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Well that was shit. It’s hard to comprehend how a team can go from a performance like we had last week at Palace, to the one we saw here. Well, the second half anyway. I actually thought we were pretty good in the first half and there was nothing to suggest what was to follow after half time. I think West Brom just bored us to sleep. They sat back in their own half and didn’t even try to put pressure on the ball until we got into the box. They just let us have the ball and do whatever we wanted. Until we reached the box and then they actually defended. I don’t think our centre backs or midfielders were closed down even once all day. What that sometimes does is lull you into a false sense of security. Players take an extra touch because they can. They relax a little too much. And before you know it, you’re not creating any chances because the ‘zip’ isn’t there. That’s why Thiago was brought in. Games like this one. We started brilliantly and just got worse and worse the longer the game went on. I can’t even say West Brom didn’t deserve a point because based on the second half they probably did. Their performance levels were as contrasting as ours. From the beginning of the second half they clearly had much more intent to break when they could. In the first half there was zero intent. In fact, there was one breakaway when Grant chased a ball with Matip and when he reached it he was surrounded by six of our players and not one of his team-mates had even bothered crossing halfway. That changed at half time and although they were still playing with everyone behind the ball, they did look to counter when the chance was there to do so. And the chance was there because we were sloppy as fuck and gave the ball away far too often. It shouldn’t have been like this though. We scored early and if we could have added a second the game was done. West Brom always had one goal in them because they did the same thing at City. Went behind, scored with one of only a handful of attacks and then held on for a point. The second goal kills teams like West Brom because at 1-0 they will just stick to their gameplan and won’t change until the last few minutes. At 2-0 they either have to try to keep the score down or open up. 1-0 changes nothing. 2-0 changes everything in games like this. The way we started I couldn’t see any way we wouldn’t score three or four. Robbo was getting in down the left at will and putting dangerous crosses in. Not high, aimless balls that play to West Brom’s strengths. Low ones drilled crosses across the face. Sadio looked sharp, Bobby was floating around linking play. All good. We were knocking around at pace, the movement was good and we were pulling them all over the place. Look at the goal. Sadio isn’t in his usual spot on the left, he’s hanging around in the centre forward spot. He went short, didn’t get it. He loitered around a bit and then the ball went to Matip and Sadio hit the space. The ball by Big Bird was great, the chest control and finish from Sadio even better. It should have set us on the road to another home win but instead we just seemed to lose more and more intensity as the game wore on. We were still doing quite well for the rest of the half but there was a gradual decline and by half time I was thinking we needed to step it up just a smidge. I was happy with the overall performance but felt like we’d started to relax a little too much in the last 10-15 minutes of the half. It was just too easy. If we hadn’t scored I don’t think the sloppiness would have been there but because we were winning and the opposition were offering nothing, we kind of went to sleep. The second half was genuinely terrible. I can’t think of a single positive thing to say about it. As Robbo said afterwards, everyone got sloppy and everyone (other than Alisson) made mistakes. There was no urgency whatsoever until we conceded. After that we pushed for another goal and would have found it but for a world class save from their keeper to deny Bobby. Klopp then immediately subbed Bobby for Origi. Why? What was the fucking point in that? 90 minutes on the clock, Bobby had played well and he’d just nearly scored. The commentary team alluded to the amount of crosses we put in as a reason for getting Origi up there. This is one of the biggest myths in football. Div hasn’t won a header in about three years. Bobby is way more of a threat aerially and it annoyed me that he was subbed when we needed a goal. It smacked of “fuck it, might as well give it a try”. Ox had come on for Jones prior to that but even that was about 15 minutes later than it should have been. And Ox couldn’t do a thing right. He wanted to inject some much needed pace and urgency into our play