Marvellous team, the All Blacks, of course. But they certainly know how to waste some time. Here are some things you may want to do when the New Zealand forwards are making their way to a line-out with a one-point lead and the clock running down: change your energy supplier, clear those clogged winter gutters or, for the more adventurous, nip out to Santa Pod Raceway in Bedfordshire and do a quarter of a mile in a drag-racing car. Either way, those mighty Kiwi forwards won’t have moved far.
Much to the annoyance of some big footballing beasts like Bayern Munich, Manchester City appear to have been channelling away millions of pounds in funding from owner Sheikh Mansour so as to beat the Financial Fair Play rules. (It’s no coincidence that the leaks came via Der Spiegel, a German news magazine.) But we know that City’s sponsors are owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family, as is the stadium, and as is more or less everything connected to City. This personally doesn’t bother me much, as long as they carry on playing the sort of football they play, which is the best ever seen in this country. Better than Ferguson’s, better than the Arsenal Invincibles.
Rules are rules, though, and will the football world love City as they should? It’s hard to tell and they certainly didn’t pull a capacity crowd to Wembley for a league game against Spurs. Still, all that money can go to maintaining Mikel Arteta’s precision haircut and building up Pep Guardiola’s collection of cashmere cardigans.
City still have to deliver in Europe before they can be judged truly great, but make no mistake: the demolition of United in the Manchester derby last weekend was a big moment.
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