Leaderboard

Sunday Mar 15: There’s been a lot of talk of how we might or might not be crowned Champions and that even if we do it will be an anti climx. Big Virg is having none of it though: “Will it be an anti-climax? What do you think? No! We should enjoy it even more because of the wait. “To win the league here is something that we can all be remembered for and will be remembered for. We should just go for it and we are very close now. Just enjoy it. We don’t play for records, we play for trophies. "I have been here now almost two-and-a-half years and been very blessed and happy to have experienced two Champions League finals. We won one of them and I was very close to the Premier League title last year and now very close to the Premier League this year. "Obviously you want to deliver the Premier League to this club. It has been so long I wasn’t even born and is something the club is definitely hungry for. So let’s just go for it and see what happens in the next weeks and months and be positive.” Nice sentiments but it will be an anti-climax. We were on course to not only win it, but to break every record in the books and be viewed as the greatest team of all time. Now that’s not going to happen. Not this season anyway. So yeah, if and when we eventually get it there is going to be a sense of disappointment mixed in with the joy. Right now though there are more important things to worry about, because by the time the footy does come back people’s lives are going to have been turned upside down. Scary times. Monday Mar 16: Steve Nicol describes Mo as the ‘most frustrating player in the Premier League’. Predictably it didn’t go down well. Nicol does talk a lot of shite but I don’t have it in me to let that bother me. He was known for being a loveable dope as a player so it’s hardly surprising that he talks a lot of bollocks now. I’m biased towards him though as he had my back on ESPN last year when some slapdick pundit they had on was ridiculing my player ratings because I gave Robbo a 9 after we lost 3-0 in the Nou Camp. He was being a right smug prick about it but Stevie put him straight, so I’ve got his back now. “Winning is the deodorant of the game, but it covers all bad smells. Winning covers a lot of bad things. You can say it with Salah. Salah’s form this season, is there a guy that frustrates you more in the Premier League or anyone else with the things he does in a game? Then all of a sudden he will produce something. But again, he plays every game and why? Because they win.” Anyone who says they haven’t been frustrated watching Mo is lying. It just seems a bit ungrateful to say it given everything he’s done since he got here. It’s not just Nicol though. Don Hutchison said this - “You watch Mo Salah and the guy does genius things but he does the most basic things so bad it's untrue. He can’t pass a ball five yards. He does the basic things really, really badly, yet his numbers are frightening and he scores a ridiculous number of goals.” They both could have worded it better, but Mo IS frustrating as fuck and then yes, all of a sudden he will produce something. He’s a complete paradox. Two years ago everything he did came off and the results were spectacular. Since then he’s been more erratic but he’s a victim of his own success. Take away that 44 goal season and I doubt he’d be judged quite as harshly as he is. I mean, take Aubameyeng for example. He’s erratic as fuck too but no-one ever says anything about him other than he’s a great striker. Mo’s numbers compare favourably with his but because he’s not hitting 44 every season some of us view him more harshly than we probably should. Tuesday Mar 17: Spurs and Arsenal reportedly want Lovren. I have so many questions, but the biggest one is why the hell is this story coming out now? With all that’s going on, are we seriously expected to believe that the staff of Arsenal and Spurs are sat around planning transfer moves. And for Dejan Lovren of all people? No disrespect to the big man but the world is being turned upside down, the idea that there are people out there trying to plot a transfer for Lovren while all this is going on just seems too outlandish for me. Still, it seems to have provided some cheer to a number of our fans during this miserable time, so at least there’s that. Meanwhile, Phil Thompson says we still need a player like Coutinho. I disagree. We don’t need it, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like it. Thommo admitted that getting Coutinho himself back is unlikely but says ‘someone like him’, as well as a striker and cover for Robbo is what we should be looking for. When should we be looking for them though? Not gonna lie, I don’t see footy coming back any time soon and when it does everything will have changed anyway in terms of player contract expiry, transfer windows and the season schedule. How’s any of that going to work out? Are contracts going to have to be redone? Timo’s Werner’s release clause needed to be activated in April, but that seems unlikely now, so how will that affect his value? If the season resumes in the summer then Lallana will be out of contract. Not a huge problem for us, but what of other teams who have key players out of contract? Can they just