What a Clash at the Top!

Olympique de Marseille and AS Monaco were two evenly matched teams, in the French derby of Ligue 1, matchday 4.

Perhaps Marseille was the slight favourite, considering the fact that its players had more experience in the first division.

But the win was obtained courtesy of a deeper squad depth by Monaco.
One might not think that a newly-promoted team would have a better overall squad than a team that least season qualified directly for Champions League group stage, but in France such a thing is possible!
Super-sub Emmanuel Riviere replaced injured Falcao, and scored the winner ten minutes before the end.

Claudio Ranieri's team thus shocks the country again.
It is the newcomer team, not the experienced one, coming from behind to win the derby, and away from home!

For Marseille, though, such embarrassing defeats at home are not as unusual as they might be for other CL participants. Or for teams at the very top of Ligue 1.
Just last year, they were losing, 1-4, to Lyon, in a similar early-ish derby. (That one was at the end of November, but still...)

Come to think of it, Marseille was better now, under critical pressure. But not by much.

Highlights:

How Can You Want Titles and Lose to Cardiff?

Well, hey, maybe Cardiff will be in the title chase, too!...

(Ha, ha, ha! Yeah, right! LOL! :D, :), ;), etc., etc.)

I'm running out of ways to laugh at Manchester City.

After replacing Roberto Mancini, and the good-looking win against Newcastle, surely the consensus was that it had been the coach's fault.

But what do you know?
This match shows that there are a lot more things rotten in the Man. City team.

If you ask me, the biggest problem, and a huge black ball for City management, is that they just don't get good players when they shop around.

But I don't mean just during this past transfer window. I mean, since the beginning.
I don't know how the hell they did so well that first year (2011-2012) with that team. They didn't finish the campaign too well, at all, and they got extremely lucky at the end, but they did pull it off.
However, these players: Dzeko, Zabaleta, Hart, Lescott, Toure, and even Aguero, are not top-quality players. No way. Any one of the Barcelona players, alone, for example, is, I would think, better than all of these guys (maybe with the exception of Aguero) put together. How Manchester City can keep a nucleus formed by these players, and believe that they can become a better team, in England or (yeah, right!) in Europe, is laughable.
They need way better players. And just buying the likes of Alvaro Negredo, who is not a top player himself, is most certainly not going to do it for them.

Negredo, as a matter of fact, from what I saw, was probably the best player City played in this encounter. (But that is not a praise of his qualities as a player. He's just a newcomer, and very enthusiastic to prove himself.) I don't know yet 100% what that is saying exactly, about Manchester City and their title chances, but for sure it's not a good omen.

Manchester City should be spending like PSG or Monaco, to achieve something truly great. And they should do so every year. Why aren't they getting guys like Falcao, who was clearly getting a move on? (How in the world was Monaco, a newly-promoted team itself, able to snatch it from teams like Chelsea, who reportedly had been watching and wanting him, and City?...)

Otherwise, if Manchester City starts imitating the spending habits of Arsenal, they won't be able to mount title challenges every year, but will oftentimes be trembling in front of weaklings like newly-promoted teams, just like now, against Cardiff.

What the hell are those sheiks doing over there? Did they just invest a little money, in the beginning, to get people to come to their stadium and spend money on merchandise and tickets, and their airline, and stuff, and now are only looking for profit instead of trophies?
That's not good.