeper and deeper in.

I'm guessing it's no good for bars in the Printworks.

Oh well. Half past nine my ears could take little more, I said my goodbyes and left.. to drive home listening to noise and feedback at maximum volume in the comfort of my car!

Reason 36 coming soon.