Weather or Not

Bloody Manchester!

Don't get me wrong, I do love this city (yes honestly), but it's the weather- it's all over the bleeding place.

I get up this morning at half 7 and the weather, though not great, was certainly not horrendous. Arrive at work at 10 with no sign of rain despite the odd cloud, by noon the rain was bouncing off the pavement with much aggression. Of course it wouldn't stop there, oh no, by half 1 the sun was out and it seemed to be heading towards a pleasant afternoon, that was of course before it started chucking it down with rain again at 3. It's just ridiculous.

But of course I digress, as usual, for this is not Sidler on Weather, as exciting a blog as that would be.

The weather in Manchester is such that they say you can get four seasons in just one day and that seems to mirror football in the region, it seems we've had at least two seasons in just one footballing weekend.

First up was the blue team of Manchester. City, who have spent upwards of 100 million pounds on players this season, took on their fourth place rivals of last year Spurs. City were absolutely rained upon. Tottenham's soon to be Champions League players were well onto of their much richer rivals and it seemed that the Mancunians multi-million pound squad were struggling to gel.

Out of the melee of shots that was being rained down on them City found a very useful umbrella. Of course it would be that out of all of the mass amounts the 'Citizens' have spent in the last two years it would be a man who cost them a maximum of £1.5 million before the 'Citeh' era who would prove to be their most valuable asset on the opening weekend of the season and most likely the rest of the season.

City of course are hoping to hail (get it) in a new era, and they will be doing so now without Craig Bellamy and Stephen Ireland, the latter seemingly on his way to Aston Villa as part of the deal to take James Milner to Eastlands. But, if their opening day fixture is anything to go by, City's main issue will be getting their team to gel quickly and with two more players coming in since the weekend Roberto Mancini has a big job on his hands.

Over at Old Trafford the sun was shining, despite the driving rain, especially on the evergreens in red. The United of Manchester took on their Newcastle counterparts as they began their quest to wrestle the league title back off the hands of Chelsea and they looked good in their match against the newly promoted Magpies. Chelsea had shone on their season debut against another promoted side, West Brom, putting 6 past the team from the Midlands and United needed to respond with an emphatic victory of their own, and they got it.

There was lots to talk about from the 3-0 win, from Joey Barton's 'moustache' to Dimitar Berbatov's impression of a player playing to his potential. But there was one man who stole the headlines and rightly so. There's snow way one could fail to mention Paul Scholes. He was brilliant. So good, in fact, that his Spanish midfield compatriots, Xavi and Iniesta, would have been watching in wonder and amazement. Near everything that came off Scholes' boot flew to its designated place on the pitch. His passing was immaculate and the most incredible thing was the sheer variety of passes; lofted, drilled, short, long, over the top, through the middle. The man was brilliant, no more so than when he set up Ryan Giggs, his forever partner in crime, for the 3rd goal, a goal which stretched Giggs' record of scoring in every season of the Premier League, a record which may well stop sooner rather than later.

Of course the season is only one week old and we cannot take too much from the first week of the season but we at least know that Chelsea look every bit the favourites they ought to be, City, despite their spending, cannot hope to achieve instant success and United will one day be much the worse for not being able to call on Scholes and Giggs. I guess we knew all this already, all which proves I really haven't the foggiest