The Shame Game

October 12, 2026

There’s probably been a few million words already written about yesterday’s game, some of it controversial, some of it predictable but nothing can disguise the fact that we lost and probably lost because of Ryan Gravenberch getting the red card. Without jumping into the conspiracy theories, group players on a yellow card know another foul often means a red. As soon as Ryan Gravenberch did it, I knew what to expect. Those who appoint the match officials should know that sending a referee from the Manchester area to referee a game at Anfield against either United or City is a risk and Chris Kavanagh has form. You get the impression that they are complicit too.
When it was 11 v 11 there wasn’t much in it and we’d started the second half in okay fashion. Sadly, when it was 10 v 11 it was no contest. All the talk was about the City spending sham, but what about ours? Around £500m spent and we still haven’t got a squad to cope with injuries. Accepting the fact that we lost our main strike force over the international break plus Dominick Szoboszlai left us totally bereft of what was needed. If those three had been playing…well who knows.
It should be known that Manchester City aren’t the only guilty party in all of this, the Premier League are as well. They made their announcement a couple weeks ago that Manchester City were guilty on 114 charges out of 115, yet they still haven’t had the guts to announce the punishment. Manchester City say they will be appealing against the verdicts, but nobody knows what punishment the verdicts carry. The Premier League proved they were cowards when handing Chelsea a meagre £10m which in the Premier League is loose change. The celebrations of the Manchester City players, manager and supporters was a show of contempt. Meanwhile the game falls further into the gutter.
A big thank you to the 170 fans who bought the Fanzine yesterday.