Saturday Nov 23:
Palace 1 L 2 Another week another arse twitching win. Feels like almost all of our games this season have finished 2-1 and loads of them have seen us win it late. We can’t do that indefinitely but it won’t matter if we’ve built up a big enough lead. We’ve already won loads of games that we could easily not have and it feels like we haven’t really played well for a lot of the season. That's probably not true but it feels like that because so many of our games have ended up on knife edge.
Our record is incredible but the performances have not always been. There are two ways to look at that. Maybe we’re pacing ourselves and will come on stronger in the second half of the season (we usually do) or maybe this is who we are now. Maybe we aren’t that wildly exciting crazy team that would win 4-0 or 5-1 virtually every week but then lose a stupid one completely out of the blue to undermine it all.
Maybe now we’re just a winning machine, grinding out three points week after week without ever really crushing anybody like we used to but also never dropping stupid points. The front three are definitely not the unstoppable force they were two years ago and that’s the main difference I think. Sadio is better than he was two years ago but Bobby and Mo aren’t producing the same numbers and that’s the main reason we’re winning 2-1 every week instead of hitting four or five.
Recently I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. Are they not playing as well or have teams just figured out ways to restrict us? I wouldn’t say we’ve been 'found out', because we’re European Champions and have only lost one league game in 18 months!! Something has changed though. Those devastating length of the field counter attacks we were seeing all the time have all but disappeared. I can only assume it’s because teams are much more careful against us now because the fear factor is there.
We’ve had to adapt because we get less space and as a result of that we’re less of a counter attacking side and more of a patient build up one. It’s working for us and the points speak for themselves, it’s just not as thrilling to watch and it's a lot more stressful when games are in the balance right up until the final whistle. Still, if it brings us the title though then I’ll take a 2-1 win every week thanks.
Sunday Nov 24:
Eden Hazard says a Liverpool player should win the Balon d’Or and his choice would be Sadio. He’s defo getting more and more traction now and it wouldn’t be undeserved if he won, but the problem is that he’s taking votes of Virg and that will no doubt open the door for Messi. Let’s not kid ourselves, he’ll win it again because he’s "the world’s best player".
By that rationale though, he should have won it pretty much every year that he’s played. The reason he hasn’t is because it has often been determined that someone else (usually Ronaldo) - while being an inferior talent - has had a better year than him. Just like Virgil in 2019. Messi will win it though. I doubt Virg gives much of a fuck about it anyway. The fans will be more upset about it than him.
Meanwhile, Naby Keita is one of the nominees for African Player of the Year. Who the fuck is voting for this? If it’s the public then that can be explained away by the lack of TVs in many African households, but if it’s the players and / or coaches then what the fuck?? He’s barely played for club or country and when he did he usually got injured.
Monday Nov 25:
Jadon Sancho has reportedly decided he wants out of Dortmund at the end of the season and we’re one of four clubs linked to him. I’ll be honest, I’ve seen virtually nothing of him because I don’t watch the Bundesliga and I sure as hell don’t watch England games. He’s meant to be class, but to me he’s very much the consolation prize if we don’t get Mbappe. Kind of like failing to pull Kylie but ending up with Danni.
Neil Critchley is going to take charge of the League Cup semi. Makes sense, as it’s going to be his team taking the field. I’d guess the line up will be something like Kelleher, Williams, Hoever, Van Den Berg, Larouci, Chirivella, Lewis, Kane, Elliott, Brewster, Jones. I can’t wait actually. They’ll probably lose and might even lose heavily. But imagine they won? How exciting would that be?
Villa have said they “fully respect” our decision to field the kids. Of course they do, it’s virtually given them a bye to the semis, but even if they did have a problem with it so what? There’s literally nothing else we can do here, unless people actually think we should send the kids to the World Club Cup instead? FIFA would love that!
