That was the week that was (Nov 7-12 2021)

Monday Nov 8:

Villa sacked Dean Smith and Stevie is their number one target to replace him apparently. This was mentioned in the group chat and John G immediately sneered “He should tell them to fuck off and then sing Happy Birthday”. I don’t have anything to add to that, he’s fucking nailed it. Birthday party on trains having fucking losers. They don't deserve Steven Gerrard, the unfunny banter merchant wankers.

Meanwhile, Adrianna told me today that a lad in her school has just started supporting Wigan. She asked him why, and he said (no word of a lie) “supporting Everton is too depressing so I’m going to support Wigan”. I mean, Wigan have almost gone out of business more than once, they’re in League One with very little prospect of ever scaling the ‘heights’ they did not so long ago but they’re still less depressing to follow than Everton. They've also won a trophy more recently too.

This kid was a proper blue as well. He went to games, had an Everton pencil case for school, wore the kit on own clothes days, the works. And now he fucking hates them because they made him miserable. He was  even arguing with one of his mates at the weekend because he said he wanted them to lose to Spurs. As Elton once famously sang, I guess that’s why they call them the Blues.

Kevin Phillips reckons Fulham’s teenage star Fabio Carvalho could end up following Harvey Elliott to Anfield. He’s not signed a new deal with Fulham and loads of top clubs are sniffing around. I’ve never seen him play but I’m all in on signing wonderkids so get it done. It makes sense to do this kind of deal now because it helps solve the problem of the front three getting old together.

In theory, if Kaide Gordon and Carvalho panned out and become top players, it wouldn’t matter if we kept Sadio, Bobby and Mo until they were older because we’d have the ready made replacements and wouldn’t need to spend a fortune. I’d probably sign one of these potential stars every season, because even if only one in five pans out that’s going to be great value. 

Tuesday Nov 9:

So Ogbonna is out for the season with a torn ACL after that fall he took against us. You know who else should be out for the season and longer? The West Ham medical people who sent him back out there on a fucked knee. The only reason he came off was because Jota split his head open with an elbow, and that was a good few minutes after he’d blown out his knee. Compare that with what happened to Virgil. Basically the same thing. Virg walked off the field and it didn’t look that bad, but our medical staff knew he was fucked and they got him out of there. I can’t believe Ogbonna played on as long as he did with a torn ACL. It’s mad. He’s as brave as their medical staff are stupid.

Also today, Calvert-Lewin is on the front page of some magazine dressed as a schoolgirl. I mean, fair play to him for not giving a fuck what anyone says or thinks, but this is still weird, right? It’s not just me that thinks “what the fuck is that about???” when they see it? It’s not the cross dressing aspect of it, I genuinely could not give a fuck about that at all. Each to their own. But he’s dressed as a schoolgirl, which on the weirdness scale is right there next to dressing up as a giant baby complete with nappy. 

Am I missing something? What point he is trying to make here? Maybe there is a good point and I’m just not getting it, so if anyone can explain it then I’m all ears. It just seems weird, especially considering the situation one of his team-mates is in currently.

It’s certainly caused a bit of a dilemma for the Blues who enjoy singing “Ladyboy” at Bobby though (they sang it to Torres as well remember). Calvert-Lewin has basically cut their balls off by doing this, which is pretty funny I guess.

You know what I just remembered after mentioning Bobby and Everton fans? Remember when we beat them in the derby and he posted that super close up video of him and his misses necking and touching tongues? It was so fucking funny and they went batshit over it.

Meanwhile, I saw this from Evra today…. "One day I was walking in Manchester in Deansgate and my brother said: 'oh it's Luis Suarez over there'. I was with two of my brothers. I looked at him and I was like 'that's it, this is the moment. And he walked, and behind him I saw his kids and his wife. And I turned my back. I was like 'if you do something to him you can't do this in front of his family. So I don't regret it because I think it would have ended up bad. I did nothing that day."

Yeah that defo didn’t happen. Especially when he also said this about when the incident occurred… “"I was proud of myself because I was talking to myself - 'should I punch him? But Patrice, this is Liverpool vs Manchester, all the kids are watching this game, people won't understand’” 

So he wouldn’t punch him in the moment he believed he’d been racially abused because he didn’t think people would understand, but doing it on the street, god knows how long after it happened, would have been ok and more understandable? Ok mate, sure.

Wednesday Nov 10:

BREAKING NEWS!! Michael Edwards is leaving at the end of the season. Didn’t we already know this? I’m sure this story was broken a while back, in the Athletic I think. It came out a couple of days after Hendo got his contract, which was definitely no co-incidence. There were loads of rumours around that time that it was Klopp insisted that deal get done and that Edwards was reluctant to sanction it. 

I’m not surprised he wants out though. His reputation is never going to be higher than it is now (he can thank Klopp for that) but all of a sudden the job has become way harder than it was before. The budget isn’t there to sign players he’s identifying and his job now is little more than renegotiating contracts for players who want more money. It’s actually quite a shit job now and he’s on a hiding to nothing. 

Think about it. He’s got FSG setting him a wage budget that he has to work within. He’s got agents wanting a big slice of that budget for clients with contracts due for renewal, and he’s got Klopp occasionally intervening and telling him that he needs to get deals done even when he doesn’t want to. Edwards didn’t want to pay Gini but because of that he had to pay Hendo or risk the ire of Klopp. 

