The biggest game of the weekend came on Sunday so I’ll start with that and then circle back to Saturday’s games afterwards.
I didn’t give United much of a chance of getting anything at Chelsea so that draw was a welcome surprise. I’m not sure they deserved it but I don’t care. How they play is not my concern but if they can pick up any kind of result that helps us then great. It would have been better if they’d managed to hold onto their lead and hadn’t conceded a stupid fucking penalty, but they took two points off Chelsea so that’ll do.
They were under pressure for most of the game but coped fairly well. Not having Maguire and Shaw back there doing their Chuckle Brothers act obviously helped but unfortunately for them, Wan Bassaka was still there shitting all over the lawn. He’s terrible him. He was actually better at Palace than he is now. The biggest myth in football is that he's such a great defender. Just because he loves a slidey and is difficult to dribble past on the outside does not make him a great defender.
Being dogshit going forward always boosts a full back's defensive reputation though as everyone assumes if you can't attack then you must be boss at defending or why else would you be in the team? Wan-Bissaka can't attack or defend. He attacks like Tony Hibbert and defends like Luke Shaw.
United held out until half time and then took the lead early in the second half when Jorginho made a mess of dealing with a high ball when he was last man, and Sancho ran clear to score. The mental thing about that goal was the part Rashford played in it. He was up there in support of Sancho and should have been the recipient of a square ball and tap in.
You could see Sancho wanted to roll it to him as he looked across a couple of times. The problem was Rashford was offside the entire way from halfway to the edge of the box. He never got himself behind the ball at any point, the soft twat. That’s the worst piece of off the ball forward play I’ve seen since that Richarlison fucktard earlier in the season.
Sancho was savvy enough to realise and didn’t give him the ball. Instead he kept his cool and scored himself. What was Rashford thinking though? Probably worrying about hungry kids again instead of ‘concentrating on his footy’ like twitter keeps telling him to.
A United win would have been great for us as we’d have closed the gap to Chelsea to just a single point. The useless pricks couldn’t hold on though and Wan Bissaka recklessly swung out a leg and caught Thiago Silva. Predictably, Jorginho converted the pen.
The big talking point was Carrick leaving out Ronaldo. It’s amazing that this was such a story. I thought Carragher had it right. He’s a 36 year old striker who doesn’t do anything to help a team defensively. He isn’t going to play every single game and an away match against the league leaders where you’re likely to be under the cosh seems like a logical game to leave him out. It was going to be all hands to the pump against Chelsea so Carrick (or Rangnick) left him on the bench with the intention of maybe bringing him on to counter attack late on. But because of the ‘name’ it’s a story. How dare you leave Ronaldo out!
Roy Keane was incredulous about it and got into a shouting match with Carra afterwards. I buzz off Keane, he’s hilarious, but he was talking bollocks here and was contradicting himself. Usually he talks sense but he lost all perspective because he just wanted to hammer Carrick about anything and everything. He had a proper cob on after seeing Carrick’s post match interview and at one point Haselbaink and Carra were looking at each other and giggling like school kids as Keane let rip.
He defo has no time for Carrick. I thought they were former team-mates but it turns out they aren’t. Carrick actually replaced Keane at Old Trafford and even took his shirt number. Hard as it seems to imagine, could it be that Keane is still bearing a grudge after all these years? Nah, surely not. He doesn’t seem the type.
Elsewhere, Stevie got his second win on the bounce as Villa boss which raised hopes he might do us a favour in midweek against City. Didn’t happen. I’ll get to that in a bit though.
They won at Selhurst Park though, a result I didn’t expect if I’m honest. I thought Palace would do them but their achilles heel did for them again. They just can’t defend set-pieces. Targett fired Villa ahead after Palace didn’t deal with a routine corner. Nothing special about it, just a cross in that they didn’t head away and Targett arrived at the back post for a goal.
Villa were briefly reduced to ten men when Douglas Luis saw red for a lunge on Kouyate. VAR told the ref to have another look, he did and changed his mind. I’ve never seen this ref before and he was pretty hopeless.
