Football Daily | Manchester City and a question of bottle in the Premier League title race

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When Jérémy Doku wheeled away in celebration with his finger to his lips after curling home a last-gasp equaliser for Manchester City at Hill Dickinson Stadium on Monday night, it was difficult to know who he was trying to shush. If the gesture was intended to mute the celebrations of Arsenal fans who had just witnessed their team seize the upper hand in the stumble toward this year’s title, it is unlikely to have had much effect. Doku’s second goal of the night was little more than an exercise in damage limitation that ensured his side blunderbussed themselves in just one foot, instead of both. At the front of the away end, ‘bottle man’ was far less performative, even if a telltale bulge about his person suggested he had come prepared for victory. Was that an unopened, Arsenal-branded bottle of salty tears in his pocket or was he just pleased to see his side come from 3-1 down to salvage a potentially useless point from the wreckage of an evening that started so promisingly?

Friday’s Football Daily wondered if Jeff Winter would be travelling with Middlesbrough to their big game at Wrexham on Saturday. Well, if he had, he would merely have been jumping on the Boro bandwagon, as he’d already headed to Hednesford Town last Tuesday for the even bigger Northern Premier League playoff semi-final, where his beloved Stockton Town were beaten 2-0. It would be a brave man who followed one such disappointment with the prospect of another” – Glyn Berrington.

After the latest hair-pulling red card over the weekend, Régis le Bris made the suggestion that he would adjust his team’s playing style to adapt to the opposition striker’s tonsorial arrangements (‘if he has long hair, we have a problem’). This got me thinking: surely there is a more proactive marginal gain to be had here, if teams look at how to manage their players’ barnets to maximise the chance of hair-tugging offences against them? Are we about to witness the rise of the hair-piece coach?” – Phil Taverner.

Why would the Watford chairman have been useless as William Tell’s assistant? He wouldn’t keep his ‘Ed Still” – Rob Burton.

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