Lucky To Get Nil

Lucky To Get Nil: 2011 Review Of The Year

Like Bowie at the end of the Ziggy Tour; like Frank Sinatra and Elvis in the Vegas years; like Ryan Giggs at any time in the last 3 years, LTGN is considering hanging up its boots and wondering whether it’s just been around too long.

Many say it’s the embodiment of all that’s good about the game, and has been scoring consistently every season. Others say it’s a clapped-out cliché of its former self, easy to ridicule (thanks Udik.) Hopefully somebody somewhere thinks it’s a public service, cheering up the downtrodden City fan. However, many of the nouveau brigade might not understand such gallows humour now we are so wonderful and shiny and successful. Some might say it’s rubbish because it’s not about football. Others might retort that it’s actually much more about football than any conventional set of worthy, statistically-based articles. Read more...

Lucky To Get Nil: City v Stoke Pre-Match Post-Match Review

Never let it be said that I leave any stone unturned in search of an angle on this column to enrich, tittilate and enliven your lives. And yet this week, I’ve been struggling.

After all, a freezing cold Wednesday in December against such tedious opposition is hardly going to inspire. You can almost hear the fixture computer laughing as thousands decide a Dale Winton Retrospective Xmas Special is more exciting than attending this match.

I didn’t agree - and wanted to subvert the preconceptions that surround this most mundane of cities. And yet - a search on 'exciting things happening in Stoke over Xmas' revealed… a concert by Richard Herring. A trawl through Wikipedia’s Stoke City page revealed that the club’s fanzine is called… wait for it... The Oakcake.

Readers, I was ready to slit my wrists. In desperation I hit upon the treasure trove that is funtrivia.com/Stoke-City. Get ready for your ribs to be tickled, your funny bones to be furtled and your mirth to give birth: “In 1976, the roof on the Victoria Ground’s Butler Street stand was blown off in a gale. Lack of adequate insurance meant that the club had to sell many of their best players to pay for repairs.”

…Er…that’s it. One wonders how any of the club’s fans can even be bothered to get out of bed to go and support a team of such stultifyingly dull tradition.

The only other noteworthy fact I could find about this most boring of clubs is the existence among its fanbase of a hooligan firm called The Naughty Forty – apparently notorious enough to merit its own entry. One imagines a group of fat, middle-aged men drinking, looking for a fight and living out the 1970s again; while back home their long-suffering girlfriends act out Delilah fantasies with the milkman. (That describes the entire supporter demographic of the league – Ed.)

So it was against this background that the teams trotted out for the Barclays Gary Speed Etihad Premier League handshake. The 15,000-plus crowd’s depression was made worse by the news that Richards, having avoided injury in the Arsenal game, had again made it into the side. Also, amazingly, the Forum’s Top Panel mystifyingly revealed no injury to Hargreaves. Perhaps he has left the club.

But if there was one person guaranteed to bring Christmas cheer, it was Mario. Eschewing the normal club colours and reprising a theme from earlier in the week, the Italian nutcase had decided to start the game dressed as a Christmas tree, replete with a fairy-shaped Mohican, lovingly crafted by his hairdresser.

The game began with an injury to Richards and settled into a familiar pattern. As the teams passed the ball to each other sideways, and shivered in the sideways sleet, The Naughty Forty amused themselves with chorus after chorus of Stoke’s signature tune, Delilah.

Isn’t it funny how fans only know the first line to songs?

For example, Richard Rogers, esteemed lyricist and write of Blue Moon, seemingly only wrote a song with 4 lines. Get to ‘Without a love of my own’ and you haven’t got a clue what comes next have you? In similar vein is the Oh Balotelli song, which appears to go: “Oh, Balotelli, he’s a striker, hmmm-mm,la,la mumble mumble.” Go in any toilet at half time and you will hear this. Does ANYONE know what happens in the subsequent lines of this ditty?

Likewise, Delilah. The details of the second verse, which illustrate the cuckolding antics of the eponymous heroine, are lost on their fans. F**k knows why they even sing it. Bored shitless by a shotless, scoreless nil-nil after 30 minutes, I had to know…

According to footballandmusic.co.uk  there was a guy who used to stand on the terraces behind the goal in the 70′s who’s name was Tom Jones. His mates found it rather amusing to sing Delilah at him and it caught on. Another explanation goes that there were a bunch of Stoke fans being rather loud in a pub prior to a game. The Police went over to them and said that they didn’t have a problem with them singing but could they mind the language - at which point one member of the group burst out with a few lines of Delilah and it snowballed from there.

But my theory about a) the extreme tedium of Stoke as a place and a team and b) the fan’s utter cluelessness about the second verse of the song were subverted by the final and (to me) the most plausible explanation: apparently, the “I felt the knife in my hand” line from the 2^nd verse was indeed appropriated by the fans, who changed it to  “I put my d**k in her hand…” The author of my research source tells how this reflects a certain misogynistic trait in the Stoke mentality, which has one of the worst ratios of males to females in the country.

No wonder they go to the football then.

Women of Stoke: enjoy your illicit Wednesday night shag/shopping spree/soap. The boyfriend will roll back around midnight, drunk and full of pies, and try to grope you to cheer himself up from the second-half goalfest that see us win by seventy three clear goals and go to the top of the league at Christmas.

Why, why , why, Delilah?

Lucky To Get Nil: City v Arsenal Pre-Match Post-Match Review

With the January transfer window fast approaching, this week’s Tevez titbit is the emerging story from Italy of interest in the on-strike striker - from an old lady!

Not some kind of necrophilic activity you understand (although with a mug like Carlos’ you might wonder) but apparently genuine interest from The Old Lady – La Signora – Juventus.

Word is they’re prepared to pay 21Mil for the belligerent Buenos-Airean, but that Khaldoon is holding out for 25....  