McGinn curled in Villa’s second from the edge of the box late on and although Guess pulled one back in stoppage time, there was no time left for them to try to force an equaliser.
Vieira said “It was disappointing because we didn’t play as well as…..” zzzzzzzzzz. Sorry, nodded off there.
It’s not too often I want Arsenal to win but I was glad they did this weekend as they were playing Newcastle. They did win but they didn’t exactly impress and for a while Newcastle were definitely in this game. Shelvey hit the bar and also stung the palms of Ramsdale when it was still goalless.
Arsenal should have taken the lead when Saka produced a bit of magic on the left and crossed for Smith Rowe. His header was saved but the ball dropped to Aubamayeng two yards out and he sliced wide, the fucking fraud.
Saka was comfortably the best player on the pitch and he put Arsenal ahead in the second half with a tidy finish. Wilson thought he should have had a penalty soon after when he tangled with Tavares in the box. The ref got that right I reckon, shoulder to shoulder, nothing in it.
Martinelli came off the bench to wrap it up with a good volley. Not sure why he doesn’t play more as he usually looks like he can do something, which is more than his captain does, the useless cunt.
Saka is already too good for Arsenal. You can see what’s going to happen there. He’ll stay there another year or maybe two while he develops and then when he’s ready to take the next step and hold down a place at a genuinely contender he’ll move on.
You know who else will move on soon? Graham Potter. You know how highly I rate him as I say it all the time. His team are as well coached as any in the league. He knows what he’s doing this fella, but Brighton fans seem to be getting a little ahead of themselves. They booed their team off after a 0-0 draw with Leeds in which they played really well but just couldn’t score.
Their finishing was shite but they were also a bit unlucky at times and they hit the post on three occasions. There was nothing wrong with the performance though and Potter wasn’t happy at the crowd reaction. My boy Tariq Lamptey is back for injury and starting games again now. And he looks great again. He caused havoc down that flank and created countless chances for the forwards, but they kept missing them. Maupay in particular had an absolute Jon Walters.
Norwich are showing signs of life under Dean Smith. They followed up last week’s second win of the season with a decent point at home to Wolves. They should have won as they were the better side and had the lion’s share of the chances, but Wolves had the best one when Krul needed to make a double save to get Grant Hanley out of jail. Watching Hanley try to play out from the back is like watching an elephant try to play snooker.
Back to Sunday now and Leicester got back to winning ways with a thumping of Ranieri’s Watford. Loveable arl Claudio was given the warm welcome you’d expect but his team got off to a terrible start when their centre half ducked under a long ball without looking to see if there was anyone behind him. There was. Maddison. Who took full advantage.
Josh King levelled from the spot after the lively Dennis was brought down. Vardy made it 2-1 when he latched onto a Maddison ball and lobbed the keeper. Then he headed in at the near post from a Maddison corner and it was 3-1.
Not sure what Vardy’s celebrations were exactly but I like to think he was making a buzzing noise. Y’know, like a hornet?
Dennis pulled one back for Leicester but at that point you couldn’t see anything as a blizzard was coming down. The yellow ball doesn’t stand out well in the snow at all. I miss the old orange tango balls from back in the day. Footy in the snow with an orange ball was fucking boss, I loved that when I was a kid.
Did you know Dennis is in the top five for both goals and assists so far this season? For all the hype about Sarr, he's the one that's been carrying the load for them.
Lookman tapped in at the back post to wrap it up for Leicester and the Watford keeper had to make a great save to deny Vardy his hat-trick.
Brendan went the full Brendan in his post match interview. He was asked about the crowd reaction to their recent bad run and he said:
“I think the pandemic has got people a wee bit anxious and that anxiety in life is coming across in football. You look at the Brighton fans yesterday, even though Graham has done a fabulous job there”.
The implication being “And obviously I’ve done a great job here too”. It was classic Brendan.
