Manchester currently likes London. London has become, temporarily at least, Manchester’s favourite place after Manchester.
Having already visited Wembley this season, where the next permanent Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær began to silence the doubters by boarding the return train complete with three points taken from his meeting with Mauricio Pochettino, he followed this up by calling in at The Emirates and dumping Arsenal out of the FA Cup. Unperturbed by yet another return to the capital he then proceeded to despatch Chelsea from the same competition.
Just in case Arsenal and Chelsea had been under the impression that they would get something when they travelled to Manchester they were both proven wrong at The Etihad where Manchester City put a total of nine goals past the two of them.
This coming weekend Chelsea play a team from Manchester AGAIN when they face City AGAIN in the Carabao Cup final. At least this one is on neutral ground so maybe Chelsea can keep the score down below four. We bet they can’t wait for the game!
The question is; will Maurizio Sarri still be in charge of Chelsea for their appearance at Wembley? The answer appears to be; yes he will. This almost guarantees that the team will lose as they won’t even have any “new manager enthusiasm” to help them. It is unlikely, however, that the Italian will still be in charge for much of next week.
Meanwhile, in Europe…..
Mo Salah looking, for one of the very few times in the game, as though he actually had control of the ball!
Liverpool’s defence coped that well without Virgil van Dijk that Bayern Münich couldn’t even manage to score a goal at Anfield. The problem was that Liverpool DID have Salah, Mané and Firmino and they too couldn’t manage to score a goal at Anfield. So a thrilling encounter ended goalless and now the Merseysiders must go to Bavaria and score whilst, at the same time, avoiding defeat.
Can they do it? You bet they can’t and Jürgen Klopp will get his unspoken wish and have an uninterrupted run at trying to win the Premier League.
Manchester City, on the other hand, remain in four competitions but they won’t win all of them because Kevin De Bruyne says they won’t.
They will, as we intimated earlier, beat Chelsea to lift the Carabao Cup, they will probably pip Liverpool to the Premier League title and their favourable result in the Champion’s League against Schalke 04 means they will probably progress in that competition.
The problem one is the FA Cup. Why, you may ask? Well, if the draw isn’t fixed and City avoid United until the final, (which would be a first), not only will that game provide the best entertainment, but it will pit Pep Guardiola against a manager who has made a habit of beating other big clubs away from Old Trafford, so why should City be any different?
Using this irrefutable logic we expect City to win the Carabao Cup and the Premier League. They may win the Champion’s League as well but they certainly won’t win the FA Cup, that one belongs to Ole.
And finally…..
Small, white and timid John Motson waving goodbye. Sorry if we’ve offended anybody with the use of the “w” word!
Forgive our obvious naiveté but we are struggling to understand why John Motson had to apologise for describing Millwall’s Tom Elliott as “big, black and brave“.
Motson is a sanctimonious jerk at the best of times but, as far as we are aware, he is no racist. It would appear that he was describing a football player to a listening audience. The clue here is in the word “listening“. Yes, he was on radio and it would have been more demeaning to black players had he not used the adjective, leaving uninformed listeners to assume that this “big, brave” player was actually white because, be assured, that is the assumption which would have been made, particularly with a name like Tom Elliott.
Yet another example of how pathetic today’s politically correct society has become.
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 