I did hear that Stu leaves his car running all day so as not to be cold if he has to run out for a quick minute.
I hope we get you again this year, so we can spank your asses 3 years running AKA hat trick for Barca over you Man city are a better team than you this season anyway
Porto got a massive coefficient boost by winning the Europa League last season, I think it moved them up a pot for this year's Champions League. That is one positive for a good Europa run. Only English/fans of the English league seem to look down at the Europa League with such disdain, personally as a match-goer I'm looking forward to another foreign team coming to our stadium.
True, if MCFC go far it will boost the coefficient. On the other hand, MUFC will almost certainly focus on the PL now exclusively, which will put a lot of pressure on City. perhaps fielding a B team at least in the round of 32, and perhaps the round of 16, is the way to go...so that they keep their hold on #1 in the Premier League?
You've got a big enough squad with enough good players to compete for both competitions and, in any event, it doesn't work like that. If teams get used to losing they tend to carry on doing it.
The Europa League could be a distraction but only if Mancini prioritises it a little too much. Like I don't think he will consider putting out teams as strong as we've had in the Champions League. He's likely to put out a weakened string side which is still very good, maybe not quite good enough to win the Europa League but probably as good a second string team as you might get outside of Madrid. ie... Pantilimon, Kolarov, Kompany OR Lescott, Kolo OR Savic, Zabaleta, De Jong, Hargreaves, Razak OR Suarez, Milner OR Nasri, Johnson, Dzeko OR Balotelli OR Aguero A fourth striker would be useful because I don't think we should play two of our main forwards in this competition. We have John Guidetti doing superbly at Feyenoord but won't want to break his loan while Luca Scapuzzi another promising one is at Oldham. I read in the Manchester Evening News that we may look at a loan or bargain signing to replace Tevez in January, I wonder if someone like Javier Saviola (out of contract next summer) could be on his way for the fourth striker role until the club deems Guidetti ready.
I think the bitterness is more along the lines of a man who has worked hard for what he has got meeting another who has done sod all in his life who is suddenly given a fortune that is unearned/undeserved. Nobody like new money! In a similar vein it's the same as paying a whore for sex - in the short term it's very enjoyable but in the long term it's not as satisfying as having a long term loving relationship with a woman (or a man).
If you're looking for morality and an honest man's game, I point you to League Two or below where football is still very working class and isn't dictated by money. What we're doing is the continuation of a monster that was in fact created more by Arsenal than City. Read up on the formation of the Premier League and come back and tell me who the main man in the hostile formation of it was. I'll spare you the effort: Arsenal's David Dein. Yes, Arsenal's David Dein. And the relevance? When the Premier League replaced "outdated" Division 1, football became a middle class money-spinning sport, no longer a working class sport. It was all about the money from then on, little by little top clubs began pricing out the common man. I tire of the same old money arguments about City. At least our club prizes our fans! Do you know that City fans can get a season ticket cheaper than Norwich fans can in certain areas? Look at Arsenal's season ticket prices, some of them are triple the cost of evil moneybags Citys, no wonder Arsenal fans complain about the atmosphere at the Emirates when the working class - who always create the most noise (do a 5 quid special day at the stadium and you'll see what I mean) - can't afford to go anymore. Is that just and fair? Or should we just apply these sudden moral values to City's owner who is putting money into not only the club but a long deprived part of Manchester, which will be regenerated into a sporting mecca in the coming years? Over 3,000 jobs... possibly many more will be created by our evil owners who are destroying football and lives or whatever other bullsh*t the sensationalist types can come up with. It doesn't matter where money comes from in football because football long ago ceased to be an honest sport, there is no morality at the top at any club. Ask fans of lower league teams who have their young kids poached by MY team, YOUR team, and just about any other team, depriving them of millions of pounds when the tribunal judges that the Premier League giant must pay a small compensation fee for said player. Or in Barcelona's case when Arsenal shrewdly exploit Spanish laws, they don't even have to pay Barca a single penny by my understanding. I could go on and on with examples of how this "unfair" usage of money has and does benefit every Premier League team, we're simply talking levels here and there is no moral high-ground to stand on for any club, especially fans of the former "Sky 4" who laughed as they banked in superior TV revenue and Champions League revenue as they created what was more or less a monopoly of English football for years before evil old City began to shatter the status quo that has caused sudden moral outrage from the morally bankrupt. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...ury-Arsenals-raid-La-Masia-academy-stars.html P.S. Every club has benefited from a "sugar daddy" in the past. For some clubs you might have to go back to the 30s or 50s or 70s (football did exist before the 90s contrary to what many younger fans seem to believe) but basically every club has at some point had this artificial infusion of cash. United have had at least two of them from the 60s onwards and might not even exist as a team if evil moneybags City hadn't helped them out after the war... ever wonder where the "rags" nickname for United comes from? We had to lend them old kits.
It's amazing how many people forget this stuff, isn't it. Well, I say, 'forget'... I SHOULD say, never knew. Personally I'd like to move, long term, to some form of fans membership/ownership model like the Spanish have with limits on how much money can be spent but, in the absence of that, I'm buggered if I'll take lessons in morality from teams that have been out-spending others for YEARS!