Money Cannot Buy you Love

There is a limit to what money can buy in football. Man City are finding out the hard way that just throwing money at a team (£325m and counting) is no gaurentee of sucess. However given the sheer weight of money the Sheiks have put into the team and the wages that the players are earning they have the right to expect a little more for their money than City have produced in their last few outings.

Under Mancini there are 2 Man Citys, a team that is nasty, mean spirited, fractous and effective, the other is nasty, mean spirited, fractous and ineffective. The former turned up at the Hawthorns today.

The difference is the presence of Tevez whilst not diminishing City's competitive nature they are  a whole tougher proposition with him than without him. Tevez proved our undoing in making the first goal for Balotelli and poor defending gave the Italian his second. Balotelli then launched a diabolical tackle on Shorey for which he was not even carded, eventually an assault by the striker on Mulumbu resulted in a straight red.

Despite having a man advantage for a large part of the 2nd half we only threatened sporadically. City deployed every spoiling tatic in the book and Mulumbu who was booked in the fracas following Balotelli's challenge managed to pick up a 2nd yellow for a foul on Tevez, who of course rolled around in agony just to help the referee make up his mind. No need another star struck referee was looking to even things up in any event after being pretty much forced to send off Balotelli (who is a seriously nasty piece of work)

Overall not a good day at the office for the Baggies. Playing Shorey at Right Back didn't work the defence looked shaky and we didn't really create that much, certainly until Odenwingie came on. We will have better days and RDM needs to have a bit of a rethink before the trip to Upton Park on Wednesday which might be the 1st game this season where we are under a bit of pressure to get a result with a depleted squad.

I am not bitter about the defeat frankly we were not good enough on the day to beat City, but as Brian Clough once said of an equally unlovable Leeds side of the 1970's "You can all throw your medals in the bin because they were not won fairly" This lot have not won a damn thing yet and it is my hope they never do, it will be a dark day for English football if this ugly cynical side win anything. Mancini can take his brand of football back to Italy where it belongs.

Post Script

How City had the brass neck to lodge an appeal over the red card is beyond me. As for Mancini's observation that you "win nothing with Angels" it is to be hoped that you win nothing with low level thuggery. If that is the best you can do with money at your disposal frankly the Arabs would have been better off burning the money at least we would have some pretty colours to look at for a few minutes rather than this ugly bunch of over paid footballing mercenaries.