but he kept running into trouble. To be fair, his intent was right and if he’d had longer on the pitch I feel like he’d have settled down and maybe done something. At least he wanted to have a shot. No-one else did. I thought Jones was too safe. In a game like this you want someone to make a bit of space on the edge of the box and get a shot away. That doesn’t just fall on Jones but it is a particular strength of his so I was disappointed that he continually looked to pass. And his sloppiness in possession that led to the corner they scored from was terrible. He was already about to be subbed anyway so maybe that was in his head and affected his concentration. But that was shit and it almost felt inevitable they’d score from that corner. I thought they might have scored from one a few minutes earlier when Robbo’s sliced clearance gifted them one. We cleared that one but you can’t keep pushing your luck against shit teams by giving them set-pieces. That’s what they live for. They’d probably spent hours practicing them all week. Allardyce isn’t stupid. He’s only really got one way of playing and he’s smart enough to stick to it. His teams do the same thing against us every time. Sometimes it works (too often, actually) and sometimes it doesn’t, but he’s never going to do anything different and nor should he. Stick to what you know. We weren’t helped by yet another injury to Matip. There’s really nothing more needs saying about him. Wonderful player, made of cheese strings. He twisted awkwardly and looked to have pulled his groin. He knew the second it happened he was in trouble and he was signalling to come off. Williams got the nod over Phillips again, which is fair enough based on how he played last time out against Spurs. He got caught almost immediately in this one with a ball over the top to Grant. I’m almost tempted to say there’s nothing he could do there as the lad was just quicker than him. But he’s quicker than Matip too and I bet there’s no way he’d have gotten in so easily if Joel was still on. I don’t think Williams gave himself enough of a cushion really and Grant blew him away. To be expected though, he’s a kid and he’ll need to make mistakes to learn from them. Not really ideal if he’s having to play a load of games when we’re chasing a title though. Thankfully Alisson was there to make the save. We’d had a couple of other warnings prior to that. Nothing serious, just little moments where it looked like they might cause us a problem with a better ball. The longer it went the more they fancied their chances and the more nervy we seemed to get. We were offering nothing. It felt like every attack ended with Mo dribbling into trouble or someone (usually Mo or Hendo) trying and failing to pick out a run by Robbo, which West Brom were now waiting on every time. This isn’t like me but I’d have gladly taken the 1-0 with about half an hour to go as it never felt as though we were going to score again. I wouldn’t say their goal was inevitable but it wasn’t surprising either. Am I the only one who thought that was a foul on Fabinho though? I haven’t seen anyone else mention it but the lad has two hands on his neck and pushes off to get in the air while also stopping Fabinho jumping. I don’t expect to get it as we get fuck all from VAR, but I’m surprised it wasn’t at least mentioned on commentary. I thought Kevin Friend’s performance was fucking appalling all game though really. No consistency, got loads wrong and generally rubbed people up the wrong way. He’s actually been alright the last couple of seasons but this was the Kevin Friend I remember from before that. Fucking terrible. Klopp was lucky not to get sent off though as he was giving him all kinds of abuse. Friend gave him a yellow but he could easily have sent him to the stands if he’d wanted to as you could see exactly what Klopp was yelling at him. Klopp was really agitated for the entire second half though and seemed rattled. Maybe that explains his weird substitutions. And after their equaliser I had a genuine concern we might even lose. Why? Because Allardyce, that’s why. That twat was the last manager to win at Anfield and I’m a big believer in this kind of weird co-incidental shit. It would be just like football to have his big mashed potato face end our run. Thankfully that never happened as it would have been incredibly difficult to swallow that. But for a stunning save by the keeper we’d have won it but a draw was probably what we deserved. There are no excuses for it. We had a strong line up, we hadn’t played in midweek, we were at Anfield. We should have won but we didn’t. In previous seasons this would have felt like the end of the world but now it’s just one of those things. There’s a lot more margin for error than there