Teams never really like to lose but it is seen as acceptable in pre-season and perhaps at less than full strength and trying out new players and systems that results aren’t really that important and it’s all about getting the fitness levels right ahead of the new season.  And that’s true.

To a point.

When Arsenal take on Manchester City in Beijing it will be a ‘friendly’ in that we will be without a number of players who have been left at home to work on their fitness and trying out a number of fringe players who might not have such a big role to play in the coming season but for Arsenal fans, for me at least, it’s Manchester City. And there’s nothing friendly in my feelings towards them whatsoever.

Once upon a time Manchester City were a likeable club.  They went about their business and had to endure ‘that lot’ winning everything in sight while they tried to do what the rest of us do – compete within their means.   The along came a winning lottery ticket and they turned in to the football equivalent of Michael Carroll.

They started buying up players from every club they could think of, whether they needed or even wanted the players in the first place.  They took players like Santa Cruz (£17.5m), Adebayor (£25m), Wright Phillips (£9m), Johnson (£7m), Boetang (£11m), Nasri (£22m), Robinho (£32,5m), Bellamy (£14m), and Bridge (£12m) from clubs where they were playing regularly and stuck them on the bench, in the reserves or sent them out on loan.  They have spent a total of £486.45m in the past four seasons alone and they compete financially at a level above what anyone else can even dream about.  When it comes to buying a player it’s like me bidding against Bill Gates for a house.  It’s just not a fair playing field.

I’ve no problems with clubs who are rich because they’ve built their clubs, achieved fans through being successful and generally went about things in the right way.  That’s how it is supposed to be done.  Man City don’t do it that way.  They took the model which Chelsea laid out and thought ‘fuck this, let’s coat that shit in gold’.

Then there is their obsession with Arsenal. Clichy, Toure, Adebayor, Nasri, Taylor, Sylvinho, possibly RvP, Vierra and Platt and feck knows who else, they’ve probably signed our tea lady as well and tapped up Gunnersaurus.  If we’re linked with a player, they’re having a look too, it’s like they want to be us or they just haven’t got a clue what they want so let’s just see what Arsenal have been at and throw a shit-load of cash at it.

They are classless and they say we are just jealous.  Maybe we are, I don’t know about you but I tend to get mighty annoyed when I have to work 12 hours a day just to scrape a living and then I watch people swanning off around the world who live on handouts and, while they are perfectly fit and able, decide not to bother working cause they can just get it handed to them instead.  I never begrudge anyone financial success they have earned.  Have it handed to you and I feel somewhat differently.

City irk me.

So we play them in what is supposed to be a ‘friendly’ in the Birds nest stadium while we know that they are probably running their beady little eyes over our players and wondering just who they can chuck a load of cash at next.  That’s the real reason we’ve left players like Podolski, Koscielny, and Giroud at home, it’s to keep Man City away from them.

In the grand scheme of things the result tomorrow won’t matter, but at the time, when you know that it is Manchester City you are facing, it really does.  Football always matters for the 90 minutes it is taking place.

Don’t let the word ‘friendly’ fool you.