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The biggest game of the weekend was obviously us v Leicester as firstly, it was us and we’re always the biggest game of any weekend, and secondly it was 3rd v 4th, or at least it was at the time we played. Going into the weekend Leicester were actually top so it was a big one. They aren’t top anymore, as Spurs beat Man City in the second biggest game of the weekend. I say second biggest but City are 13th so maybe I’m giving them too much credit. Obviously that position isn’t a true reflection of their level. I still have them as comfortably the second best team in the league, but it’s entirely possible I’m going to be proved massively wrong there. Was anyone actually surprised they lost at Spurs? Should we be surprised when they lose to anyone these days? Everton, obviously, but if and when the Blues eventually realise that losing to City isn’t actually going to make any difference to Liverpool’s season then even they might have a shot at beating Pep. It’s weird though because if you look at all the numbers from this game it looks like a standard Mourinho smash and grab act. And it was to some extent, but despite all of City’s possession and countless goal attempts, Spurs seemed to carry more menace all day, albeit with far less opportunities. City are just extremely vulnerable to counter attacks. This is why that point we got at their place a few weeks back almost felt like a missed opportunity. I’m not saying we deserved to win that game because we didn’t. I’m saying that with the forwards we have we ought to have caused them more problems than we did and I do feel a sense of disappointment that the only goal we scored was a penalty. City are easy to play through. You see it virtually every week now, even in the games they win. If you can defend well then you can get at them on the counter attack quite easily. The way City are now must be like a Mourinho wet dream. They’ve become the type of opponent he loves and this game went exactly how he’d have envisaged it. Son ran clear to make it 1-0 after only four minutes. He then teed up Kane to make it 2-0 but it was correctly ruled out for offside. City thought they’d equalised but VAR said otherwise. The Hand of Jesus. Actually before I go on, that reminds me. Of all the arguments against VAR there’s one that stands out more than anything to me, and it’s this: If VAR had been around in 1986 then my favourite World Cup goal of all time would never have stood and I wouldn’t be able to mock that Peter Shilton cunt about it on Twitter every time he brings it up. There’ll be plenty of Maradona stuff in the diary so I won’t dwell on it here, but yeah, VAR would have ruled that goal out so that alone is enough reason for me to be against it. Anyway, back to this game and Los Celso came off the bench and scored 30 seconds later after being sent clear by Kane. City never really looked like getting back into it despite having plenty of the ball in Tottenham’s half. Spurs had four attempts, City had 22. The corner count was 10-0 in City’s favour. Yet Spurs won 2-0. How many times have we seen this shit? And then we hear about another ‘Mourinho masterclass’. Makes me laugh. It’s only a ‘masterclass’ when they win. When his teams play like this and don’t win they look fucking awful. Just ask United fans. Despite their lowly league position I’m not writing City off at this point because they if they win their game in hand they’re only five points back. Four wins on the spin will have anyone in the top ten moving up the table and there’s no reason City can’t do that. It’s not like they’re playing badly. They just aren’t the force they were. Guardiola signing a new contract might not be the great news they thought it was either. Don’t get me wrong, all things being equal he’s the best coach they could possibly get (only Klopp is better and they obviously can’t get him because he likes proper football clubs), but he’s been there a good few years now and he’s got the kind of personality that grates on people after a while. His signings have been ropey as fuck too. There was a time when I’d have been made up if he had left but now I’m not sure if it’s better for us in the long run that he didn’t, as he may have outstayed his welcome. We’ll see. So the win put Spurs top and suddenly everyone is falling over themselves to tickle Jose’s balls. No doubt many of the same people who were saying he was washed up when he left United. No-one has benefited more from lockdown footy with no fans than Spurs, that’s for sure. Are they serious title contenders? Well yeah, they’re top so they have to be. But it’s early days and as I say, all it takes is for one of the decent sides to win four on the bounce and they’ll become contenders