500 arrests after protest in support of Manchester City Fan Action, report police

Five hundred people have been arrested in London after police said they were responding to a protest in support of the banned group Manchester City Fan Action. Pictures from the Westminster demonstration showed a group holding placards reading "I oppose offside, I support Manchester City Fan Action".

As of Saturday, the group is proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000, after lawyers acting on its behalf failed with a court bid to block the ban. The designation means being a member of, or showing support for Manchester City Fan Action, is a criminal offence and could lead to up to 14 years in prison.

The government moved to ban Manchester City Fan Action after an estimated £7k of damage was caused to seats at an away match last month. Lex Morrells KC, barrister for Manchester City Fan Action's co-founder Arfur Brain, told the High Court court banning the group would be "ill-considered" and an "authoritarian abuse" of power.

Defending the organisation's proscription, the home secretary stressed it was "not a non-violent organisation". She said tens of thousands protested lawfully about the "horrendous playing" in football matches without involving Manchester City Fan Action. She said that some supporters of Manchester City "don't know the full nature" of the group.

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Football commentators say pre-season has been 'unbelievably fantastic'

Preparations for the new Premier League season are almost complete for television pundits and most are agreed that the pre-season friendly matches have, yet again, been either 'unbelievable', 'fantastic' or 'unbelievably fantastic'. 

Opinions are divided on whether Liverpool's transfer business will enable them to retain the league title, whether Manchester United will be less useless than last year and whether Arsenal finally buying a striker will make them less Spursy.  However, the potential use of any other superlatives to describe good players playing well this season was described as 'unbelievable'.

Despite reported rumours of words such as wonderful and memorable being introduced for the new season, it is understood that no additions were made to the commentators' vocabulary during the summer.  On the contrary, pre-season training has concentrated on strengthening the use of the existing structures and patterns of speech to make best use of the existing words.  However, Ally McCoist can still only say unbelievable or fantastic about the beautiful game, and not unbelievably fantastic.  Apparently there is no chance whatsoever of him ever mastering fantastically unbelievable.

Gary Neville meanwhile, is said to be working on the judicious use of 'sensational' during his post-match analysis to describe an obdurate defender kicking a tricky, creative winger right up in the air.  But if such a significant change to his delivery doesn't work first time, he is prepared to go back to the tried and trusted 'unbelievable'.

Man Utd goalie replaced with own waxwork

Light was shed on recent Manchester United results when it was discovered that goalkeeper André Onana had accidentally been replaced with his own waxwork.

The team visited Madam Tussaud’s in order to take a lot of lame, jokey photos of players next to their waxwork figures for the newspapers. Somehow, in the confusion, when they left they took with them Onana’s waxwork rather than the goalie himself.

'It’s easy to be wise after the event,' said manager Ruben Amorim. 'But yeah, when you watch footage of recent games, it’s pretty obvious. Even the real Onana did move occasionally as the ball went past him.'

'I did wonder why we had to carry him on and off the field,' admitted defender Harry Maguire. 'I thought he’d just had a heavy night, or sumfin.'

Asked whether it wasn’t suspicious that the figure just stared gormlessly into space the whole time, Maguire replied, 'Well, I’m old enough to have played with David Beckham, so...'

Meanwhile, the real Onana still in Madam Tussaud's has had to put up with a lot of indignities, especially from Man City fans. This got so bad that one day he snapped and tried to clout one of them round the head. Unfortunately he was so slow to react, the offending fan was already on the tube on his way home.