That was the Week that Was (Aug 30 - Sep 3 2021)

Monday Aug 30:

Michael Edwards is apparently stepping down at the end of the season. Not good but probably not as catastrophic as a lot of people seem top fear it will be. Without wanting to diminish what he does, a big part of it seems to be analysing data to determine which players we should be looking at. Now maybe he set up the system that collates all that data, I don’t know, but the point is does it really matter which nerd we have crunching numbers? They’ve all got access to the same data.

So I don’t think our player recruitment will suffer if he’s replaced by one of his colleagues. Where we may be impacted is in negotiating with other clubs, as it seems like Edwards is a fucking king at that, or at least he was. Not been so great since Covid, but then in fairness he’s probably out of practice as they never let him spend any money. 

I guess what I’m saying is that the way analytics has taken over has reduced the need for the genius scout who can see a player for 10 minutes and know if he’s good enough or not. A Geoff Twentyman if you like. Someone like that is nigh on impossible to replace because it’s a skill you can’t teach. Analysing data is something you can teach.

I’d be more concerned about why he wants to leave. Maybe it’s just a change of scenery he wants after 10 years, but if it’s something else then that could be problematic. People will speculate that he’s fed up of having to tell Klopp he can’t have any new signings, or that he himself is fed up of identifying targets and then the club not spending the money to get them. It could be that, I have no idea. I doubt we’ll ever find out either.

Bizarre rumours linking Curtis with a move to Villa. If that happens I’m handing back my season ticket. It was bad enough seeing Gini leave while that waster Keita was allowed to stick around, but if he outlasts Curtis as well then count me out.

Also today, some interesting stuff on twitter from people joining the dots about Mendy’s arrest dates and him not only being allowed to play for City, but for the club to be going to bat for him when he was accused of having a house party during covid. Seems one of the terms of his parole was he wasn’t allowed to have house parties. Murky as fuck this, and City’s conduct is predictably shitty. What do you expect from people who feel they are untouchable and can do what they like and just lawyer up to avoid consequences. Cunt club. The absolute fucking worst.

Tuesday Aug 31:

Deadline Day and the club are trolling us with contract announcements. First Hendo, who, considering he’s away with England, must have signed this and done the interviews some time last week, meaning they waited until today to announce it. And then Big Nat, who presumably was offered a deal because no-one offered what we wanted for him.

I like to think I’m fairly chilled out about transfers and I’m not one for stamping my feet and demanding “spend some money you cunts” but I don’t blame anyone who is pissed off today as it really did feel like they were taking the piss out of us. They can’t be THAT tone deaf, surely? 

The Hendo thing is a disgrace and did him a complete dis-service. That should have been good news that would be greeted as such, but the delay in announcing it just pissed everyone off. Whoever thought that was a good idea needs to give their head a wobble. This has obviously been done for weeks because it was reportedly ‘almost done’ ages ago. For them to wait until today to put it out…. Well they deserve every bot of shit they get for it.

As for Nat, could they not have announced that later this week? I’m assuming he only signed it when they knew no suitable offers had come in and when Rhys Williams had gone out on loan (he too got a new deal, and well deserved it is too). But putting that news out late on deadline day is just really fucking poor and again, ensured people were kicking off about it when it had nothing at all to do with Nat.

On the one hand I’m glad for him that he’s been financially rewarded for what he did for us last season, but on the other I feel bad that he’s going to be an afterthought now and will hardly play. We did need to have a fifth centre back option but it would have made much more sense for that to be Rhys. He could learn by training with and against world class players every day and that would compensate for the lack of playing time, plus he could turn out for the 23s. Nat is 24, he can’t be not playing. I don’t like this, but I am glad he’s getting paid and I suppose this protects his transfer value for next year too.

Wednesday Sep 1:

Robbo played right wing back for Scotland tonight. Not sure how I feel about that. I mean, he’s the captain and it’s his responsibility to set an example and do what’s best for the team, but he’s also their best player and the best in the world in his position, so why the fuck isn’t someone else being asked to fill in?

Chelsea have been charged for failing to control their players at Anfield. Not really a surprise considering how they badgered Anthony Taylor after the sending off. They should be punished because this wasn’t even a judgement call by the ref, he had no choice. Where’s the charge for Taylor though, the bent twat? Not a single free-kick awarded to us in the entire second half. Couldn’t have made it more obvious, but nothing will be said or done about it. Go ahead, make an example of Chelsea’s players, but they weren’t the ones bringing the game into disrepute last weekend.