too. There’s going to be a lot of surprising results this season and no-one is going to put together a run like we did last year. Being a contender now doesn’t mean you will be by the time Easter comes around though. I don’t think Mourinho is working any magic and I’m not overly impressed by how they play. They will probably stay around the top for a while yet though because Kane and Son are genuinely brilliant, as good as any forwards in the league. When you have that you’ve always got a chance. The rest of the team? Meh. The league is fucked up this year because of Covid and the empty stadiums. It’s a great leveller and it’s not going to need a points total in the high nineties to win it this year. So yeah, you can’t dismiss Spurs out of hand, not when Kane and Son are doing what they’re doing. They are still Spurs though, we shouldn’t forget that. Chelsea have to be seen as contenders too. I’ve said before that their only real weakness now they’ve replaced their dodgy Kepa (see what I did there?) is the manager. At the moment their talent is cancelling out Lampard’s lack of nous and they look strong. They won 2-0 at Newcastle with a performance that was more like a five or six niller. They wasted loads of chances though and that kept Newcastle hanging around in a game where they were basically dominated from start to finish. That Darlow twat made a decent low save to deny Werner early on and then guess what? Yep, an absolutely fucking outrageous camera save again not long after to stop a Kevin Abraham header that was straight at him. I keep telling you. Every. Fucking. Week. I hate him. Have you got onto it yet? Seriously, next time you watch Newcastle play, or even if you’re just watching MOTD, watch this vain little fucking prick because he does it constantly. Never seen anything like it. You have to wonder what his goalkeeper coach is thinking, as if I can spot this then he sure as hell must be seeing it. It bothers me far more than it should but it’s an age thing, I’m just an angry twat these days and the slightest thing like that has me flying off the handle. Fernandez put through his own net and then ol’ no finesse Timo missed a sitter. Fernandez then got caught dwelling on the ball by Werner and it should have been 2-0, but Timo’s lack of finesse cost him again as he fucked up a simple pass that would have left Abraham with a tap in. Hayden then wasted a glorious opening and Chelsea made them pay as Werner played in Abraham and Kev finished this one off. Werner had one disallowed for offside (nice finish though to be fair) and Mount scuffed one wide when he should have scored. Longstaff went close with a thunderous 30 yarder that skimmed the bar but overall Newcastle were shite and once again they looked far too defensive. They’ve got some decent attackers and Bruce need to let them off the leash a little bit. This defensive approach is not gonna fly when the fans are back in. Chelsea are playing really well at the moment though and that Ziyech looks like a good acquisition. They’re doing this without Captain America too. Their squad depth will stand them in good stead this year if everyone keeps getting the kind of injuries we’ve been seeing so far with the clubs who play in Europe. I don’t like Chilwell though and I don’t really know why. I can only put it down to his face. He looks like he’s just stepped out of the 1920s. Elsewhere, Danny Welcrap scored for Brighton as they had a good win at Villa. Nailed on that was after me taking the piss out of him last week. I stand by everything I said though. He’ll score two or three goals a season so this was just one of them. He took it really well too. Class finish. Hopefully he’ll revert to type this weekend but if he doesn’t I’m not taking the blame for that. I deliberately mocked him before this game so he could get his goal out of the way and leave us in the clear. If he scores against us that’s on our defenders, not me. Konsa converted a Grealish free-kick from close range to get Villa level but March bent one in the top corner with his weak foot to restore Brighton’s lead. My boy Lamptey was then sent off for two quick yellows, the second of which was ridiculously harsh. Grealish just stepped in front of him and the contact was unavoidable. Still, he’ll miss the game against us now so that’s good as he’s fucking boss. It won’t be easy this weekend because I’ve been saying it for over a year now but Brighton are one of the best coached teams in the league. They know what they’re doing, they’ve got a clear way of playing and they’re greater than the sum of their parts. It’s a lack of quality that holds them back. There was late drama as Villa were awarded a penalty when March caught Trezeguet. March went up to Michael Oliver and was