A Rallying Cry To City Fans

I think it is fair to say that most City fans today are disappointed, I certainly am.  It was always going to be a bit of a lottery getting out of our Champions League group, but other than our visit to Munich I genuinely believe we made a good fist of it.  Our haul of 10 points should have seen us through, even before a ball was kick that was the figure that Roberto Mancini said would be enough.


The facts are though that it wasn't, and I don't think anyone thought that Villareal would end the group stage with no points, before the first round of matches it was assumed they would take points of someone, hopefully for us Napoli, and if they had managed that we would have gone through.  It now seems remarkable that the Spanish team were seeded 2nd in our group with the extremely dangerous Italians 4th.

Now though our attention turns to the other European competition, the ugly sister of the glamorous and glitzy Champions League, the Europa League is ready and waiting for us.  Thoughts seem to be mixed on the competition, some have said it is a good opportunity for our second string, and gives our first team a chance to rest up rather than playing 2 games each week.  I am not so sure that personally I would go along with this.


As I was driving away from Eastlands last night, I was listening to various Manchester United fans acting as if the sky was falling and the world was ending, one even suggested Ferguson should leave his post at Old Trafford.  This ridiculous over reaction was followed by a call from a City fan, sadly I do not remember her name, but she spoke sense.  She quite simply said the Europa League is a trophy, and we are capable of winning it, so lets go for it.  As we all know we haven't won a lot these last 35 years, so why should we turn our nose up at a competitive trophy, especially a European one.

It appears that Roberto Mancini sees the tournament similarly, and hopefully we will give it our best.    The Thursday/Sunday games are annoying, but it is not the end of the world, my understanding is that it is a similar amount of games in both competitions from this point therefore if we were happy to play twice a week in the Champions League, why not in this competition?


Clearly we have a squad capable of winning the it, our strongest competition will come from our neighbours but really they are nothing to fear any more.  Therefore I urge everyone to get behind the team, and lets try and go all the way in this, its another trophy and we shouldn't look down on any competition victory in my mind, and most importantly of all, it is probably our last chance to win it, since we won't ever play in it again.....