Zippin up my boots

Is it only me, or is anyone else getting fed up with all this god stuff in footy at the moment? Has it escaped anyone's attention that the game is now owned by Muslims?

So, only City, Spurs and Chelsea hold that elusive 100% record. Based on yesterday's appalling rubbish, at least one of those three is likely to drop out of the equation before long. Of our players, only Ireland and Adebayor looked as if they could make something happen. Wright-Phillips did a lot of running around, but with limited results; Barry did not look a quality player, as evidenced by the amount of time he had on the ball, and the actual production of something decent at the end of it. Tevez gave his best impression of the waspish Wayne across the road at the Sty, with the crucial difference being that his sting had been removed, leaving an awful lot of pointless buzzing. Bellamy was even more of a waste of space than usual, stuck out on the left wing like that. In actual fact, we should have beaten a truly crap side comfortably, but were fortunate not to blow the game. Pompey had one shot on target and nearly scored from it! I have a bad feeling about the Arsenal...

The other night I was asked to justify my reasons for being a City supporter. Well, I said, I was born in Shropshire, so there were no local teams I could support. Truth be told, Oswestry did have a football team when I was a kid. They played in the Northern Premier League at that time, before committing the unthinkable sin of playing in the League of Wales. and then went into administration before merging with TNS - now known as The New Saints. It would not have been easy to have supported them, though I do of course look out for the New Saints results as they come off the vidi-printer. For obvious reasons, I could not have supported Wrexham, and as far as many of us were concerned, Shrewsbury may as well have been London. Extend that, and you will see why I reacted negatively when asked if I could have supported one of the Midlands teams, like Aston Villa, Wolves or Birmingham. Wolves would have been the least offensive of the yow-yow lot, but it still just wasn't an option, quite frankly.

No, all eyes looked north from Shropshire. In my mind (and in fact, when I return to Oswestry these days, it is still largely the case) there were always loads of City fans, quite a few Liverpool and Rags, the odd Toffee and a decent smattering of Leeds United. The fact of my uncle John's support for City swung it for me, and I guess I grew into the age for following footy at a peculiar phase in history when we were a decent side.

The fact that I was having to justify myself to a Toffee from Stockport is neither here nor there.