saying “I got a tiny bit of the ball” and the replay showed he did. Oliver looked at the screen and then changed his mind. Dean Smith handled it well I thought. He didn’t say it was a pen but he said he doesn’t know what is anymore. None of us do. This probably wasn’t a pen but we could easily see that given next week. I didn’t agree with Smith saying if the VAR didn’t think it was a pen because he got the ball then he should have just told Oliver it wasn’t a pen and there was no need for the ref to go and look at it. I thought this was what we all wanted? Refs going and looking for themselves rather than have some fuckwit like Coote in Stockley Park going rogue and making wrong decisions for them. Speaking of whom, that cunt was at it again this weekend with an outrageous showing at Old Trafford as he ensured United beat West Brom. Nothing he ever does will be worse than his antics during the derby the other week, but this was still pretty fucking scandalous. He gave West Brom a pen and it looked blatant. Whoever the VAR gimp was must have put doubt in his head by telling him to go and look. He should have looked at it and said “the fuck are you talking about, VAR gimp? That’s a pen”. Instead he changed his mind. What was really weird about it was you could see on MOTD that he walked away from the screen right before they showed the clearest close up of the incident. He watched a few angles that weren’t the best, then turned away when they showed him the best one. This cunt should not be anywhere near a football pitch. To add insult to West Brom’s injury, United were then awarded a pen - of course they were - and this one wasn’t overturned - of course it wasn’t. In fairness, you’d want a pen for that because the defender got himself into a terrible position and the ball hit his hand. He did all he could to get his left arm behind his back but he forgot about his right arm, which was sticking out by his head as the ball hit him right on the hand. That’s going to be a pen 9 times out of 10. I don’t blame Coote for what happened next as that’s not his call, and as annoying as that decision is there was really no way that could be allowed under the current rules. The keeper saved the kick from Fernandez but he had jumped off his line before contact was made. It was retaken, Fernandez scored and United picked up three points they really didn’t deserve. Still, anything that keeps Ole in a job a bit longer. This keeper moving off his line thing on pens is bollocks though. Add it to the list of shitty, petty jobsworth type rules that need fucking off. This isn’t what the rule was brought in for. It’s to stop keepers doing a Dudek and coming four yards off their line when pens are taken. Now we’ve got these fucking traffic wardens watching the TV and reporting back that the keeper’s foot was an inch off the line. I hate it, it’s shit. And here’s the other thing that needs addressing. Why is the keeper being punished when the likes of Fernandez (and Jorginho) is blatantly taking the piss trying to get him to commit by delaying the kick as long as possible so he can see where the keeper is going? I don’t have an issue with anyone taking a pen like that, but if they do then you can’t be punishing keepers for moving a fraction early. The West Brom keeper tweeted about that, saying that keepers shouldn’t be punished when the taker is doing “a hop step and a jump” and he’s bang on there. That rule needs fixing along with offside and handball. Then they can throw all the fucking video monitors in the sea (along with David Coote gaffa taped to them) and maybe then we’ll have our game back? I won’t hold my breath on any of the above. In fact, I’d put money on them making it even worse. West Brom were incredibly unlucky not to get anything from this game and they even hit the bar late on. They played well but it says more about United than anything I think, because we know West Brom aren’t very good despite how they looked in this game. They haven’t won a game yet for fucks sake. Onto Sunday now, and hold on, Fulham v Everton was live on BBC. When did this happen? I thought Sky and BT had all of the games. Have they decided that the really shit ones who no-one cares about can go to other channels? I’m not sure that can be the case seeing as how Burnley v Palace was the MNF game. Surprisingly, it was actually a decent spectacle as there were five goals and a missed penalty. Richarlison was back. The fucking cunt. Not right that he’s back out there playing while Thiago is… I dunno, dead? Just where the fuck is he? Calvert-Lewin got the opener when the ball hit him on the shin and went in from close range. Liverpool fan Bobby Decordova-Reid levelled but Calvert-Lewin scored again. Sick of these double barrel names but I