has been but it’s still irritating as fuck that United and Everton are within touching distance of us. It’s partly our own fault and partly due to terrible misfortune and officiating incompetence in some of our games. This was a chance to extend our lead and in that context dropping points to the second worst team in the league is pretty bad. To make matter worse we’ve lost Matip for God knows how long now. Fabinho, Williams and Phillips are going to need to hold down the fort for a while unless we buy someone. We surely have to buy someone now because Matip won’t be back in a week or two, he never is. And even when he comes back, how long before he’s out again? We almost need to completely discount him when planning for anything. Same with Keita. He’s a fucking waste of time too. Injured AGAIN??? Seriously I can actually see us playing games with Fabinho and Hendo at the back as soon as Thiago is ready to come back in. It’s not ideal but in games like this one it wouldn’t really be a problem. If anything it might even help us. Thiago was signed to help in this type of game but we’ve hardly seen him yet. If he can stay fit then we’ll be an entirely different proposition against park the bus shitbags like Allardyce. Hopefully he’s ready for our next game because Newcastle are going to play in exactly the same way, only they’ve got much better forwards than West Brom. As disappointed as I am by this, the players will be far more annoyed than I am and I expect a response from them at St James’ Park on Wednesday Star man is Firmino. It was probably going to be Hendo until that awful cross he hit straight to the keeper deep into stoppage time. And by the way, what the fuck was Trent playing at taking a short corner, five minutes into an allocated four minutes of stoppage time? Jesus Christ. Anyway, yeah I’m going for Bobby because although nobody stood out I thought he was good with everything he did. He’s definitely back now. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip (Williams), Fabinho, Robertson; Henderson, Wijnaldum, Jones (Oxlade-Chamberlain); Salah, Firmino (Origi), Mané:

I almost forgot to do this. My routine is all over the place because of Christmas. Thursday is Round Up day and today is Thursday, but it felt like a Tuesday or something. Then I realised it was Thursday and that it was also Christmas Eve and I went into a panic. If I don’t get this done tonight it’s not going to be done, as if I tried sneaking off on Christmas Day to do work you’d never hear from me again (because my missus would kill me. Not sure the implication was clear enough there so I thought it best to explain. Probably ruined the line now). So here I am, Christmas Eve, watching MOTD and writing shite about it. You don’t deserve me you know. Usually I fast forward through our game because I’ve already watched it. This time I watched it again. 7-0 away wins don’t come around too often so I’m making the most of it. There’s nothing in particular that I noticed that I hadn’t already put in the report but I want to further emphasise just how fucking awesome Bobby’s finish on his second goal was. Not enough was said about that because the other goals were so spectacular, but the technique on that off the fucking scale. I didn’t give enough credit to Minamino’s little flick to lift the ball over the defender before his goal either. Lovely skill that. Anyway, let’s get straight into it as I’d like to finish this before Santa shows up. Arsenal lost yet again. They’ve had so many of these shit runs over the last decade but they always found a way to get out of it and pick up some points before they hit the skids again. This time there’s been no respite. They’re just losing all the time. They lose to good teams. They lose to average teams. They lose to bad teams. They got off to a terrible start with an own goal from Holding. Not really his fault, he was running in with Calvert-Lewin and the striker’s poor header glanced off him and went in. Pepe equalised from the spot after Garden Gnome Tom Davies fouled Maitland-Niles, but Mina headed in from a corner just before half time. Arsenal were the better side in the second half and Luiz hit the bar, but they couldn’t find an equaliser and remain in 15th spot. They got twatted by City in the League Cup too and this is probably the biggest crisis I can remember in my lifetime. It’s making for some golden content on AFTV though, so long may it continue. I always say how much I despise those Arsenal players and what fucking cowards they are. Generally I feel like there’s not one who is worth a fucking carrot, but sometimes I wonder if there might actually be one or two of them who are being dragged down by the rest and who might have something about them. Tierney would probably