This comparison is sparked by complaints of opposing managers and fans about City's footballing tactics.

The onslaught of Attila and the Huns against the western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD has come down to us as the very epitome of terror, as an unassailable force that swept all before it. There could be nothing exaggerated about the bloodthirsty attack of the Huns, though images of that too were used to bring home the reality of the threat and galvanise opposition to it. Many fell before the onslaught, paralysed by terror.

The rapidity of the Hun advance in the middle years of the 5thC was characterised by rapid movement, concentrated power and integrated military effort. It would be tempting to leave it at that – to ascribe the Hun success to an avalanche of action, and to the psychology of terror.

One Roman soldier described the tactics of Attila, "They are lightly equipped for swift motion, and unexpected in action; they purposely divide suddenly into scattered bands and attack, running about in disorder here and there, dealing terrific slaughter … you would not hesitate to call them the most terrible of all warriors, because they fight from a distance with missiles … then they gallop over the intervening spaces and fight hand to hand with swords, regardless of their own lives"

If that isn't a description of Colin's tactics (and Gunnars and Bamba), I'll eat my City bobble hat.

Unfortunately, Attila was found out eventually. The one great weakness of his thinking was that it depended for momentum on the rapid collapse of an enemy and faltered once an enemy resisted.

A salutory lesson, Colin!