Richard Dunne, so often City’s one man team during this decade’s darker days has signed for Aston Villa bringing to an end an era that assures him legendary status with The Blues…
The hapless Football Association finally confirmed all the paperwork was in order this lunchtime, bringing to a close Manchester City’s unprecedented transfer activity for the year.
Dunney endured the bad times and rode the waves of the good times at City since he signed for JR in 2000 from Everton. We moved home, swapped owners, divisions and managers and rediscovered top flight continuity yet throughout it all, Dunney was always there, very often the last man standing as the ceiling caved in around him. Towards the end of some seasons, without his heroics we would have been sure fire relegation certs.
Before that wretched last season, Dunney won City’s Player of The Year award a consecutive four times. Proof enough of his ability and recognition of his efforts, his captaincy coinciding with us becoming re-established as Premier League regulars as we dished out a few beatings to the rags along the way.
Fast forward to 2009 and City are a club utterly transformed from the one Dunney’s car pulled up outside in Moss Side nine years back next month.
Dunney maintained recently that he very much wanted to remain a part of this stunning transformation. But it wasn’t to be as Mark Hughes’ far reaching radical overhaul of the City squad reached it’s conclusion this week.
This cannot have been at all easy for the big man but to his absolute credit he has maintained his professionalism when he could have followed the behaviour of certain City stars who in recent years have seen fit to either sulk or go to the media via agents to register their unrest rather than do their talking on the training ground and the pitch. From Anelka through Elano to Petrov in one sentence.
Richard Dunne went from Johnny off the rails, put right by Mad Kev, to becoming an absolute ambassador for Manchester City. I can’t think of a better word to describe his efforts as a Blue and as Manchester City’s Captain.
The crying shame in all this is that he won’t get the chance to lift the trophy his Blue hearted battling merited and richly deserved.
A proper send off would have also been in order, but the pace of the new campaign and circumstances surrounding certain transfers this summer seem to have put paid to that.
Travelling Blues who chanted Dunney’s name at Selhurst Park and Fratton Park last week will get the chance to do so again at Villa Park for the Monday night league clash with Villa in four weeks time.
We can be sure, as can our Villa pals that the big Irishman will be giving his all against us that night.
‘He’s Here, He’s There….’
Thanks for the memories, skipper and all the best from the Vital MC online community.
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