While we were getting hosed out of two points, our top four rivals were enjoying mixed fortunes this week. Arsenal murdered hapless Everton, the Mancs eventually bored Huddersfield into submission at Old Trafford but Chelsea’s up and down run continued as they were humiliated at Watford.
Fat Sam went with a back five and two holding midfielders at the Emirates. A sensible approach; keep it tight early doors and feel your way into the game, maybe nick something from a set-piece or with the pace of Walcott and Bolasie. Somehow they found themselves 3-0 down after 19 minutes. Imagine how many they'd have conceded if he hadn't gone with that extra defender.
Ramsay bagged the first of his hat-trick when he converted a Mkhitaryan cross from close range. Koscielny made it 2-0 and Ramsey added a third with a shot that deflected past Pickford, who probably still should have saved it. Mkhitaryan picked up another assist when he played in a clearly offside Aubamayang, who finished with a nonchalant little dink over Pickford to make it 4-0 just before half time.
I say it was clearly offside, but do we know for sure? Perhaps they’ve made yet another change to the offside law without telling anyone?
That Calvert-Lewin prick came off the bench and headed in a consolation, but then helped to lay on Ramsay’s hat-trick when he presented the ball to Mkhitaryan who delivered another buffet ball for the Welshman to despatch.
The best thing about Everton defeats these days is watching Allardyce talking to TV post match. It's great, he doesn’t give a shit. He just comes out and moans about how crap the players were. Every week he just lays into them, it’s marvellous.
“We played the same system as Swansea, and put players in the same positions, but I might as well have been talking to them in a foreign language from what I saw from them out there”. Brilliant that. He did his job by basically copying Swansea’s system and telling them “go and do what Swansea did”. When it doesn’t work, it’s because they don’t listen to him. Easy money this management lark isn’t it?
“I’m angry at the players for that performance. It’s unacceptable”. Outstanding passing of the buck. He's up there with Mourinho when it comes to the "my plan was great, blame those fucking deadbeats who couldn't carry it out" approach to self preservation. It’s shameless. To quote Ron Burgundy, I’m not even mad, I’m impressed. You almost have to admire such rampant ego.
That’s a nice little segue to the next game actually, which featured another out of control ego - my main man Pards. His Baggies team have been much improved of late and they took on struggling Southampton at the Hawthorns. All signs pointed to a home win, but Pards was given an unexpected taste of ‘the long pork sausage’.
It started well for the Baggies though, as that giant Egyptian defender put them ahead from a corner (somewhere up in Teesside, a 60 year old man in a trackie, wearing a baseball cap and the whitest pair of trainers you’ve ever seen, wiped away a small tear of pride as it rolled down his cheek), but Lemina hit a thunderbolt to bring the Saints level. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of him but he looks a player I reckon.
Jack Stephens then struck two minutes later with his third goal in consecutive games and Ward-Prowse made it 3-1 with a free-kick. That was funny because Boufal had wanted to take it but was over ruled by all of his team-mates, who have obviously seen Ward-Prowse pinging them in every day in training, as that’s his thing. Boufal threw a massive strop at not getting his own way, but to his credit he was first on the scene for the celebrations, which wouldn’t be the case with some players.
Rondon did pull one back when he headed in a Chris Brunt set-piece, but Southampton held on for a much needed win. Given that 90% of West Brom goals come from set-pieces, Brunt must be a fucking superstar in fantasy footy. I wouldn’t know as any time I’ve done it I’ve lost interest by the time September even starts, as I've got more important, responsible grown up things to be doing (ok, I know you're not buying that. I'm basically talking about playing the xbox and watching reruns of Its Always Sunny on Netflix), but if there are any fantasy football playing virgins reading this, you might want to sign him up to your team and make him captain.
It was weird - and to be honest a little sad - seeing Sturridge playing for West Brom. It doesn’t seem right. Like seeing a Crufts winner rummaging through bins in an alley and hanging out with some mangey, flea ridden strays. No offence meant to West Brom players, and I’m sure they’d agree anyway.
West Ham meanwhile, looked like they were climbing towards safety a few weeks ago but they’re right back in the shit now and sit just three points ahead of the relegation zone. They got turned over by Brighton on Saturday and Chris Hughton's plucky underdogs are now level with the Hammers, with the same points and goal difference.
