It's no longer a rumour it's true. He was at the reserves game yesterday afternoon with Ancelotti and Ron Gourlay phoned him at half time to tell him we wouldn't be renewing his contract. Wilkins left the ground and wasn't there for the second half. I'm assuming the words saying he had left the club 'with immediate effect' refer to the fact it was agreed he didn't have to see out the remainder of his final month.

It's all a bit bizarre

Ah ok, so you're playing in the afternoons now too. A lot of the PL clubs (including us) have decided to play the babies matches at the training grounds behind closed doors rather than at lower league grounds. I can see the tech reasons for it but it is very disappointing as I love watching ours (and other teams) kids. Jay Emmanuel Thomas scored a cracking goal this week for our babies, they have the highlights on ATV online but its not the same as watching the whole game live.
As to Wilkins, like I said they will miss him, it really is a bizarre thing as you say. Why call him up and sack him like that??
Footballs gone mad!

I know what you mean about watching the youth it's often more entertaining than watching the first team. All our reserve games are live on CTV but I'm on Virgin who had some sort of row with CTV so I can't subscribe to it 

At least your young players will have a heck of a lot more chances to get into your first team than ours ever will.

The press seem to be having a right go at our owners again today... Im quite happy the way the club is run. Not just on the funding of the team, but the facilities aswell. Theres all sorts of building going on around COMS at the moment. The new website is great aswell, just 2-3 weeks ago they streamed the reserves game live between City and Arsenal.

You'll get that till you start winning things. Then it will be 'you bought the league' or whatever you won. Then they'll get bored and move on to something else. That's how it went for us 

always makes me laugh that..........as you say we got it alot when we won the premiership for the first time.and again the next year............every team buys.......how much did rooney,ferdinand,vidic,evra,nani etc and when he was there ronaldo cost?!.were they bought for fun?.no!...they were bought to bring trophies and success...and every club does it..utd,us,arsenal,city.......that's the name of the game...........christ you could go back and say blackburn 'bought' the league by signing shearer and sutton etc..

city have made some good buys.....adam johnson has impressed me everytime i've seen him.....exciting player.....though he seems to be getting splinters in his arse atm at city which is puzzling.........and i think they made a mistake letting bellamy go......annoying little irritant...but that's who you want on your side....he reminds me of paul dickov......except bellamy is better...........i think they've made some bad buys at inflated prices.....but as mourinho said when he was our manager....'if a player is for sale and the price is set at 10 million,if we express an interest it goes up to 15 million'.......and thats now the same for city

There's no doubt at all in my mind that they have the players to mount a serious title challenge. They just don't have the right manager. Mancini seems like a nice bloke but he's not having any more success than Hughes had despite having much better players. As soon as the owners twig that Mancini is out. Good luck to them though finding another Mourinho. City getting Hiddink is my own personal nightmare.

In the meantime their fans need to adopt MrMeat's approach and ignore all the nonsense in the press. How many clubs have had foreign owners buy into them now? It shouldn't really even be news anymore.

The Sun have wrote crap about the club for over a year now, apparently they have been banned from entering COMS and have been denied access to the training ground because of stories that have wrote about the owner. My favourite was last year when they said City had bought every player a £150k watch... later they were taken to court over it.

Rumours have it that we may be looking to build out own ground, im guessing the club wants to increase the capacity. I don't see the point to be honest, we only sell out on the big games and the current one is actually paid for by the council. No stadium maintenance costs to worry about. The press can knock the club all it likes about the direction we are going in... the only thing I miss is the old maine road atmosphere. Its awful at eastlands, theres only one block that seem to make any noise. Also abit sh*te that we don't have many players in the first team squad that came through the ranks or been there for a long time.

It seems to be a hot topic recently with the fans of who is now our "Mr Manchester City"
It used to be Stephen Ireland during the 08/09 season, as we went into 09/10 though he was poor and faded away.

We look at other clubs and they have someone to look to as their "leader".

Liverpool - Gerrard
Chelsea - Lampard/Terry
United - Giggs
Arsenal - Fabregas

Michael Johnson is a top player if he's fit, problem is... he's picked up all sorts of long term injurys. Apparently he's near full fitness now though. He played one game last season I think and scored a cracker.

Sorry but that's something you're going to have to get used to. As soon as it looks like you're going to have star players and win things that's what you're going to get. The same thing happened to us. I can't imagine any of our 'new fans' getting excited at the prospect of watching us playing Oldham in old Division 2 on a wet Tuesday night. I did, and I don't regret it. To me it was just Chelsea and singing only one Kerry Dixon made up for it all somehow even when he didn't score. Finally getting some success I thought I would never see in my lifetime has been amazing.

But you'll get the glory hunters too. It comes with the territory I'm afraid  

Obviously I don't go to Stamford Bridge, but from what I hear on TV often when Chelsea score against a team like say Blackburn or Bolton or someone, the Chelsea fans do the most half hearted cheers for the goal. I know it's because Chelsea fans go there knowing that their team is going to win, so it's not really that much of a special moment when your team scores.

