Sunday Aug 1:
Jarrod Bowen is left out of a West Ham friendly and Twitter goes nuts with rumours he’s about to sign for us. One suggestion is it might be some sort of part-ex deal with Ox involved. Makes no sense at all that. Ox is a better player (not as a winger though, obviously) and we need all of our homegrown players because we’re right on the limit of the overseas quota. Can we not send them Keita instead? They can even keep Bowen if they like, just fucking take ‘Naby lad’ off our hands, if only so I don’t have to see another “make or break season for Keita” piece being pushed online.
So bored with it now. Every pre-season he does a couple of stepovers, makes a nice pass or two, maybe even chips in with a goal and we get it rammed down our throats by his weird little internet cult following about how he’s going to take the league by storm. It’s not going to happen. If he somehow makes it to the opening game he’ll be injured by the time we reach September.
Elsewhere, Schalke are rumoured to be about to terminate Ozan Kabak’s contract. That would explain why no-one has moved for him yet. I can see why we didn’t sign him but he’s a good player and he should have so many offers that they are coming out of his arse. Presumably everyone is waiting in case he’s a free agent. If that happens someone will get themselves a great bargain.
Maybe Leicester will pair him up with his fellow countryman Soyuncu. You can be sure the Echo will be floating it out there that we might be interested but there’s no way, even if Phillips leaves. We’ve got four top quality centre backs and if last season showed us anything, it’s that we can win no matter who we have back there. Using up an overseas squad place on a fifth choice centre back would be almost as stupid as giving one to a third choice keeper….
We won eight of the last ten games with a combo of Phillips / Kabak and Williams. So if young Rhys needed to play half a dozen games next season alongside any of the established four, I wouldn’t be concerned about that at all. Any time I think back to how last season ended it’s just hard to process how well we did with big Nat and Rhys back there when the stakes were so high. We had no margin for error but we kept winning. I fucking love those two lads you know, pair of absolute heroes.
On a similar note, I'd almost forgotten that Alisson scored a stoppage time winner against West Brom. I mean, obviously I'll never 'forget' it as such, but I had LFCTV today and they were showing random things from last season and that came on and I was like "Hahaha I'd forgotten about that" because I hadn't thought about it for months. That's doing it a massive injustice, it deserves to be tweeted out every day by the club account so we can all appreciate it on a daily basis. It was one of the greatest things ever.
Monday Aug 2:
Napoli are linked with Tsimikas. Why would we sell him as we’d only have to go out and sign a replacement. I could have got on board with cashing in and bringing in someone like Bertrand or Van Aanholt on a free to replace him but they’ve both signed elsewhere. Maybe there’s another freebie out there and if so, then you could make a case for trying to bring in cash if it’s needed elsewhere, but that seems unlikely.
I don’t have a clue if Kostas is any good or not. I can barely remember him playing in any kind of meaningful game. It’s all been friendlies, dead rubber CL games and the league cup with the kids. He hasn’t stood out as being good or shit though from what I can remember. We can’t keep running Robbo into the ground year after year though so hopefully he can step in and do a job. If he can’t, then we need to replace him with someone that can.
Just looking through newsnow to see if there’s anything happening worth mentioning in here and it’s staggering the amount of shit that is turned into ‘news’ reports now in the search for clicks. Looking down all the headlines and there are actually websites running pieces about Curtis Jones being megged by someone in the rondos they do in training. Mental.
Tuesday Aug 3:
Still no more signings but hey look over here, we’ve got another new contract to announce!! This time it’s Fabinho. Well deserved, he’s fucking world class and probably the most under-rated player in the entire league. It’s still irritating though how we’re championing all these new contracts when everyone else is signing ‘new’ players as well as keeping their existing ones.
Leaving that aside though, Fab’s outperformed his previous contract so this is smart business and the right thing to do. Makes it all the more strange they didn’t do the same for Gini but whatever, I know I’m a broken record on that so I’ll shut the fuck up.
Meanwhile, Wolves are rumoured to have bid £10m for Div but we’ve turned it down because we want £20m. I don’t know who is in charge of transfers at Wolves but I hope he didn’t miss out on the opportunity to go all Uncle Junior on Michael Edwards and say “and I’d like to fuck Angie Dickinson. Let’s see who gets lucky first”.
I mean, £20m for Origi in this current climate is pie in the sky. He’s been available for two years and no-one was paying that even before Covid hit. He’s literally done fucking nothing for those two years so there’s just no way we’re getting that. Anything we get is a bonus at this point. If Wolves want him maybe we can throw in Keita and Shaq as well and see if they’ll give us Adama?
