HIT THE CITY
If not now, then when? The logic on Tyneside is that Saturday’s 3pm kick-off between Manchester City and Newcastle at the Etihad is where Pep Guardiola’s patronising of Wor Eddie ends. Erling Haaland? We’ve got Alexander Isak, man. He even runs around a bit. The managers have been well acquainted for some years now, back to Eddie’s Bournemouth days when his trusty bunch of former EFL-ers would turn up in Manchester to get thoroughly gubbed. Pep would float them back down to Dorset, his simpering tones gushing sweet praise of being “so, so good”, despite losing 4-0, 4-0 and 3-1 in successive seasons.
Once Eddie became the toast of Tyneside, Howe of the lads, so to speak, he showed none of the old magic had gone. City duly spanked Newcastle 4-0 at St James’ Park and 5-0 back at the Etihad. If things have tightened up since – there was a Milk Cup victory two seasons ago – the statement win over City has still not arrived. After all, everyone’s landing one these days. Even Tottenham and Manchester United. And City’s rot started fully with a loss to Eddie’s old boys Bournemouth on 2 November, the first time his former club had ever beaten a City team. That both clubs are funded by petrodollars adjacent to Gulf nation states will always be remarked upon – and needs to be. If City’s rise is disputed, legal cases pending, it both inspired and then constrained Saudi Arabia’s desire to go hog-wild with spending, what with pesky profit and sustainability rules clipping wings.
New ownership undoubtedly altered both clubs’ horizons but did the sheikhs and emirs fully change the essence of them? Lately, as a wraith-like Guardiola contorts himself into touchline shapes that can resemble Charles Hawtrey hitting the disco biscuits, the ghosts of City’s comedic past reveal themselves. Was that Jamie Pollock dropping a, erm, Pollock for those Real Madrid goals? Who had Ruben Dias as the second coming of Michael Frontzeck? Ederson’s goalkeeping has come to resemble Eike Immel on a bad day. All of which has meant the premature end of Noel Gallagher’s co-commentary career.
Newcastle meanwhile, brim with confidence and are full of power and speed. Pep has already fully patronised them: “Today modern football is the way Bournemouth, Newcastle, Brighton and Liverpool play,” he cooed last month, gushing on Friday: “They have a lot of threats and a lot of positive things.” Has Howe knocked out the essence of Newcastle? Doubts must remain. Cast back a month, the Toon going for 10 wins in a row, only to be walloped 4-1 at home by Bournemouth, an opponent with just 12 players available. “A game too far,” sobbed sympathetic headlines after Eddie’s boys revived the club’s old trend of snatching defeat from the jaws of glory. Saturday looks a test of which club can hold back their true selves.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Here [it] is simple – to do something we need to sell players” – Ruben Amorim on the reality of managing in the Big Sir Jim era at Manchester United.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
In yesterday’s Football Daily you parped on about the scenes at Goodison nobody wanted to see that of course everybody wanted to see. You then mentioned two more examples of such scenes (Aniq Rizqin throwing punches and Alexander Barboza losing a tooth to a punch) but annoyingly failed to provide any links to the videos we would of course have ignored as they were scenes nobody wants to see. Please could you provide the links so I can
watchignore them? (No, because they are clearly scenes no one wants to see – Football Daily Ed)” – Giordy Salvi.
Of course ‘Satire died when Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize’ as the late, great Tom Lehrer said, back in the days when Big Website didn’t need to explain to readers who either Kissinger or Lehrer were (although those were the days in which people were also dumb enough to think I was named after a prize, so swings and roundabouts I guess), but if Chelsea end up missing out on the top four and Bigger Cup because they haven’t bought enough players then it will surely be the season that irony died” – Noble Francis.
David Moyes is proving that a manager matters in the current megabucks, oil-state-sponsored-super-teams. Cheers to that” – Krishna Moorthy.
I stayed late last last Tuesday working at the Etihad. I appreciated the press tribune that allowed Spanish media representatives to feel all the natural hate derived by Real Madrid. But I’m tired of Madrid’s unique success. Maybe I’ll change my job to be the next West Didsbury & Chorlton AFC media manager. They’re my new ninth-tier favourite team that I discovered during my whistlestop visit to Manchester. Fewer fireworks, more grassroots” – Denís Iglesias from El Periódico de España.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our letter o’ the day is … Noble Francis, who gets a copy of David Squires’s brilliant new book: Chaos in the Box. If you haven’t been lucky enough to win one you can order your own in the Guardian Bookshop. There are loads of other great tomes waiting to be added to your basket, too, so get shopping! Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.
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