Did anyone else read this drivel in the Grauniad this morning - what utter shite. Trotting out complete garbage that Stuart Pearce is at loggerheads with the City board over his acceptance of the England U21 job, albeit on a temporary basis. What SP really said, was that he had accepted the job on the proviso of there being agreement between  Manchester City and the FA. But hey, don't let the truth get in the way of a good story - and there hasn'e been another Manchester City disaster story for oooh at least a week. What annoyed me was that ancient history was dredged up to speculate that Denis Tueart was somehow the Machiavellian villian of the piece - quotes from Frank Clarke's autobiography for fuck's sake, and quotes from Joe Royle.

But the icing on the cake was big fatuous Dave "the fan's mouthpiece" Wallace, editor of City fanzine (sic) King of the Kippax on the radio. Five Live made a big thing of getting the views of Manchester City fans and then trot out this gobshite. Whenever the former "fan on the board" opens his gob, bullshit pours forth. He waffled on for a couple of minutes about the fans won't be happy blah blah blah, and then said something about it being an exit strategy for Pearce and justified this by saying that Pearce had never bought a home in the North West.Well, fuck me Dave, did you bother to check out the facts? Mrs Pearce is a successful businessperson in her own right and runs her own stud farm. Not exactly the sort of thing you can move lock, stock from one place to another.

My take? Well it's for a couple of friendlies and then the U21 Championships in the summer. The friendlies coincide with senior England squad matches and so there will most likely be no Premiership matches that weekend anyway. Some of the senior pros will be away with their own international squads so I'm quite confident that Steve Wigley is capable of looking after training whilst SP is away with the U21s. The summer tournament will also give SP a chance to do a bit of scouting and perhaps entice a couple of promising youngsters to Eastlands. If, after that SP decides that he would rather be U21 manager full time and let go of the reins at City, then that's up to him. But Pearce, being Pearce won't let an opportunity pass him by.