A Big Thank You To Carlos Tevez, Frank Lampard and Manchester City

After thrashing West Ham 4-0 away from home, with two central midfielders making up half of our defence, alongside our second/third choice goalkeeper, we were put within two points of league leaders Chelsea.

After the ball bounced off Emmanuel Adebayor’s back and in to the goal to put Chelsea ahead, I assumed it was going to be another one of those days where Chelsea were concerned. The ball came off Ashley Cole but the referee awarded a corner to Chelsea instead of a goalkick to City, which is where their goal came from. Great, another completely wrong match deciding decision in favour of Chelsea!

How happy I am to have been totally wrong.

Not long before half time, Shaun Wright-Phillips struck the ball and it deflected off Micah Richards arms in to the path of Adebayor. He added to his own goal with a goal for City, with the Chelsea players tearing after the referee. The referee wasn’t interested. It definitely hit Richards arms and they were on his chest, so whether his arms being there or not changed the flight of the ball is unknown. Oh well.

Then not long after the restart, City were awarded a freekick just outside the area which Carlos Tevez curled around the wall. It took the slightest of deflections off Lescott, which totally wrong-footed Petr Cech. 2-1.

With less than ten minutes to go when Chelsea were awarded a penalty for a foul on Drogba, I was hoping for a draw as the best result. Never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate that Fwank would take such a ridiculously bad penalty, that a keeper of Shay Given’s ability would have no problem with. He palmed it away and that was that. City won 2-1 and United stay within two points of Chelsea.

So a massive thank you to Tevez for scoring the winning goal, to Fwank for missing the penalty, but the biggest thank you of all to every City player for trying so hard and every City fan in the ground cheering them on. How thankful we are will be determined in May.

Until then, here’s to the African Cup of Nations!

Ideas for Christmas pressies at the Republik of Mancunia shop