Remember Keegans city going to Highbury one mid-week game at the time arsenal were the best team in the country.As ever the optimist Keegan told sky sports as the team bus left the maine road car-park.."We are going to Highbury to win" promising a typical Keegan performance and indicating he would be sending the team to attack.
Sure enough,the 1st twenty minutes had city playing some brilliant football-Bernarbia and Eyal looked sublime.real quality and even the Highbury crowd were shocked at both the class of city and the high tempo/accuracy of our passing game. Anelka even managed to score against his old side,before we imploded,Arsenal took advantage of our open style of play and counter-attacked us at a speed which suggested ,in fact ,it was more men against boys..we had played right into Wengers hands. A 2-1 defeat was followed by Henry and Wenger stating how good our football had been,Henry in partc. said " Manchester City are a vey good team" you couldn,t find better examples of being magnanimous and sporting in victory. I think Arsenal won the league that year.
I have no problem with Keegan who i loved,but several years on i was so proud to be leaving the Emirates not having played into Arsenal,s hands-yes we were a bit fortunate at time( no more fortunate than Arsenal were not to concede after 2 mins at Eastlands when Silva,s flick was somehow kept out by their keeper..?) but surely remaining above one of the best teams in Europe is justification enough for our manager sending his troops out to
carry out a professional performance against one of the best counter attacking teams this country has ever seen.
Following the match i headed for the Kings Head pub- an arse pub to meet up with some long standing arsenal fans of mine-you could feel the tensio in the air as they ripped into me about "being happy with that crap" i reminded them that the rest of the football world had to put uip with Terry Neils/George Graham,s Arasenal for years ..they had no right to berate others for employing dull tactics to win points.
The second point levelled at me was that " wba came here and played really nice football.attacked us and won" i replied where are wba in the league,with thier nice football? "we,re going for the title,not enjoying a tourists day out at your place every two years!!"
If that was a disgrace from Bobby Manc , i look forward to many more horror shows away from home if it means picking up points in at difficult venues, with a team affected by fatigue/injuries. At the very least it bodes well for champions league football and tricky away ties.