Leaderboard

Saturday Apr 27: Carra is talking up Burnley’s chances tomorrow. I’ve been doing the same for weeks, but now that the moment is almost upon us I’m no longer expecting anything other than a City win. It’s just wishful thinking. We look at these teams and think “if they do this this and that they could really cause City problems”. And you know what? Fucking none of them ever do it. They just curl into a ball and hope they don’t get smashed in the face. Over in Spain, Barca rest Messi ahead of our game but still have enough to get the result they needed too clinch the title. Apparently, according to a couple of ‘news’ items I saw on LFC’s news now page, Liverpool fans are fuming about Messi being rested. What the fuck? Why would anyone be upset about that, it’s just common sense and if Man City didn’t exist then I might have even got a game for us against Huddersfield last night, as Klopp would have rested everyone. I’m so sick of this lowest common denominator bullshit. Websites and papers trawling social media looking for the stupidest comments from randomers who might not even actually support the team they claim they do, and then turning them into ‘news’ items. It just depresses me. Sports journalism is completely fucked. Social media has killed it stone dead. Just have a look at the headlines on newsnow. 75% of it is this kind of shit, and the rest is made up of whatever random shite the likes of Robbie Savage, Paul Merson etc has come out with. Example? How about this from today “Martin Keown and Paul Ince in heated debate over Player of Year award”. Honestly, we’re one step away from articles based on whatever shite Alan Brazil is spouting in his local boozer. The bottom of the barrel was scraped away a long time ago and they’re halfway to the earth’s core. You know what else was deemed worthy of reporting? Tony Bellew, a boxer, picking his team of the year on Twitter. It had no Liverpool players in it and apparently that makes this a story? He’s one of the bitterest blues on the planet, of course he didn’t pick any Liverpool players. More to the point though, why does anybody give a flying fuck what Tony Bellew thinks about this? Do boxing fans have to be subjected to the views retired footballers have on who the top five heavyweights of all time are? No. So why is that Tony Bellew tit showing up on LFC’s newsnow page? I should just stay off there, but I need it for this diary as it’s still the best place to go to find out what’s happening on any particular day. It’s just a pain in the arse sifting through all the tonnes of sloppy dog shite to find it. Most of these papers and websites will literally publish anything these days if it brings in a click or two. Sunday Apr 28: Thanks for nothing Burnley. At least they didn’t roll over I suppose. They actually defended heroically (Mee and Tarkowski were sensational), but they were so focussed on keeping City out they never even bothered trying to do anything at the other end. It was soul destroying. At the very least I expected an aerial bombardment, some roughing up and for Wood and Barnes to really cause problems. We got none of that, it was shit. City won thanks to the shittest of goals, as the football Gods chose to rub our noses it a bit more. “Hey Kopites, remember when you were 11mm away from scoring against City? Well how do like these apples. Three points thanks to a ball that was 23mm over the line”. If we end up on 97 points and don’t win the league, we may as well forget about ever winning it. City lost four games this season. They won’t lose that many next year. So we’re pretty much going to have to win every fucking game more or less. Why? Because neither UEFA or the FA are prepared to do anything about the cunts thumbing their noses at them. Still, no-one is arsed because it stops us from winning the league. Exhibit A: United fans at Old Trafford actually cheered when Aguero scored today. The irony is that United have been as badly hit by City’s rule breaches as anyone, and will continue to be. They aren’t even top dogs in their own city now because their neighbours are cheating like fuck, but they’re happy to accept it if it means we don’t win the title. It’s beyond fucking embarrassing that. Look at what you’ve become, United fans. Just look at it. You’re truly pathetic. So that’s pretty much it now as far as the title is concerned. There is a 0% chance of Brighton taking points off City on the final day, so that only leaves Leicester and Brendan Rodgers. I'd give them a 5% chance of getting anything at the Etihad. The league title went on the day that our destiny was no longer in our own hands and we became reliant on others to stand up to City. Virtually no-one does. They’ve won every game since that defeat at Newcastle. Every fucking game. This is unprecedented shit we’re up against here. There’s no shame in finishing second to them, but there’s plenty of injustice and bitterness. Meanwhile, the u23s had a game at Anfield today and served up an absolute shit sandwich. I’ve been saying all season how I generally can’t be arsed watching them and today showed why. They’re not usually this bad but even when they’re doing well there’s very little to get excited about. I had hoped that Brewster coming back would make them a bit more interesting but it hasn’t. I used to love watching Curtis Jones when he was with the u18s, but now I generally just find it infuriating seeing him hold onto the ball for too long and run down blind alleys. Loads of ability but I’ve officialy gone from being hopeful about him to being worried. Camacho is bang average too. This is probably the least fun reserve side I can ever remember. It should be better next year when some of the u18s move up, but the modern game is all about creative wide players and we no longer have any of those at reserve or youth level. We’ve had Ibe, Wilson, Kent and Ojo but now there aren’t any, which is weird considering how important those type of players are in our first team. Monday Apr 29: Gary Neville - “Rafa Benitez, I think, will want to do a job on Liverpool, on Jurgen Klopp. A resilient, stubborn 0-0, 1-0 victory. Also Gary Neville - "I think Brendan Rodgers will want to go to City and make sure that tactically he matches Pep Guardiola , and show that he can compete at that level. 100% agree on both counts. Any Red thinking that “Rafa will help us out” is living in cloud cuckoo land. Rafa will want to win this game as much as he’s wanted to win any game this season, probably more in fact. “But he loves us!”. Yeah, but he’ll also want to stop Klopp doing what he could never do. It’s only natural, it’s a matter of professional pride and I expect virtually every other top manager would be the same. He should be trying his best to win the game. And ‘win’ is the key word there. If he sends out his team to have a go at us and they beat us by attacking and playing on the front foot, fair play to him. I’d have no issue with that. I don’t expect him to do anything less. Newcastle pay his wages. He owes it to the club and the fans to try to win the game. If he goes out with ten men behind the ball and tries to shithouse his way to a 0-0 that helps nobody, then he can fuck right off. As for Brendan. We know how he thinks. His ego will not allow him to try and shithouse a result. He’ll see himself as every bit Guardiola’s equal and he’ll send his team out to out-Pep Man City. They’ll take the game to them and they’ll try to pass it around. And they’ll probably score a goal or two. And concede four, at least one from one of their defenders getting caught playing around in his own box. Tuesday Apr 30: Spurs have it all to do after losing 1-0 at home to Ajax. It’s easy to mock them but they went into a European semi final without Kane and Son. How would we cope without two of our front three? A full strength Spurs would probably just edge out Ajax in my opinion, but without their two best players that was never going to happen, especially with Pochettino fucking up his tactics so badly. Three at the back against a team who play like Ajax? The only surprising thing to me is Ajax only won 1-0, as the way they started the game it looked like they’d score four or five. Hopefully they finish the job now and reach the final. If we get there, I’d rather play Ajax than Spurs because fuck playing other English teams, and if we don’t get there I’d rather Spurs didn’t because fuck other English teams doing well in our competition. As for us, well it’s not been a good day for our travelling fans. Clashes with police and videos circulating of some tit pushing locals into a fountain. We can go all over Europe and have no incidents at all, but you get a tie like this and it brings out all the big game beauts. Loads of fans over there won’t even be going the game, but because it’s Barcelona people just flock there anyway, including loads of helmets who you wouldn’t normally see. Wednesday May 1: Oh for fucks sake. Barca 3 L 0. Genuinely can’t believe how this played out. We outplayed them in the Nou Camp. Out-passed them, out worked them, had more shots, just generally outplayed them. And lost by three fucking goals. It’s hard to take but I don’t blame anybody for it. Nobody from our side anyway. The ref was shite and Barca’s players took some right liberties (the tackle on Naby, the constant fouling of Salah and Mané, Messi being a cunt, Suarez being an even bigger cunt), but it just wasn’t our night. Maybe next week will be, but I can’t see it. We just can’t seem to catch a break any time we’re within touching distance of a trophy. I know we’re in great shape overall and the big picture looks exciting, but I just can’t bring myself to look to what should be a bright future because I’m just so gutted about the heartbreaking present. Not going to elaborate further on this, as it's all in the match report. Thursday May 2: Yeah don’t feel any