Do you reckon he has a point about the pandemic though? I think he might have. People have been acting weird as fuck and football isn’t going to be immune to that. Was it the pandemic that made Brighton fans boo? Something to think about I suppose. If that is the case then Evertonians must have been hit harder by Covid than anyone.
Maddison’s post match interview did my head in. He’s such a fucking cock, I can’t stand him.
City beat West Ham 2-1 so I forwarded through the highlights as I have no interest in watching them fucking dickheads. Don’t know who scored, don’t care either. Fuck them the cheating cunts.
I did watch quite a bit of Everton’s loss at Brentford. And I watched that live rather than on the highlights. I wanted a look at the Blues before we played them, just to confirm what I already thought; that they are absolute dogshit. And I’m happy to report that they did indeed confirm it.
Brentford dominated the first half and led through a typically composed pen from my boy Ivan Toney. I actually had an argument with my Dad about that penalty afterwards. He was adamant that wasn’t a pen because the Brentford lad put his head down. He didn’t dispute that Townsend kicked him in the head, but apparently that’s ok if the player lowers his head and puts it in harm’s way.
Surely that’s only relevant when it comes to red cards? I wouldn’t send someone off if they accidentally kick an opponent who lowers his head, but how is this any different to if the Brentford lad had nicked the ball with his and been kicked? You’ll have to ask my dad, because he insisted it wasn’t the same thing and that this wasn’t a foul.
Any suspicion I had that he was going soft on Everton was quickly dispelled at half time in the derby though when he declared that Klopp should tell the ref we aren’t coming out for the second half because he wasn’t doing enough about how dirty Everton were. Honestly, I never know what mad take he’s going to come out with next, but at least it’s entertaining.
Not like the second half of that Brentford / Everton game, which was dire. Brentford settled for what they had and Everton didn’t have it in them to do anything about it. Wretched performance from them and it just convinced me even more that we’d twat them in the derby, which of course we did. I figured something out watching this though. Rondon is Rafa’s illegitimate son. There’s a resemblance there and it makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Norwich followed it up their encouraging draw with Wolves by securing another point, away to Newcastle. Given that they played against 10 men for 80 minutes this wasn’t so great a result, but at least they avoided defeat which kept Newcastle winless and bottom of the table. It ain’t happenin’.
Onto the midweek games now. Watford had a really good go at home to Chelsea but came up just short. Tuchel made a load of changes but the side still looked really strong, with internationals all over the park.
Mount gave them the lead on the half hour against the run of play. Lovely move to be fair. Great football. For some reason Chelsea fans were singing “Feed the scousers”. While they’re playing Watford. Weirdos.
My boy Dennis (yeah he’s my boy now) equalised with a well taken goal and then put one on a plate for Sissoko who completely missed his kick. Cleverley then went clean through but fell over as Mendy came out to meet him. Useless manc twat.
Ziyech won it for Chelsea with a smart finish after another sweeping move. That goal reminded me of us. Alonso and Mount playing the roles of Robbo and Sadio, with Ziyech arriving late like Hendo. Ziyech should have made it 3-1 soon after but headed right at the keeper. Tuchel said afterwards they were lucky, didn’t deserve to win and it’s the worst they’ve played since he’s been there. But they won, which is frustrating as fuck.
Watford will stay up because they score goals, which means they’ll win enough games. They’ll lose loads as well, and some of them will be cricket scores. But when you’ve got goals in you like they have with King, Sarr and Dennis, then you can win games which gives you a chance. That’s why Norwich and Newcastle look like they’re fucked. They don’t score enough.
They met on Tuesday night in a huge game for both teams. A draw was no good to either but that’s what happened. Ciaran Clark was sent off after just 10 minutes but Norwich didn’t take advantage of it and were way too cautious.
The ten men of Newcastle took the lead through a Wilson penalty but couldn’t hold on as my former boy Pukki scored a cracking equaliser with a left foot volley. Great finish that.
That’s a bad result for Newcastle but under the circumstances it’s a battling point and their players deserve credit for it. Instead they got booed off by the “loyalest footballers the world has ever had”.
