Dreck

It was funny for a while. They were all over us, no doubt about that. We looked lethargic and uninterested, overrun at the back and unable to cope with their 'passing and movement' in any part of the pitch. Ashley Young and Danny fucking Welbeck appear to have had the Man U branding steamed into their sleek sides. Evra is as much of a twat as he ever was. I will not mention you-know-who. He can fuck right off to join his mates in Croxteth for a night of petrol bombing.

Then there was De Gea. A stripling with wispy beard thrust into the limelight at Wembley and - it has to be said - at fault for both goals (though obviously the second more so than the first) which essentially came out of nothing. I couldn't hear it in the pub due to the sound of windows being smashed at the local Curry's across the street and the sickening crunch of bone as black bloc-ers vented their spleen at the local plod, but this morning on 5 Live I heard some commentary on Dzeko's goal. It was described as a 'great strike'. I have to disagree. It was an average strike, and should without question have been saved. At that point, it was funny. And you thought we could only improve with the wind at our backs and the usual wealth of talent at our disposal on the bench. Not to be though, was it? Typical City and all that bullshit as we continued our ponderous probings and allowed them back into it.

What the hell happened? Why on god's earth did Mancini bring on Gareth Barry? Can someone answer me that? Was he trying to hold on for the draw? Was he treating the match as some kind of training exercise, or as an opportunity to look at different ways of setting the team up? Maybe there is some contractual mcguffin in Agüero's contract which would have meant an additional €100 million falling due or something if he were to make an appearance. Who the fuck knows. All I can say is that it was pretty much a foregone conclusion from there on that we wouldn't win the thing. Yaya seemed out of sorts, Silva fitful, Balotelli poor and Dzeko average. In summary, our midfield and attack utterly lame in truth. But the real problems were at the back - Kolarov terrorised, Lescott exposed (again) and even Kompany frequently lunging. Richards was busy and stood out not only in defence, but in the team as a whole. De Jong didn't make much of an impression on me, and the whole lot were all too easily side-stepped by the marauding Rags.

I was glad in a way that the match didn't go to extra time and penalties, being as I was surrounded by Rags of European descent, and trudged home through the clouds of tear gas and screams of agony in the apocalyptic city.