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.