Rooney. Rooney. Rooney. Last week the thought of City fans chanting that name would have been insane. The odds are a lot shorter now.
Inevitably City have been linked with the player ever since the story of Rooney refusing to sign a new United contract was broke by the Mirror on Sunday. The prospect is a delicious one for the media, but could it happen? Here’s a few reasons why it’s a possibility, and a couple why City should think twice.
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The snowballing of outrage over Nigel de Jong’s tackle on Hatem Ben Arfa has been as inevitable as the neeed to fill football pages in a week without high profile games. The story has followed a journalistic arc that’s worth recapping as we attempt to make sense of the acres of comment – and then roll our eyes at the inevitability of it all.
In the beginning: the tackle took place on Sunday without a free-kick being awarded by the referee, who saw the incident. Play wasn’t stopped and the Newcastle players did not react with outrage. Television commentators at the time, and later on Match Of The Day 2 offered sympathy to Ben Arfa, but judged the tackle legitimate.
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In the build-up to the Juventus game, today sees Roberto Mancini quoted as having looked to sign Milos Krasic when he was in charge of Inter and at City. The Serbian plays on the right wing and there was plenty of speculation linking him to City over the Summer, before he eventually moved to Juve from CSKA Moscow.
There’s no great surprise in Mancini’s interest as Krasic looks a decent winger, scoring a hat-trick at the weekend. It will be interesting to see how he performs on Thursday.
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Possibly the most encouraging aspect of the final few minutes against Blackburn was the influence of David Silva. The Spaniard looked sharper and more dangerous than in any of his games thus far, prompting Roberto Mancini to suggest it’s time to give him more minutes.
There was always the danger that Silva would take time to acclimatise. Having to stay for the full length of the World Cup with Spain resulted in an almost non-existant pre-season with his new club.
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