leave or will they go on week to week? The whole thing is completely up in the air and because nothing like this has ever happened before we have no point of reference. Fuck knows how any of this is going to play out. Wednesday Mar 18: Something came to me today. I was reading an interview with Big Virg and the thought randomly came to me that if he were anyone else his nickname would be ‘Dick’. Thank about it, these are footy players were talking about here. They aren’t exactly creative with their nicknames. Darren Potter was known as ‘Harry’ and James Norris in our u23s is called ‘Chuck’. Yet no-one has made the Dick Van Dyke link. The only explanation for it is respect. Virgil is just too cool and too well respected for that shit. Yeah this is what I’m being reduced to with no footy. I’m scraping the barrel for content here. Ok, I found something work commenting on. A really good piece in the Athletic today by Simon Hughes, where he’s interviewing Carra about local grass roots footy. Some of the stories from Carra’s youth when his arl fella managed Merton Villa were absolute gold, but the bit that really jumped out at me was this: “I don’t think my Dad was a cheat, but he liked to bend the rules a bit”. Why did that jump out? Because literally the sentence before he’d said that Philly once told his number two to “go and bend the crossbar” during a game in which they were 1-0 down so they could get the game abandoned. The assistant duly obliged, went and swung on the crossbar (while the game was still going) and he broke it! Game abandoned. Sorry Carra, that’s not ‘bending the rules’. It’s not even breaking them. It’s taking the rules, smashing them up with a hammer, setting fore to them and then putting the fire out by pissing all over them! Philly makes Simeone look like Snow White! Society has definitely lost something though in recent years. The advancements in technology (internet, netflix etc) along with gym’s popping up on every fucking corner means people just don’t play footy like we used to, and it’s pretty sad really. Thursday Mar 19: The PL meets and the outcome is as good as we could have hoped for. Basically, next season won’t start until this one has been played to its conclusion, but there's obviously no way of predicting at this stage when that's going to be. Meanwhile, all three of us here are in bed sick today. I’ve had mild symptoms since Sunday but they went away with pain killers and I thought nothing of it. Then today it just completely floored me. Might be the virus, might just be a heavy cold. We’ll see..... ............ Monday Mar 30: Yeah it was the virus. They say you have it for around five days before you start showing any symptoms and I’ve worked back from the first time I felt anything and that takes me to the Atletico game. Klopp said it was criminal that game was allowed to go ahead and looking back he’s right. Given the choice though I wanted the game to be played and I chose to go knowing there was a risk. That’s why we need to be saved from ourselves really. Decisions like that need to be taken out of our hands. I mean fucking hell, we had a game called off back in the day because Diana died in a car crash, yet they let this go ahead? Mad when I look back now. Letting 3,000 Spaniards come over when their country was about to go into lockdown is massively irresponsible. PSG - Dortmund was played behind closed doors the night before too. Today is the first day since I was confined to my bed that I could even face opening up the laptop to write anything. I could have just scrapped what I’d written above and started a new week, but I’m not a bad fucking tory like Karen Brady or a selfish twat like Harry Kane, so I’m going to finish what I started. So yeah, Harry Kane eh, what a cunt. Wanting to void the season because he and Spurs did fuck all. Will he be so willing to hand back all the wages he was paid or have his goals wiped from the record books? Doubt it. Big chinned slobbering fucking moron. I had made a pledge earlier this season that I was really going to try and tone down the Kane abuse, but I think I’ll just void that now. When things start up again I promise to be even more savage towards the selfish ugly cunt. Fuck Harry Kane. There is not a single redeeming feature about the twat. Ok, one redeeming feature is that at least he isn't Jack Grealish. Just wow. In terms of the stupid things done by footballers, this might be top three. Not the act itself, as drink driving is fairly common place and we’ve seen far worse examples of it than this. But fucking hell, to do that now of all times? Especially when you’ve just been on social media giving it the ‘stay home, protect the NHS’ spiel. This is right up there with the stupidest things ever. Grealish had won me over this season too. I always thought he was a twat and I’ll admit it was based entirely on the way he looks. Recently I’d changed my mind on him but there’s a lesson to be learned here. Always judge a book by its cover. That’s what I usually do and it’s generally served me well for 46 years. I’m rarely wrong and it turns out I wasn’t wrong on Grealish either, not until I broke my own rule anyway. Tell you something funny about this. I rang my mum this morning to