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Saturday Sep 26: Ah fuck off. Alisson is injured AGAIN??? And Thiago too? Actually maybe they aren’t ‘injured’ as it’s all been very sketchy. Usually you’ll hear that there’s a muscle injury or a slight knee problem or whatever, but this has been much more vague than usual. They’re isolating, aren’t they? Meanwhile, there are STILL random reports linking us with Koulibaly. This does my head in as it’s just completely unrealistic. Even Stan Collymore is banging the drum for it and while I understand the argument that him and Van Dijk together would be invincible, if Man City can’t afford to prize him from Napoli then there’s no way we can considering we have no money whatsoever. Even the deals we’ve done have cost us virtually nothing. £5m a year for Thiago and only a £4m down payment this year for Jota. We’ve made that back with sales already. Koulibaly ain’t coming Stan, get over over it. Speaking of Collymore though, I read something about him today that I didn’t know. It was an interview with Tony Warner on some podcast a while back and I stumbled across it online while looking for something else. Warner had a scrap with Stan on a night out. He said Collymore swung a big heavy chair at his head and he had to block it with his arms or it might have killed him. He then starts swinging and the pair of them hit the floor. According to Warner, all the other players couldn’t stand Collymore so James and Ruddock pinned him down and held down his arms and legs allowing Warner to lay into him. Then Roy Evans arrived to break it up and caught an accidental smack in the mouth. Warner told another story about how Steve Harkness was obsessed with his own shit. This is absolutely fucking mad, and filthy. “He was always messing around with shit. His own shit. He put it on the door handles in the hotels, especially with the foreign lads.” “We used to stay at a hotel in Waltham Abbey. When you go in there, there’d always be sweets and three or four chocolates next to the bed. I’d always fly in and scoff all the chocolates dead quick. So, one day I’ve walked in and I’ve grabbed the chocolates. Bang! One goes in. Bang! Another goes in. Then there was another one. They usually come wrapped in paper like cupcakes, but this one looks like it had kind of been smeared in. “Do you know what gave him away? An arse hair. Just an arse hair hanging out the shite. At the same time, I’ve picked up on the smell. So, I’ve seen it and thought ‘imagine if that went in my mouth’. I’ve turned around, looked at the door and Harkness is there with his head poked around the corner. “He’s burst off laughing and I’ve legged it after him, shouting ‘I’d have fucking killed you had I have eaten that, I’d have fucking destroyed you’. “I was thinking to myself afterwards that if I’d eaten that shit, that story would’ve followed me around forever. I remember saying to him afterwards: ‘The fucking hiding I’d have had to give you to appease myself… I’d have been ruthless.” Hard to believe we never won anything with that group of players isn’t it? Fucking hell. Sunday Sep 27: City got whallopped at home by Leicester and it was glorious. It will be covered in extensive detail in this week’s round up so I’ll just focus on the reaction to it rather than the game itself. Because the reaction has been hilarious. Rodri’s quotes afterwards tell you all you need to know about that team. He sounds like the playground bully who has been unexpectedly punched on the nose: “It is very difficult to explain. When someone knocks you out you are confused and don’t know what happens. Football has not been fair with us. We deserve many things. We prosed many things in the game. We tried many things, they tried two or three things”. It’s called rope a dope you soft twat. Teams will let you come onto them because they know your defense is shite and that any counter attack is likely to end up in a goal. It isn’t ‘difficult to explain’ at all. It’s fucking obvious. “Maybe it is our fault, maybe it is their strength. I am young and try to learn every game but games like this where the opposition do nothing, you are a bit confused. You don’t know what to do.” He doesn’t know what to do. What does that tell you about Guardiola’s coaching? Imagine one of our lads saying something like that? There’s such a stench of entitlement about that club and ironically that’s the thing fucking them up now. “The opposition does nothing” even though they scored five goals. “For me they are lucky. It is not the way I like to play”. Hahahaha fucking hell, talk about arrogant. They beat you 5-2 you soft cunt. It wasn’t some 1-0 backs to the wall Mourinho-esque shithouse display. THEY SCORED FIVE GOALS!!! It’s the football snobbery of City that is killing them. They think everyone should try to play the way they do and beat them at their own game and they don’t like it when teams use City’s own strength against them. City want the ball so let them have it, let them think they’re in control and then as soon as they lose it, stick it straight up their arrogant tiki taki, FFP dodging cheating arses. Guardiola too, the bald fraud. “Even at 2-5 they settled back with 11 men behind the ball and it so difficult to create chances”. Mate, it only became 2-5 with 88 minutes gone! And of course they got men behind the ball. They were winning, What do you want them to do, all go up front because “Jamie Vardy’s ‘aving a party”. He’s so used to winning that he has no idea how to handle losing. Meanwhile, Suarez makes his debut for Atletico and scores twice after coming on as a sub. Diego Costa was asked afterwards about how