Even if you take the prestige out of it, take a look at the prize money for both competitions and that tells you all you need to know. I actually think Klopp would privately admit he doesn’t want to reach the league cup semis anyway as that’s two games he could do without. Personally I’d love us to get there just so the kids could have another run out, but the downside to that is we could end up getting City. It wouldn’t be fair to play the kids then, which would mean extra games for senior players. So yeah, I reckon Klopp is hoping we give a good account of ourselves at Villa but lose.
Speaking of Klopp, he and Guardiola both gave speeches at the Footy Writers Awards do and they were both really good. You expect that from Jurgen, he’s a funny guy, but I’ll give some grudging praise to Guardiola too as he was good. I may have said this before, but there is one thing I have to give him credit for, and that is that he never tries to hide his fear / admiration of Klopp and the Reds. A lot of managers would downplay it but he’s the opposite.
He’s secure enough in his own skin that he’ll admit the effect we have on his psyche. In this speech he joked about how much our late goals are doing his head in and it was funny. He even managed to joke that “Man City will pay for all this (the cost of the bar etc) because we are rich” and somehow it didn’t make him sound like a twat. I still can’t stand him, but if he wasn’t at City I probably wouldn’t mind him.
Tuesday Nov 26:
He’s at it again. ”Liverpool have six (European trophies) and this club have one semi-final. We are far away from the 'You'll Never Walk Alone' team and that is the reality. But I like the Premier League because when you win a lot in the league you live eleven months of the year happy.”
See, this is what I mean. If that was me, I’d be saying fuck all to acknowledge that the Reds have more pedigree and prestige than City, but Guardiola doesn’t have any problem being complimentary. I bet City’s press office are having fucking kittens over it though, the sad, obsessed losers.
Meanwhile, Brewster will reportedly be allowed to go on loan in January. It’s a no brainer really, the lad was supposed to be going to play a significant role this year but he can’t even make the bench most weeks. Keeping him around in case of emergency might be prudent, but it’s not really fair. Let him go and play and let’s see what he’s made of.
We’ve got four others who can play centre forward and we’ll have Shaqiri and Elliott to come in if either Sadio or Mo has to move central. I want to see Brewster playing every week, ideally in the Prem but more likely in the Championship.
Wednesday Nov 27:
L 1 Napoli 1 Shite that. Didn’t deserve to win and it’s really annoying how Napoli continue to make us look bang average. They aren’t even that good, but put them up against us and they raise their game about 200%. They know how to stifle us so let’s hope Ancelotti stays put and doesn’t end up back in this country, where he can do this shit to us twice a year.
I'm sick to death of Napoli, their shithouse fans, shithouse players (I'd never tire of punching that Allan in his stupid face), shitty kit and their kryptonite like effect on us. Thankfully they're doing shite in Serie A so with any luck they won't qualify next year and we won't have to play them again for a while. Mind you, we could get them in the knock outs this year. If we make it that is.
It’s annoying as fuck that we can never make things easy for ourselves. Winning tonight would have allowed us a night off in Salzburg, but now we need to go there and get something against a side who are dangerous because they’re so free-scoring and fearless in how they play. They won’t give a fuck about our reputation, they have nothing to lose and they’ll just fly at us over there. We should still have enough to go through, but we’ve made it needlessly difficult by not winning tonight.
The kids fared better though, slaughtering Napoli 7-0 at the Academy. It was 5-0 inside half an hour. Curtis Jones bagged a hat-trick and frankly it wasn’t really fair letting him play in this game, because he was so far ahead of everyone else on the pitch it was frightening. You know when you watch Messi just take the piss and people can’t get near him? Jones was like that in this game. He was just far too good for Napoli and completely ran the show.
Neco Williams was brilliant at right back too. He’s had a spectacular couple of months and might just be one good game against Villa away from becoming Trent’s understudy, especially based on Joe’s struggles tonight. Villa should be shitting themselves if they watched this, as our kids looked like superstars.
The best bit was defo Jones and Elliott having a disagreement over who was taking a penalty. Jones pulled rank as captain (and scored) but Elliott had the hump. As Jones made his way back to halfway he put his finger to his lips and shouted across the pitch “Harvey, shut your mouth or I’ll take the next one as well. Shut your mouth”.
