TheNamelessThing.com

Well, what can I say? We've gone and done it again, haven't we? I woke up this morning in a cloud, with the most horrendous neck issues, for reasons I have not yet determined, and, barely able to revolve my upper body, lumbered into the computer room to tune into the broadcast via the WWW.

The other half of our glorious city, those bittermen who have subsisted on nought but grime and shame and embarrassment and horror all these years seem finally to have found purchase on some footballing joy, but for how long? Did they dance, did they sing, and weep with pleasure at the slaying of their red foe?

As I listened to the descriptions of our gladiators pounding the turf and hitting the blues with everything they had, yet not finding the back of the net, a growing sense of deja vu began to replace the cloudiness, and I could feel my innards twisting into a triple helix. Tevez, Vidic, Hargreaves, all the names we adore, minus Roon and Ron, playing out of their skins and bottling it or something...cos we didn't manage a goal, and one more of our get-out-of-jail-free cards just went for a Burton. The City fans crammed into the Council House must have been ecstatic, having missed out on that penalty there a few short months ago, and I cannot imagine what it felt like to actually have been present as a red.

Of course they did, for they are snotty-nosed demons, and they detest us with an intensity usually reserved for particularly nasty criminals. When Mr. Vidic turned away from the shot by Geovanni, and saw it wheeling into the net with a straightness uncommon to the Council House, he must have felt worse than Rio did after that own goal at Portsmouth last season. But there's always a never say die spirit to United and City on derby day, only this time it didn't work, and we did die, a little bit. We died like dogs while the snot people relished gleefully their little day in the sun. Frankly, Mr. Shankley, it's getting boring. Who will they sign next? Beckham?