check in and I mentioned the Grealish thing. She knew nothing about it but when I told her this was her exact response: “Not surprised. You can tell by the way he wears his socks that he thinks he’s above the law”. Honestly, that’s exactly what she said. Apparently because he wears his socks rolled down and nobody else does it, that means he has no respect for authority and thinks he can do what he likes. Mad thing is she’s been proved right. She hated Grealish from day one but unlike me she never wavered. She hated Jack Grealish before he was Jack Grealish. She hated him when he was Lee Hendrie. For the record, she hates James Maddison too because he has a “horribly wispy whiskery face”. And let's not forget she hated Son Heung Min ("sly little thing him") before the rest of us realised that behind the friendly smile was a massive shithouse. I can't wait for footy to come back just so I can nail some of these fuckers in the round ups. Tuesday Mar 31: Spurs and Newcastle furloughing their non playing staff and not paying their 20%? This is hideous. It’s literally a drop in the ocean to them, and the bad PR really isn’t worth the peanuts they’ll save by doing this, so why do it? Because they’re cunts, that’s why. Not all billionaires are absolute fucking scumbags but most of them are. One week’s wages for Harry Kane would cover the cost of the regular staff for the length of this thing. Now I’m not saying Kane should give up a week’s wage to cove… actually yeah I am. If your club are gonna be cunts about it, then fucking step up Kane you big slobbering goon. NBA players have done this. Not all of them, because surprisingly a good number of pro sports teams in the US have not been absolute greedy bastards about it and a lot have done the right thing. Those that haven’t, the players have generally taken care of it to ensure everyone got paid. Our lads haven’t needed to do it because the club haven’t shit all over their employees. Let’s face it, there’s no way they’d be able to even if that was their intention as Klopp would never accept that in a million years. No staff at Liverpool will have to take less money because Klopp (and the players, to be fair) would ensure they're all looked after. It genuinely does blow my mind though that clubs that pay millions of pounds per week to players will balk at paying a few thousand to regular non playing staff (loads of them - including LFC - wouldn’t pay the living wage for ages). It’s a fucked up world we live in but hopefully when this is over people will remember who the shithouses were. The likes of Wetherspoons, Branson, Spurs, Mike Ashley etc Wednesday Apr 1: Ok I know what date it is, but what’s all this Raheem Sterling wanting to come back here shit? It’s been mentioned a few times prior to today so it’s not an April Fools, although I’ve seen April Fools gags that were more believable. It seems to have started last week when he was asked if he’d ever come back to Liverpool. The appropriate response would have been “I’m a Man City player and Liverpool are our big rivals so that would be pretty difficult”. Something along those lines anyway. Instead he went on about how he’ll always have a place in his heart for Liverpool and blah blah blah. Don’t forget, this is the same tit who said not so long ago that “nobody wants to see Liverpool win the league”. Then one of ‘his people’ is quoted in a French publication going even further. I don’t get it. There’s zero chance of it ever happening. The bad blood when he left is something that could possibly be overcome, but he’s a knob and Klopp doesn’t sign knobs. That in itself would be enough reason to dismiss this but when you take into account the financial aspect of it is the biggest non-starter ever. He’s on 300k a week at City (although only a third of that will go through their books, obviously) and that’s double what Sadio is getting. As if we’re bringing in an inferior player and paying him more money than Sadio. So what’s all this about then? There’s definitely a reason for it, and it’s probably trying to scare City into giving him a new deal with a nice pay rise. Don’t forget a couple of weeks back he was posing with a Real Madrid scarf. Thursday Apr 2: Good interview with Hendo done by Carra today. The skipper was in good spirits but it felt really weird listening to them talking about the ‘season so far’ and going through games that were pivotal to getting us in the position we’re in. It almost felt like they were discussing a season from the distant past, when it’s only actually been a few weeks since it was paused. Who knows how long it will be before it starts again? There are more important things going on in the world right now but I’ve got to admit that watching this really made me feel bad for Hendo and the lads, not to mention us as fans. They were so close and they were 3/4 through what was on course to be the greatest season in the history of this country. And then just like that it stopped and now none of us have a clue what will happen. It’s beyond cruel. It reminded me that a few months ago I was saying to a mate how the title was done but he wasn’t having it. When I accused him of showing a lack of faith in Klopp and the players he said it wasn’t that, he