better today. In fact I probably feel worse if anything. Going to take a little while to get over this one. Bit of a surreal moment this morning too while watching the ESPN FC show from last night. Stevie Nicol, Craig Burnley & co were discussing the game and a graphic of my player ratings flashed up on the screen. Some fella called Alejandro Moreno started ripping me for giving Robbo 9/10. His ‘logic’ being we lost 3-0 so how can a defender get a 9? Thankfully 'Chico' had my back. Here's the exchange: Moreno: I don’t know how a team loses 3-0 and your left-back gets a nine on the player ratings. Thomas: Stevie you said he was excellent as well, Robertson. Nicol: Absolutely, absolutely, he played some great balls forward. Moreno: A nine? You lost 3-0. Nicol: He made two tackles that were goal-saving tackles and every other thing came down the other side. Moreno: So a nine? A nine? Nicol: Absolutely. Moreno: Losing 3-0. Nicol: Absolutely. Moreno: Semi-final of the Champions League. Nicol: Yep. Moreno: Okay, excellent. Nicol: Never put a foot wrong all night and saved two goals. I don’t know what else you want from him. Moreno: Well not allow three goals. Nicol: By the way he put a couple of fantastic balls in the box as well. Moreno: I’m not going to get caught up on whether Robertson has a nine or not. I can tell you that, or anybody, you can’t get a nine when you lose 3-0. I’m just saying. Nicol: So if the goalkeeper makes 20 saves and you lose 3-0, are you going to give him a five? Moreno: He doesn’t get a nine, but whatever. It’s neither here nor there. It was a weird feeling watching it as I had no way to fight my corner against such drivel, but even if I had I’d have struggled to do it better than Nicol did. He can talk some right bollocks himself at times but he was on the right side of the argument tonight and it was boss having a Liverpool legend sticking up for me. When it comes to assessing LFC full backs, I’ll go with the opinion of one of the greatest we ever had over that of a fella who’s name sounds like one of the worst. I often joke that Moreno must be Spanish for ‘moron’, but now I’m beginning to wonder if it actually is. The funny thing is I had seriously considered giving Robbo a 10 as I thought his performance was incredible. I mean fucking hell, the Barca coach even brought on a second right back just to try and slow him down a bit. And what about that at the end when he had Messi, Suarez and (I think) Rakitic bearing down on him and he managed to stop them? That was amazing. He slowed them down, forced Messi to pass to Suarez (who would have been on his weaker foot) and then turned on the after burners to eat up the ground and make the block. Everyone raved about Virgil against Sissoko, but this was next level. It was Messi, Suarez and Rakitic against Robbo on his own, and Robbo won. Meanwhile, the Spanish press plumb new depths in their ‘get Salah to Spain’ campaign. Today’s bullshit story is that Salah told Messi after the game he wants to join him at Camp Nou. Yeah, ok, sure. I'd be surprised if he even spoke to anyone as he looked devastated at the end. Final word on this, I saw a clip today of the Barca celebrations after Messi’s free kick and Suarez runs right out of his way to go to Robbo and rub his nose in it. He’s dead to me now, if we can’t go through next week then the one thing I’m hoping for is that someone twats him or manages to get him sent off so he misses the final. Goofy cunt. Friday May 3: Naby is out for two months. Such a shame as he’d just clicked into gear and was looking smooth. I thought he had a big of swag about him the other night before he got injured. His first season has been a disappointment overall but he’s settled now and next year he should be great for us. His injury opens the door for Ox now. If there is such a thing as the 'Football Gods', given the way they’ve repeatedly shit on us (and Ox) they owe us something in the next couple of weeks. An Ox winner against Barca, or maybe the goal that clinches the title against Wolves? Just give us something. Anything. Come on, football gods, for fucks sake give us a little help here. Meanwhile, the absolute state of this. “What I loved about Raheem was that, for a young boy, he knew what he wanted to be. He wanted to be one of the best players in the world. For Raheem, it was never about money. If it was about money he could have stayed at Liverpool. It was about being the best he could be.” Fucking hell, if we didn’t need a favour from him on Monday night I’d be fucking annihilating Brendan for that nonsense. It’s utter bollocks from start to finish. What 17 year old footballer doesn’t want to be the best in the world? And it may never have been JUST about money, but he repeatedly turned down contract offers because the salary wasn’t what he wanted, and eventually he joined City for 200k a week, which was at least double what we’d offered, so not sure how that ties in with ‘if it was just about money he could have stayed at Liverpool’. Brendan, get us a result on Monday and we’ll pretend this embarrassing shit never happened. Deal? That was the week that was….

