Sunderland may think that beating Manchester City with the luckiest display of the season is the highlight of their campaign. But Soccer 365’s Howard Johnson knows the Blues will be back!

‘Football! Bloody hell!’ It’s not often that I want to credit Alex Ferguson with anything. But the phrase he so eloquently used back in 1999 when they won some trophy or other has never been more appropriate than after an astonishing weekend of English Premiership football. It was a weekend that proved beyond any doubt that while England may not have the most skillful or technically sound league in the world, it’s still miles ahead of all the competition when it comes to drama, excitement, thrills, spills and downright head-spinning craziness!

After enjoying a jolly pleasant Saturday watching Manchester United coming hilariously unstuck at home against Premiership whipping boys Blackburn, I thought it was too much to ask that any more New Year wishes could be made to come true. But no. There were Chelsea handing out the post Christmas cheer in comic fashion by going down 3-1 at home to the oh-so-ordinary Aston Villa. And then to cap it all I was also handed a cheeky little stocking-filler as Spurs could only manage a draw at lowly Swansea.

‘This Premiership title-winning lark is easy,’ I thought to myself as I settled in front of the telly the following day, safe in the knowledge that my beloved City would be sitting pretty three points clear of United by the end of the meeting with Sunderland. 93 minutes later, though, and I was calling for a large portion of humble pie with a side order of humiliation. As the TV commentators ever-so-helpfully kept pointing out, The Stadium Of Light was ‘rocking’ as The Black Cats scored a thoroughly-undeserved additional time goal to win the game 1-0, knock the smile off my face and seriously ruffle Roberto Mancini’s feathers.

It was the absolute daftest of matches. City peppered, bombarded, assaulted and, yes, laid siege to the Sunderland goal. But the damn ball just wouldn’t get over the line due to a cunning mixture of misfortune, maladresse and marvelous Mignolet, Sunderland’s inspired keeper. It was simply one of those days, the kind that keeps us all interested in sport; one where financial inequalities and a gulf in class as wide as Harry Redknapp counted for nothing; where the form book wasn’t just turned upside down, but once it was there started doing balancing tricks just to show off!

Saying that City were unlucky is like saying that Gervinho has a really big forehead, so obvious was our lack of fortune. On another day we would have had four or five, easy. But with Edin Dzeko starting a game for once and continuing to show the kind of woeful form that he’s recently slumped into, I soon started to fear the worst. Mario Balotelli, at the Stadium Of Light but not included in the matchday squad, must have been smoking more fags than usual, such was the tension as City searched for a way through. With Mancini having opted to put his second string out, mindful of a tough Premier League meeting with Liverpool two days later, we always had the possibility of bringing on the big guns if things weren’t going according to plan. And sure enough, Sergio Aguero and David Silva were both introduced in the second half as City tried to turn 150% of possession into a winning advantage. But it was all to no avail and the sucker-punch was duly delivered with the game in its death throes when Sunderland sub Ji Dong-Won picked off an over-excited, attacking City defence and won a game the home side had no right to steal. Robbery? And don’t forget the grand larceny!

At the final whistle Sunderland players, staff and fans alike celebrated as if they’d won the Champions League. They hadn’t. They’d scraped a home game they clearly didn’t deserve to by getting 11 men behind the ball at every possible opportunity. If I were a home supporter I might be going ballistic for five minutes. But it would soon dawn on me that my club’s primary objective in a home fixture is now to cling on by their fingernails and hope against hope not to get a shellacking. Enjoy your season boys!

City, meanwhile, are in something of a slump if you want to believe the critics. The last five games have yielded two wins, two defeats and a draw, with three goals conceded and five scored. If this is as bad as it’s going to get this season, a campaign that was always going to feature a tricky run of form, then I for one would grab it with both hands. January is a big month for City, with seven matches to play, including three meetings with Liverpool, one with Spurs and one with Man United. It’s not ‘make or break’ exactly. There will be more than a few twists and turns in the Premiership race between now and the end of the season. But it will certainly give everyone a pretty clear indication of whether City have the bottle to handle fighting on a number of fronts. So well done to Sunderland. We all need to feed off scraps once in a while. But one weird old game of football won’t be the end of our season.