Monday Aug 1:
The England women won the Euros yesterday so good for them. I didn’t watch any of the tournament before this and wasn’t going to watch any of the final either, for no other reason than I don’t give much a fuck about it. Not because it’s women, but because I’m just not interested. I’ve got nothing derogatory to say about women’s footy at all, any time I've watched it I've thought the standard was good, it's just that I don’t really care about it. It’s the same reason I wouldn’t watch the Scottish Cup final or a Serie A game. Nothing against it, I’d just rather spend my time doing something else.
But Adrianna decided to put it on (she hadn't watched any of it prior to the final either) and because I was in the room I got to see a decent chunk of the game. I didn’t cheer when they scored but I was pleased for them and posted in the group chat about what a boss finish it was and that “Nunez should have done that with his chance yesterday”.
When Germany equalised I felt something approaching disappointment. Had that been the men I’d have been laughing my head off. Clearly my disdain for England does not extend to the women’s team or the fans of it. I had to go out so didn’t see extra time but I’m glad they won.
You know what’s funny though? All of a sudden you’ve got people trying to make out this is the same as the men winning something. Not because they see women’s footy as equal to the men’s game, but because they’re so desperate to hitch themselves to any trophy laden English wagon. “The 56 year wait is over!!” I kept hearing on Talksport and on the news last night. Is it fuck! Don’t be piggy backing on the success of the women just because the men are shit.
Let them enjoy their own success without patronisingly trying to put them on equal footing with the men’s game and making out this is like 1966. It isn’t and trying to suggest otherwise just demeans what they achieved and makes those who talk it down rebel against it even more. Just celebrate it for what it is. The English women are European Champions, it's has nothing to do with the men's game though. Hopefully it gives their league a boost because the attendances are pretty shite.
Meanwhile, we had a friendly yesterday. It was essentially a reserve game even though it was played at Anfield in front of fans. We lost 3-0 to Strasbourg so I’m not bothering with any catch up of it either. I did see some complaining on twitter about the team and some were even saying the game was sold to fans on ‘false pretences’.
Fuck off. If you bought a ticket for this thinking that Salah and Van Dijk and Nunez etc would be playing then more fool you. It’s the day after the Community Shield. The only players who were going to feature in this were the ones who missed out against City. In other words, the squad players and kids.
What made the line up weaker was the number of injuries we have. Jones and Keita pulled out of this one, while Jota, Alisson and Kostas are all out too. Calvin Ramsay hasn’t kicked a ball for us yet as he’s injured too, so the team was as strong as Klopp could have picked. I doubt anyone who actually paid to go had any problem as they knew the situation. It’s the fucking internet cry babies complaining on their behalf. Always have to have something to moan about.
As for today’s news, there were some quite revealing quote from Nunez about how hard he found it when he first got here. Basically to paraphrase, he was shit in his early training sessions and couldn’t do anything right because he was trying too hard to impress and justify his fee. He said the lads helped him and a chat with Mo was the main turning point.
I found this interesting because I was only thinking yesterday that whenever any of the lads have spoken about him it’s been carefully worded and not particularly effusive. They haven’t been saying how incredible he is, it’s all been about how he needs to work hard, learn how we play and that his quality will shine through. It kind of makes sense now if he was shite in his first week or two. I bet he’s fucking flying now though.
Tuesday Aug 2:
New deal for Jota. Sound. Well deserved. He’s almost become the forgotten man recently because he didn’t end last season very well and he’s been injured ever since. I have to remind myself sometimes just how ace he was in the middle part of last season especially.
He was really good before that too, but I think back to how he destroyed Arsenal in that league cup semi and it’s a good reminder of what a talent he is. Jota in that form can force his way into any starting line up. The Jota we’ve seen since will spend a lot of time on the bench I think.
On the subject of Arsenal though. Fuck me. That Amazon show is going to be a train wreck and much as I have no problem mocking Arsenal I think it’s going to be too much even for me. That clip they put out today prior to us leathering them 4-0 made me want to die of cringe. If you haven’t seen it, I don’t know if you’re lucky or if you’ve missed out. It’s really something though.
Arteta is an embarrassing bastard. If he wasn’t Spanish and a housewives favourite he’d be getting slaughtered in the same way Brendan was after we did one of these fly on the wall things. Today’s offering is incredible. It’s bad enough that he admitted one time when he played at Anfield he kind of blacked out and couldn’t focus because of what the atmosphere did to him, but he then put that phobia onto his players by making them train while YNWA was being blasted out on speakers.