Glenn Murray got the opener but Hernandez finished well to get West Ham back on level terms. You know the only thing more lame than a fully grown man calling himself ‘Chicarito’? An even older man, commentating, also calling him ‘Chicarito’. Yes Jonathon Pearce, I’m talking about you, you fucking cringey bastard.
Izquierdo (pretty sure I've spelt that wrong despite looking at it three or four times. My brain just can't seem to formulate those letters no matter how many times I try) curled in an absolute beauty to restore Brighton’s advantage and Gross then added a belter of his own to make it 3-1.
West Ham are back to looking like boiled shite again, which is great because if seeing Moyes losing isn’t fun enough for you (I can't think why it wouldn't be though, are you dead inside?), his assistant is Stuart Pearce, which just makes it doubly satisfying. Triply satisfying if you also detest their Tory owners.
The most surprising result of the weekend saw Burnley spring an upset by taking two points of Man City after coming from behind to grab a 1-1 draw. Danilo whipped one into the top corner from 25 yards to give City the lead but Gudmundssen equalised. Fair play to Burnley for hanging in there but they were helped by some terrible finishing from City.
Sterling produced the miss of the season. The surprising thing is that people were surprised. He does this on a regular basis, always has. He still converts plenty and he’s got 19 goals this season so I’m not saying he’s shit. I’ll just re-iterate what I’ve been saying all season. For a really good player he does a fantastic impersonation of a shit one at times.
All the talk afterwards surrounded ‘Pep’ only naming six subs because “I had nobody else”. Bet that went down well at ‘the Etihad Campus’. He’s a knobhead. People were second guessing it and wondering if it was a protest about not getting Mahrez, or maybe it was about his players being on the receiving end of some bad fouls in recent weeks. Who cares why he did it? He’s just a knobhead. Knobheads do knobhead things. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.
Speaking of knobheads, Mourinho’s United made hard work of beating Huddersfield but two second half goals, one of which came from Al€xi$ $an¢€z (won’t be doing that again, it took me fucking ages to find the ¢ key and by the time I did, I’d realised it’s not that clever anyway, but I’d spent so long on it by that point there’s no way I wasn’t going to use it) who scored a rebound after he’d missed a pen.
Obviously I didn’t watch it, why would I, but I saw a clip on twitter of a pen that United were denied. Funny as fuck, not only was it a clear foul by Kongolo on that McTomwhatshisface, but he nearly fucking killed him. It was some proper Harold Schumacher shit, but Stuart Atwell was like ‘nah, that’s never a foul’. He’s immediately jumped to the top of my ‘favourite refs list’. He’s actually the only name on it, but still, he’s my favourite. For now.
Mourinho complained afterwards about the Old Trafford atmosphere, making an unflattering comparison to Portsmouth, of all places. Basically his argument is that Old Trafford has four times as many people than Fratton Park had back in the day, but for some reason it’s nowhere near as loud. Might wanna go down to Pompey some time before the end of the season, I think you might change your mind on that.
Although maybe not. These days I expect there’s only that knobhead with his bell and a handful of other die hards dotted around the ground, but they still make more noise than United fans. It’s not like me to defend United fans over anything, but in this case I’m going to make an exception.
The atmosphere at Old Trafford has been abysmal for years, even Ferguson used to complain about it so this is nothing new. Here’s the thing though. Ferguson had every right to moan, considering he was delivering league titles while playing a “Man United style” brand of football. This cunt is boring everyone to death with his dull safety first football yet he expects them to sit there screaming and shouting like performing seals just to fuel his own fucking enormous ego. Still, they fucking deserve each other.
If he wants to sample support like that, maybe he should go and manage a club that hasn't been spoiled by success and expects to win every game 5-0? Of course to do that he'd have to go to a team that wouldn't let him outspend everybody else and might expect him to actually try and bring through some young players instead of filling his team with 29 year old 'finished products'. Tit.
Huddersfield are in real trouble now sadly, but that's hardly surprising when they have the only striker capable of giving Joselu a run for his money in the “shittest player in the league” stakes. Depoitre is horrific, but when we played them last week the commentator described him as ‘the Belgian international’. He didn’t say international what, but unless hod carrying is now a sport then I can only assume he meant football.
Which leads me to ask, how can a nation that has Lukaku, Benteke, Origi, Batshuayi and fuck knows how many other decent forwards to choose from, ever, EVER, find themselves in a situation where they call up this fucking bruiser? He’s the Belgian Michael Ricketts. Actually, having just checked wiki and noticed he has one cap and one goal, he’s more like the Belgian Dave Nugent.
