Sheriff Kimbo's Thursday Thoughts #5

Hello everybody, hope you've had a good week. The football world certainly has been entertaining hasn't it?

The main talking point for the majority of the week was the Manchester derby. In my opinion, City can have little complaint about the added time, mostly because of their woeful defending. They deserve credit for the way they kept battling back and they genuinely played well in the first half. For me it was all United in the second half and over the course of the game, it was the right result in the end. A lot has been said about the added time but even as we were watching, me and my Dad both said, "Well with the celebration and a substitute it's probably about right" so I find it all a bit assuming when you look at the drama surrounding it. Both teams seemed determined to help each other out judging by the amount of defensive mistakes, and I tell you what - looking at Citeh's defending off the corners and free-kicks, I reckon John Carew might get a hat-trick when they come to B6 a week on Monday!

The second game of last Sunday was not without its controversy either. Spurs had two nailed-on penalties not given, one of which was crucial when Robbie Keane was brought down. They also had another not given when Ashley Cole jumped into Peter Crouch but the game was pretty much done and dusted by then.

On the subject of Spurs, I was sad to see Ledley King injured again. He's the closest defender I've seen to Paul McGrath in style and I'd have him over Ferdinand or Terry. Unfortunately, the injuries have prevented him having the kind of career that he could have done. When I suggested the McGrath similarity on a Spurs fan website, one fan did say to me, "no offence but King is different class". Um...WHAT?

How many goals were conceded by teams not having men on the posts when defending set-pieces? Between that and the 'zonal marking' tactic, there were a fair few very preventable goals given away last weekend.

So just what was Sol Campbell thinking? To leave Notts County in that way, now without a club until January, Campbell's decision was bizarre to say the least. I found the rumour that he felt there had not been appropriate investment was really poor given how late he joined them, and I am not even convinced that he did say that purely because it is so very ridiculous! Part of me hopes it was all an evil master plan all along because it's pretty much soap opera villain bad; you can almost imagine JR Ewing waiting to pick him up from County's training ground!

I was thinking about the fact that Villa played Cardiff last night. There are three teams from Wales in the English league; does this happen anywhere else in the world?

I think a job as a Premiership substitute may be the best job on the planet. I know that being a regular starter is the more obvious answer but think about it, as a regular sub you don't face the pressures of a regular player; you still get a weekly wage somewhere in the region of the average national salary; and you go to warm up a few times a game and get a round of applause from a few thousand people! Not too shabby at all!

That is about all from me this week. While it was an entertaining week - and on a personal note, Villa won two more games - the real high point was Motty's moment of madness during his commentary on MOTD!