Featured: That was the week that was (Oct 31 - Nov 6 2020)

**tlw content** · 7 Nov 2020, 20:59:59

Saturday Oct 31:

L 2 West Ham 1 Sound that. Difficult game, not at our best, dug in and willed our way to the three points. That’s what Champions do. It’s what we did for most of last season. It felt like most of the games we won during that record breaking run last year were single goal wins. I know they weren’t, were did have some comfortable ones in there too but there were loads like this one. It feels like we’re getting back into that groove now.

Nice that we’re actually getting penalties again for fouls on Salah. It felt like there was a period of about 12 months where it was open season for defenders to do whatever they liked to him without any punishment. What brought that on? The media and rival manager witch hunt every time he was awarded a pen. And look, it’s happening again tonight. Even though it’s a clear foul and the West Ham player a) didn’t complain when it was given and b) apologised for the mistake on twitter afterwards, we’re still being subjected to absolute bollocks from pundits claiming it’s not a penalty.

Even Souness was at it, which is disappointing as he’s normally one of the better ones. He was talking so much shit that Micah Richards stopped laughing for once in his life and was looking at him like “ok mate, whatever”. Then you had baked bean head Shearer talking absolute fucking nonsense on MOTD. It’s easy to dismiss this and say it doesn’t mean anything, but it does. It creates a narrative and eventually it can influence people’s thinking.

It’s basically a Daily Mail front page blaming all the ills of the country on immigrants and refugees. Your hear something reported often enough that eventually it can influence your thinking without even realising it. It’s not a co-incidence that Salah stopped getting pens when the narrative became about him diving all the time. The same thing happened to Suarez back in the day too. I wouldn’t mind if it was the same across the board, but Kane and Sterling are literally throwing themselves to the ground without any contact on a weekly basis and fuck all is ever said about it. Mo won’t get another pen now for six months, you just watch (hopefully that reverse jinx kicks in on Sunday)

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So, here’s something from today that I found interesting. For the first time in ages the twitter mole who posts the team got it wrong yesterday. He had Thiago and Williams starting. So what happened there? Are the club onto him and feeding false info? Because Nat Phillips said that he knew he was starting on Thursday but clearly the mole didn’t. This feels like a sting to me. We’ll know on Tuesday if we get early team news again.

Sunday Nov 1:

Normal service is resumed as Everton lose their second game in a row and they can kiss goodbye to ever being top again now. Well, they might do it again at the start of a season, but you’re never going to see a situation where they’re top after, say, ten games. They had their little run, got typically chesty about it and now they’re back to being Everton. They’ll never learn will they? All that “Spirit of the Blues” thing was setting themselves up for a massive fail.

I mean come on, the lyrics are “we don’t know the meaning of losing”. You’re Everton. Losing is what you do. It’s who you are. It’s like Steve Davis running around singing “I don’t know the meaning of snooker”. All it took was four games for them to completely forget who they were. FOUR FUCKING GAMES! They’re utterly mental. You’d think after being so shit for so long, and living with constant disappointment and misery, that they’d at least have their guard up a little bit and be somewhat sceptical that it might not last. But no, they go wading in, running their mouths and writing cheques their team can’t cover.

When we spoke to one of the lads from Grand Old Team ahead of the derby and asked “what is an obtainable goal” for them this season, instead of saying “well most of the traditional top six look a bit unconvincing this year so maybe we can grab a European place or possibly even sneak into the top four” he said “Don’t laugh…. to be Champions”.

Honestly, they’ll never, ever learn. “Don’t laugh?” Come on, lad, some things can’t be prefaced with that. It’s like Del Boy looking into the camera and telling us “don’t laugh” before he went arse over tit in that yuppy wine bar.

My mum went right off on one about them today. I don’t even remember what instigated it, we were talking about something completely unrelated and the next thing she’s telling me how horrible Ancelotti is and always has been. I’d said Everton had changed him and she said he’s always been “vile” and his Napoli team were dirty nasty scumbags.

Then she said how every single Everton player was horrible. I was like “Oh I’m not sure I’d go that far”. “Tell me one who is ok then” she challenged me. “Leighton Baines wasn’t too bad and Seamus Coleman seems like a decent lad” I replied. “Noooooooo. Baines is your typical bitter Evertonian. I saw an interview with him once and they mentioned Liverpool and he got all defensive wouldn’t even say the word. As for Coleman, I felt sorry for that lad when he got injured but he’s been a right snide ever since he came back. He’s a dirty little thing him.”

Then she went on about Pickford, Richarlison, Delph, Calvert-Lewin (she’s hated him from day one, even before the dive against Lovren) and Rodriguez for a bit before again challenging me “Name me one who you can honestly say seems alright? You can’t. Even with Man United there are some who are inoffensive and don’t bother me. Every team will have one or two that you can’t stand but with Everton it’s every one of them”.

And you know what, I couldn’t actually name one who doesn’t annoy the fuck out of me. None of the established ones anyway. They’re all varying degrees of snide, dirty, bitter little bastards. I don’t mind Doucoure but he’s only been there five minutes. Michael Keane might be the least offensive of the regulars but I always feel he’s got a two footed lunge in a derby game in him so it’s only a matter of time until he’s on the list. I wasn’t bothered too much by Mina until I saw him acting like a complete cunt today when Wilson was getting ready to take the pen. So yeah, I can’t actually name one who’s ok.

So the Everton game today was funny, as was United losing to Arsenal. The best bit about that was Keane afterwards. He said Ole is probably going to be gone soon but he took issue with criticism that he isn’t motivating the players. Keane was fuming about that and (rightly, in my view) claimed that players should be motivating themselves and that he never needed any manager to motivate him.

The best was when Cahill started pontificating about how great Arteta is what a great job he’s doing with Arsenal. It was embarrassing how overboard he was going just because it’s his mate and the contempt from Keane was palpable, he kept saying “how many games have Arsenal lost this season?” and Cahill kept avoiding the question. Keane just sat there shaking his head, looking away and generally fuming. He’s great, he should be covering every game on every channel like Micah Richards does.

My favourite bit was later on when they asked what Man United need and he sneered “Mikel Arteta as apparently he’s the new messiah”. Great stuff.

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**Tj hooker** · 7 Nov 2020, 23:57:08

Great read Dave can we have more from your Mum from time to time please

**sir roger** · 8 Nov 2020, 00:49:41

Flanno signed for Charleroi during the week.

**rb14** · 8 Nov 2020, 00:50:22

Top top "That was Mum's week that was" analysis there, Dave. I hope you're paying her?

That'll be a no then.

**alles ist gut** · 8 Nov 2020, 08:36:49

Absolute top "Adrianna vs. Maguire" analysis there, Dave.

**ralph** · 8 Nov 2020, 10:48:15

Spot on that Dave. I would like to think that if you still did the magazine, then your Mum could have her own page full of her observations. Certainly knows her stuff.

**Code** · 8 Nov 2020, 12:28:18

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye"

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye