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Manchester Derby Answers Big Question

What is going on?

Here I was at the start of the season totally convinced Manchester City would do absolutely nothing. Ok, so just like we did when Roman arrived, they’ve bought themselves some pretty good players, but so what? I’ve always maintained it takes more than money to get anywhere in the Premier League. You can’t just throw a load of quality individuals together and expect that in itself to be enough can you? Or can you?

Not that I’ll ever accept any comparison with Citeh in terms of them being the new Chelsea’, because as I’ve pointed out in the past, if you look at where they were when the Arabs came in and at where we were when Abramovich arrived, we were at a point where we were already in the top four, playing in the Champions and seemingly just needing his money to help us make that final step up to the title. Citeh on the other hand, looked like they’d need a bloody miracle to get anywhere near the Champions League nevermind seriously thinking about a title challenge, so all that rubbish about ‘if Chelsea can make the jump from 10th to 1st why can’t Man City?’ just made me laugh to be honest.

And yet, before the Manchester derby today it suddenly occurred to me that Citeh could finish the day level with us. If they got themselves a win against United today and we lose to Spurs, they’d be level on points – and worse still, they’d have played a game less. Has football gone mad? This is Manchester Citeh ffs, why would I even be considering the possibility of them getting anywhere near the top of the table? Wouldn’t that disprove everything I ever said in Chelsea’s defence about our title wins being about more than just Abramovich’s millions?

I mean, we weren’t sitting mid-table before Roman were we? We knew what Europe looked like, we knew how nice it felt to have something silver and shiny to look at now and then – and whilst we weren’t competing for the title convincingly, we certainly weren’t just plodding through a season picking up scraps mid-table.  And when the money came in, we didn’t have Mark Hughes running round wondering how quickly he could spend it indiscriminately, we had a man capable of putting a really good side together – in fact, if it wasn’t for the side Ranieri put together, Mourinho wouldn’t have won the title in his first season. Will Mark Hughes’ successor be able to say the same? I have to admit I was worried that was another one of my theories that was about to be tested in the first half of the derby game.

To my utter disbelief (and disgust if I’m honest), Citeh looked good – for the first half anyway – they actually looked like they had enough to live with their neighbours.  Fortunately though as United stepped up their game in the second half, it exposed City for what I’d suspected they were all along – also-rans. Fair play, for each United goal, they responded – but in all honestly, the goals were more to do with benevolence on United’s part than chances City carved out for themselves. In terms of pure football though, for all City’s spending, not only did they not have enough on the pitch to win the game but their bench wasn’t likely to add much to it either. And whilst United had the luxury of bringing on Michael Owen to get a late winner – yes, the same Michael Owen I thought Fergie had lost his marbles signing – City’s choice ofsubs was never going to afford them the same sort of return.

And so, as the final whistle went – about half hour after the 90 I think – I could sit, smug in the knowledge that I was right all along – it really does take more than just money, as the seething Mark Hughes is finding out!

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