Still, it meant that Summerbee and McKinlay could have another go from the start and show us why we should at least get our hands in our pockets and offer them a tenner win-bonus now and then.

"One Matty Piper, there's only one Matty Piper" sang the Kop as loudly as they could to the Sky cameras, hoping the lad was watching.

With quarter of an hour to kick off we were all wondering where the heck the Stoke fans were. At home it seemed, cos there were no more there by kick off. What a pathetic turn out for a newly promoted club for their first home game of the season. A measly 14,000. "Shit ground, no fans" sang the City Kop gleefully.

There was unreserved seating which meant all the crew could go and stand together...it created a great atmosphere and City outsang Stoke despite the Britannia's reputation for being loud. The City fans had even more to sing about after only 8 minutes.

A beautiful flowing move that oozed class left Stoke absolutely floudering and Scowcroft headed home from a Summerbee cross.

"Say we are top of the league, say we are top of the league" chanted the City fans.

An even bigger cheer went up as the F£$%&* score was heard on the radio and the trees were losing. Micky even started the wave. Bit early for that, man!

Unfortunately we then had to suffer the rest of the game. First division footy...don't you just love it? City never really looked in any danger but never built on their early momentum either.

A couple of times Stoke did something for their fans to get excited about (like won a throw in) and the noise was huge for a few seconds...but then they went to sleep again. Did Stoke have a shot on target? Don't think so. We only heard Delilah once. Feeble.

City fans amused themselves in the second half by abusing Stoke goalie Cutler who had got arsey with Dickov and later on rolled around injured. He didn't endear himself to any of us.

City sat back a little in the second half despite still having lot of zip in them and looking fit, and Stoke did start to look a little more like getting somewhere...until they came up against Elliott and Taggart who just mopped up everything and won every ball in the air.

Stoke tried different combinations of unfit players and if Chris Iwelumo is the best they've got god help them this year. "Are you Ade in disguise?" sang the Foxes' end.

Mad Frank decided one and a half games was far too long to go without taking a player out and picked up the obligatory yellow card.

Adams gave the youngsters a chance and stuck on Jordan Stewart and Jon Stevenson. Both looked fast and up for it and had some lovely touches in the last ten minutes.

5 minutes of injury time was not our idea of fun seeing as it was all Stoke by then, but the City fans were singing "Lets all have a disco", "jingle bells" and "we are top of the league" as the final whistle went and the players left the field.

The Stoke fans stay away...only 14000	Muzzy coming to take a corner
Elliott sorts out his defence	Deane giving the defenders a hard time