Manchester City 0 Arsenal 1: Below par, but still three points

Patrick Vieira receives attention from Bosvelt and Macken

Studying in Derby means I can usually access northern aways with relative ease. Unfortunately for myself and uni mate John, British rail didn’t have the same idea, and what should have been a 25 minute trip to Uttoxeter to get picked up for my lift to Manchester, turned into an hour and a half fiasco. We eventually made our way towards the grey clouds of Manc land and ended up having a couple of drinks on the outskirts of Manchester before completing the last three miles of our journey. This proved to be a bad decision as the roads were rammed and it took us over an hour to complete the short journey !

We luckily still managed to make it to the ground with 15 minutes to spare, last season I was in the upper tier of the ground, and was hoping for better atmosphere and singing in the lower tier this time round. Before the start of the game we had a minutes silence for Brian Clough, although I wasn’t born till a year after he completed back to back European cup victories I still knew, appreciated and respected what the man had achieved, and obviously being in Derby at the moment its dominated the local news and talk around the area.

Onto the game, and Bergkamp, Campbell and Edu came in to replace Pires, Cygan and Gilberto, with Jose out on the wing. City started brightly with Anelka going close, but we broke the deadlock in the 14th minute when Ashley Cole latched onto a loose ball following on from good work by Henry and Reyes to slot past James. It was only at half time when seeing the goal again on the screens in the concourse area that you realised how well he had taken the goal, by shooting with the outside of his left foot and going through Distins legs and in the corner of the goal. City responded with large chunks of possession but did nothing with it which pretty summed up the whole game with only six shots on target between the two sides.

Off the pitch a new song started to emerge on the terraces which looks like it could catch on. The player in question - Kolo Toure , with the tune to the conga “do do do we got Kolo Toure, do do do he plays for arsenal” lets see if it can get a good airing at home to Charlton on Saturday. I was also pleased (and obviously joined in) at giving Anelka and Danny Mills massive amounts of abuse all afternoon.

First team debut for Van Persie

The game quickly turned into us defending the 1-0 lead with Clichy coming on to replace Reyes, and Fabragas coming on for a poor Bergkamp. Van persie also came on to make his premiership debut in place of Freddie but only had five minutes at the end so we didn’t get to see what he could really do. Cole also hit the outside of the post late on. Wenger said after the game that it was like a cup tie, and my stomach was flipping like it was one after some late City pressure. Just like most teams you do wonder how much better City would do if their fans actually got behind the side apart from the ones who sit either side of the away sections. It was somewhat a relief when the final whistle went, and to be honest I can see this unbeaten record going sooner rather than later. I think if it had been chelshit or man ure today we would have been beaten.

After leaving the ground we stopped off at “the city chippie” for some much needed food, a quite niceportion of chips and cheese and onion pie went down nicely as we walked back to the car discussing the days events, we eventually got back to Derby at 7.30pm after a traffic free trip back. Thanks again to The Uttoxeter Gun aka Barry for the lift !