“It was one of the stranger sights of the season, for sure. During the League Cup semi-final between Manchester United and Manchester City on Wednesday night, a large number of (what to the untrained eye may have appeared to have been) Norwich City supporters seemed to have infiltrated Old Trafford and were sitting in their seats, cheering on Alex Ferguson’s team. It was, of course, nothing of the sort.” (twohundredpercent)
“The old adage about defenses winning championships is starting to look outdated. Across Europe’s leading football leagues right now, the major title contenders have ditched the defensive mindset traditionally associated with success in favor of a new adventurous line of attack, in which teams are far more interested in scoring goals than preventing them. The result has been a deluge of goals that has delighted supporters and sent statisticians scurrying to check the record books.” (WSJ)
“History, it has been said many times, is written by the victors. It’s a thought that may pass through the heads of some older Manchester City supporters during their League Cup semi-final against Manchester United at The City of Manchester Stadium this evening. It is a scarcely believable twenty-nine years since the blue half of Manchester made so much as the semi-final of a major competition. Much has happened to City since then, but what is often forgotten in the fog of history is just how close they came to winning the 1981 FA Cup and what sort of a difference to the club such a win may have made. There would certainly have been few that would have confidently predicted in 1981 that the club would not get as close again to winning a trophy in the next three decades.” (twohundredpercent)
