NOU CAMP – Vintage performance from a Barcelona team that can boast Messi, Neymar and Suarev up front. Barcelona missed a hat full of chances in the first half and although City got into it slightly in the second that was only because the La Liga leaders took the foot off the pedal. In a second half that saw Barcelona hit the post several times, Joe Hart was City’s best player on the night. And it was because of him that Barcelona did not score seven or eight as the gulf in class between English sides and their European counterparts was once again cruelly exposed.
ANALYSIS – One thing is certain as May 7 gets ever closer – that Labour will win the general election. The question is by how much – enough to govern or will they have form a coalition. This observation is not based on any obvious statistics – even though the polls give Ed Miliband’s Labour a lead or even on his approval ratings which if newspapers are to be believed aren’t great. This is a simple statement based on what I am seeing on the street in a country where the ordinary person will not be able to get through another round of promised Tory austerity. Put simply something’s going to have to give if Cameron and his ghastly Chancellor make it back into number 10. George Osborne may be a darling in the business community and to the people he’s protected over the last five years – namely the rich and pensioners – but to the rest of the population his diet of cuts to public services, public sector jobs whilst giving tax breaks to the very rich has caused considerable pain without any obvious results. What’s more the aspiring classes the so-called Essex man and woman are finding that unless they started out in the eighties ala Alan Sugar there’s very little out there to mine unless you want to be a butler to the very rich.