MONEY WINS THE BATTLE OF MANCHESTER

Today's football scores have produced one of the most amazing results of the last 60 or more years.

There have obviously been a few eccentric results in the past, sometimes with top-flight teams being beaten by supposedly vastly inferior oppostion, but has there ever been a more extraordinary result than the 1-6 drubbing suffered by Manchester United at home to their arch rivals, Manchester City, today ?

The simple answer has to be 'NO' but that is to ignore the true facts behind this match. Manchester United played a large part of the game with 10 men, after one of their number was sent off, and 3 of the goals were scored on, or after, the end of normal time. Not that any of this will be any consolation to the distraught United fans, nor of any interest to the elated City followers.

What is of greatest importance is how this result has come about. A few weeks ago, Manchester City thumped Tottenham 5-1 at White Hart Lane; since then, they've run up a string of wins with goals galore and now head the Premier League by a distance. Unless something untoward happens, they could be crowned Champions tomorrow as there's little likelihood of anyone challenging them. All this from a team that a couple of years ago were struggling to escape from mid-table at best; how has this happened ?

Manchester City has been bought by an Arabic conglomerate that has injected a ludicrous amount of money into the team, having seen a business opportunity in exploiting the football-mad youth, and others, of the world. In the short term, they will undoubtedly make a lot of money, but what will happen when the bubble bursts, as all bubbles eventually do ? We are currently in a casino where the player with the biggest wallet wins because no one can afford to 'see' his hand, but what happens when the other players all drop out and refuse to play any further ?

The importance of football has been exaggerated to a point of lunacy. The pay of the players has reached a level that is completely unsustainable without the vast advertising revenues that are currently attracted and that has no connection with pay in the real world that the supporters inhabit. This is, after all, a game that is basically played by children in school playgrounds and fields and yet the status awarded to the players is something that eclipses the greatest statesmen, scientists and philosophers by many times. This has to, and will, end.

Today's result at Old Trafford was, in reality, only to be expected; it was not all that extraordinary at all. It was a consequence of a concatenation of events, the most potent of which, financial speculation, will inevitably lead to an eventual collapse in the finances of the game. At some point, interests will change and profits will fall, or, quite simply, the current investors will see greater profit in some other venture. However it happens, football will oneday become nothing more than the the game it once was; sadly, that day may be some-way off and, by then, it's quite possible that Manchester City will be nothing more than a name in football history.