Mancini urges Sheikh Mansour to buy Scapegoat

The Undeniable Stench of Failure Overwhelms Mr. Mancini

Italy's foremost Kevin Keegan impersonator, Roberto Mancini, has urged the Manchester City owner to splash out in the wake of City's bottle smashing. In a desperate attempt to protect his merry gang of mercenary, attention seekers, Mancini directed his scouts to look for someone who was capable of taking the full brunt of the Etihad post Christmas cluster fuck. Having gone through the full contingent of managerial excuses, including "Scarf malfunction", "Unseasonal weather" and FPWK favourite "Below average Internet speeds", Mancini even considered using arch-rival and noted philanthropist, Alex Ferguson's classic "We couldn't see each other because of the grey strip" hum-dinger. 

Barely Visible: Ryan Giggs can be just
made out on the left of the picture

Without any suitable patsies to be found anywhere in the UK, or indeed the rest of the planet, Sheikh Mansour has been forced to shell out a record £1.3 billion to sign God from the struggling Irish non-league side, Repentant Catholics FC. Spokesperson for RCFC, Father Diarmid Feargal Padraigh O'Mulligan-and-O'Hare, said "To be sure, we wanted to keep his omnipotence until the end of the season, but what the Lord giveth with one hand, a bored mega-rich-oil-baron-with-no-interest-in-the-sport-he-has-bought-into taketh away". 

Preparations are now in full flow at Man City's Carrington training ground, where our insider, Owen Hargreaves, has personally seen Mancini manically repeating the phrases "God did that" and "It's God will" in a mirror, trying to find the perfect accompanying South European shrug of  the shoulders. Man City travel to Arsenal on Sunday, coincidentally God's favourite day, knowing that a loss will undoubtably mean that Mancini will use his new signing in the the post-match interview, although this may cast a shadow over the return of the unscrupulous, privateer Carlos Tevez. The Argentinian's personal Shylock, Kia Jaroobachian, will probably find some way of rinsing more money for his scoffer of a client, before he secures a summer move to the home of the rest of the mutants, the X-Men. "Carlos enjoyed being the fall guy for City, he took the role very seriously and gave 113.245%, now that God is here, I don't see a future for Carlos at City. Prof. Xavier has expressed an interest and I think Carlos will see plenty of first team action there".

Clairvoyant: This City fan could see the future

Man City fan, John Millington, famously became famous, for famously crying when Swansea famously turned over City. "Honestly, when it went in, I just knew that was the end of the dream really, I know we have worked hard by just spending and spending, but it was clear from the performance that we just haven't spent enough. I was so upset because I know there is so much more we could spend. Hopefully after spending all that money on God, we can secure some more petulant, knob-scoffing, underachievers during the summer. If we spend all our time spending, we could well be in with a chance of completely ruining football next season".

As this season reaches fever pitch, there may yet be more twists and turns to come. And even if Man City don't manage to win the title this year, they are clear winners in terms of the quality of scoffers they have available to them, with Mario Balotelli sure to raise the bar for all Premiership footballers next season by aiding the North Korean Nuclear Missile project over the summer. Watch out John Terry, Balotelli is after your crown.

Jeremy Axeminster