There is a wonderful old sketch in The Goon Show when Throat, Neddie Seagoon and Justin Eidelburger, played by Spike Milligan and his partners in anarchy, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers, intend to steal Napoleon’s piano and arrange to meet outside the Louvre on the second stroke of midnight. Except Seagoon arrives on the third stroke. “You’re late,” Eidelburger says. And the explanation is a thing of beauty. “Sorry,” Seagoon says, “my legs were slow.”
Vincent Kompany, one imagines, knows the feeling. It’s just not so funny in his case when his legs are not what they were and he is at a stage of his professional life when, to borrow an old line from Paul Gascoigne, the injuries no longer come in threes, they come in 33s. Or more, to be precise: Kompany’s latest setback is his 34th in Manchester City’s colours, and potentially the most damaging when the club have a new regime that gives the impression there is no place for sentimentality.
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