That’s some David Brent style shit that. One of the club employees who he spoke to about it was kissing his arse saying what an interesting, clever idea it was. He must have been thinking ‘what’s this fucking clown doing?’.
There’s maybe 1% of this that kind of makes sense. By that I mean if there was something that could be done to genuinely prepare his players for playing at Anfield then it would maybe make sense to do it, but even then it’s probably not smart because you’re making the occasion bigger than it is. It’s a league game at Anfield. 19 Premier League teams face this every year, and most of Arsenal’s team had already experienced it.
The thing is though, YNWA isn’t playing when the game is on so why does he have his players training as it’s blasting out? It almost felt like a wind up. Seriously embarrassing shit this.
Wednesday Aug 3:
More Arsenal documentary nonsense. I saw something on twitter from someone saying how fantastic this was, and I can see why from an Arsenal fans point of view it was. Arteta brought in the club photographer to give a pep talk to the players before a game. He’s a massive fan and has been in the job for 30 years. His speech was good, not exactly one of those inspirational, make you want to run through a brick wall kind of things but not far off it.
When he’d finished his speech you’d have liked to see players frothing at the mouth and yelling, just wanting to get out there and get stuck in. Instead you see Aubamayeng dancing a jig and doing a stupid handshake with another player. He was their captain. That is what you fail, Arsenal. That is why you fail.
In other news the players won’t be taking the knee anymore. I have no strong opinion on this and it’s a minefield I’m not walking into. As I’ve said before, I don’t feel like I have any right to an opinion on it. I’m happy to just let those who are on the end of racial abuse decide what they want to do and then I’ll support whatever it is. If that’s taking the knee, sound. If it’s something else, cool.
I made the mistake of dipping my toe into the replies to the PL tweet on this. Jesus Christ it was even worse than I expected. Just shite being thrown around by people on all sides. Some complaining it should never have been a thing to begin with, and then others complaining that it’s been stopped. One loon said it’s been scrapped because 90% of PL captains are white. Like I said, absolute minefield. There is no right or wrong solution here, it’s impossible.
On the transfer front, Chelsea are trying to hijack City’s move for my boy Cucurella (who obviously won’t be my boy for much longer if he joins City or Chelsea) and they’re also meant to be going for De Jong, which frankly, (or if you prefer, frenkly) would be hilarious after United chased him all summer. It all seems a bit scattergun at Chelsea right now. They’re throwing in bids for loads of players but it’s treading water because they’re replacing ones who have either left (Rudiger, Christensen etc) or want to leave (Azpilacueta and Alonso).
I don’t think Chelsea are going to be much of a threat this season. They won’t be shit, but they aren’t going to kick on because there’s too much flux there at the moment.
As for United, they will be shit. How shit I’m not sure because Ten Hag is an unknown quantity really. If he knows what he’s doing they’ll improve from last season but they’ll still be shit because most of the players are crap. If Ten Hag is no good then they’ll do well to get top six. They look like a team that will finish somewhere between 8th -10th to me.
Thursday Aug 4:
Curtis is going to be out for a few weeks. Not good this, it reminds me of last season when a similar thing happened. He really needed an uninterrupted run where he could stake his claim. Stop start is not going to help him in what is a really important year for him. It doesn’t seem like this is a bad injury but we’ve got five games in August and he’ll probably miss all of them. It’s frustrating.
Ox is out, Keita is probably out this weekend too. We’ve got enough depth for it not to matter but for Curtis this is bad timing. Great news for Harvey and Carvalho though, they’re going to get good minutes this month I think and if they do well it gives them a leg up on the absentees.
Meanwhile, bit late to this but I’ve been away for a few days this week and hadn’t had a chance to fully catch up on the coverage from last weekend. I’m just watching ‘Inside Leicester’ and it’s really interesting seeing the way Klopp reacts with opponents. He’s the main reason this rivalry with City has never spilled over into seriously bad blood. With another manager this would have turned nasty a long time ago, we’re talking Wenger / Ferguson levels of feuding here.
