Saturday Feb 2:
Gomez is having an op. There’s no timescale on his return but he is expected to play again this season. Yeah, heard that before so I’ll take it with a pinch of salt. What the fuck has gone on here? History repeating itself, that’s what. Last season he got injured, it was mis-diagnosed and it caused him to miss the run to the Champions League Final and also robbed him of a place at the World Cup.
Same thing has happened here. He was meant to be back already, but someone got it wrong and now he’s having a fucking operation and we’re stuck with Big Bird from Sesame Street playing alongside Van Dijk because of course Lovren is injured again too.
We’ll be playing against Bayern Munich with Big Bird and Fabinho in the middle of the back four. Can’t wait.
Sunday Feb 3:
City cruise to a 3-1 win against Arsenal. Can’t say I’m shocked by the scoreline but I didn’t expect Arsenal to be as bad as they were. I thought they’d have a go but that their awful defending would prove their undoing. I was half right. Their defending was staggeringly shit but they didn’t even have a go. No shots in the second half. Fucking shitbags.
Don’t expect Chelsea to do anything next week either, or Spurs when they go there. If City drop points it will be to someone you least expect it to be. They’ll be zoned in against Chelsea and Spurs. Chelsea got beat 4-0 at Bournemouth last week and the players have quit on Sarri. On paper Spurs could give City a game, but on grass they never do.
Bad day all around really as United won as well. Nine wins from ten for the Goblin now, but one man isn’t impressed as Paul Ince says “I could have done what Solskjaer has done”. Yeah, course you could. Fucking hell.
Solskjaer might’t be the greatest tactical manager in the world and what he’s done there might just be as straightforward as simply playing the best players in their best positions and allowing them to express themselves, but you know what Solskjaer is not doing? He’s not stood on the touchline with a little notepad, writing the word “SHOOT!” on it.
So pipe down, guv’nor.
Over the pond tonight we saw the worst Superbowl in living memory as the hated Patriots won again. Their opponents were the Stan Kroenke owned LA Rams, who thoroughly embarrassed themselves with a pitiful showing. Kroenke should be used to such gutless displays though as he also owns Arsenal.
Worse than the Patriots winning was having to see Harry Kane’s slobbering gob on TV. He was over there watching the game, and of course he’s a Patriots fan. I’d have been staggered if he wasn’t, the front running, glory hunting twat. The only surprise is he din’t somehow end up on the field claiming the MVP award.
Southgate was there too, as was… wait for it…. David Moyes. Ok, time out here. The Superbowl is always referred to as ‘the greatest show on earth’ and tickets for it are like gold dust. You generally have to be a somebody to go to a Superbowl. At least that’s how it used to be. Letting that deadbeat Moyes in there changes everything. It’s lost all credibility.
Monday Feb 4:
West Ham 1 L 1. That was so demoralising. I can live with the two dropped points but how we look right now is really terrifying me. The thought of not winning this title fills me with dread, and performances like this are making the possibility seem all too real.
I hate that I’m being such a shithouse, but I can’t help it. I had no confidence about tonight at all. I’ve been dreading the game all day. Against a fucking West Ham team who’ve just been spanked by Wimbledon and Wolves. How am I not confident about playing them?
We’re top of the league and have lost one game all season. And I’m shitting myself about playing these losers? The worst part is I was right to be worried. We should have lost. They had better chances than we did and the one goal we scored was a mile offside.
What’s happened to our form? Can we not just go back to what worked, with Mo on the right and Bobby at number nine? Mo has been hit and miss at centre forward but Bobby has been mostly shite in that number ten role. Half the time he doesn’t look like he knows what he’s supposed to be doing and he was shambolic tonight.
Get back to basics. 4-3-3, counter pressing, running all over teams. I know sometimes that’s not possible depending on how the opposition play, but it’s all but disappeared since the Arsenal game. This season we’re doing great, so how come I enjoyed last year more? I dunno, it’s weird. I should be loving this as it’s what we’ve always wanted, but instead I’m just stressed out and miserable.
Could have done without Jurgen kicking off about the ref on a night when the two linesmen did their best to hand us three points too. There have been times when he'd have been justified in letting the ref have it with both barrels, but tonight wasn't one of them and this just plays up to the shitty "they're bottling it" narrative.
Tuesday Feb 5:
Carra is stirring things up ahead of tomorrow night’s game at Goodison and is doing his best to light a fire under the Blues by suggesting they always roll over for the Manc teams whenever one of them is going for the title. He’s right, but it’s not going to make a scrap of difference.
At least half the crowd will be wanting to lose, and if history tells us anything then half the players will look disinterested too. Some of them will give it a go but it won’t matter because they’re shite anyway and have zero chance of beating City.
That might sound a little OTT given that Newcastle beat City last week and Everton are better than Newcastle, but there are some key differences. The Geordie crowd were bang up for it and gave their team everything to help them over the line. Everton won’t have that. The biggest difference though is Newcastle have Rafa and Everton have Silva. One knows how to an organise a defence, and one has conceded six goals in a game with all three PL clubs he’s managed. Rafa could get eleven lads from the crowd, spend a week training them up and still not concede six goals.
Meanwhile, Fabinho had this to say about our tactical approach: “Often, we want to go through the middle and it is difficult against physically strong and defensive teams. We need to find solutions and in these past few games we haven’t.”
Yeah no shit Sherlock, I’ve been writing that week in week out all season. John Barnes is in the news today after his defence of Liam Neeson and attack on Winston Churchill. Wise words from Digger, as always, but he’s never issued a truer statement than when he rapped “there’s only one way to beat them, get round the back”.