FOR GOD’S SAKE SELL HIM NOW!!! I’LL DRIVE HIM TO TURIN MY BLOODY SELF!!!! That is if I can get past the already-forming queue of traffic on Ashton New Road, waiting to do exactly the same thing.

And while we’re at it, can we use January to ship out some more dead wood, before Etihad Road begins to resemble a beaver’s lodge…? What IS Wayne Bridge for? Get O’Neill to buy Ned – or better still flog him to United who are short of a defender or two. Sell Ade to Spurs, for surely there is nothing more guaranteed to return him to his lazy, shuffling best than a permanent contract. Job done: Spurs freefall back down the table. And as for RSC – well I don’t even know whether the Shakespearean striker is even with us or not, so far under the radar has he become.

No doubt some pedant will point out that he was actually sold to Boca Juniors in 2006 but I’m on a roll and nothing’s gonna get in the way of fiction at its finest. What we need to do is replace our old acronym with a new one…

….RVP.

And who should be rocking up to Etihad Road this very weekend – none other than the eponymous Dutch master. He has 15 goals in 15 games with a startling 68 shots. That’s 4/5 per game. The man was born to score and would certainly put away some of the glaring misses our strikers have skied, scuffed or stumbled over in recent weeks. If we had him we’d win by at least 12 goals every game, no danger.

And anyway, we’ve bought most of the Arsenal team, so they won’t miss one more. Let’s batter the shite out of them and show him what a good team he would be coming to. OK, he’s an evil so and so and if you’re honest got Ade into all that trouble the season before last – but as we hate Ade now, it’s all fair in love and war.

But despite RVP’s gun-toting prowess, a surprising detail of The Arse’s performances this year is the way they have reverted to the old George Graham stereotype – they’ve won ten games this season by a single-goal margin – suggesting they’re better at hanging on to a lead than people think they are.

Even worse news comes in the form guide: the home team has failed to score in the last four matches in all competitions between City and Arsenal. Also we have lost at home to Arsenal 10 times in the Premier League and 20 times overall. Not good. Our main hope lies in keeping RVP quiet – no-one else in the team can hit a barn door with a bin lid. Let’s put Nige on him and mark him out of the game.

I really hope collective heads don’t drop if we don’t get going in the first 30 mins or so. We’ve got the experience and the fitness now to see games through, and we need a morale-boosting result. Fingers crossed we can keep 11 on the pitch. At least we’ve not got Clats again – that bastard has ruined too many games for us – but it looks like Phil Dowd will be officiating and he too can be trigger-happy. If you’re after a scrap, then Song and Frimpong are definitely the ones to wind up, as they top the yellow and red card counts respectively, so let’s hope Phil’s flapping the plastic in that direction and not ours.

But most of all though, we need to get behind the team after Chelsea. And if there was one Tevez titbit in the last week that was designed to bring a smile back to the collective faces of team and fans, it was this:

"Reports in Italy claim Milan are ready to offer Alexandre Pato or Robinho to City as part of a swap deal that would see Tevez join the Italian champions."

Now let me see, RVP or Robinho….. (sound of manic laughter)

Lock me up and throw away the key, doctor.

Lucky To Get Nil: Things We Have Learned From Chelsea

OK. Deep breath. Sense of perspective required and all that, but I'm upset. Let's try and wade through this minefield to some nuggets of truth. Here are some things we learned from the Chelsea defeat:

1) Lescott and Clichy Did Not Lose Us The Game
Yes, i have been critical of the defence in recent artilces, but we lost because we stopped doing what we were doing so successfully for the first 20 minutes: defending from the front. Defenders get forced into errors like diving in (most of our yellow cards and sendings off this season are caused by it) because the midfield - still - give the ball away too many times. Yaya does it constantly, Barry joined in tonight, and nothing would stick up front after a while. Of course the defence are going to be on the back foot. See sofcookies response to my recent article: if we are going to play like Barcelona, we need to play like Barcelona do when they haven't got the ball - and we stopped doing that halfway through the first half. Then the trouble began. Concentration is our enemy here, not fitness or ineptitude.

2) Bobby's Response Was Perfect 
If, like me, you were headbutting the cat and throwing the toaster through the window, whilst simultaneously burning your own hair, you may have missed the nuances of what he said after the game. it was calm, measured and not throwing blame about. Those players need this attutude more than ever. Loads of teams have got to this point in the season top of the league and thrown it away by losing self-belief. i don't think Bobby will let them do that - and nor should we as fans. If things don't go too well against The Arse, don't get nervous - stick behind the team. This is a confidence team and they need us now.

3) Don't Throw The Tactics Away When We Go A Man Down
The ridiculous sight of Kolo Toure at centre forward, Dzeko at right wing, Sergio off, Nige in goal and Silva off when we went  a man down - and still level - shows us, like in the Bayern and Napoli games, that if Bobby does have a fault, it's tinkering with the shape when we are behind. It almost never produces results. He realised too late that he'd taken off his aggressive, harrying forward - Sergio - and kept Mario on to fanny about and dive. Mario should have gone and Sergio stayed on. Mistake, Bobby. And stop putting square subs in round holes. That's what we've got a squad for.

4) The Media's Impartiality Is A Myth
Fat analyst Neville and Uncle Fester Wilkins could hardly hide their glee. Wilkins even apologised at one point. The Spurs/Chelsea/Liverpool/United-loving media will now have a field day, as will every part-time United fan on every social network. Avoid the temptation to kill them my friends, for we will rise again. Just don't read a paper, listen to the radio, watch TV, go online or speak to anybody for a few days.

5) We Can Never Recover A Second Half Deficit
If you go to Israel, there is a cave dating from the 35th century BC, in which this is written. it is the law and will never change.