Benwell Lad

Nah. He'll just go out to hurt someone in order to cement his place in macum folklore along with the other legendary cloggers. Mind, how he even got a game for anyone in League One is beyond me.

Almost predictably a bit of xenophobia creeping in. Too many forrins in their team and they just don't get the FA Cup. Almost like no foreign player ever played a legendary part in English cup finals or anything

Didn't bother attending the match but most of Burslem did turn out to applaud the macums back onto their coaches.

Commentators and pundits often talk about our pace and physicality. Maybe in lieu of anything else that's it ?

Having seen City more times than I wanted to this season and after last night, what really surprises me is that you are not top of the league. Based on what I've seen you have the best team and squad by some distance. Certainly the only side which has totally outclassed us.

Is "identity" over deliberated? Isn't it really just about how good players are. What's Man City's real identity? Is it just having brilliant players in every position and 100% cover for them when needed? On occasions, for now, when we play the really top teams our "identity" just becomes whatever they want us to be.

No club deserves to be in the National League more, or less, than Gateshead just depending on which way you look at it The spirit, fight and resolve they show season after season despite the soulless stadium and low crowds is quite amazing.

Why were Guardiola and his staff so animated and going apeshit at the 4th official and referee all game ? Very lucky to get away with just one yellow card, but they can bully the officials knowing they get away with it. Did TV say what the perceived injustice was ?

Yeah. Pretty much what I said. Although Leeds somewhat contradict your last sentence. They've played some lovely stuff and been involved in a lot of entertaining games.

It's certainly not going to be pretty, not because it's a derby but because they haven't been involved in a decent, entertaining, free flowing game all season. It's just not what they do.

Sunderland don't look like they've got any distinct gameplan or strategy at all. It's just a messy 90 minutes of niggling, fouling, grappling, falling over, feigning injury and haranguing referees. Wimbledon did at least have a distinct style of play and if not for the purist it was often quite entertaining to watch. If you had to say one positive thing about Sunderland, they work hard.

A lot of good goals of all varieties over the season but for many reasons, not least timing, opposition and influence on the result, that is the goal of the season or indeed any other season.

Crowds, and I guess atmosphere, aren't that great nowadays but the place could be bouncing back in the day when it seemed like every other game was a derby for them.

Without studying data, I'm not so sure about that, at least this season. Sure we're suffering our usual casualty list but teams with far less demanding schedules than ours seem to be suffering the same.

Was pretty normal for sold out matches before the east stand was built.

Is his hair curly enough for a reprise of the Coloccini song? If not we really need to sign someone with curly hair soon. Heard the tune last night and was reminded how good that chant was.

Yes, it's going to be difficult to redress it. It's what happens when blind eyes get turned and problems become entrenched. No easy solution and probably none better than the one you suggest. VAR - first offence get's the penalty or free kick ? It will only take about ten minutes to decide which way it goes

It was a penalty or, played on and we scored. Either way we were robbed. Again. On a broader note, FIFA or whatever have to do something radical about the grappling at set pieces. It's unedifying, detrimental to the sport and totally out of control.

Yeah, Ellery and Dean were streets ahead of the current crop of musclebound posers.

Don't know why when we can buy up all the world's best players we can't hire the best referees from around the world as well to officiate in the PL ? That way we could free up the current crop of PL referees to spend more time working out in the gym and going to their hairdressers. They seem to take more interest in how they look rather than how they perform nowadays.

Can't believe some of the negative comments or indifference to him leaving the club that have been aired for some time now. He's by far our most effective player in the opposition half. He terrifies defenders and losing him would create another Izak sized hole in our set up. Cherish the kid, appreciate him and learn to live with his emotional side.

Somehow I don't think this is a nailed on defeat despite having thought just that every time we've ever played at the Etihad. Vamos a ver......

Introduce the "daylight" ruling into offsides and VAR can start to function as it was intended and eliminate most of the protracted delays.

As a veteran of the Trelford Mills game and someone who has felt for some time that English referees are worse than other major European leagues, Saturday's display was beyond any previous comparison, just pitifully incompetent and embarrassing. This was supposedly a top level referee from the world's best league, not some overweight geriatric in a Sunday morning game though you'd have struggled to tell the difference. Not corrupt in any way, you couldn't make corruption so transparent and expect to get away with it. That is where it differs from many of the Madley displays when refereeing Newcastle games. He is just plain bent against us but would never be so stupid to make it that obvious. With him (or previously his brother) it's much more nuanced and guarded against obvious bias. He'll give us a free kick or two, book an opposition player and even bigger decisions early on but it is nailed on that when the game changing decision comes along he'll go against us. Ignoring fouls and cheating, allowing time wasting and disruption, blowing up as we break dangerously, all much more subtle, opaque and difficult to prove definitively but inevitably directed against us. Pitiful, embarrassing incompetence is easy to spot, Madley's type of cheating much less so.

Just think Onassis. Same thing, just a different, slightly less globally well known name. The US has tech and media oligarchs, Greece has shipowners. And yes it gets passed down the line, usually with a lot of soap opera type dramas along the way.