He later posted a photo of them hugging and said “thanks to my little brother for the pass for my second”. He never mentioned the penalty incident. I find this hilarious though, as it’s the kind of thing a big brother would do to his younger brother. “Shut your mouth or I’ll take the next one as well”. Tremendous.
Thursday Nov 28:
What an utterly heartbreaking day for the Hillsborough families. I can’t say I’m shocked by the verdict because it’s exactly what I expected. When people allowed themselves to believe that justice was finally going to be done, my view was that I’ll believe it when it happens. The establishment in this country doesn’t answer to anyone. They do what they like, to whom they like, without any comeback. They did it back in ’89, and they’re still doing it now.
At the inquest Duckenfield admitted his actions caused the disaster and he admitted he then lied about it. The verdict was that the fans were completely blameless and that the 96 were unlawfully killed. For some stupid legal reason, none of that was deemed relevant to this case, so Duckenfield and his fucking scumbag cunt lawyer took advantage and did a complete about face, taking no responsibility for it and went back to blaming the fans again.
Imagine being one of the family members, sat in court listening to that? I hope Duckenfield dies a slow, painful death and fucking rots in hell, along with all the other cunts responsible for the deaths and subsequent cover up.
I just don’t really know what else to say about it. The burning anger and feeling of helplessness I feel is nothing to what the families must be feeling. I wish there was something we could do to ease their suffering, but there isn’t. We’re powerless. I hate this country and the cunts who run it.
In fact, people in general these days just suck. So many of the world’s population are just horrible, uncaring, vile bastards. For example, the PL put out a tweet today in support of the rainbow laces campaign and the replies to it were just thoroughly disgusting. Just what the fuck is wrong with people? Why would you be arsed about other people’s sexual preferences?
The objection to the laces seems to be that this “gay thing” is being forced upon them. Footballers are wearing rainbow laces, they’re not sucking each other off on the field in front of you. Get a grip you fucking bellends. Even if you think that way, why would you be that arsed that you feel the need to share that view with the world? Fucking weirdos. The reason the rainbow laces campaign is necessary is because of the exact same cunts who are objecting to it. If they weren’t so intolerant, this wouldn’t even be a thing.
It’s symptomatic of everything that is wrong with the world that something like this can illicit that kind of a response from people. Imagine being upset because of a rainbow laces campaign. Fucking hell.
Friday Nov 29:
Fabinho is out for up to eight weeks. Not great news like. We’ve never lost a game that he’s played and he’s probably second only to Van Dijk in his importance. Most of the games we’ve got shouldn’t be too challenging but Leicester away is going to be extra tough and Salzburg is going to be even more tricky and those pesky little bastards will be running at us from all angles.
I expect Gini will be the main one to fill in more often than not, but Hendo and even Lallana (but only in the easiest of games) will see some time there too. What it does mean is that one of the box to box spots will be available more often now, so either Ox or (don’t laugh) Keita are going to have to step up.
Meanwhile, I watched a youtube interview with Klopp today where he was talking about his time at Mainz. I’m not sure if I knew this or not, but if I did I’d forgotten it (happens a lot since I turned 40). Mainz missed out on promotion by one point and the next year they missed out by one goal. That would have killed a lot of teams but the next year they did it. Klopp described it as his greatest achievement, as he said doing that with Mainz was more difficult than winning the Champions League with Liverpool.
Which was the more difficult task isn’t really important. What I took from it was that this goes a long way to showing how we won the European Cup a year after losing the final in heartbreaking circumstances, and why we’re now top of the league after missing out last year despite finishing with 97 points. Setbacks that would destroy a lot of people just make Klopp even more determined. He calls his team “mentality monsters” but really it all stems from him. They’re just following his lead. What a guy.
Finally, that advert with the CGI Bob Paisley? No. Just no. Pure cringe.
….and that was the week that was
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