Thanks for nothing, Burnley. Ok, that’s a little harsh as they did all they could to keep City out, and did a pretty damn good job of it truth be told. 2cm away from a clean sheet is a pretty decent effort. Problem is they completely forgot about attacking. Look, I know it was always a long shot, but this was the game that should have been most problematic to City. In some ways it was, but I saw none of the things I thought Burnley might be able to do to unsettle City in defence. It’s pretty demoralising when so many teams fail to exploit the weakness in Man City. They’ve got no defensive midfielders and a highly questionable back four. Yet hardly anyone is able to lay a glove on them because they’re terrified of getting caught at the other end. City were shite against Burnley but it didn’t matter because they didn't have to worry about anything defensively. Nothing at all. Did Burnley even have a shot? A corner? No, it was just shite. My boy Ashley Barnes didn't get a kick. I blame all the desperate Reds using him as their twitter avatars. They'll jinx Jamie Vardy too no doubt. Here's a thought, how about changing to Aguero instead? The ol' classic reverse jinx. It was really hard watching this. Far more stressful than watching our games because this is completely out of our hands. Having to rely on limited teams like is tough and massively frustrating to watch. I’m not going to watch their game with Leicester as there doesn’t seem to be any point. If they drop points I’ll be overjoyed regardless of whether I watch it or not, but if they win I don’t want to be sitting through that shit. It’s the arrogance of the cheating fucks that’s the hardest thing to take. Guardiola has already said they’ll beat Leicester, and there was that goal-line technology screenshot thing their official account tweeted out. They’re just horrible bastards, thumbing their noses at everyone while getting away with rampant cheating. I hate everything about them. From Guardiola’s stupid bald head to the cynical counter attack stopping fouls that never earn them bookings (Sterling produced a textbook on elf those on Barnes early on. No yellow card). From Kompany’s big horrible ‘Ken Griffey Jr in the Simpsons’ bulb head to their shitty fans and their stupid “Invisible man” chant. You aren’t invisible, those are just empty seats. From Aguero and his pigeon shit hairstyle (you’re in your 30s, grow up) to Sterling and little dinosaur run. From Emerson and his hideous face and shit tattoos, to Bernardo Silva the snide little oldest youngster in town cunt. Fuck all of them. I keep hearing Reds talking about how ‘wouldn’t it be great if they got their comeuppance and dropped points’ but how often does life work out like that? ‘Cheats never prosper’ is the most ridiculous expression in the history of mankind. They do prosper. They always have. They always will. For every Ben Johnson there are a thousand Diego Maradonas. PSG have cheated they away to dominance in France and City have done it over here. And no-one is prepared to do anything about it. Cheats always prosper except on the rare occasions they don’t, when people trot out that lame statement. Teams should be going out there wanting to kick fuck out of City and fighting tooth and nail to get a result. Not to help us, but because City’s cheating affects everyone. From Burnley to Man United, everyone is impacted by it. No-one's arsed though, because y'know, scousers not winning the league bantz, lol. Aaaaaanyway, moving on. Spurs had a 100% record at their new home going into the weekend. Then they lost twice in four days. The loss to Ajax in midweek wasn’t the biggest of upsets given that Kane and Son were both out, but West Ham turning them over was a bit of a shocker. It wasn’t a fluke though. Both teams had their chances but West Ham were the only side to take one. Great goal too. Arnautovic crossed for Antonio to bring it down on his chest and lash one in. He’s been useless for most of the season but he’s tearing shit up now is Antonio. He also gave the happiest post match interview I’ve ever seen. He laughed the whole way through it. Seems like a good lad him. Spurs almost levelled in stoppage time but Janssen’s header was cleared off the line. “Who’s this Janssen then?” I said to myself. After looking it up, it’s only fucking Vincent Jansson!!! Remember that bum? Didn't they buy him with the Bale money? How on earth is he still a Spurs player? I thought he’d left two or three years ago. Can’t wait until next week when they bring that Soldado bum off the bench. Spurs have lost 13 games this season but remain in third because the chasing pack are all shitting the bed. I'll get to those shortly though. There was a belter of a game at St Mary’s as Southampton secured their