City ask for new keeper

It's being widely reported that we have asked for Premier League permission to bring in an emergency loan goalkeeper, such is our faith in Gunnar Nielsen.

There is precedent here - some teams are allowed an emergency loan when they are desperately short on keepers. I'm not sure how strong a case we have: Gunnar Nielsen is a 23 year old full international, not some naive adolescent who's only just started playing in goal.

Briefly, part of me wanted our request to get turned down - not just because I have total faith that Gunnar Nielsen is the new Arni Arason, but also because I think the bending of the rules to suit the bigger sides is pernicious. Remember Liverpool being allowed to to play Champions League football in 2005/06, or Javier Mascherano playing for three teams in one season? It's important that rules are applied equally to all teams.

But then I realised that we could conceivably bring in Nicky Weaver as our emergency goalkeeper, and now I'm very keen that we be allowed to. We're only really going to get someone who is a second-choice keeper at a team with nothing to play for - and Weaver fits the bill perfectly (as does Carlo Nash). He's a genuine City legend, for obvious reasons, and could write another chapter for himself in our history books if he could guide us to Champions League football. Can anyone think of a better idea?

Once a blue always a blue #3

Happy 31st birthday Nicky Weaver.

Nicky Weaver will always be remembered as the hero from the shoot-out against Gillingham, the man who completed the work of Kevin Horlock and Paul Dickov. With his saves from Paul Smith and Guy Butters he sent us back up into the second tier in what remains the greatest match in the history of the club. Naturally it was Weaver's finest moment for City but that doesn't mean it was the only part of his story here. In many ways he was the Joe Hart of his day, a promising English teenager recruited from an unfashionable lower league club, and like Hart he found himself quickly in the fray. He starred in both of the consecutive promotion seasons under Joe Royle - like Hart, making his way into the England U21s, and looked set to be a real star of the future. He held on as first choice as we were relegated under Royle and then promoted under Keegan, but the arrival of Peter Schmeichel in summer 2002 signalled that Weaver was no longer first choice. The presence of Schmeichel, David Seaman and David James as well as a series of knee injuries meant that he played just one game for City in the next four seasons before Stuart Pearce made him first choice for the dismal 2006/07 campaign. It was heartening to see him in goal again for City, but he could not maintain his place and in 2007 he left on a free transfer to Charlton Athletic. After a spell at Dundee United he is now back in the Premier League as back-up to Brian Jensen at Burnley.

Nicky Weaver MCFC 1998-2007 205 games.