be sound in a different team and I quite like Maitland-Niles you know. I think he’s decent and he doesn’t seem like your typical lightweight Arsenal fanny. I think he has a bit about him but it’s hard to tell when they’ve been so shit for so long and seem to be getting worse, not better. Sacking Arteta won’t change anything either. They need a whole new squad because even Klopp might struggle to get a tune out of those fucking wasters. Everton are still shit though. Don’t let this little run of wins fool you. They’re shit. They briefly went second after this win but I’ve been saying it all season and I’m still saying it now. They’re shit. The best they can hope for is finishing 6th or 7th. Because they’re shit. City recorded a good win at St Mary’s against in form Southampton. It wasn’t pretty and a draw would have been a fair result. Sterling got the only goal of the game from a De Bruyne cutback. Standard, boring, Man City goal. I think I wrote last week that they only have two ways of scoring. Cutback, or ‘give it to Kev and let him shoot or cross’. This one was a combination of both. Ings thought he should have had a pen when he headed wide while almost being kicked in the nose by Stones. There was no contact, but that’s a fucking pen. It was high kicking and dangerous play. Ings couldn’t commit to the header because he had a size 12 coming right at him and he misses the target. Mike Dean wasn’t having it and nor was VAR. Ings went off injured soon after. Southampton had another good penalty shout waved away too when sterling handled. The ball bounced up off his thigh onto his outstretched arm. Not sure what the rule is on that anymore. It’s one of them that you look at and think ‘that’s got to be a pen’ but honestly I don’t know. That rat Bernardo missed a great chance after being set up - who else - De Bruyne. Remember a couple of years ago when he looked boss? He’s been fucking shite ever since, the little gobshite. City now remind me of how we were for years when Stevie carried us. They rely on De Bruyne as much as, if not more than, we ever relied on Gerrard. Literally everything they do now has his fingerprints all over it. City are keeping loads of clean sheets but they don’t score many. It’s clear what’s happened here. Pep got fed up of every cunt just taking the piss by hitting them on the break and exploiting his tactical set up, so he’s changed it. They don’t give up much on the break because they aren’t setting up camp with their entire team (other than that gormless fuck goalkeeper) in the opposition half. They’re controlling games but not threatening as much. Maybe their threat will be increased significantly when Aguero is fit and firing but this is a different City than we’re used to. Elsewhere, Fulham took the lead at Newcastle in comical circumstances when the ball bounced up and went in off the face of Matt Ritchie. He was taken completely by surprise and it looked dead funny, but he was looking right at it so not sure how he let that happen. Joachim Anderson was then sent off for felling Wilson as he ran through. I’m not sure it was even a foul. It looked it at normal speed but the slo mo just makes it look like a dive. There was a little tug and then an unintentional little touch on Wilson’s foot, which is when he flung himself to the floor. So a penalty and a straight red. Wilson scored the pen and Scott ‘Scotty’ Parker was understandably disgusted afterwards. I agreed with every word he said there. No problem with a ref giving that in real time, but having seen the replay how is he giving a pen and a red card? Parker said he can accept the initial decision and if there was no VAR you just take the rough with the smooth. But when VAR is there they shouldn’t still be getting these wrong. I think pretty everyone hates it now and wants it fucked off. I wonder how it’s going in other countries? Anyone know? I’d be interested to know if they hate it as much as we do. Onto Sunday now. I thought Leeds might give the Mancs a good game but it was over inside three fucking minutes when they allowed McTominay to score. Twice. The first one was a mis-hit. He’s getting loads of credit for that but fuck right off. Nobody tries to hit a shot like that from there. He went for the left corner, sliced it and it went in the opposite side. His second was a good finish, I’ll give him that. My boy Bamford should have pulled one back soon after but fluffed it and that was costly as Portuguese Gylffi quickly made it 3-0. It was end to end stuff though and Bamford then headed wide before Lindelof made it 4-0 from a corner. Leeds did pull one back but then James added a fifth before they got their customary pen when Martial took a tumble. James had tried for one earlier but got a yellow card