Bitter City Make False Injury Time Complaint... Awww

After defending Craig Bellamy for punching a restrained pitch invader, Mark Hughes went on to have a complaint about the amount of injury time added. He said he would love someone to explain to him where it came from. Ok, deal.

Four minutes of injury time had been decided upon when United lead 3-2. As Bellamy wheeled away from scoring his second, this time was announced.

Sadly for City, Bellamy and co. chose to spend 56 seconds celebrating what they believed to be the goal that had earned them a point at Old Trafford, after being comprehensively outplayed for the entire second half and gifted every single on of their goals.

United then replaced the impressive Anderson (who had obviously left his shooting boots at White Hart Lane) with Michael Carrick, which meant another 30 seconds had to be added.

Then Given, who turned to incite the Stretford End at 3-3, was wasting time with a goal-kick after Rooney fired over from distance, so much so that Ryan Giggs complained to the referee. All these incidents factored in to the decision to allow the game to play on.

MOTD2 worked out that with the celebration and and substitution the match should have finished on 95 minutes and 26 seconds, but this did not include Given’s time wasting. The goal was scored on 95 minutes and 27 seconds.

It seems this ‘Bitter and Blue’ blogger doesn’t quite live up to his namesake:
Much has already been written about the amount of injury time that was played, and yes it did appear excessive, but to play devils advocate a little here, it did also allow ourselves the opportunity to grab a winner. Looking again at the injury time that was played – perhaps due to our relief at equalising on the stroke of ninety minutes – we looked like we were frantically playing out time whilst United went hunting for the win.

But the majority bitters will live up to their name, claiming the referee worked as 12th man to gift us the win, ignoring the facts.

“This is how it feels to be City, this is how it feels to be small, this is how it feels when your team wins nothing at all, NOTHING at all…”