Everton's younger Munster brother breaks City hearts!

Today's proved a sad day, and one i'm sure none of us will ever forget. Certain moments in life stay ingrained on your mind until you're under soil; where you met your first love, tying the knot, losing one of your nearest and dearest, where you were when you heard the news of someone cataclysmically famous popping their clogs. November 20th 2009 will go down in history as being the day the world learned that one of football's modern elite ruled out joining God's own club, Manchester City.

Phyllis Neville, it should be pointed out somewhere in the oncoming adulating prose to such a great man, has got the odd medal. During over a decade across the road Neville won ten major honours. He also, somehow, won 59 caps for his country. During those years his main competition came from the likes of Michael Gray, Steve Guppy and Chris Powell, that's not the point, he was amongst the best in his position, or at least England managerial greats like Glenn Hoddle and Kevin Keegan thought so.

Sadly for the lad, almost 400 appearances for The World's Greatest Football Club(TM), including a European Cup win (didn't play, like, but let's not clutch at straws), his career is probably best summed up by his distinguished international record; untried during Euro '96, dropped for the World Cup in France in '98, responsible for England's exit against Romania at Euro 2000, dropped again for the '02 trip to Japan & Korea, roughly half an hour in Portugal '04, again 'rested' in 2006, and now unable to get a game at all.

Struggling to budge greats like Quinton Fortune, Wesley Brown and John 'The Cat' O'Shea from the United line-up, and with funds needed to be raised after their selling out to the much-loved American Glazer dynasty, young Phil found himself having to leave Old Trafford. When 'The People's Club' came calling, and knowing his only real competition would be ponies like Tony Hibbert, Lee Carsley and Nuno Valente, he moved for a staggering £4m.

His career at Blue Scouse started fantastically well; eliminated from the Champions League at the earliest possible opportunity having snook 4th place the season prior, they'd win just two of his first dozen games. His season wouldn't get much better, his new club finishing 11th, and Nev spending most of the year wearing down the pencils of referees and being described by pundits as 'hard-working', as players of such limited ability often are.

During the three years that followed Neville did, to be fair to the pug-faced freak, become a key component of an Everton side that relies, and still does, heavily on a couple of cloggers 'putting themselves about' in the middle of the park. Three successive top six finishes under Gollum can't be sniffed at, but as we're seeing with their results so far this season, the main reason for that was the Franco Baresi-like defensive consistency of Joleon Lescott.

Phil's public statement, then, that he wouldn't play for or manage Manchester City would have to be deemed somewhat fanciful. Even with our sometime problems at full-back he'd be lucky, and turning 33 in January the odds of one of the big five snapping him up are absolutely nil. The days of us signing tinpot, over-the-hill ratters are long gone, and the best hope Nev Mark II has got to fall into management would be if Moyes' men continue to wobble and he's offered some sort of caretaker role.

As a City supporter, though, and obviously not the biggest fan of either brother, i'm quite glad that they, and other players who are or have been associated with our humble neighbours, continue to talk about us. We'll just bob along, quietly improving, leaving the likes of the Brothers Grimm and other poor deluded souls to make their continued noise. We're not a threat, to any of them, remember that.