can’t bring myself to use initial abbreviations unless it’s one of our lads like TAA or AOC. Maybe it’s me, but it feels inappropriate doing that with opposing players, especially ones I can’t stand like Calvert-Lewin. It’s kind of like using nicknames for them. It’s not acceptable. I mean only this week Stu Monty referred to Mourinho as ‘Mou’ in the TLW Writers chat and all hell broke loose. We all rounded on him and I’m not gonna lie, I almost removed him from the chat. I don’t think he’ll do it again but it was a harsh lesson for him to learn. The point is, as much as I’m a lazy bastard and I hate doing it, I’d rather type Calvert-Lewin than DCL. Not least because I can type that out scornfully, but you just can’t do that with initials. Don’t know if that makes sense, but I know what I mean. Doucoure’s header made it 3-1 but Fulham hit back in the second half. Loftus-Cheek (or RLC to his friends) came on at the break (how is he not starting, he’s ten times better than any other player they have at the club) and won a penalty straight away. Fulham have had some real penalty woes this season and it continued as Caballero kicked his own standing foot and the ball flew high and wide. Soft cunt. That was even worse than the Lookman ‘Panenka’. Loftus-Cheek pulled a goal back from a Lookman cut back but Fulham couldn’t find the equaliser and Everton ended their winless run. Everton are shite though. I’ve said it all season even when they were ‘flying high’ (after beating nobody of note other than Spurs who they caught cold on opening weekend). They’re shite. They’ll finish somewhere around 10th at best. The one concession I’m willing to make is that Calvert-Lewin is definitely better than I have ever been willing to give him credit for. He’s limited but he plays to his strengths now and he’s really effective. I may have made this comparison before, I find it increasingly difficult to remember anything I write these days, but he’s kind of a John Aldridge type, which is no bad thing. If he keeps scoring at the rate he is now he won’t be with Everton for long. As average as I think Everton are, the way they’re going Arsenal might be right there with them fighting for 10th spot. They were fucking shite at Leeds and it was nothing short of a miracle they came away with a point. Leeds hit the woodwork about ten fucking times and Arsenal were just dire. They weren’t helped by Pepe stupidly getting himself sent off. What an absolute bum he’s turned out to be. He’s not shit, but for £70m or so you’d want a hell of a lot more than he’s given. Still, it was a clean sheet with ten men so no doubt Tim Cahill would have been lauding another “Arteta masterclass” if he’d been covering it on Sky. He’s so sycophantic when it comes to Arteta that it’s bordering on weird. He was on Carra’s podcast last week and when he had to pick his ultimate five a side team of players he’s played with, against or just seen play, he had Arteta in there. I mean really? I was going to say that everyone should have someone who views them in the same overly flattering light that Cahill does Arteta, but I actually have that with my mate John who will argue with anyone who’ll listen that in my playing days I was a cross between Berbatov and Dalglish. I hope Arteta is as appreciative of the blind and utterly misplaced devotion he gets from Cahill as I am for what I get from my boy John. Next, Sheffield United. Fucking hell they’re in trouble aren’t they? They can’t score and they can’t win. They’ve had a tough run of games lately but having got those out of the way this was a chance for them to put some points on the board. West Ham aren’t bad these days but if you’re Sheffield United you have to be looking at this as a great chance to finally pick up a win. But they didn’t. They were beaten 1-0 thanks to a belter from Haller. I see Brewster was only on the bench. He came on for the final half an hour and created a chance for McBurnie who hit the post. That’s just how it’s going for them at the moment. They didn’t deserve to lose this but when you’re in this kind of run you don’t get any luck. Wouldn’t surprise me if Brewster ends up having to wait until about April before finally getting goal, and it will be through no fault of his own. Onto Monday now and a couple of games no-one really cares about. I didn’t watch either of them and I didn’t even know the scores until just know when I fired up youtube to watch the highlights. Burnley got their first win of the season by edging out Palace 1-0. It’s uncanny how many of their games have either zero, one or two goals in them. I should start betting on that every week. This time the one goal went their way as Wood scored early on. Gudmundsen hit the bar with a nice effort while in the second half