Things were looking seriously grim on Saturday night. Our depressing loss at West Ham was just…well depressing, and all thoughts of a title challenge have already been banished from my mind now. Given the way we’ve started, even top four was looking ambitious to me as I wallowed in that post-loss misery. A look at Sunday’s fixtures did little to lighten the mood as our three most likely rivals for 4th place all had easy games on paper. They all lost - hilariously so in United’s case - while Chelsea conceded a late equaliser to Fat Frank and Man City.
If Saturday was Eastenders - abject misery and negativity in London’s east end - then Sunday was an Only Fools & Horses quadruple header, capped by the ‘Jolly Boys Outing’ episode at Leicester.
I’ll get to Sunday’s fun and games in due course, but I’ll start with Saturday and under pressure Alan Pardew facing the man who many are tipping to be his successor; Geordie and boyhood Newcastle fan Steve Bruce.
It was a nothing game until it exploded in the second half when Jelavic opened the scoring with a brilliant scissor kick just minutes after the restart. Mo Diame then made it 2-0 which was the cue for the unhappy Geordies to let Pardew have it with both barrels. Cometh the hour, cometh the man though. Pardew didn’t wilt under the pressure, he made an inspired change by sending on Papis Cisse who bagged a brace to get them a point.
That’s why he calls himself the King. No really, he does. The Guardian’s football weekly podcast told an interesting story about old ‘Slimer’. Allegedly when he was at West Ham he was at a club dinner and when his food arrived he wasn’t overly impressed with what he’d ordered, mainly because he liked the look of the club photographer’s meal a whole lot more. So, as you do, he just took the photographer’s meal from him and when the photographer protested, Pardew told him: “When you’re the King you do what you like”.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Newcastle fans deserve Mike Ashley and Alan Pardew. Long the King I say!
High flying Villa came back down to earth by losing 3-0 at home to Arsenal. All the goals came in a disastrous four minute spell capped by a shocking own goal from Cissokho. Fucking typical that, Villa suddenly remembering they are Villa at just the wrong time. Useless twats. They even managed to allow Ozil and Welbeck to score. Hope they implode now and go down with the Geordies.
And QPR of course, they’re nailed on to finish bottom. Stoke should be kicking themselves that they slipped to a draw at Loftus Road, especially having led twice through Diouf and Crouch (who had earlier put through his own net to hand QPR a lifeline). A last minute free-kick from Krancjar gave QPR a point (Begovic should have done better), but they are fucking rubbish.
I even saw a comment on twitter saying that the QPR defence actually tried to play offside from a throw in, which begs the question what the hell is Ferdinand playing at as he’s supposed to be providing veteran leadership back there. Maybe he was off his tits on smack again.
Two of the season’s surprise pacesetters met at the Liberty as Southampton edged out ten man Swansea in a bad tempered game. Bony was sent off for two bookable offences and Fonte was lucky he didn’t follow him off. Wanyama got the only goal of the game with a couple of minutes left, but what was with the ‘too cool for school’ non-celebration? I hate all that shit, you’ve scored, be fucking happy about it knob head. Only Mario can get away with that shit, and you’re not Mario so fucking smile, soft arse.
I’m glad to see Southampton doing well though, although perhaps not THIS well. They’re second in the table. Remember when we were second in the table? Good times, I miss being second in the table. I miss being top even more like, but right now second would be just lovely.
Burnley drew 0-0 again. This time with Sunderland. Burnley don’t concede but they can’t score. They’re competitive and have a chance of staying up, but it’s going to be a long season for them. Sunderland need to be better than this though.
Onto Sunday now, and the big game was obviously at the Etihad where the two title favourites went head to head. Sadly, unlike last season, this fixture seems largely irrelevant to us now, so with that in mind my only concern was that Chelsea didn’t win. Maybe if we do what we did last year and go on a massive winning streak in the second half of the season we can once again concern ourselves with what City and Chelsea are doing, but right now I just feel like we’re a million miles away from it.
As usual, Chelsea turned up to defend and frustrate, and as usual, it worked. It helped that City were reduced to ten men when Zabaleta was sent off for two yellows. The first one was incredibly harsh, the second one was probably about right, although you surely have to make some allowances for anyone kicking that cunt Diego Costa?
Chelsea still stayed on the back foot even with the extra man, whereas City still tried to push forward and paid the penalty when super sub Schurrle rounded off a swift counter attack with a simple finish at the back post.
City kept going and substitute Lampard equalised late on, and immediately looked like someone had not only pissed on his chips but also replaced them with salad. He looked like he was gonna cry, the silly fat cunt. I hope he never scores another goal in his career and this one haunts him forever, the big tub of lard.
The bad blood between the two managers continued afterwards as Pellegrini said ““We played during 90 minutes against a small team trying to defend, trying to keep 10 players in front of their goal and [against] a team that wanted to win from the beginning. It was very similar to the Stoke team, with a big team playing against a small team with very good players, trying to defend, trying to keep the score [nil-nil]. They had nine players in front of their box. I said last week that it will be very difficult for us to defend the title because every team will play the way Chelsea did. I repeat that I think they had no intention to win the game. They came just to draw and they scored on the counterattack against 10 players.”