he feels having Suarez as a team-mate and he said. “It’s great. One of us bites and the other kicks.” They’re going to be must watch this season. They’ll probably finish above Barca. Monday Sep 28: L 3 Arsenal 1 Boss that. Just completely dominant from start to finish. We still managed to gift wrap them a goal yet again, but this time we hit back straight away and continued to dominate. The score flattered Arsenal but I don’t think anyone is fooled by it. We’re being praised to the rooftops by most pundits. Shit, Roy Keane actually said we make him giddy. This was after Klopp had torn a strip off him after getting the wrong end of the stick. Keane was raving about us all night, even before the game he was talking about how great we are. Then he makes one little poorly worded remark about us being sloppy (which we were on a couple of occasions) just as Klopp comes into earshot! Keane had already said we’d win the title and he completely dismissed City as any kind of a threat to us. I understand why Jurgen saw his arse over it because he’ll have been thinking that his boys put in an incredible performance and will have been expecting everyone to be purring about it. Keane actually was, just not at the moment Kloppo arrived on the scene! It’s a back handed compliment that this team has set such high standards now that brilliance is almost taken for granted. When a team creates a chance against us, people read too much into it because they need to believe that maybe there’s a vulnerability there. Otherwise, everyone is just resigned to us running away with the title again and to a neutral that’s boring. The great United and Arsenal sides had to deal with the same thing. City too, although the cracks and vulnerabilities people saw with them were actually real and have been exposed for all to see over the last 12 months or so. Klopp has been making the same point for ages about how loads of chances we give up are actually offside and wouldn’t count anyway. He’s right. Every game there’s one or two incidents where the opposition go through on goal and everyone gets all excited, but you know if they’d scored and it went to VAR they’d have been offside. But because the flag didn’t go up and because they didn’t score so VAR wasn’t needed, the perception is it was a chance. Other than the goal we handed them, Arsenal had, what, two chances tonight? And all the other ‘moments’ they had wouldn’t have counted because they were offside. Like the one when Lacazette tried to lob Alisson and the big fella denied him. It wouldn’t have counted, but it was probably in his head when he went through again soon after. He shit himself and hit it straight at the keeper. Speaking of Alisson, he played so at least we know he isn’t sick. He wasn’t injured either, so his absence from training must have been covid related. The club say Thiago didn’t play because of a “slight problem”. If he was injured they’d just say, surely? Meanwhile, two keepers left today. Karius went on loan to Union Berlin while Kamil Grabara went back on loan to AGF, where he’s been before. We’ve got so many keepers on the books it’s impossible to keep track of them all. Every other week there’s a different one playing for the 23s or the 18s. Not sure what the point of it is but Edwards knows what he’s doing. He’ll probably sell half a dozen of them for £50m over the next couple of years. We’re not getting shit for Karius though. Tuesday Sep 29: Yep Thiago’s officially got the ‘rona. No surprise really as it was fairly obvious that’s what was going on with him and Alisson. Big Ali must have tested negative but now Thiago is isolating for 10 days so he won’t be able to play our next couple of games. I’m not sure how all this works though, as he’ll have been in contact with all of the other players and probably Klopp (who is still hugging the lads as much as ever). Do they not all need to isolate too? This whole thing is confusing as fuck. Meanwhile, Danny Murphy says Pogba wouldn’t get in our midfield. “Because Pogba’s got everything, he could defend better than he does. But he doesn’t, for some reason, and I don’t know whether that’s the lack of consequence for not defending. “Pogba wouldn’t get in Klopp’s midfield, I don’t think. He might if he was going to work as hard as he was supposed to but I don’t think the likes of Klopp would put up with midfielders defending like that.” In other news, the sky is blue and water is wet. Ok, that’s a little unfair on SuperDan as there are loads of deluded fools who think Pogba would get in ANY midfield so he's just setting them straight. They’re either United fans or people whose knowledge of football comes entirely from youtube clips and playing FIFA. Pogba is shite. Absolute turd. But as soon as he does one thing good (which he occasionally does because he’s incredibly talented) you get all the FIFA nonces posting clips and salivating over him. I wouldn’t swap any of our midfielders for him. Well, maybe Keita, but that’s not saying much. Wednesday Sep 30: Ljinders address the Neco Williams thing in his press conference. It was strong stuff but he could have stronger. He said something about you can’t be a supporter without supporting, but that’s kind of missing the point I think. I didn’t like it when Houllier went down that road as being a supporter doesn’t mean you can’t criticise when it’s justified. The Neto thing is completely different. It isn’t about being a supporter or not. It’s simply about not being a cunt. It’s that simple. Anyone who sends abuse (or even needless criticism) to a player from their own team is a cunt. Express your opinion all you like, but don’t force that