The other Tuesday night game was Leeds v Palace. Rodrigo missed a sitter for Leeds and Benteke headed wide from a few yards with the goal gaping.
Leeds won it late with a Raphinha penalty after Guehi was penalised for handball. I didn’t think that was a pen because the arm was in a natural position for a player jumping like that. His arm is out to protect himself from contact. The player he’s challenging missed it and it hits his arm, but that could go either way.
I’d be happy to see Leeds go down but I’m not unhappy to see them put more distance between themselves and Newcastle. Could do with Burnley and Watford picking up some points, because if they did then Everton would be right in the thick of it. Imagine Rafa getting them relegated. I’d build the statue of him outside Anfield myself if that happened.
Not a good few days for Palace though and Vieira said afterwards “We are v…..” zzzzzzzz. Sorry, nodded off again.
Southampton drew at home to Leicester. Bednarek poked them into an early lead but Evans lashed in an equaliser. Adams restored the Saints’ lead with a close range header but Maddison continued his recent good form with a cracking goal to make it 2-2. The prick.
Barnes thought he’d won it when he raced clear but McCarthy made a brilliant stop to deny him and then Vardy blazed another chance over the bar late on.
West Ham drew at home to Brighton and Moyes admitted afterwards it was a fair result because Brighton played well, but that his side should have won because they had a good goal ruled out. For once I agree with him. This is typical Brighton though isn’t it? They outplay most teams but don’t win as often as their performances merit.
They fell behind to a Soucek header from a corner. West Ham have become the new Burnley. It feels like nearly all of their goals come from set-pieces. They do play some decent stuff too and the Burnley comparison is a little harsh. Speaking of harsh, West Ham had a goal disallowed (from a corner, obviously) and no-one is really sure why. The suggestion was Antonio touched the ball on its way in and he was offside, but it doesn’t look like he touched it at all, and if he did it made no difference to the path of the ball.
Maupay had been the villain at the weekend with his shit finishing, but he scored a fucking belting equaliser with an overhead kick. Outstanding. He taunted his own fans with his celebration too. Running to them with his ears cupped. He said afterwards “after Saturday I was the worst striker in the world and today everyone is cheering for me. But that’s football”.
Not sure if I’ve admitted this before, but it’s something I’ve been thinking for a while and didn’t really want to say. Declan Rice is really fucking good. I used to think he was all unjustified hype, but he isn’t. He’s really fucking good.
Burnley didn’t play at the weekend as their game with Spurs was called off because of snow. They were back in action at Wolves in midweek. It finished 0-0 and I’m saying nothing as we play Wolves this weekend.
City won at Villa Park and many Villa fans booed Grealish, which seemed to surprise a lot of people. If you’d asked me if I thought they’d boo him I would have said no, but that doesn’t mean I was surprised. Villa fans acting like bad biffs will never, ever surprise me.
I don’t know why they booed him though. It doesn’t really make much sense as it’s not like they seemed to resent him moving on last summer. They got £100m for him which most would agree was at least £30m more than he was worth, arguably even more. He stayed there longer than he needed to because it was ‘his’ club and he showed as much loyalty as any club is entitled to expect really.
He signed contract with a ridiculously high buyout clause, meaning Villa would be looked after if he left but also suggesting he wasn’t that interested in a move as he could never have imagined anybody would actually pay that kind of money for him. When City did decide to pay it, he had a decision to make and he made it.
At the time there seemed to be very little animosity from Villa fans, but lo and behold, he comes back there with his new club and they’re booing him and signing “Villa til I die” when he came on as a sub. They’re such fucking knobheads.
I’m almost glad they lost. If City weren’t one of our rivals for the title I’d have probably been happy at this result. But we needed Villa to help us out and, in typical Villa fashion, they failed. These cunts never win when you need them to. For decades they made a habit of capitulating to Ferguson’s United. Never rely on Villa for anything.