Anyway, moving on, and Bournemouth’s unbeaten run stretched to seven games as they came from behind to beat Stoke after Shaqiri had put the visitors ahead. Both goals from substitutes but Eddie Howe refused to take any credit for that. He’s got a lot to learn hasn’t he? I can just imagine Allardyce spitting tea all over his telly when he heard him say "it's nothing to do with me, it's all about the players". No no no no you silly boy, you say that when you've LOST.
Josh King equalised and Mousset headed a late winner. Bournemouth are rolling now and might rival Leicester and Burnley for those 7th and 8th spots the way they're going. To think earlier in the season I thought this was the year it would all catch up with them and they'd go down. Fair play to Nice Guy Eddie, he's a good manager and a likeable fella.
By the way, no matter how many times I hear a commentator say “Norwegian international Josh King” it never fails to make me go “yer wha? Oh yeah, forgot about that”. Don't think I'll ever get used to it.
“Foxes never quit” reads a sign at the KingPower Stadium. Someone needs to tell that to my boy Mahrez, who is still AWOL after not being allowed to join Man City. Poor form that, he's undoing all the positive rep he built up by the way he handled not getting his move last summer.
His replacement, a French kid called Diabate, should have been sent off early doors after an over the top challenge on Clucas. Apart from that he looked really good though. Could be one to watch him.
Vardy gave Leicester an early lead and Ndidi thought he’d made it 2-0, but it was ruled out for offside. The offence happened about ten seconds before the goal and the lino had his flag up for ages, but Anthony Taylor never bothered stopping the game, the shit manc cunt. Swansea gradually began to get themselves into the game and equalised through Fernandez after the break and that’s how it ended.
Swansea’s new manager is proving me wrong as he’s really turned them around quickly. I still don’t like his face. I finally figured out who he looks like. He's like Robert De Niro playing Inspector Clouseau.
Onto Sunday now, where Rafa and Roy faced off at Selhurst. No love lost there on either side, and the handshake afterwards was as brief as it’s possible to do. Blink and you’d miss it.
Diame broke the deadlock and Newcastle had chances to extend their lead before Palace were awarded a scandalous penalty. Yes, Clark did have a slight hold of Benteke but it was just two players grappling for position. The ref didn’t give it but it was a day for busy cunt linesmen sticking their oar on. Milivojevic (yes I looked that up) buried the pen and then Clark redeemed himself with two brilliant blocks in the space of as many seconds to preserve a point for his side.
Palace have signed a 6ft 4 Norwegian striker. If you were to ask me who’s the manager most likely to sign a 6ft 4 Norwegian striker, Neil Warnock would be my first guess and the Hodge would be my second. It’s just such a Hodgson move that. Bet he's absolutely terrible too.
Mind you, no matter how bad he is he'll probably fancy his chances of getting a game, because is there a striker anywhere in the game who misses more one v ones with the keeper than Benteke? Every fucking week. He also missed an open goal from three yards, but it did come at an awkward height and wasn’t a miss of Sterling proportions. Still, he's been a joke this season. We've completely broken him I think.
Finally, it was an eventful Monday night game that saw Chelsea humiliated by Watford. Bakayoko was sent off early and that turned the game. Chelsea fans sang "You're fucking shit" as he trudged disconsolately past them. So many of the reasons to hate Chelsea are no longer there and I don't think I'm alone in not really being bothered by them much these days. The one constant is the absolute lack of class of their fans though. I don't think there is another set of fans in the Premier League (other than maybe West Ham) that would treat one of their own players like that. Fucking appalling.
Watford just steamrollered them in the end, with Deulefeu doing much of the damage. Deeney scored and gave it the double bird (presumably to the Chelsea fans but maybe to the FA, who knows), which will probably land him another ban. I enjoyed it though, so fair play to him.
The worry I have now is that Chelsea might sack Conte before he gets to sort Mourinho out. There was even some talk he’d be given the old heave ho after the Watford game, but thankfully that didn’t prove to be the case and he's had a temporary reprieve with a vote of confidence.
That was a relief. Antonio Conte doesn’t deserve to go out like that. He’s a fantastic manager and an even better guy. He deserves to go out swinging, on the touchline at Old Trafford, like this….
Say that again about match fixin'. Say it again, you fuckin' mutt you.
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