survival with a 3-3 draw with Bournemouth. Shane Long opened the scoring with his fourth goal in five games. I haven’t checked, so I’m not 100% certain on this stat but I believe he’s scored more goals this last month than he had in the whole of his career. Bournemouth equalised through that Dan Gosling jabroni. Glorious goal it was too, a classic counter attack that started in their own box. Lovely football that. They're such a good counter attacking side, except when they're refusing to cross the halfway line against Man City of course. Twats. Long then missed an open goal by hitting the post. Normal service resumed there then. I shouldn’t take the piss out of Long as I actually really like him as a player. He doesn’t score many but I always feel that he’s a handful and causes problems. He’s like a Poundland Jamie Vardy only without the goals. Wilson then put Bournemouth ahead before Ward-Prowse fired in an equaliser from 20 yards. Seven goals for him now, and you can add him to the list of Premier League midfielders more deserving than Paul Pogba of a spot in the PFA Team of the Season. Substitute Matt Targett headed the Saints in front again but with four minutes remaining my boy Ryan Fraser crossed for Wilson to score his second of the game. If Cardiff had won at Craven Cottage that goal would have been devastating for Southampton, but as it turns out it didn’t really matter because…. Fulham won for the third game in a row, which has all but sent Cardiff down. There’s still a chance for them if they beat Palace and United, but if you can’t beat Fulham then why would anyone think they can win their last two, even if one of them is against the hopeless Mancs? In fairness, they could have beaten Fulham. They had loads of chances but they didn’t take any of them and they lost to a Ryan Babel worldy. He’s been really good for them and has done enough to get himself a decent move in the summer. Despite his age he’s a better player now than when he played for us, and he doesn’t look to have lost any speed either. Weird how he bummed around for most of his 20s and then all of a sudden he became good when he should be getting worse. He was never one to conform to normal trends though. Cardiff threw everything at them in the last ten minutes. They hit the bar and also brought six saves out of Spider Rico in the Fulham goal. They had more chances in the last ten minutes than they’d had in the previous half a dozen games. Seven good chances in ten minutes is some going like, but it makes you wonder just what the fuck they were doing for the previous 80. Sitting back being happy with a point, it would seem. Cardiff were denied a stonewall pen early doors too. That almost goes without saying these days though. So much so that even Warnock never bothered moaning about it on MOTD. He even said the ref had a good game. He's up to something. The main beneficiaries of the Cardiff loss were Brighton, who draw at home with Newcastle. Ayoze Perez went off injured after giving the Geordies the lead. Great news that, as it means he’s unlikely to play against us, and therefore won’t be able to make me eat my words for all the years I called him ‘that loser Ayoze Perez’. The ‘worm with eyebrows’, Almiron, won’t be playing either as he’s done for the season. Again, big win for me that. Now I only have to worry about Paul Dummett. Brighton must have been thinking they were never going to score again. It had been six games or something, the longest barren spell in club history. They should have had a penalty when Ritchie shoved Murray in the back. Mike Dean was unimpressed and made sure everyone knew it. He’s in charge of City’s next game and he might be our best (only?) hope of them dropping points. Imagine if an official from Merseyside screwed them over. The fume would be off the charts, yet fuck all was said when Manchester’s Anthony Taylor didn’t send Kompany off against us. No, I'm not going to stop going on about that. It's going to burn inside me forever. Gross finally ended Brighton’s drought to get them a point, which could be crucial considering their next two games are against Arsenal and City. They’re relying on Cardiff not picking up points now as Brighton aren’t getting another one (although it's Arsenal so...). This draw, coupled with their superior goal difference, means that Cardiff have to win both games as a win and a draw wouldn’t be enough now. Ideally Cardiff will win this weekend and at least take it to the final day. Not that Brighton have a hope in hell against City, but I’d prefer them to at least have something to play for. If they’re safe, they won’t even try. Wolves and Watford met in the rematch from the FA Cup semi the other week and Wolves got their revenge courtesy of goals from Jimenez and Jota, either side of an Andre Gray strike. I like both of them, they're like Bobby and Sadio lite. Ben Foster did hell of a job of exonerating himself from any blame for the Wolves