Finally, Thursday night’s games. Spurs beat Brentford 2-0 and I’m definitely thinking I jumped the gun on Brentford. I did this a couple of years ago with someone else too. Norwich I think. I watched their first few games and decided they’d stay up comfortably, but it turned out they were pretty shite. I’m getting those vibes from Brentford now.
They were pretty shit against Everton at the weekend, it’s just Everton were worse. They’ve not been good for a while and teams may have figured them out now. I hope not, as I’d like them to do well. They’ll probably finish above Norwich and Newcastle but that third spot is wide open.
Last and very much least, two pathetic former giants of the game that have fallen on hard times. United v Arsenal is like when you get two washed up retired fighters coming back for another crack at reliving their former glories but no-one really cares as they just aren’t relevant anymore. Kind of fitting then that Ronaldo settled the game and De Gea grabbed all the headlines. Both of them have seen better days, although you’ve got to hand it to Ronaldo as he’s still incredible at what he does, which is score goals and then preen like fuck.
Arsenal are exactly what they’ve been for years. People get fooled any time they have a reasonable run of results when the fixture list throws up a bunch of easy games, but they are what they are. Pathetic.
They also have a habit of doing some seriously unsporting shit. That opening goal for example. I have mixed feelings on that though. I don’t actually think Arsenal did anything wrong and although there’s an argument to be had that they should have let United score straight afterwards, I don’t think I buy that.
If Arsenal hadn’t screwed Watford over with similar shit a couple of weeks back I’d have exonerated them completely here, as why should they stop playing because a United player had stood on De Gea’s foot? It’s only iffy because they’ve done shit like this before so fuck Arsenal.
There’s nothing wrong with them scoring the goal as I’m not even sure Smith Rowe knew De Gea was down. Only two seconds passed between De Gea going down and Smith Rowe scoring. The ref didn’t stop the game so there’s nothing wrong with the goal and VAR couldn’t do anything about it. So the only choice for Arsenal was whether to then allow United an equaliser or not. They chose not. If they’d allowed it you just know that Ronaldo would have made sure he was the one to score, the self centred twat.
My biggest take away from that whole episode was that De Gea is a fucking joke. I don’t care how much pain he may or may not have been in, you don’t stay down on the ground like that when you’re a goalkeeper. You just don’t do it. You never, ever, leave your goal unprotected. It isn’t even a schoolboy error as schoolboys know better.
If games start getting stopped for that then you’ll just see the shithousery cranked up massively and keepers will play dead any time there’s danger. De Gea wasn’t that badly injured and he went down because he thought the ref would stop the game or that Arsenal would put the ball out. Instead, he conceded a goal and for all the understandable suspicion about Arsenal’s conduct I think the over-riding thing here is “fuck Man United and their shithousing”.
Arsenal are weak as piss though and it was no surprise they blew the lead. Fernandes equaliser and Ronaldo made it 2-1 with the 800th goal of his career. Some going that. Pele got over a thousand but half of them were friendlies and training sessions they reckon. There’s no diminishing what Ronaldo has done. I’d laugh at anyone who says he’s the best player of all time, but if you want to call him the best goalscorer I’d have a tougher time knocking that down.
Odegaard equalised for Arsenal before undoing his good work by giving away a needless penalty. Amazing that it needed VAR to give that as Atkinson was looking right at it and somehow didn’t think it was a foul. Ronaldo did the big dramatic, eyes closed, puff out the cheeks routine and then hit the pen right down the middle. Ramsdale had dived out of the way and that was goal number 801 and a win for United in what turned out to be Carrick’s last game.
He quit straight after, despite Rangnick claiming he tried to talk him into staying. If he decided to go as soon as Solskjaer did and he just stayed on to help the club, then fair play to him. No idea if that’s the case or not but if I were Carrick that’d defo be the line I’d take just to stick it to Roy Keane who was ripping him for not going when Solskjaer did.
I’d say “I felt like I should leave with Ole but I didn’t want to leave my club in the lurch so I stayed for as long as was needed”. Even if it’s not true it would make Keane look like an arlarse so I’d defo do it.
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