He’s right, but what’s the point in even bringing it up anymore? This is who they are, it’s what they do and they’re completely unapologetic about it. Whatsmore, it works for them. Find a way to overcome it instead of crying about it. Same goes for Brendan too. Just fucking beat the cunts and then complain about their tactics.
Of course mouth almighty had to respond, thinking he’s clever by getting Pellegrini’s name wrong and then coming out with some blatant lies.
“Pellegrino? Many times he says he never speaks about me and my team but he keeps doing the same thing. I am the one that does as he says [not talk about the opposition]. I don’t comment on his words. Don’t ask me about his words, I am not interested in that.” When asked about Lampard, he had another pop at the City boss. “I don’t speak about players from other teams, I am sorry. He is a Man City player and I don’t speak about other teams’ players. Mr Pellegrino, instead of speaking about other teams’ players, should speak about Frank Lampard. I am Chelsea manager and I speak about my players.”
Unless their name is Luis Suarez eh? Cunt. Mourinho I mean, not Suarez. I still love Suarez.
Moving on, what’s up with Everton this season? I expected them to roll over Palace with ease and when Lukaku gave them an early lead it looked like that was exactly what would happen. Next time I checked the score they were 3-1 down! What the hell happened there? Tim Howard happened there, that’s what. First he gave away a pen, then he flapped at a cross and allowed Fraizer Campbell to out jump him. Bolasie then added a third after being set up by my boy J-Punch.
Baines pulled one back from the spot to ensure a frantic finish but Palace held on for their second win at the Pit in successive seasons. Warnock might actually finally to avoid being relegated for once.
The Blues followed it up by letting in another three at Swansea in the League Cup, and that list of #thingstimhowardcansave is shrinking by the week. Let’s hope ‘shots by de redshite’ aren’t on it after this weekend either.
Spurs are having problems too, as Pochettino’s methods haven’t taken yet. Losing at home to West Brom was unexpectedly bad and Spurs are struggling. Hell, even we beat them so clearly they’ve got some things to sort out.
Kaboul is their new full time skipper, which seems weird to me. Is he now first choice then, because I always look at him as someone who they bring in when the centre backs they have who aren’t shit are out injured.
Not that I’m in much of a position to be mocking other club’s defenders when we’ve got the keystone cops back there giving away goals every fucking week. We’re almost Everton-like in our defending these days (think I’ve just guaranteed a 0-0 in the derby haven’t I?).
I’m going out on a limb and saying Berahino will be playing for a top six side within two years. He’s really good and being at a club like West Brom is ideal because he’ll get the playing time he needs to develop.
Finally, that United game was so funny that even the usually po-faced Mario was smiling. Or more specifically, “lol’ing”. I’d rather he didn’t do shit like that, especially when we’ve lost our previous two games, but he was only expressing what the entire non-United supporting nation were thinking.
I was more relived about it than anything to be truthful. After our shit start the last thing we needed was for United to suddenly start looking good, and when their forwards started to turn it on early doors I was pretty fucking down in the dumps. Falcao set up Van Persie for number one, Di Maria scored a brilliant second but Ulloa headed in a terrific goal to get Leicester back in it. All inside the opening 16 minutes, United were basically looking like us from last season.
Falcao then hit the bar with a great effort before Herrera made it 3-1. Depressing. Just fuck off football. United have one bad year, spend an absolute fuckload of dough, the arse falls out of us and suddenly look like they’ll be better than us gain just like that. As I said, depressing.
Then something wonderful happened. God bless Mark Clattenburg. He really doesn’t like United much does he? Fair play to him. Vardy’s foul on Rafael was as blatant as can be. How did ‘Clatts’ (I like to call him Clatts now that he’s nailed his manc hating colours to the mast) not give a free-kick for that? He then infuriated United further by then immediately giving a pen when Rafael made the very slightest of contact on Vardy seconds later. Again, it was a joke of a decision. A hilarious joke though, and if this game was the “Jolly Boys Outing” episode than that incident was Del Boy smacking “the Great Raymondo” in the mush.
After that, United just fell apart, it was glorious. Credit to Leicester, they were absolutely brilliant and the little sequence when they had three nutmegs in the space of about ten seconds was great. United though, fucking hell. I’m going to just enjoy this while it lasts because you have to assume they will sort out their defensive problems eventually, and when they do they’ll be really dangerous because of the star quality they’ve signed at the other end.
That spending spree has left a bitter taste in the mouth of some though, not least Big Sam who says Moyes should have been given the £150m to spend that Van Gaal has had. It’s not often the entire football world (other than United fans) are all in unanimous agreement with the mashed potato faced slug, but he’ll get few arguments on this one. Moyes could have bought five Fellainis with that dough and still had change for Tony Hibbert.
Dave
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