Wednesday Feb 6:
Jesse Lingard is asked who he’d rather win the title, us or City. He replied “My voice is a bit sore, I can’t answer that”. How can your voice be sore you thick manc twat? We all know he’d rather City win it and that’s fine, I get it. At least he didn’t say it though (and in doing so pledge support for City), so I’ll give him credit for that.
If the situation was reversed and it was United and Everton (don’t laugh) going for the league, I’d probably want United to win. My reasoning is purely because Everton haven’t won anything for so long whereas United have won plenty. I wouldn’t want the Blues ending that drought. If both had won something in recent years then I’d want Everton to win. So I get why United fans want City to win, but what I don’t get is how they can revel in it like they did after 2014.
It's the least shitty outcome, but it's still a shitty outcome. Them singing about Gerrard slipping is glorifying their neighbours winning the title. Sad, thick cunts probably don’t see that though. Not sure where I’m going with this other than pointing out United fans are thick knobheads and I hate Lingard.
On the field tonight, City had a stroll to three points against an Everton side without it’s three best players, who Marco Silva rested because he’s so desperate to beat Watford at the weekend. Imagine being a Blue. What an utterly horrific, joyless existence it is.
Meanwhile, Tim Sherwood knows where we are going wrong. “Allowing Coutinho to leave” and the “incredible” decision to loan out Clyne, which was “a massive error”.
It’s not just Sherwood either. That other oracle of knowledge Chris Sutton is in agreement. “Letting Clyne leave on loan – with no ability to recall him – is the biggest mistake Klopp has made at Liverpool. It could cost them the title.”
I’m also of the opinion we shouldn’t have loaned out Clyne but it’s being overstated there. We didn’t draw with Leicester and West Ham because of who we had playing at right back and that wasn’t the reason Salah and Firmino did fuck all at West Ham.
There are a number of things I’m worried about right now, and the right back position is not at the top of that list.
Thursday Feb 7:
Ox is in the CL squad. He won’t play against Bayern but should be available for the semis if we get through. If the football Gods didn’t hate us so much I’d be tipping him to score the goal that either wins the title or lands us the European Cup. Given how things usually go for us he’ll probably put through his own net or miss a pen in a shoot out.
Glen Johnson was on Talksport today and the Suarez / Evra stuff was all brought up again. I’d forgotten how great Johnson was through all of that. He was one of the few who had the balls to call out Evra over the whole handshake fiasco.
Jeez, those were some stressful times weren’t they? The amount of time and energy I spent on all that stuff was ridiculous looking back. It was the injustice of it all though. I hate injustice and there was so much shit went on there to stitch Suarez up. It still bothers me even now, even after he fucked us off and then acted as an estate agent for Coutinho to get him over there too.
As horrible a time as it was, there is one incident from that period that cracks me up every time I think of it. After Evra stitched him up over the handshake, United’s players were fucking steaming at Luis and Ferdinand had completely lost his head. In the first minute he went charging over with bad intentions, but Suarez ducked out of the way and Ferdinand took Evra out instead.
If we’d have won that game it would have been one of the all time great moments. But we lost, because it’s United at Old Trafford and that’s what always seems to happen. As rabid as they were that day, it will be nothing to how worked up they’ll be in a couple of weeks. Twats.
Speaking of United, they gave a new contract to Phil Jones today. Great stuff. Hopefully Smalling gets one too.
Friday Feb 8:
Ok I’m drawing a line in the sand now over this rampant shithousery I’ve been displaying in recent weeks. It stops here. Now. It’s completely understandable that I and others have been stressing out about the possibility of not winning the title after getting ourselves into such a strong position, but I had an epiphany tonight and from this moment forward I’m going to focus on the positive and just try to enjoy the race we’re in.
What happened? I’ll tell you. Tonight I was at my daughter’s footy training and I was talking to one of the other dads. Lovely fella, possibly the nicest Evertonian I’ve ever met. So the conversation starts with me saying how shite the Blues are and it can’t be much fun for him going to the games.
He was quite philosophical about it, and the subject comes around to us and the title race. He didn’t really say anything other than “it’s interesting” and “we’ll see what happens”.
As for me? I was crying it in like a good ‘un. Telling him how I’m not handling it very well, I’m shitting myself about going to Old Trafford and then, finally, the coup de grace. I said to him “I know this is where we all want to be, but honestly, being top of the league isn’t all it’s cracked up to be”.
Yes, I actually said that. To an EVERTONIAN!
He’s too nice a fella to say to me “cry me a river you ungrateful, spoiled redshite twat” but that’s surely what he was thinking. Hell, a few minutes afterwards when I got back to the car that’s what I was thinking. I told my daughter what I’d said and she was pissing herself.
I may as well have gone up to a homeless person and complained about my bedroom being too warm at night time. What an absolute fucking weapon I am.
It took that low point for me to realise the ludicrousness of the entire situation. It means too much to us and that is bringing a pressure that wouldn’t be there if we had a recent title or two under our belts, but we’re in mid February, top of the table (technically we’re second but that’s merely a result of the PL bringing forward City’s easiest game of the season) and have only lost one game.
Statistically this is the best season in the club’s entire history, and I’m crying to an Evertonian about how “being top isn’t all it’s cracked up to be”.
Fucking hell. What an absolute shithouse. That stops now. We have to enjoy these times and what will be will be. If there's heartbreak at the end of it then I'll worry about it then, not now.
Up the Reds!
and that was the week that was
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