winner. He went running out trying to catch a fine deep cross from Neves but he got nowhere near it and Jota had an open goal. You and I might look at that and say “that’s a howler from the keeper” but you and I would be wrong, apparently. Here’s what Foster said on MOTD “It’s a very windy day and he’s just lumped the ball to be honest with you. I was humming and harring as to whether I could get it, but the wind’s pushed it to the back post. But we can’t let players run in unmarked and get on the end of things like that”. So in summary, shit hopeful cross that got caught on the wind and none of the defenders picked up Jota. Not my fault, guv, honest. Wonder what he blamed Aubamayeng’s goal on a couple of weeks ago? My guess is sunshine, moonlight and the boogie. Finally on Saturday, bringing up the rear, taking up their rightful place in the graveyard slot on MOTD, it’s the Blues. They were all cock-ahoop- after spanking United, but they followed it up with a 0-0 at Palace. Disappointing that, as I was sure they’d lose. No matter. The MOTD analysts focused on that Calvert-Lewin turd and his lack of goals. Shearer and Wright spoke of things that he can be taught about movement and positioning in the box, and then Shearer said, with a straight face, “Big Duncan Ferguson is there so I’m sure he’ll be teaching him these things”. Hahahahahahahahahaha. To think there are people out there who say Shearer is a boring unfunny twat. Belter. Good one Big Al. Finally, Sunday’s games. I’ve already spoke about City’s win at Burnley so that just leaves Arsenal’s loss at Leicester and then Chelsea and United playing out a 1-1 draw at Old Trafford. Solksjaer selected a much stronger team against Chelsea than he had against City, which jut confirms what we already knew about where their priorities lay. Mata scored early to give them a dream start but a howler from the Werewolf allowed Chelsea to level through Alonso. Proper shite that De Gea now. That was so, so bad. All those years when he was like Superman, and now he's Massimo Taibi. Still, never mind, eh? The second half was dreadful. Nothing really happened, although Rojo somehow escaped a red card for a scandalous lunge on Willian that could easily have broken the Chelsea man’s leg. I say ‘somehow’ but it’s simple really; Martin Atkinson was the ref. Higuain should have won it with the last kick of the game but he’s a fraud and frauded it up, the big fat fraud. Arsenal were shite but they were hampered by an early red card for Maitland-Niles. The first booking was clear, the second one was a little bit more contentious in that he barely touched Maddison. From Michael Oliver’s view though it will have looked a bad one, and it’s hard to blame the ref for that. Maddison loves a dive, as I’ve been saying all season. He explained it away as “it was a bad tackle and I had to jump out of the way”. That’s fair enough, but he didn’t just jump out of the way. He went down hard and stayed down, rolling about and making it look like he was hurt. It was a stupid tackle and he probably deserved to go just for diving in when already on a yellow, but Maddison’s done him there. Maitland-Niles obviously knows him from England u21s too and you could see him saying “that’s poor Madds, I didn’t touch you”. It was poor. Very poor. But let’s have more of the same this Monday night, Madds. He’s defo up for it like, he said afterwards “let’s go to the Etihad on Monday and keep it interesting”. Go ‘ed lad. Leicester were really good. Vardy looked sharp as fuck (he always does, to be fair) and Maddison and Tielemans behind him were bright and creative. They combined for the opener when Maddison picked Tielemans out with a whipped cross and the Belgian headed in. Vardy doubled the lead with a goal only he could have scored and only Arsenal could have conceded. Schmeichel’s long goal kick beat both Arsenal centre backs and Vardy raced through and got there before the keeper before playing a one two with the crossbar and heading in. He’s great. Definitely my favourite non-LFC player. After all the nice things I’ve said about him this season it would be nice if he paid me back on Monday. He made it 3-0 deep into stoppage time with a tap in after brilliant work by Ricardo. He’s boss him. He might be the least talked about boss player in the league. Trent deserved a spot in the PFA Team but this lad ran him really close and probably would have got in if he played for a ‘big six’ team. Leicester may well be in the top six next season as since Brendan has come in they’ve looked better than Arsenal and United, and with Chelsea’s transfer ban there’s a real chance for someone to break the big six monopoly. Leicester did it before when they finished above all of us. Hell, if they take points off City on Monday I’d be more than happy for them to win the title again next year. Seems like a fair trade off to me. Come on Brendan, Madds, Vardy and Mike Dean. You’re our last hope now.