Split-screen Premier drama leaves even big Quinny speechless

TV VIEW:IF, SAY, a few Martians dropped in to visit us earthlings some time soon and, while expressing befuddlement at curious humanoid traits, asked for an illustration to demonstrate how our emotions can sometimes be a bit see-sawy, all you'd have to do, really, is show them Sky Sport's split screen coverage of yesterday's Premier League-deciding games.

“I swear, you’ll never see anything like this again – but watch it, drink it in,” howled Martin Tyler, and he wasn’t wrong.

He, though, was talking about on-the-field events, not what was happening in the stands or in the dugouts, where our split screen showed earthlings moving from despair to rhapsody, back to despair again, before experiencing another dash of rhapsody/despair and then spontaneously combusting – in either a good or entirely bad way.

As your eyes moved back and forward between the two screens you witnessed a Mexican Wave of highs and lows and lows and highs, few reactions more spectacularly rollercoaster-ish than those of Roberto Mancini and Alex Ferguson. You know, it’s on days like these – not that there was ever was a day like this – you have to concede: whatever these fellas earn, it just isn’t enough.

You didn’t even need to know the scores – the pace at which Ferguson chewed his gum let you know how things were shaping up.

City a goal up? A leisurely, slightly resigned and planning-his-summer-transfers-already chew, slumped in his seat, looking his age.

QPR 2-1 up? Hammer-drilling his gum, Riverdancing on the touchline, looking like a young buck.

Mancini, meanwhile, went from Mr Serene to Mr Manic, before falling in to Jeff Shreeves’s arms and declaring that he felt “90 years old”. “To win like this is craaaaazy,” he said, barely a breath left in his body.

It was madness, pure unadulterated sporting madness, with more twists and turns than the Corkscrew near Doochary.

“Where were you on the final day of the 2011-’12 English Premier League season,” our great-great-grandchildren will ask us when City complete their 56-in-a-row. “In front of our split screen tellies – where else, you eejits,” we’ll tell them, while insisting, while they insolently guffaw, that Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs still have a season or two left in them yet.

“This is probably Alex Ferguson’s greatest achievement,” Niall Quinn had said as the minutes ticked away and the camera picked out City fans bawling and kicking and punching thin air in frustration. “Well . . . assuming it stays this way,” he added.

And then, you know yourself.

“Have you ever experienced anything quite like this,” Tyler had asked him when QPR took the lead. There was silence beside him. Quinn couldn’t find any words, he’d run out of them. Or else he’d been informed that Sky Sports isn’t a radio station, so it’s okay to stop talking occasionally.

By then it had been quiet enough. Just the Wayne Rooney goal on the right screen and the Pablo Zabaleta goal on the left and Rooney’s open-goal miss on the right and Djibril Cisse’s equaliser on the left, and then Joey Barton’s meltdown.

And QPR supporters going bonkers because Stoke had scored, and Sunderland supporters going bonkers because City had scored, and United supporters going bonkers because QPR had scored, and so on.

The Martians would have been well and truly addled if they’d arrived in time for the games.

“I really don’t know what to think now,” said Quinn, and he wasn’t alone.

The image that will, perhaps, live the longest, is the sight of those City fans who left their seats and headed for the exits, when their team was 2-1 down.

May the videos of their overhasty departures go viral.

And then Edin Dzeko equalised two minutes in to extra-time, the winner moments later ensuring that every child in the blue half of Manchester born between now and 3017 will be named Sergio Leonel “Kun” Aguero del Castillo – even if it’s a girl. In Ireland there may even be, say, a few Aguero O’Reillys, after nigh on a decade of Waynes. Fickle.

“The most stupendous, greatest moment I’ve EVER seen in Premier League football,” said a hyperventilating Quinn, “I’m lost for words.” “In our bloody dreams,” responded those of a Reddish persuasion. “You have to feel for Manchester United right now,” he said. “LOL,” they replied. (Note to David Cameron: that’s “laughing out loud”, not “lots of love”).

So, as anticipated, City won the league after a pedestrian enough afternoon.

“They’ve suffered for 40 odd years, you’ve got to congratulate them,” said Gary Neville, by now a whiter shade of pale. And you do. You have to feel happy for Manchester City. Ah, you do.