for his troubles. He’s got as many yellow card for diving as he has goals since signing for them. Fernandez scored the pen and then Dallas pulled one back to make it 6-2. Leeds are always running the risk of this happening with the way they play. It is what it is. Boom or bust. You can’t be singing their praises when they play like this at Anfield and almost nick a point, and then rip into the approach when they get tonked at Old Trafford. It’s high risk high reward. Sometimes it will work, sometimes they’ll get fucked. It’s worked more often than it hasn’t though and Leeds will be comfortably safe this season. And they’ll have been entertaining as fuck in the process, so Bielsa can just carry on being Bielsa as far as I’m concerned. You’d rather be playing like Leeds than Sheffield United or West Brom, that’s for sure. I’m sick of United winning though. I don’t see them as a threat to us as they’re flawed and always seem to be two bad results away from Solskjaer being under pressure again. But this run they’ve been on is getting on my tits now. I’m generally ok with them picking up enough results to keep Ole safe but it’s going beyond that now. They’re getting a little full of themselves and need bringing down a peg or two. They beat the Blueshite in midweek to advance in the League Cup. I’m good with that as anything that helps to keep Everton’s trophy less run continuing is fine by me. Did I mention Everton are shit? I’m sure I must have. Not been a good week for Spurs eh? They went from top to *checks table* SIXTH! in the blink of an eye. Probably a joke about London and tiers in there somewhere but I don’t find any of that shit funny as I’m so sick of all this. Spurs going from first to sixth inside of a week is funny though. Palace held them to a draw, we beat them and then Leicester turned them over as well. I saw that one coming. Mourinho had so many gullible fuckwits dancing to his tune the other night I knew they’d come a cropper against Leicester. I’m not dismissing Spurs. As I’ve been saying for weeks they’re obviously going to be a threat as long as they have Kane and Son together. But let’s not get fucking carried away here. They aren’t that good. Palace showed it but everyone is entitled to an off day. We’ve had some ropey away days ourselves so using that game as evidence of Spurs not being all that would be daft. They got their arses handed to them at Anfield but somehow came out of that game with more people talking them up than down. Crazy that. “Spurs showed they can compete with Liverpool”. Yeah, so did Fulham and that means nothing either. In fact, I actually dispute that Spurs did compete with us. They competed with us in the same way West Ham did. And Sheffield United. And loads of other bottom feeders. Fuck Spurs and their Mourinho-ball tactics. That’s why I fancied Leicester. Because Spurs want to sit back and counter, but when they come up against someone else who wants to do the same thing, like Palace and Leicester, it’s not so easy is it? When they have to make the play they aren’t very good. When they can use Kane and Son on the break they’re fucking deadly. You all know how much I despise Kane, the big slobbering goon. In spite of the absolute disdain I have for him, virtually every time I watch him play these days I think “he’s fucking brilliant him. The cunt.”. It puts me in mind of that Simpsons episode “Colonel Homer” when Homer is managing Lurleen Lumpkin. And at one point Bart says “As much as I hate that man right now, you gotta love that suit”. He had his moments against Leicester but by and large they did well against him and Son. Not much happened in the first half as both teams cancelled each other out. Brendan has become more pragmatic and less idealistic over the past 12 months and this time he beat Mourinho at his own game. Both teams were sitting in and waiting for the other to make a mistake. Mourinho’s made a career out of that and it’s usually saps like Rodgers on the receiving end. This time it was Spurs who made the mistake as Aurier clumsily barged into the back of Fofana. The ref missed it but when he was told to check the screen he pointed to the spot and Vardy did the rest. Just before half time that was, the perfect time to score. Maddison made it 2-0 when he latched onto a ball over the top, controlled it beautifully and slotted past Lloris. The replay looked well onside, then they started fucking around drawing lines from his arm and the defenders foot and before you knew it, no goal. Ordinarily I’d be livid about it, but I honestly think on this occasion the VAR official saw his stupid dance and decided “I’m gonna find a way to rule this one out” which I’m not gonna lie, is completely fair and something I’d probably do. It didn’t matter