The Final Say

Real go gaga over Gago

Over the course of January and for some time before, City had been linked to a number of players to sign before the transfer window closed last Monday. Indeed, on deadline day itself, we were linked to a number of players, most notably McDonald Mariga, Adam Johnson and Fernando Gago.

At the beginning of the day, Mariga was on his way to England to seal a transfer to City while Johnson was staying put and the Gago deal was dead in the water. Then the home office intervened and refused to give Kenyan international Mariga his work permit and the deal was off. The reason was because of Kenya’s FIFA ranking being outside the top 70 in the world.

You would have thought that, when the deal was being agreed with Parma someone would have stopped and said “er, hang on a minute, we might have a problem. What the FA’s stance on world rankings?” Had this been done, the club could have scraped the deal for the Kenyan and got Gago instead.

The blues have some in for a bit of stick over the Gago deal, which is only to be expected really. Think about it. Real Madrid embarked on a summer transfer spree and had to recoup some of the money from somewhere. But when City came along, the Spaniards obviously saw Euros in their eyes and upped their price considerably, which tends to happen when City make an approach for a player these days. Yet when the deal fell through, it wasn’t because City didn’t want the player, it was because Real were victims of their own greed and City showed that they would not be held to ransom over transfer fees.

But we did sign Adam Johnson and he has the potential to be big at Eastlands, but who will he replace? Martin Petrov is the obvious candidate but SWP hasn’t made many starts. Cooke and Mancini though will risk the wrath of the supporters should they dare sell SWP for a second time.

Terry went a Bridge too far.

For his indiscretions with Wayne Bridge’s ex girlfriend, Fabio Capello this week stripped John Terry of the England captaincy. And rightly so. Some may think that the action Capello took was a bit harsh; after all John Terry’s private life has nothing to do with his performance as captain of England does it? Well yes it does. Like any leader, Terry is supposed to set an example not only to the players on the pitch under his leadership but also to the supporters and the thousands of youngsters that are looking to get into the game. What sort of message has he given out over the last couple of weeks? It was the only action Capello could have taken.

Terry has missed the chance to lift the World Cup in South Africa but now that job has been given to Rio Ferdinand. I would have thought that Steven Gerrard would have got the job but Capello would have needed to tell him to win games before walking off with the trophy.

When will the blues learn?

That’s the question being asked at the moment. When will City learn to beat these lower teams? It’s becoming a bit of a joke now that we can’t seem to beat lower teams away from home. Last weekend we beat Portsmouth without getting out of bed but on Saturday none of the players even woke up for the game. I don’t care it’s a case of taking the game for granted, they couldn’t be bothered or they had one eye on the FA Cup fifth round next week, there should be no excuses for losing at Hull. Yes the home team can be a very good side when the want to be but if the blues have serious ambitions of winning something, of making the season count for something, we should be travelling to these places and wiping the floor with them.

Teams like Hull always raise their game against teams like us so we too should raise our game. It’s no good going there thinking the three points are in the bag. You have to play well and earn them. City supporters travelled a long way to Hull and to be rewarded by allowing the home team to run you off the park is just a disgrace.

We’ve got a home game against Bolton and there had better be a stark improvement or the Eastlands faithful will start to get restless. Since September, my father-in-law has been saying ‘someone’s going to get a thrashing from us soon,’ so please let it be on Tuesday so I don’t have to hear it again the next time I see him.

And finally…

As you may already know, England have been given a kind(ish) draw to qualify for Euro 2012. Craig Bellamy’s Wales, Martin Petrov’s Bulgaria and former star Gelson Fernandes’ Switzerland as well as Montenegro. Any captions to go with this picture of Fabio Capello?

Until next Sunday, keep the faith, have a good week and don’t work too hard.