TIOC Are Back Just In Time For The Balotelli Fallout, Tactical Provocation

First of all I'd like to apologise for the halt in publishing here at This is our City, due to serious family matters, a temporary loss of Internet which seemed like a lifetime caused by moving home and a jump from employment to self employment.

Well City fans it seems we are still coming up short as usual, thirty odd years supporting City and if it was not for me not believing in curses then I'd probably start believing we were cursed right now.

I myself cling onto our old saying 'Typical City' because it helps me deal with the disappointment, right now Mario Balotelli is one of those disappointments but I am not going to attack the young lad.

Players are human and humans make mistakes so with that said, Balotelli will learn from it and the MUEN has confirmed he was angry with himself for reacting to the rough tackles he received from Kyiv that went unpunished and has apologised to the rest of the City squad for letting them down.

Kyiv came and parked the bus with intentions of holding onto their aggregate lead instead of trying to increase it which I thought was pathetic especially when their travelling fans payed good money to see them play, lets face it they tactically provoked Balotelli and they were lucky Popov was not seriously injured.

If Popov was seriously injured in that tackle then a lot of people would be witch hunting Balotelli right now like they did with Nigel Dejong, conveniently forgetting that Balotelli was provoked.

Some players and clubs abuse their power and use tactical provocation and I believe it to be something that should not be tolerated, this is a subject referee's should be made more aware of as the provoker should also be punished in my book.

City were subjected to five yellow cards and one red compared to Kyiv's three yellow cards, clearly the referee was well out of his depth on the night. It seemed to me like the Turkish referee was far less lenient on Kyiv, when you harshly book half a football team you end up putting the whole team on the back foot and dictate the game or manipulate even.

Balotelli was right to have been sent off but equally the referee was wrong to be so card happy in favour of Kyiv. Going out the Europa League is a blessing and means we can concentrate on the FA Cup and keeping a Champions League place in the league.