Our team that year was an absolute joke. Packed full of Premier League quality players like Huckerby, Berkovic, Wanchope, Howey, Horlock, Tiatto etc. and eventually Jensen. And that's not mentioning lads like Shauny Wright and Dunney who were almost there. It was always going to gel and get firing.
And then after a few weeks of the season we just nabbed a guy who'd been playing in the top division in France (with, believe it or not, Anelka, Jay Jay Okocha, Distin, Laurent Robert, Mikel Arteta and Pochettino). He just walked straight off the plane and waltzed through Birmingham like he'd already seen the match in his head.
That's how the story goes isn't it? We signed him on the Thursday afternoon on a free transfer, registered him on the Friday night just in time to name him in the squad, we flew him over from Paris to Manchester on the Saturday morning, and just sent him out there in the afternoon to see what he could do.
Ran the game from the word go and the Birmingham lads didn't have a clue what they were watching, hahaha. There's that moment just before the first goal where he has it with his back to goal and there's six Birmingham players like statues because none of them know which way he's gonna go. In three seconds it's in the net, lol.
And before the second goal where he gives the short corner to Tiatto and shapes like he's going to cross, and all the Birmingham lads step out expecting the ball over, and he just backheels it to Tiatto on the left wing who whips it in for Dunne to make it 2-0. Remember watching it as an 8-year-old and laughing my head off.
I don't even think our lads were on Ali's wavelength that day either. The amount of times he was pointing to them, telling them where to go, then passing it to them, then moving to receive it so they had a nice easy pass back to him. Controlled the other 21 players on the pitch on his own - only Aguero's debut comes close.
