Sunday 13th May 2012
Football
I was at the Etihad today for the amazing climax to the season where City won the title for the first time in my living memory (having been 3 years old the last time it happened). Going into the game the head was saying there was nothing to worry about, given City had the best home record in the league with only Sunderland having avoided defeat there, and visitors QPR having the worst away record, having lost 13 of their away away games beforehand. The heart though knew that City are past masters at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory so the tension I'd felt all week was no less than before the ostensibly more difficult games against United and Newcastle. And so it proved to be. The full gamut of emotions, the tension growing as the game dragged on without a goal, QPR conceding the flanks and defending very narrow, which worked very well against our diminuitive strike force of Tevez and Aguero. Then Zaba scored shortly before the break and there was palpable relief and as the half time scores came up on the big screens, I wondered why the QPR fans had gotten very excited twice during the first half - Bolton were leading 2-1, which was a scoreline that would have meant the drop for QPR - had they been cheering United taking the lead at Sunderland? Anyway, with the scores as they stood, QPR would have to come out and attack us in the second half and we could surely pick them off? Not so. Cisse was presented with a gift and accepted it with an expertly-taken finish, leaving us having to break the visitors down again. Then the linesman spotted Barton assaulting Tevez off the ball, which was obviously going to result in a red card but I was amazed by the subsequent thuggery displayed by the City old boy, despite knowing already what he was capable of. Cisse came off to allow another defender, Traore, to come on, and one of his first involvements in the game was a superb run and cross that found Mackie unmarked at the far post to make it 2-1 to QPR. Unbelievable! City seemed to have run out of ideas. Dzeko and Balotelli came on and we tried getting cross after cross after cross in but as often as not they were horrifically wayward or at least easily cleared. The clock ticked on and on and we entered 5 minutes of injury time. The game was being played as an attack versus defence training game, entirely in the QPR half and we really didn't look like scoring, despite the best efforts of Mario, who was really making a big effort to getting us back into it. The feeling was of complete despair: we'd been so close and United were going take it from us right at the end again. I'd not felt as bad since the 1999_Football_League_Second_Division_play-off_Final where I'd had my head in my hands as the clock approached 90 minutes (though at least I'd not left the stadium, unlike a lot of other part-timers). And then it happened again. Edin Dzeko rose unchallenged to head in a corner and there was hope. A minute later and Aguero plays a give-and-go with Balotelli and it's a Paul Dickov moment all over again. The stadium goes ballistic but my wife's screaming at me that it's not over yet but she's wrong - the QPR players have got the message that Bolton have only drawn and they are safe, so they just kick the ball into touch from the kick-off. The referee beckons the linesmen towards him to avoid the inevitable pitch invasion and blows for full time. City are champions. I never thought I'd see the day. Neither did Alex Ferguson but to his credit he was mangnaminous in defeat, which is more than can be said for the prat Piers Morgan. We stayed for an hour after the game to savour the moment and enjoy the presentations before heading home for a bit of champagne that I'd stuck in the fridge in case we won 
I'm not going to be winding the Reds up at work tomorrow (there's a few, albeit of the armchair variety); I know how they're feeling because that's how I was feeling at 90 minutes and I'm not kicking them when they're down that far.