It hasn’t happened because of Klopp, and to some extent Guardiola too, who for all of his weirdness and occasional snide hasn’t ever really gone looking to start a war. Watching this and you see Klopp in the tunnel talking to his old mate Gundogan, but then De Bruyne comes over for a handshake and Haaland greets him with a big smile. Klopp responds with a trademark grin and says “WELCOME!”. Most managers don’t have that kind of relationship with opposing players, but they all love him because he just has massive respect for everyone and doesn’t bear grudges.
A few times him and Guardiola have had little snipes at eachother in press conferences but they always seem to be on good terms whenever you see them interacting. Before this one Guardiola comes over to him and asks “how was the summer?” and then, somewhat bizarrely “do you play golf?”. Jurgen doesn’t play golf, but Guardiola has become a golf nut. I wouldn’t play with the cunt though as I can imagine him any time he has a bad lie just moving his ball into the best possible position. He’s shown throughout his career he doesn’t like playing by the same rules as everyone else, he just wants to make things as easy for himself as possible. Bet he plays off the red tees just to make the course shorter too.
Other things I picked up on were just how happy Mo looks. I might be reading too much into that (because he signed the new deal) but he looked absolutely beaming every time the camera was on him. He seems so relaxed and comfortable, he was having a fucking great time. There was also a shot of Harvey and Fabio with the trophy, and then Curtis joined them. All three were on the pitch in the closing stages of the game and I don’t think that was a co-incidence. Klopp wants this generation of kids to come through and form the basis of the next great team alongside Trent, Konate and (hopefully) Darwin.
Tyler Morton finally joined Blackburn on loan about a month after it was agreed. I like that we wanted him to spend pre-season with us before going there and Klopp has been gushing in his praise of him. Could be a big year for him if he does well there. His unveiling press conference was great. “Did you have other offers, and if so why did you choose Blackburn?” “I wanted to come here because it’s a boss league and a boss club”. Hahaha!
Friday Aug 5:
Nat Phillips isn’t leaving this window because Konate has an injury. Hmmm, not sure I believe that. We’ll probably keep him until just before the deadline and then let him leave. Unless Konate’s injury is worse than they are letting on, which wouldn’t be the first time they’ve blagged us on something like that. Klopp just said he’d be out ‘a while’ which is so vague it worries me. On the plus side, I’m all for Gomez getting more minutes this season so every cloud and that.
Also today, Martin Tyler caused a storm with an unfortunate choice of words. Maybe I’m too kind, but I don’t think for a second he was implying that Hillsborough was “hooligan related” as 1) he knows it wasn’t, and 2) why the fuck would he want to bring that kind of heat on himself?
I can’t stand the fella and if he was never allowed anywhere near our games in future no-one would be happier than me, but not because of this. I’m not grabbing my pitch fork and going after him on this as it was an unintentional error that he apologised for. If people want to hold a grudge against him for it then that’s their choice, but I’d rather focus my disdain on those who say shit like this and actually mean it, which is not Tyler.
There are plenty of other reasons for me to hate on Martin Tyler so I’m not dwelling on this. The club are meeting with Sky and BBC which is a good idea. Not to kick off about Tyler and demand punishment, but to ensure that all media personnel are aware of this shit and the next time someone makes an error like Tyler they can immediately correct it.
Chelsea are paying £65m for Cucurella!! Fucking hell, what’s going on! And people were making out we paid a lot for Nunez. Unless Chilwell’s knee hasn’t mended properly this seems mental, but at the same time I’m all for City being gazumped on a player. Speaking of City, Bernardo Silva is being heavily linked with a move to Barca.
It seems that the only thing stopping it is Barca being so fucked they aren’t allowed to register any of the signings they’ve already made, let alone any new ones. If they get that sorted though then Silva could be headed there, which is baffling to me because other than De Bruyne he’s probably their best player. I feel like they’re up to something. It’s like that old movie trope. “It’s quiet. Too quiet.” I don’t trust them and there’s no way they’d just continue to weaken their squad the way they have been.
Sterling, Jesus, Zinchenko and maybe Silva too? They’ve got something mad in the works, like Messi or Neymar. Or Ronaldo. Fucking hell imagine that. I’d probably die laughing at the reaction of United fans. Mind you, United are reportedly willing to let him leave on loan and then come back next season if they’re good enough for him. The fucking bad cucks.
Sky Sports have a poll on who will win the league. The options are City, us and ‘other’. ‘Other’ is leading the way. Arsenal won at Palace tonight. These two things are not unrelated. Smelling themselves already, the pricks.
….and that was the week that was
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