WHY SAY ANYTHING?

Manchester City have signed Aymeric Laporte. Manchester’s poor relations, (according to their manager, Pep Guardiola), who can’t afford to spend a lot of money on players have now spent a club record £57 million on buying the Frenchman.

They have a very expensive, if not very good, defence having bought Claudio Bravo, Ederson, Kyle Walker, Danilo, Benjamin Mendy, John Stones and now Laporte so, hopefully for them, things will improve.

By the way, the poverty-stricken Manchester team also splashed out on a private jet to fly from Madrid to Bilbao, collect their new signing, then fly from Bilbao to Manchester where he stayed in the 5* Radisson overnight before being chauffer-driven to the CFA on Tuesday morning.

It must be tough to be as poor as City!

Whilst on the Cityzens, Leroy Sané could be out for a while thanks to THAT tackle from Cardiff’s Joe Bennett. Our question is a simple one. Why is there no talk of retrospective action against the player?

The ruling is that the referee has to have missed the original offence and it is fairly evident that, in this case, he did. Giving only a yellow card for the challenge was evidence that he didn’t see the lunge clearly and so the eventual sending off of the player for two yellows, which carries a one-match ban, should be overruled and turned into a straight red which would mean a three-match ban.

Anyway, rant over and City should retain their twelve points lead at the top of the Premier League when they beat West Bromwich Albion on Wednesday night, despite the baggies being buoyed by their recent cup exploits at Anfield.

Down the road somewhat…..

Manchester United will have Alexis Sánchez making his league debut against Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Wembley and, had this game happened seven or eight weeks ago, we would have been tempted to expect a draw.

At that time United were drawing games they should have won and Spurs were going through a purple patch.

Now, however, the tables have turned slightly. United have signed Sánchez and Tottenham have just drawn with Newport County in the FA Cup. These two events have shifted the tag of favourite result from a draw to a United win. (United also have a pretty good record at Wembley).

Finally on United and David Beckham is astonished that United were able to get Sánchez at all! Why is that David? He’s left a team sixth in the Premier League, who are out of the FA Cup and not competing in the Champion’s League and whose season’s success rests on beating Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final and, possibly, winning the Europa League.

United managed those two feats last season when they were expected to win nothing and have now progressed to a stage where Sánchez is at a club second in the Premier League, still in the FA Cup and competing in the Champion’s League. Their qualification for next season’s Champion’s League is, unlike Arsenal, not going to be determined by their success in the Europa League.

Added to that United is, arguably, the biggest club in the world.

Hopefully this manages to reduce the astonishment felt by Mr. Beckham and goes some way to explaining, as simply as possible, why the Chilean pitched up at Old Trafford.

Over in Wales…..

Tonight’s football saw a resurgent Swansea take on Stubborn Old Man’s Arsenal at the Liberty stadium. Henrikh Mkhitaryan eventually made his debut but didn’t look out of place when he started the game on the bench, a place he had become quite accustomed to while at United.

Swansea continued their “why couldn’t you play like this earlier?” form and won the game 3-1 as Arsenal continued their “how can you be this bad?” form.

And back up in Yorkshire…..

Liverpool travelled the relatively short distance to Huddersfield still clinging to the hope that the addition of Virgil van Dijk would improve their defence.

It did because he wasn’t selected and the resulting clean sheet was a huge positive as were the three goals the team scored against an abject Huddersfield side.

And finally…..

Wednesday night, apart from the two games involving the Manchester clubs which we have previously mentioned, sees Chelsea take on Bournemouth at Stamford Bridge, which should be a routine victory for Antonio Conte’s men. As they say, we shall see!