Monday Jan 10:
Brighton become the first club to join LFC in backing the Hillsborough law. Have to say I’m shocked it wasn’t Everton. Bill Kenwright has always been great when it comes to standing with us over Hillsborough. His influence there is on the wane though and Moshiri seems like a fucking knob. I expect he’ll eventually get on board when he sees which way the wind is blowing, but it would have been nice to have them throw their support behind it from the get go.
Staying with Everton, and Digne is joining Villa. This is too funny. Forget all the noise around it about the player not being happy and Rafa saying he isn’t committed. The nuts and bolts of this are that Rafa Benitez took over at Everton and sold their best player to Steven Gerrard. That’s it, nothing else is relevant here. Rafa sold their best player to Stevie. Imagine an alternate reality where Klopp left us in the summer of 2020, Mourinho replaced him and then sold Van Dijk to Lampard at Chelsea. Because that’s the equivalent of this.
Meanwhile, Achterberg does a piece with the Athletic and one of the things he spoke about was Karius and his current situation. “It’s down to him, his agent & the club to try to find a solution, Hopefully there will be one this month. It doesn’t help anyone to sit for another six months without the feeling you are really fighting for something.”
This is presumably in reference to reports last week of a German club wanting to take him but being put off by his wages, and Karius refusing to leave without a payoff from LFC. The easy thing here is to rip into for being a greedy twat who values money over wanting to play, but this is more nuanced than that.
Karius is on a good contract here. Not huge money, but it’s more than he’ll get anywhere else because his stock has fallen so much since he signed the deal with us. So this is probably the biggest contract he’s ever going to have in his career. He’s got six months of it left, and having not played all season, what’s another six months of doing fuck all?
Besides, if he waits until the summer he’ll have more options than he has right now, so quite frankly, he’d be absolutely mad to walk away from this contract to go and sign for the first team that comes in for him this month. If I was him I’d sit tight too, and it wouldn’t JUST be about the money, it would be about options too.
Meanwhile, the EFL have said they won’t be charging LFC for postponing the Arsenal game. What the fuck kind of news is that? It should never have even been a discussion point, but by putting this out it’s implying that maybe there was a case to answer. May as well put out a statement saying we won’t be charged with Mendy’s rapes or
Sadio scores a late, late penalty to give Senegal a 1-0 win in their opening game. Good for him, but not so much for us as ideally we want him back here asap. Same with Mo. I don’t mind either with Naby. If he comes back then sound, but if Guinea go all the way then good for him. I want Senegal and Egypt out quickly though. Sorry lads.
Tuesday Jan 11:
Egypt lost 1-0 to Nigeria, with that cunt Iheanacho getting the goal. I suppose I should be happy, but I’m not. Mostly because of who scored but partly because I have to admit that it would be cool for Mo if he was able to win this for Egypt. It would be cooler if he was able to play at Palace next week though so *shrugs*, sorry Egypt.
There were more quotes from him today on his future and again he’s saying how much he wants to stay but it’s up to the club. He also said his demands are nothing crazy, which I guess he would say, but I believe him. I take that to mean he isn’t asking for Messi / Neymar / Bale money and he’s more in line with what the top PL earners are on. The likes of De Bruyne, Lukaku and half the United and City squads.
The club need to just fucking sort this now because if they allow him to leave because of penny pinching then we should just fucking riot. I’m not generally one for saying “just pay him whatever he wants” and I’m not even doing that now. If Mo was asking for 500k a week I’d understand the reluctance to do it. But he’s not. You can’t claim to be one of the world’s leading clubs when you can’t hold onto your best player.
For years we’ve lost our best players (Gerrard apart, and he only stayed because he’s a scouser) because we were shit. You can accept that because it’s kind of unavoidable. When you have a player who has no interest in leaving and he’s the best in the world, if you let him go then you can't class yourself as a big club. FSG need to stop being so small time, the pricks.
Wednesday Jan 12:
Newcastle are signing Chris Wood for £25m, which is his buy out clause. Absolute fucking cunts. They don’t actually want Chris Wood and if he was playing for, let’s say Villa or Leicester, they wouldn’t look twice at him. They’ve done this purely to nobble Burnley, because it’s going to be three from four who go down and Newcastle have obviously targeted Burnley as the one they need to finish above. This is proper dirty pool and I hope it backfires and Burnley survive. I feel like I want us to let them have Div on loan for the rest of the season to make sure they stay up and fuck Newcastle over. That’s if he ever gets over this ‘sore knee’.
Not a dig at Divock that by the way, I’m not questioning his toughness or suggesting he isn’t injured. But ’sore knee’ is what we were told it was when he first missed a game over a month ago now. And he’s still back in training. Thiago is also out with another ‘mystery’ injury that they can’t diagnose too.
Still, Klopp says there’s nothing to worry about with Mo’s contract situation though. He also said to the reporter who asked that “the fans aren’t worrying like you are. They know the club and the people responsible for these things”. Erm, yeah we do and that’s why we’re worried. I mean fucking hell, we’ve been down this road with Can and Wijnaldum, two players Klopp wanted to keep, so why on earth would we have any confidence in the club resolving this issue? I like to think that Klopp’s relaxed approach means that it’s closer than any of us think, but we have every right to feel concerned about it.
