Bigger assets than Dolly Parton and runs of the FA Cup variety.

By: Martyn | July 13th, 2008

Anyhow, back to a more important team and matters. Last season saw the league campaign become the support act to the diva that was the FA Cup run. As wonderfully endearing as reaching the FA Cup final was (despite the fact all cup football related clichés automatically make me reach for the sick bucket. The metaphorical and real one), and I must admit, my favourite game of the entire season was the victory at Middlesborough away in the quarter-final stage, unfortunately, our season dragged and disappointed as everything became before the Lord Mayor’s Show.

We have several players who’ve tickled the fancy of Premier League (one cannot say P******ship anymore apparently. It’s a criminal offence punishable by having to spend a day in the company of Gary Neville and David Beckham) teams, as well as our Championship comrades. Yes, that’s right, our club has/now had players other than Ramsey, Fowler, and Hasselwank! Anyway, here is a selection of prey the predators are supposedly salivating over. Behold more variety than a pack of Revel’s! But which one is coffee flavour… cough, Capaldi, splutter, wheeze:

Roger Johnson – Jones has a good record on the buying defenders front (its just strikers and goalkeepers he is astoundingly dreadful at spotting and buying), and although this is blasphemy to most City fans who worship the ex-Wycombe Wanderers man, if we are offered a ridiculous sum of money for him (£3.5m?), we should bite that team’s arm off. Johnson is solid at the back, more solid than most in this league, and loses few tackles or headers. But the irony in all this is that it’s he who tends to give the ball to the opposition in the first place! Well, him or McPhail. Therefore, I truly believe that we could plug any gap left by his departure.

Peter Whittingham – Why oh why did we reject a bid of £1m for him from Forest!?? He’s never taken a decent set-piece in his entire City career (Boro assist aside), yet still we allow him to take the corners. WHY?!! He has an awful tendency to drift in and out of games, and when he drifts in, your stopwatch won’t venture beyond the seconds counter if you time him. Ok, he scored that goal against Boro, he could be a decent option from the bench when we need to push defences back, and when he’s good, he’s very good. But such showings (which always coincide with us being on TV) are about as rare as the games company that brought us Nintendo 64 classics such as Goldeneye 007, Diddy Kong Racing, and Perfect Dark 64! And for that reason, there is a life without him.

Kevin McNaughton – Note to board: please DO NOT sell!!

Glenn Loovens – Note to board: please DO NOT sell (in spite of his rumoured contract mulling)!! And note to Glenn: We love you whatever you decide to choose!

Paul Parry – Note to board: please DO NOT sell!!

Tony Capaldi – Note to board: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do sell!!

After every one of our games this year, I intend to write player ratings for the entire City team, ratings for opposition players that caught my eye, a little match report written in a bullet point format (I won’t go overboard on this because there are many websites/newspapers etc who will offer this and they all say the same thing near enough), and what I consider to be the Championship team of the week. Similarly, I will round up the movers and shakers of the league, and perhaps do a Hit/Miss/Maybe feature (similar to the one on Channel 4’s Football Italia website. Things that are fun and different!