It was the last time I stood at an away game way back when. Fab atmosphere in the Kippax. You know my views about standing..... and drinking bee-yor .... and smurking tabs.

As a matter of interest do any of your grounds sell beer? Ours has a load of Carlsberg and Tetley shieght. The only way to get a decent drink here is to have one in the pub before and after.
Meanwhile today's value for money selections.... Manchester U. Arsenal. Newcastle. Liverpool. Burnley. Ipswich. Darlo.

Darlo 1-0 up. Keep it up! Took 'em win/win too.

Bugger!

What an absolutely ridiculously brilliant goal by Elmander today...

5th in the league.

Madness....


0-0 and Tevez off for Barry? I swear at one point I even heard our own fans shouting "You don't know what your doing". That substitution just topped it off, muppetry at its finest.

Mancini is on the way out. I was amazed that Man U dropped points again though. It's like they just don't want to win it this year. Elsewhere it's good to see Liverpool are making such excellent progress under the clueless fraud best manager of all time.

I'm beginning to wonder if we're going to see a Chelsea/Arsenal title fight this year.

If it wasn't bad enough that Capello picked a guy who has tried and failed to make it as a striker in the Premier League dozens of times, he's only gone and called up Carlton Cole...

Chelsea are just like us... booing substitutions Tevez for Barry was a far worse sub though.

Sigh...
I was at Villa Park yesterday and, even at 2-0 up, I absolutely KNEW what was going to happen next. I know us too well.. 

Your not the only side its happened to... bit of a kick in the bollox when they actually decide to play after 85+ mins.

 Until they scored, they had only three shots on goal and not one of them on target.
Whereas we hit the woodwork about half a dozen times and should have been at least three or four up. Ah, bugger it..

Wow... that was awful. Chelseas defense looks a shambles without John Terry.

got what we deserved................nothing.....but for cech it could have been worse......

Ferreira is a lousy right back and an even worse central back I would have played the tea lady in central defence rather than him. Ramires was shocking and who does he take off? Malouda off, Kalou on, then finally he brings on Kakuta who has neither scored or looked like scoring in any game he has played for us.

My guess is Ancellotti and Mancini have been sharing tactics over the phone.

considering we had bruma on the bench it would've made more sense to start with him.....he is a centre half..................george clooney..(pf) has been given twisted blood all season.....ramieres is just too lightweight and needs to toughen up if he's to get on in the premier league

I would have started with Bruma too. Ramires is looking less and less like a PL standard midfielder he gives the ball away far too often. CA underestimated Sunderland he thought we would be too strong for them up front for what we were doing in midfield and defence to matter. Wrong. Like you said, we got what we deserved: sod all.

Watched Everton Arsenal.

Gave Chelsea Sunderland a miss cos thought it'd be a formality. What do I know?

It was brilliant wasn't it? 

No doubt the clowns on MOTD will still vote a 25 yard top corner pot shot as goal of the month ahead of it.

Awful so far... France all over us.




Also, just switched on the Italy v Romania... its like the 70's all over again. Balotelli is recieving racist chants and being boo'ed each time he touches the ball. The press have picked up on it already.

Crouchaaaayyyyyy!!

Hahahahahahahahaha It would of been a f*cking good goal aswell...

And they call that the worst French team in decades...

Oh my, that Premier League table is looking quite good right now.

Johan Elmander is ludicrously brilliant right now. Get him signed up for another few years...

Brilliant match today, one of the best I've ever seen at the Reebok.  Elmander is showing us now he's worth every penny we paid for him

Indeed, I did see a few Ligue 1 games on TV that he played for Toulouse and he had that kind of potential then.. just needed to get used to the game here which he has done. Owen Coyle has done a great job with the players since taking over.

How ironic that Andy Carroll was 2/1 to score at any time today. :smug: It made up for putting Six poond on the 'Boro to win at 5/6! That was the worst game of the season and I suspect we are on our way to Division Three, in old money.

Ouch
One of my worst days ever as a Gooner - took friends son to the game, he cried his eyes out at the end. Wasn't helped by fans around us squaring up to eachother, and these were Gooners with eachother not with the N17 lot

I started watching the Norf Landan derby in the pub and was well pleased with the way it went (the arse winning) Imagine my disappointment whilst filling out my betting slip at the ground when I heard people cheering a third goal for Tottingham! I promise not to back Arsenal to win the League next year Veggie, for I may bring them luck!

Thanks Joe
The gooner forums are in full rant mode, calling for AWs head, saying get shot of Cesc etc etc. They are mad, but I get the hurt. I didn't even watch MOTD tonight but have just put on the League show. At least Brentford won today.


Are you seriously worried about Boro? I haven't really seen a lot of the results today but thought that Mowbray was sorting them out.
Why O why are we footie fans, my whole month is ruined by this result.

I am seriously worried about the 'Boro!

Our only hope is that Mogga may have planned some sorta incoming newbie system. I think we may be selling various players to finance this, but apart from 3 megapoond for Wheater and a few pence for O'neill, I have no idea how they will finance it.