In other news, Arsenal have reportedly had a COVID outbreak ahead of tomorrow. Imagine if that’s true and they aren’t allowed to postpone. It would be fucking hilarious, purely because of how their fans have acted. If they have had an outbreak then it should be postponed and it would be unfair if it isn’t. But yeah, their fans were such fucking knobs about it that it would be hilarious.
Not as hilarious as AFCON. Fuck me, could that have been any more AFCON today? As if the actual refereeing decisions weren’t strange enough, he blows for full time on 85 minutes and then when pulled up on it says it was for a drinks break. Except they’d not long had a drinks break. So he restarts the game and then blows up on 89 minutes 47 seconds, even though at least 5 minutes were meant to be added on for said drinks break, plus whatever normal added time there would have been.
There’s murder, and then half an hour after the game when the angry Tunisia coach is doing his presser, they decide to tell the players to get back out and finish the game. Mali are 1-0 up but a man short and go out to continue the game but Tunisia say “nah fuck this shit” and don’t bother. The ref, by the way, has previously been investigated for corruption.
And some Africans had the nerve to get all arsey after some cunt twisted Klopp’s words to make it look like he was calling it a “little tournament”. Little tournament? No, but it is a fucking joke and this it’s exactly why people don’t take it seriously. This, and the fact the games are like watching paint dry and goals are as rare as a law abiding Tory.
Thursday Jan 13:
L 0 Arsenal 0. Pathetic that. Just a wretched display all over the park and we got what we deserved. We’ll have to listen to a load of shite about how Arsenal are becoming more resilient, but it will be a cold day in hell before I concede that point. Just because they didn’t fold like a pack of cards let’s not go overboard. If Taki puts away that late chance everyone is laughing at Arsenal for blowing it late on again. They made big mistakes but we were too shit to punish them. Next week we won’t be, and that’s all I have to say about this as everything else is in the match report.
Also today, Digne completed his move to Villa and the Everton twitter account basically said just that and nothing else. Nothing about wishing him well or “thanks for the memories” etc. Does Rafa control the social media output now? I bet he does you know. This is what he does. He goes in, starts fires everywhere and then convinces people that he’s the only one who can put those fires out but he needs full autonomy to be able to do it. He’s probably got the little mute boy who sits next to him handling the club twitter.
I was going to compare it to the “great British public” electing the Tories and then acting all shocked and indignant when they do Tory things, but that’s unfair on the Blues as they didn’t ‘elect’ Rafa. They were dead against him being the given the job so this isn’t a case of them getting what they deserved. In this analogy the Blues are like those of us who didn’t vote for Johnson because we know what he is and wanted no part of it.
Moshiri on the other hand, is getting exactly what he deserves. He’s the fucking madman that sanctioned this and now he’s like “in for a penny in for a pound” and just letting it play out. Great for us, fucking horrific if you’re a blue though. Still, never mind eh?
And any Blue who swallowed that shit from Digne in his farewell message deserves whatever misery comes their way. “It only takes one outsider to ruin a great love affair” hahahahaha fucking hell mate, I know you’re French but you’re no Eric Cantona.
Friday Jan 14:
Arsenal have asked for the North London derby to be postponed because they don’t have enough players. Hardly any of them have COVID despite those false reports a couple of days ago and they let two players go out on loan this week. Half of the games that have been postponed recently should have been played, yet it’s one of the most obvious legitimate call offs that got everyone up in arms. Can’t think why.
By rights Arsenal should be told to fuck off but it’s not that straightforward because Leicester were allowed to postpone against Everton with only one (or maximum two) players missing with COVID and everyone else injured or at AFCON. If you allow that, how can you then refuse Arsenal? This season has descended into fucking farce.
Digne says he signed for Villa “because of the manager” which I’m sure will go down well with those he enjoyed such a “great love affair” with. Stevie himself is talking about Coutinho and refers to him as ‘the kid’. Has Stevie become a Scouse boxer? Because the only people I ever hear referring to grown men as ‘the kid’ are the likes of Tony Bellew and Paul Smith Jr. For the record, Coutinho is 29!
Meanwhile, we have Origi news at last. He’s running again and should be back in full training very soon. Harvey is back in full training next week too, but still nothing on Thiago and his undiagnosable hip injury. We might see Ox this weekend as Klopp was talking him up today and saying how he’s “in a really good way”. If that’s true then I’m even more disillusioned at that midfield three he picked last night.
Over at AFCON Naby and Sadio went head to head. It was 0-0, of course. Goals at this tournament are about as rare as Evertonians that back Benitez. Naby was booked for fouling Sadio though. He’d better not try any of that against Egypt as if he so much as harms a hair on Mo’s beautiful little head he needn’t bother coming back.
Egypt play tomorrow night and if they lose they’re out. They probably won’t as they’re only playing Guinea-Bissau and are heavy favourites. If they do lose then Mo would be back for Palace next week.
There are some rumours doing the rounds that we’re in for Dybala, who has pulled out of contract talks with Juve and will be available for free this summer. Don’t think I’ve ever seen him play and I have no idea if he fits our set up, but my gut feeling is that free transfers are going to become more and more common for us as I just don’t see us spending proper money ever again. At least that’s how it feels. Because we’ve all seen the graphics on twitter, since 2018 we’re bottom of the net spend table and have made a £3m profit. We’re defo the world’s poorest rich club.
….and that was the week that was.
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