Ben Davies is going too apparently. No surprise there as the prospect of him staying made no sense, but let’s not forget that’s what we were being told was happening by the likes of the Athletic earlier this summer. The lads who work there aren’t prone to making shit up, but it just shows you can’t believe anything from the LFC media anymore because the club feeds them a stack of bullshit most of the time.
Wednesday Aug 4:
See what I mean? The Davies story has changed again. Now, he is apparently not for sale but is available for loan, but not with a ‘loan to buy’ clause in there. What the fuck is this all about? This is even more difficult to fathom than the Origi asking price.
You know what’s the weirdest decision we’ve made this summer though? Extending Adrian. Regardless of what you think about his ability and whether he’s good enough or not, the key here is that we’ve allocated one of the overseas spots in the squad to a third choice keeper, and currently we are at the limit and can’t sign anybody else until someone leaves.
So any question about ‘why aren’t we signing anybody?’ is moot at the moment. We can only sign homegrown players currently until the likes of Shaq, Origi and Minamino are moved on.
Grealish is close to joining City. £100m is the figure being bandied around. He’s really good but he’s nowhere near worth that but it’s all just monopoly money to City anyway isn’t it? There’s no difference between £100m and £200m to them really, other than how it looks to the outside in terms of FFP.
Sickening really. Everyone is fucking skint because of Covid but you’ve got these cheating cunts just thinking they’ve now got cart blanche to lash their oil money around. I really wish the other clubs would get together and just refuse to do any kind of business with them at all. All the clubs around Europe should blackball City (and PSG for that matter) because this is getting out of hand.
They’ve made a mockery of the ‘competitiveness’ of English football by hoovering up almost everything in the last four or five years and but for Chelsea they’d be European Champions too. All by blatantly cheating and then lawyering up to escape punishment. The authorities can’t stop them but the clubs could. Just blackball them. Don’t sell anyone to them and don’t buy anyone from them. Simple.
Villa are already spending their expected windfall and they’ve signed Buendia and Leon Bailley and today swooped for Danny Ings. We got a couple of million out of that due to a sell on clause. Not sure what that means for Villa though. Are they playing two up top or could Watkins now be available? We’re supposed to have a strong interest in him so it might be one to watch. Villa could maybe go and get Tammy Abraham to replace him and have an Ings / Abraham pairing, which looks quite tasty.
This Barca crisis has kind of passed me by. I knew they were in trouble but didn’t realise the extent of it. They can’t register Messi or Aguero for the start of the new season until they get the wage bill down to be able to accommodate them under the rules. This is glorious. They’re so fucked.
Some of their players will have to be released on frees or Messi will be sidelined. Maybe Coutinho is going to be one of them? Personally I’d say that’s a no brainer for us. Get him in, even if it means selling him in a year for a big profit. We’re a midfielder down since Gini left and although they’re chalk and cheese, Coutinho on a free is too good to turn down, even if its just to troll Barcelona.
Atletico are in shit too, which may explain why the Saul thing is dragging on. It makes sense to wait because it may reach a point where they have to virtually give him away. In fact, clubs all across Europe are rumoured to be needing to sell players so we might just be lying in the weeds here waiting to see who becomes available late in the window. Let’s hope that’s what it is anyway.
Thursday Aug 5:
New contract for Alisson. Six years, so that’s great news. Maybe not for Kelleher, but for everyone else. I’m not even going to get snarky about new contracts being the new ‘new signings’ either. Well not much anyway. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t my first reaction when I heard the news.
It is hard not to be a little downbeat when you see everyone else throwing cash around. The latest is that Chelsea are getting Lukaku back apparently. Meanwhile we’re doing fuck all except giving pay rises to the players we already have.
We did win two games today though. Two, one hour long friendly games against Bologna. I watched all of the first game and most of the second. The first was 2-0 with Jota and Sadio getting the goals and Virg getting a good run out. The second should also have been 2-0 except Origi missed a penalty so we only had a Minamino goal to show for it. Complete domination of both games though and we're looking quite sharp now. The Anfield games should be fun for those who go.
Grealish has indeed now signed for City and becomes the highest paid player in the league. Am I missing something here? How has he pulled that off? He’s won nothing. Never played in Europe. Spent a few years in the Championship and isn’t first choice for England. Don;'t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of his (or I was until today, now all bets are off again) but he doesn’t have anything like the kind of pedigree to justify that. Makes you wonder, just how much would they pay Kane if they landed him?
Speaking of the dribble chinned devil, he’s still on strike. He’s seriously getting away with this as if it was anyone else they’d be getting fucking slaughtered. This twat is getting a largely free ride. Carra criticised him on Twitter and you should have seen some of the replies (almost exclusively Man City fans). I saw a Spurs supporting Sky journo making some observations on it too and again, the City bots came after him in a big way. The sports washing is strong with these….
