It amazes me how few weblogs there are devoted to football, considering its mass market appeal. Maybe newspapers and TV have such a monopoly on punditry that no one else has the creativity or determination left to write up what they think somewhere else - certainly that's the case with me. I just can't build up the enthusiasm to really decide what I think about things that happen on a football pitch once everyone else has had their say, let alone write that down on here.

The reason I bring this up is that earlier today, Manchester City signed Espanyol midfielder Albert Riera on loan until the end of the season, with a view to a permanent move. I was interested to see what people thought about this so I put his name into Google Blog Search. The only real result of interest was Danny at Bitter and Blue, who wrote this:

Coupled with the availability of Tuomas Haapala (whose contract commenced January 1st), it throws doubt on the long-term future of Kiki Musampa who has seen himself out of favour in recent times and Riera's arrival in particular will have done him no favours. With the size of the squad currently though, it is unlikely Musampa will be sent back to Atletico Madrid before the end of the season but it looks a certainty that he will not be back next season.

Granted, for those of you who don't follow City, that may not make much sense. But from my relatively informed perspective that's a good point, well made. Danny takes a matter-of-fact approach to his analysis, a bit like a mildly subjective version of BBC Sport, even earning praise from Spurs fans for his preview of the match coming up tonight, so it's a blog lacking most of the irrational sentiment you might expect from a football fan. On first glance, at least (there might be a few Munich songs lurking in the archive, who knows...).

It's just surprising that there aren't more sites like Bitter and Blue out there. I did check out one other supposed City weblog, mcfcblog, that was linked to from Danny's site, but the last post there was for 27 November. Like I said I have difficulty sustaining football arguments on paper - people have tried to cajole me into writing for a City fanzine recently and I'd love to but can think of nothing worthwhile to say. So in some respects I can understand why there aren't more City blogs around. But equally, I'd have thought there are people who can wax as lyrical about City out there as I can about, say, hurricanes, news or everyday incidents on Dayorama. Perhaps the literate City fans have exhausted their opinions elsewhere, i.e. the pub.