because Alderweireld put through his own net shortly after and Spurs had no answer to it. Great win for Leicester and Spurs well and truly back in their box. One of the funniest things this week was the emergence of some tweets from a 15 year old Maddison saying how much he hates Spurs and calling Bale a chimpanzee and a monkey. Fucking hilarious, but you’d think once these players make the big time the clubs would have someone on the payroll to go through their social media and remove any embarrassing teenage posts. Still, I’m glad they didn’t on this one as it was proper funny. Sheffield United’s woes continued although at least they didn’t lose this weekend. Brewster was given a rare start but didn’t long as he had to be sacrificed following an early sending off for Lundstram. It was a full blooded 50-50 and he went in low initially, won the ball but then caught the lad on the shin with his follow through because he was no longer in control of his momentum. Not so long ago that would be seen as a great tackle but now you’re going to be in trouble more often than not. What irritates me about this is we’ve seen much worse that either went unpunished or had a lesser punishment. Lookman against us last week was worse than this one but he only got a yellow. Anyway, Brewster’s afternoon was cut short and his misery was compounded when the lad who took his place actually scored to put them ahead. Burke should have wrapped it up but blasted high and wide and that cost them big time as Danny Welcrap equalised from close range with a couple of minutes to go. It could have been worse for the Blades as Brighton hit the bar with the last kick of the game. So Chris Wilder still has less points than subs. Brighton would have been a better fit for Brewster than Sheffield United is, because they play actually create chances for their forwards. They just don’t take enough of them. Fat Sam’s return to the big time didn’t start well as his side conceded to El Ghazi inside five minutes as West Brom were dominated by Villa. Livermore was booked for a nasty one on Grealish but after VAR it was upgraded to red. No doubt about that one. Watkins made it 2-0 but then the lines came out and it was chalked off. Another one of those shitty decisions that morally should never be given as offside. Villa were undeterred though and Traore did make it 2-0 with a composed finish before El Ghazi added a third from the spot after yet another foul on Grealish. West Brom seemed to want to just kick the shit out of him all day. Understandable but not conducive to winning football. I’ll say no more about the Baggies as we play them next. Villa are flying aren’t they? I don’t know where they’ll finish but I’m confident it will be above Everton. Because Everton are shit. Wolves’ wildly inconsistent run of results continued as they lost to Burnley. My boy Ashley Barnes (he’s my boy again now that he’s finally remembered where the net is) headed the Clarets in front and Wood hammered in the second from a yard out. They were good value for it too as they also hit the bar and brought a great save out of Patricio. Wolves offered very little but were awarded a penalty out of nothing when Fabio Silva took a tumble in the box. He converted the kick himself but Burnley held on for a massive three points. Finally, Chelsea got back to winning ways with a 3-0 drubbing of West Ham. Thiago Silva headed the opener from a corner. Great header that one. He’s still class him. Top player. No finesse Timo missed yet another one v one chance before fortunately setting up Abraham to make it 2-0. Werner’s shot was so bad and so scuffed that Abraham was able to run in and catch it before it reached the goal. Abraham then added another to make it 3-0 before Werner missed another sitter when he hit the bar. I’ve got a mate who’s a Chelsea fan and when they signed Werner I told him that Chelsea were welcome to him as he’s not very good. At the time he thought it was sour grapes and I was jealous. He said to me this week “we’ve signed fucking Theo Walcott. The cunt even has the same initials”. Now I’m not the kind of guy to say “I told you” but if I was I’d defo have been saying “I told you”. Oh fuck, who am I trying to kid. I fucking love saying “I told you” and that’s exactly what I said to him because the only thing better than being right is telling people that you were right. Merry Christmas my faithful readers, we’ll pick this up again after the Boxing Day games, when no doubt Timo Werner is going to fill his boots now just to make me look bad. But it won’t, you see, because I’ve just given myself that insurance policy. If he bags a few goals I’ll say “I called that one” and if he doesn’t I can continue to say how I told you all months ago he’s crap. *taps nose*