The big news today though was Barca’s announcement that they couldn’t re-sign Messi because big bad La Liga and their stupid unfair rules prevented it. The entitlement with these cunts. Madrid put a statement out criticising La Liga too, which I'm sure was just a co-incidence. Everyone else in Spain has to play by the same rules and cut their cloth accordingly, so why not these fuckers? “More than a club” wankers.
Friday Aug 6:
So Messi was apparently straight on the phone to Pochettino trying to get himself a move to PSG. Yeah that’s about right. Little fucking coward looking for the most comfortable option rather than wanting to go and prove how great he is by taking on a tough challenge. It’s shit like this which makes Ronaldo’s case ever stronger in the “Messi v Ronaldo” debate.
I know Ronaldo always went to top teams but the point is that he had this need to prove himself in the top leagues and get out of his comfort zone. He could have taken the PSG option too but he didn’t. Messi is undoubtedly the better footballer but Ronaldo’s mentality shits all over Messi’s. If Messi signs for PSG it just tells us that he has no balls. He’s no Diego, that’s for damn sure.
Considering how much money Barca have paid him over the years I’d have had a lot more respect for him if he’d said “you know what, I’ll take a basic squad player salary for this year just to help you get back on track”. Instead, he’s got on the phone to one of the two richest clubs that he knows will pay him the most money. Greedy little rat fuck. It really is some accomplishment that he's somehow been such a little fucking bitch he's made me side with Ronaldo.
As much as I’m enjoying Barca getting their just desserts, the cause of all this is oil money. Messi’s ridiculous and crippling salary at Barca was a direct result of PSG taking Neymar in the manner they did and the threat that was there that they could do the same with Messi. That was the game changer here. Barca had to pay Messi what he wanted or he’d go to PSG, and the fact they were the first club he called when Barca released him tells you all you need to know.
Meanwhile the sports washing propaganda continues as Guardiola says City were able to spend £100m on Grealish because they raised £60m through selling Academy players. That shit went unchallenged, possibly because the journos listening to it were in shock, or possibly because they’re all fucking bootlicking shills like that Stuart Brennan lunatic from the MEN. Either way, how is he getting away with rampant fucking lies such as that to cover up their obvious cheating?
Trevor Sinclair is allowed to spout this kind of disingenuous shite on Talksport too…
“Pep’s been there 5 years, spent £950m & they’ve recouped £350m. That is about £120m-a-year and I don’t think that’s excessive. United have spent slightly less but they’ve not recouped as much!”
Ok firstly, United’s turnover is massively higher than City’s so they can spend that much because they earn it. That’s how financial fair play works. Secondly, the figure of what City have recouped is most likely to be absolute bollocks based on that shit we heard from egghead today. And thirdly, “I don’t think that’s excessive”. Well you think it’s ok to drive a car when you’re shitfaced s o I wipe my arse with what you ‘think’.
Why is nobody asking why a club with no global fanbase and no main sponsors outside of those in the pockets of the gulf state that owns them, is able to spend £120m a season when global powerhouse clubs like us, Arsenal, Bayern, Juve etc can’t even come close to those kinds of numbers. Everyone in the media knows what City are up to because it was all in those emails. They were found guilty by UEFA yet many sections of the media speak as though the case against them wasn’t proven. It was proven, but they couldn’t be punished because the statute of limitations had expired.
The average bloke on the street doesn’t know this though because that’s not how it has been reported. The average, casual footy fan thinks they were cleared because it wasn't really widely reported otherwise. It should be mentioned every day, on every sports show any time City are mentioned.
This is the problem. So much shite is written and spoken about City and there is hardly anyone prepared to call them out on their cheating. Basically you have Nick Harris, Tariq Panja, Miguel Delaney and Rob Harris fighting the good fight and virtually nobody else gives a shit, they’re all too busy stroking their chins waxing lyrical about “Pep” and how he has reinvented football. It’s incredibly frustrating how people don’t seem to be able to see how much these cunts are killing the competitiveness of football in this country, and anyone who points it out is accused of bitterness and jealousy.
It’s just sickening and it will only get worse. I mean, previously they’ve tried to be little bit discreet about their cheating by not breaking transfer records. Sure, they’ll sign ten players for £50m and pay them off the books, but they wouldn’t go and pay £500m for one and just flaunt their cheating like they appear to be doing this summer. The genie is out of the bottle now and I don’t think UEFA or the PL have the power to stop it unless they have the full backing of all the other clubs.
That’s the way to stop this. Everyone needs to not sell to City or buy from them. Villa had no choice because of the buyout clause, but there are suggestions that Villa wanted to sell to anyone but City and tried to get United and Real Madrid involved. If that’s true and if Villa are representative of a wider feeling in football, then there’s some hope at least.
….and that was the week that was.
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