Pope had to be alert to deny Batshuayi and Benteke. That was Burnley’s first win of what looks like being a long season for them. Finally, Southampton were held to a draw at Wolves. Walcott gave the Saints the lead and then missed a great chance to make it 2-0. He’d have buried that when he was younger but he’s gotten worse with every season he’s been a professional. That Arsenal stink was bad enough but he’s also been rolling around in Everton stench too. Substitute Neto equalised for Wolves, who are just having a really nondescript season so far. I keep waiting for them to kick into gear but so far it’s not happening. And what the fuck has happened to my boy Adama? He isn’t even showing up in highlights packages these days. It’s a crime what they’re doing to him. Go and save him, Jurgen.

Incredible to think we smashed these 5-0 a few weeks ago. Was that performance even better than we realised, or was this just even worse than it seemed? Atalanta definitely seemed like they had a point to prove and often it can be difficult facing an opponent you’ve just battered. We lost to Palace not long after beating them 9-0, and last season Southampton beat Leicester 78 days after being humiliated 9-0 by them at home.* There was always a danger we’d throw in a clunker in this one so that didn’t particularly shock me. I didn’t think it could be as bad as this though. Jeez. It was brutal to watch. No chances, no shots on target and I don’t actually remember any off target either. Did we have a single shot of any note? A lot of these group matches are forgettable but this was so bad it might actually stick in the memory much longer than usual. We’ve lost other group games in recent years and most of them I couldn’t recall now even if you showed me the goals. This one stands out because of how poor it actually was. Not that it matters too much and it’s easy to shrug this off. At least it will be as long as we don’t lose the next two. If we end up in the fucking Europa League then this is going to take on an entirely different feel. I put it on the players rather than the manager though. It wasn’t our strongest line up but they should have performed much better than this. I certainly don’t have any issue with Klopp making changes to the team and he probably would have been entitled to make a couple more had he wanted to. Not making changes for this one would have been irresponsible. The games are coming thick and fast, our players have been dropping like flies and having won our first three fixtures in the group this was a game we did not have to win. And it showed. Put it this way, if a performance like this was coming then I’d much rather it been in this one than in a league game. I can console myself with that easily enough as this was a game we really should be able to afford to lose, unless we completely shit the bed in the next two. It was grim though wasn’t it? Full disclosure, I actually fell asleep and missed the last ten minutes of the first half. I was lying on the sofa watching it and just nodded off. Apparently I didn’t miss anything. Shame I woke up really as the second half was even worse. No-one played well but by far the worst were Salah and Mané. Well, Origi too but I kind of expect that now so it doesn’t impact on me that much. He was given a rare chance to play centre forward and somehow managed to be so bad that I almost understand now why Klopp usually plays him wide, even though he’s fucking terrible out there. Divock basically retired after the Champions League final. He did have one comeback bout when he knocked Everton out but then the gloves were hung up again. He needs to go somewhere and play because he’s not the type of lad who can play once a month and be able to produce his best. Seeing Sadio play like that was mad though. He started badly and got much worse. It’s by far the worst game I’ve ever seen him have. He didn’t look like a good player having a bad game, he just looked completely shit. He was so bad I ended up laughing at one point, wondering just what the fuck was going on. He couldn’t trap a bag of cement, his passing was woeful and he kept falling over his own feet. I’ve never seen anything like it. I wouldn’t have believed he could play as badly as that if I hadn’t witnessed it. Mo was shite too but it’s the kind of shite we’ve seen from him before. It was just a standard bad Mo game. Sadio was on a whole other level to that. He literally couldn’t do a thing right. The service to them wasn’t great either it needs to be said, but since when is that a problem for them? They usually make a lot of their own chances themselves, either through linking up together or doing something individually. Neither offered any threat all night though. The forwards were undoubtedly the worst