Heard a few people suggesting that FSG are preparing for a sale and that’s why they’ve locked down so many players and why they spent fuck all. No idea if that’s the case but I have been wondering what their end game is here. They’re hedge funders. They buy a business, grow it, then sell for a profit. So you’d assume that one day they will sell, and I suppose in theory that day could be coming soon.

They aren’t going to hold onto the club indefinitely and they did sell off 10% recently for a huge profit. If they could sell the whole lot for ten times their investment, why wouldn’t they? The only reason they wouldn’t is if they felt like they could make even more by holding onto the ‘asset’ a bit longer. They've had the club over ten years now, it must be on their minds to maybe cash in soon.

Loads of fans want them out but all I’d say in response to that is be careful what you wish for. I don’t care for FSG much but in this modern era I’m not sure we can expect anything better. Multi billionaires as a rule tend to not be particularly good people, so there’s no telling who they could end up selling to. I think some fans don’t care as long as we’re competing for the big signings with City and PSG, but most of us don’t really want that. The problem is that I’m not sure what we want actually exists. Are there owners out there we can look at and say “yeah I wish we had them”? If there are, let me know as I don’t see any.

Thursday Sep 2:

Played golf with Dennis Taylor today. I’m a trustee for the Roy Evans Foundation and we had a charity golf day, so I got to play with the former world champ. What a lovely fella, really humble and didn’t really say much about his great career, even when I was badgering him about it. He didn’t really want to blow his own trumpet, whereas if I were him I’d have a tattoo on my forehead of that famous celebration he did when he beat Davis. 

He was more comfortable chatting about golf and telling us funny stories from his commentary career. He’s 72 but I was struggling to outdrive him. Not sure if that says more about him or me though. Stan Boardman was in the group behind and was on the tee when we went off. One of the lads in our group teed off and Stan mutters “seen better swings in the park”. I wonder how many times he’s used that one? In fairness, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t planning on using it at some point in the future. 

Dennis reckons that whenever Stan plays golf he always leaves one shoe untied just waiting for someone to tell him his lace is undone so he can reply “no it says on the sole Taiwan”. You’ve actually got to admire that kind of commitment to getting a gag out there. Leon Osman and his team won and I don’t begrudge him it at all as he’s never won anything else. Probably cheated like, but as I say, I don’t begrudge him a rare chance to celebrate.

Meanwhile, it’s reported that we considered a move for Ward-Prowse this summer as a replacement for Wijnaldum. Not sure I believe it to be honest, but if I could have got rid of Keita and brought in Ward-Prowse I’d have done it in a heartbeat. It isn’t about who is better, it’s the total package. Ward-Prowse never misses games, he helps with the homegrown quota, he’s boss at set-pieces and his agent isn’t a mouthy wanker. Shame it didn’t happen really. Same story with Bissouma. Maybe January.

Also today, Gabby Agbonlahor has dismissed our chances of winning the title. That’s me crushed, I have so much respect for Gabby’s opinion that this is a real blow and I may need to reassess my prediction that we’ll finish top. 

Friday Sep 3:

Rumours that Turkish clubs are sniffing around Divock. Wouldn’t that be the most modern LFC thing if we sold him now that it’s too late to replace him. I know he offers virtually nothing, but if we get a couple of injuries we’ll need him, and who knows, maybe if there’s a bit of incentive there for him he’ll show the form we know he’s capable of. I just think he’s given up because he knew no matter what he did he’d never be good enough to nail down a regular place, and the arrival of Jota basically pushed him out completely.

As much as I wanted him sold this summer, if they do it now that it’s too late to replace him then heads should fucking roll.

Remember Nabil Fekir? He’s spoken out (again) about his move here that fell through. Usually he says he doesn’t know why we pulled out, but today he’s said that the move didn’t happen because of a problem with his agent. Liverpool were briefing everyone off the record that it was his knee, but maybe it was the agent? Not sure why the club wouldn’t have just told people that instead of implying that the lad had a bum knee. I doubt we’ll ever know what happened, but I was irrationally gutted about that considering I’d never seen him play other than on youtube.

Sadio sets himself a target of 30 goals. I’ll say it here and now, if he does that then we’re Champions. Presumably he didn’t mean 30 league goals, but if he gets 23 or 24 in the league, we’re winning the title because we’ll have close to the best defensive record and Mo will be around 25 goals as usual. Jota will be chipping in with a dozen so if Sadio does that it won’t even matter if Bobby is shite again.

….and that was the week that was.