The longer he stays, the harder his job will get and the more his reputation will start to diminish. Don’t forget, he’s also going to have to deal with the issue of replacing Klopp fairly soon. And before that it’s the Salah contract. If Mo ends up leaving it will be Edwards and FSG who get the blame, no Mo or Klopp. 

So I’d leave too if I were him. He can write his own cheque if he wants to go and work for Newcastle, especially as his mate Eddie Howe is manager there now. Not sure he will though as I hear that he quite fancies the idea of becoming another Jorge Mendes. That open letter he put on the club website today though. Fucking hell. Boring, self indulgent bastard. After reading that I’m glad he’s leaving. Nerd.

Thursday Nov 11:

Stevie takes the Villa job. Rangers fans aren’t taking it well. After giving them a title and stopping Celtic getting ten in a row, you’d think they’d be grateful and just wish him well, but apparently he initially said that he was staying so they see it is a bit of a betrayal. Which it kind of is in a way. Thing is though, no manager who goes to the Scottish league sees it as his final destination. They all want bigger things and when the opportunity comes they’ll take it. Doing it mid-season is a bit of a shitty thing to do, but if he turned Villa down now he might not ever get a better offer than this.

So he has left Ibrox and taken the coaching staff with him, which has left Rangers in the lurch. He does leave them top of the table with a four point cushion, but chances are they’ll lose that in a hurry while they try to find and then bed in a new manager. So I get why their fans wouldn’t be taking it too well, but this is just how it is. They might appoint someone from a club lower down the food chain than them, but I bet they won’t think any less of whatever manager they persuade to leave his club mid-season.

I don’t like the idea of Gerrard managing Villa purely because I don’t like Villa fans. From his point of view it’s a great move as it’s a much better club than he has earned the right to manage. He’s got this job because he’s Steven Gerrard, not because he managed Rangers for a few years and won one trophy there. He did a good job at Rangers but he’s got a whole lot still to prove and his managerial CV isn’t anywhere near impressive enough to have landed that job. 

We did a podcast on this tonight though so I’m not going to say too much more here, but the short version is I don’t think he’ll ever be at the level that we need a manager to be, because for that to happen he’d need to be as great a manager as he was a player. And even if he does a great job at Villa I wouldn’t want him managing us because I don’t want a situation where fans are either slagging him off and calling for his head, or doing the opposite even when they know he isn’t up to the job. Look at United now, I don’t want that for us (even though Stevie has already shown he’s a better manager than Solskjaer). The minute it starts to not go well it would be civil war in the fanbase. 

Friday Nov 12:

Lot of publicity today about the 7 year old kid in our Academy labelled the next Messi. He’s got over 5 million followers on Instagram and Sky Sports have been bigging him up this week. 

It’s easy to say that he’s got no chance of making it now because when kids get this kind of hype they usually don’t live up to it, but Tiger Woods did it so it does occasionally happen. Tiger was a TV star when he was two! Then his development was well publicised all the way through as his dad was running around telling everyone his boy would be the greatest golfer who ever lived. And turns out he was right. Tiger was even better than anyone expected him to be. He was also a complete fucking sociopath with all sorts of emotional baggage and weird behaviour that comes with being a child star.

This kid looks brilliant but he should be allowed to just develop naturally and out of the spotlight. Shut the fucking instagram account down for fucks sake, and tell Sky to do one until he’s at least 15. It doesn’t matter how much skill a young kid has got because it isn’t enough. There’s the mental side of it and the physical side. What if he doesn’t have any pace? I don’t mean what if he isn’t Mo Salah quick, I mean what if he just doesn’t have any speed and is slow as fuck? You can have all the skill in the world but if you can’t run you’ve got no chance.

It just seems wrong putting this kind of spotlight and pressure on a kid of that age and while his dad might think it’s cool to have all this exposure on social media now, it’s hard to envisage how this can possibly help the boy in the long run. Just let him be a normal kid for fuck’s sake. 

On the field tonight England hammered Albania. Not sure what the score was, I only know they were even playing because I saw some clips on twitter of an incredulous Roy Keane slating Harry Maguire. He’s 100% right too. It’s not often I have any empathy with United fans but I tell you what, they’ve got every justification in feeling pissed off about this. I’m pissed off, and I can’t stand United. Maguire is one cheeky, deluded dope. Cupping his ears as if to say “how do you like me now?” because he scored a header against Albania. Fucking hell, where to even start with that.

There’s so many levels to why this is wrong. Firstly, the world’s most expensive defender thinking that anything he does at the OTHER END is any kind of justification of anything is mental. Secondly, it was Albania anyway. Thirdly, Maguire himself has been talking about how his form hasn’t been good enough, so unless he doesn’t believe that then why is he getting all uppity about criticism? Fourthly, the absolute fucking balls on this prick. As Keane said, he’s been a disgrace all season but he thinks scoring in a rout of Albania gives him the right to “send a message” to his critics. If I was a United fan I’d want him lynched.

Meanwhile, Alisson says we’re going for the quadruple. He’s jinxed it now, the soft get. He played for Brazil last night and every time he took a goal kick their fans chanted “oooooooooooo lingo!”. You know, like that old “you’re shit ahhhhhhh” thing. Except what they were chanting actually translates to “ooooooooooo handsome!”. This needs to happen on the Kop as it's too funny.

….and that was the week that was.