of the bunch but it was just a terrible collective performance. So many passes went astray it was inexplicable. Even when Fabino came on he was passing it ten yards behind people and then looking thoroughly disgusted with himself. One of those nights where everyone was off. Credit where it’s due though. As awful as we were they played very well and fully deserved their win. Atalanta were the better side in the first half and their confidence grew by the minute. In the second half they looked like the side we were told they were before we smashed them 5-0. They defended well but it was the way they hunted in packs and closed us down quickly that really impressed. When they had the ball they used it well without really cutting us open. They were actually more dangerous in the first game but they had far more control and composure in this one. The little number ten was pulling all the strings and it was no surprise that he was the creator of their opening goal. Lovely ball in to the back post where the striker got away from Tsimikas to meet the cross and leave Alisson with no chance. Klopp had been preparing to make four changes prior to that but it seemed to take forever to get them on. The goal provided the break in play that allowed him to send on Fabinho, Robbo, Bobby and Jota for Gini, Tsimikas, Mo and Divock. It doesn’t bode particularly well for Minamino that he’s back behind Origi in the pecking order and can only get eight minutes at the end of a game when the team is heavily rotated. I had fairly high hopes for him when the season started but it’s not going well is it? The changes improved us I’d say, but not by much. Robbo was about 30 yards higher uptake pitch than Kostas had been which immediately gave us an outlet and produced some crosses into the box. Going to take the Greek lad a little while to get up to speed I think, but that’s normal. No judgements on him yet, that’s for sure. Within minutes of the substitutions it was 2-0. Another ball to the back stick where Robbo was beaten in the air and an unmarked Atalanta forward arrived to finish. Rhys Williams kind of got a bit lost there. I’m not sure what happened as he and Matip seemed to have swapped positions. Matip had been playing right centre with Rhys to the left, but for whatever reason those roles were reversed and the kid drifted to the right edge of the box to follow the striker and then didn’t turn and follow him back in. That was the only blemish on another decent display from him. The kids were certainly not the reason we were so shite in this game. Big Rhys was fine and Jones was probably our best player on the night. Not saying much as it’s not like he played THAT well, but he was ok and gave the ball away a lot less than everyone else. Neco was adequate at right back too. Not great, he still had some of those infuriating moments when he gets caught in possession or holds onto it too long and then has to just launch it, but overall he wasn’t bad. You see how important Trent and Robbo are when they aren’t there though. It was just an incredibly flat, lifeless performance all round. I wasn’t even angry watching it. I was just waiting for it to end so I could switch it off. I’m not angry now writing this, I’m just looking to get to the end so I can move on and start on this week’s round up. Like it or not, we’re going to get some games like this. Everyone is. It’s an inevitable consequence of too many games and no fans in the stadiums. It’s not possible for the players to turn up with maximum intensity every game so I just hope our lads continue to produce it when it’s most needed. Fact is, it wasn’t needed against Atalanta and we saw what happened. Beating Ajax next week is important now because it would allow us to rest everyone for the final game, but I’m calling it here and now that it won’t happen. We won’t beat Ajax because we always seem to take it to the last game. I had hoped after winning our first three that we’d finally put that to bed, but after seeing how this went down I’m now fully expecting us to need to go to Denmark and win, because that’s just how we roll. It’s not ideal and hopefully I’m wrong and we do finish the job against Ajax, but as long as we can continue picking up wins in the league I’ll not get too worked up about nights like these. I don’t really have anything else to say really. On to Brighton, let’s get three points and never speak of this ever again. Team: Alisson; N Williams, Matip (Minamino), R Williams, Tsimikas (Robertson); Wijnaldum (Fabinho), Milner, Jones; Salah (Jota), Origi (Firmino), Mané: * yeah I looked that one up, I didn’t know it was 78 days. I didn’t actually know Southampton beat them either, I just remembered they lost 9-0 and was curious to see how the return game went.