was just worried that something mad would happen to prevent it. He suggested a plane crash or world war 3 (this was before Corona was a thing) and while I scoffed at the time, it is hard to get away from the notion that we are indeed cursed. Even if the fixtures are completed it’s not going to be the same is it? There’ll always be an asterisk next to our name even though we will have been the most dominant champions ever. As I say, I’m aware there are more important things going on and I feel uneasy even discussing this, but it fucking sucks. Friday April 3: So that Hancock twat emerged from isolation (after six days, not seven, so he’s either disregarding his own instructions or he didn’t have it in the first place) and attempted to deflect the scrutiny on the shitty job he’s doing by calling for Premier League footballers to take a wage cut. Who the fuck does he think he is? There’s so much wrong with this it’s difficult to know where to start. Why footballers and not bankers, CEO’s, hedge fund cunts or all the other numerous Eton educated millionaires (and billionaires for that matter) he could have called out? Well we know why. Footy players are almost all working class lads who’ve made their money through talent rather than privilege. Can’t have that now, can we? The sheer stupidity of this idea is what gets me though. If players wages are reduced all that means is they pay less tax, and therefore less money goes to the NHS. Who profits if players don’t get paid? The clubs. That’s who. No-one else. So Mike Ashley and the twat at Spurs for example, those fuckers who are trying to get the taxpayer to pay their staff, will be trousering even more cash because they’re not having to pay their players the full whack either. I’m all for footy players using their wealth to help out, but I don’t understand how this would help. The more I think about it, the more I don’t think its about them helping at all. It’s about getting everyone to talk about this rather than the criminal negligence of the government in failing provide tests, ventilators and masks. The players won’t take it lying down though. Contrary to how they’re often portrayed, for the most part footy players are good lads with a strong social conscience. The other day one of our lads sent 25k to Alder Hey. We don’t know who it was because he didn’t want it made public. My first thought was Trent, but it could be any of them really. The “do your bit” line from Hancock has got me fucking seething to be honest. Players are doing all sorts, some we know about but loads we don’t. Marcus Rashford - who’s only a young lad himself - is making sure that kids in Manchester don’t go hungry. Robbo sent a load of cash up to Scottish food banks and Wilf Zaha has been doing his bit for his community. There’ll be countless more examples we don’t even know about. So to have some fucking Tory call them into question bothers me massively, especially when it was reported today that Hendo has spent this week speaking to all the other top flight captains to organise a big fuck off whip round to raise millions for the NHS. I’d have been more surprised if the players weren’t looking to do something like this, but that Hancock twat better not try to claim it was because he called them out. The players are having their wages cut though. The clubs met today and it looks like there’s going to be a 30% cut right across the board. The clubs are apparently using the money to help out the lower league clubs who are struggling (great idea and something that should happen more often) and there’s going to be a million quid per club going to the NHS. So, footballers are doing their part. Now how about getting that Amazon cunt to pay some tax (and give his staff sick pay) and let’s have pay cuts for MPs and all their rich mates. I won’t hold my breath. Saturday Apr 4: Well that’s just fucking great isn’t it? Liverpool are furloughing non playing staff, but it’s ok apparently because they’re paying the extra 20% to make sure the staff aren’t out of pocket. Fucking hell, this is just so disappointing. They’re really only marginally better (20% better to be exact) than Spurs and Newcastle. Just because they are entitled to take the 80% taxpayer contribution to staff salaries doesn’t mean they should. It wasn’t brought in for multi million pound big businesses to protect their profit margins, it was brought in for the smaller businesses to keep them afloat. Legally the clubs can do this (and most probably will) but morally they should be above it, especially as they’re cutting player salaries by 30% which would cover non playing staff salaries for the next fucking decade. I'm ashamed of them. Disgusted. Yes, there are companies with even more money that are doing the same or worse, but so fucking what? That doesn't make it ok. Be better than them. Act in a way that makes your supporters proud, not embarrassed. They had a chance to do the right thing (at little actual cost to themselves) and instead they acted like the hedge fund cunts they are. The other week that Peter Moore tit was saying that before they do anything they ask themselves 'what would Shankly do?". Well he wouldn't have fucking done this. and that was the week and a bit that was….