opinion onto the person you’re talking about because that makes you a cunt. And when you’re doing it to a teenage lad playing for a team that is winning everything and had just won 7-2 then you probably just deserve the death penalty as the world would be a much better place without you. That’s what Pep should have said today. Meanwhile, Ross Barkley signs for Villa. Good move for all concerned. He’s a talented player but the lack of a functioning brain means he’s not cut out for life with a Champions League calibre team. He’ll be very good for Villa so they’ve done well to get him. Of course the move was greeted by lots of smugness from Evertonians who somehow see this as Barkley getting his comeuppance for thinking he’s too good for Everton. He left for Chelsea and he won trophies. He made a ton of money and now he’s joined Villa, which Evertonians seem to think it a step down from the Blues but really isn’t. Villa are a bigger club than Everton in every sense. The Blues are higher in the table, but that’s literally all they have over Villa, who have a bigger ground, more fans and a richer history. Thursday Oct 1: L 0 Arse 0. I hate losing penalty shoot outs and I have losing them even more when it’s against Arsenal. That’s the only real thing bothering me about this. Going out of the cup would be more of an issue if there wasn’t now a three month wait until the next round. By the time that comes around it’ll have been the last thing Klopp would have wanted. If the next round had been next week I’d probably feel worse about this, as it would have been nice for the kids and squaddies to get more gametime. As it is, we probably won’t see some of these lads again. Wilson & Grujic will probably go, maybe Div too, and Elliott and Rhys Williams are going to struggle to see the field given the nine subs proposal was shot down. There were things to be pleased with tonight though. The Williams kids were both ace and Grujic probably put another couple of mil on his value as he was the best player on the pitch. I’d like to keep him but it’s not fair to the lad as he’s too good to just sit around and wait for the odd cup game. We should have won the game as we were comfortably the better team. I like how sharp Jota is looking and it would be interesting to see how he did in a 4-2-3-1 with Mo playing central and Bobby a little deeper. I thought tonight was a big chance for Minamino to put pressure on Bobby for his starting spot but I don’t think he did anywhere enough to do that. He was alright and was unlucky not to score, but he needed a big performance and that’s not what we got. For now I think Bobby’s spot is safe but he is going to have to start scoring at some point. Friday Oct 2: Oh for fuck’s sake. Sadio has Covid now. There have been rumours for a day or two and this is going to happen a lot now I think. The club puts out videos and photos from training sessions and eagle eyed fans are looking to see who isn’t there. Sadio wasn’t on any of them in the last couple of days so we kind of knew what was going on and tonight the club confirmed it. More and more players seem to be testing positive now, which makes it all the more remarkable how successful operation restart was last season. I don’t think there were any positive tests right across the PL last season which is astonishing really. I think I remember reading a few weeks back that games won’t be postponed because players have Covid and that as long as you have enough players to complete the fixture then you can’t get it called off. So we’ve got to go to Villa without Thiago and Mané and possibly anyone else who might test positive in the next couple of days. Given the close proximity the lads are to each other I’d be surprised if it was only these two that have it to be honest. On the transfer front, Brewster completes his move to Sheffield United. £23.5m with a buy back clause that can be activated at any time in the next three years, and a 15% sell on clause. In general I don’t like the idea of selling our best youngsters, especially before they’ve had a chance to show what they can do, but that one deal has covered the Thiago transfer fee and if Brewster actually turns out to be boss then we can bring him back. Unless we change how we play I don’t see him ever being a good fit for us but the kid is going to score goals so good luck to him. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the reason we were prepared to let him go is because of how highly they rate Layton Stewart and that he’s more of a natural fit for our set up. He’s started the season brilliantly for the 18s and might be the next one to be moved to Melwood to train with the big boys. Shaq is close to leaving too, which upsets me more than Brewster going. I can’t disagree with it really though. He’s been injured so much that it reached a point where he wasn’t worth the wages we were paying him. He’s quality though, I love him and I’ll be sad if he leaves. Wilson may be staying now though after Burnley supposedly dropped their interest. They offered £12m plus and extra £4m in add ons. As if you’re getting Michael Edwards to accept that. If we got £23.5m for Brewster then Wilson’s fee is more likely to be around £25m as he’s a proven Premier League player who scores goals. Under normal circumstances I don’t think we’d sell both Shaq and Wilson but if there’s a chance to get money in to recoup what we’ve lost through Covid then it’s probably wise to do it and then rely on Harvey Elliott to fill the hole that’s left. To be honest I’d rather sell Origi and keep Shaq or Wilson. Doesn’t look like that’s happening though. and that was the week that was….