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Saturday Aug 7: Leicester win the Charity Shield. City had a few players missing but so fucking what. When you spend that much one assembling a squad you don’t get the luxury of excuses. I’m made up they lost. It doesn’t mean anything but any time they end up without the trophy in their hands is cause for celebration. Well done Leicester. Not only do City deserve to win nothing, they should have last year’s title stripped from them. Not just for the financial cheating, but for that Peaky Blinders mock up photo they tweeted out. Appalling business. Cringey bastards, they’re just the fucking worst. I expect Villa fans will be fuming at that though, so it’s not all bad I suppose. The really big news today though was Mo winning the pre-season table tennis competition. Three years in a row now. I knew within about 30 seconds of that video starting that Mo was winning it. He had his game face on and he rightly sees himself as the top dog at table tennis. He was never not winning that, he was like Michael Jordan in the playoffs. The video was good fun and I have two main take aways from it. Firstly, Karius was on his phone while everyone else was watching it and cheering people on. I don’t know why, but it annoyed me. I really shouldn’t care as honestly, who gives a fuck, right? I still felt a pang of irritation though. Secondly, I love Robbo. He’s the life and soul of that squad, but I think if I was around him all the time I’d end up just yelling at him “DON’T YOU EVER FUCKING SHUT UP?!?!?” He’s absolutely relentless. Over at the Pit, business is picking up. This is going to be one hell of a fun ride while it lasts. The Blues lost 4-0 at Old Trafford today and some of the travelling blues were signing “you’re just a fat Spanish waiter”. That’s going to get worse with every game they lose, and given how shit that squad is, they’re going to lose plenty. He’s trying to strengthen by signing Rondon and one of the Longstaffs. Why not get Matt Richie and Paul Dummett too? This is going to be fucking great. Sunday Aug 8: L 1 Bilbao 1. Oh fuck. That did not look good for Robbo and now we can only wait and hope the scan results are positive. Good game though and we played well. We should have scored five but it’s a bit rusty in front of goal at the moment which is fine. Get it out of your system now and sharpen up for when the real thing starts. I’d be more worried if we were scoring five or six every pre-season game as it’\d be nailed on that we’d draw a blank at Norwich. Mo hasn’t scored in pre-season but he’s looking really good. Norwich might be on the receiving end of a Suarez style beatdown from him next week. Let’s hope so anyway. Sadio looks to have a bit of a spring in his step again too. Harvey was our best player today and I think it’s significant how much time he’s spent in midfield this pre-season. Not only that, he’s been in the ‘first’ team a lot too. Ox could have played today and Harvey could have been involved tomorrow night instead, but he was out there with most of the lads who will be starting against Norwich. They definitely have plans for him this year and I’m now more convinced than ever we won’t be signing anyone to replace Gini. That starting line up next week is going to be interesting. I didn’t think Virgil would be risked on opening day but now I’m sure he will, otherwise why play him in this one? If Konate is lined up to start then you’d want him out there getting familiar with Joel. He’s not though, he’s in the ‘B’ team tomorrow night. The team at Carrow Road won’t be too different to what we saw today. Fabinho will come in, probably for Elliott, and we will presumably have Kostas in there now unless Robbo makes a miracle recovery. The game will come too soon for Hendo and Thiago, while Bobby needs to earn his spot back. The new ticketing system is a fucking fiasco though and loads of fans couldn’t get in on time so the kick off had to be delayed. I don’t see the point of all this. There was fuck all wrong with the card system we had, it was working great. Now I no longer have a season ticket card, it’s all on my phone, which is shit. What if my battery dies or something happens to the phone? My dad isn’t going anymore which is a good thing because he wouldn’t have a fucking clue about any of this and his phone is pretty basic and wouldn’t be able to use the app anyway. I know the club make allowances for the likes of my dad, but if they hadn’t fucked around with the system they wouldn’t need to. On the transfer front, West Ham are the latest club sniffing around Big Nat. Brighton and Southampton are also interested. This is great. Not because I want to see him leave, but when you think back to a year ago and the only interest was from Swansea in the Championship, and they didn’t follow it up with an acceptable offer, I just love that he’s now in demand from top flight clubs. Good for him, he deserves it the big unassuming hero. Southampton want Ox on loan….. Monday Aug 9: L 3 Ossassuna 1 Fucking hell, that was REALLY good. Considering that was the B team, they were brilliant weren’t they? I didn’t expect that level of performance when I saw the line up but it was great stuff, really exciting, proper Klopp footy. Nice to see Bobby among the goals. I have no idea what to expect from him anymore. He’s not old so his best days shouldn’t be behind him, but there’s been such a drop off over the last couple of years I don’t know if that’s just the way he’s trending now or if he can bounce back. If he does get back to his best then that would be fucking huge for us. If he doesn’t, at least we’re not relying on him so much because we’ve got Jota. Kostas has been looking good lately too and he was boss tonight. We need him to step up and he looks like he’s ready. Owen Beck has had a good pre-season too, he’s getting a lot of praise from Klopp and the senior players. Ben Woodburn has really had a sneaky impressive pre-season hasn’t he? He’s only been getting random minutes here and there to fill in at the end of games but he’s really made the most of it. I hope he gets a decent move but it might be better for him to stay until January and build on this good form in the u23s and maybe the odd cup game. His stock was at its lowest a few weeks ago but he’s done his reputation no harm these last few games so maybe he should stick around if the right offer doesn’t come now. It’s sad the way things have gone for him, especially when you see how Trent has taken off. They came through at the same time but now look at them. World’s apart. Tell you what though, these two games in front of fans at Anfield may have been friendlies but there was more intensity to them than most ‘competitive’ games last season. There’s absolutely no comparison. Empty stadium football is almost like a different sport. The buzz the lads have obviously got from this is really significant, they all just looked really happy to have normality back. The performances in these last two days have definitely had an extra zip compared to what we’ve been seeing. I can’t fucking wait for the first home game now. Some more rumours about us being in for Doku. I was reading about him a few weeks ago when the rumour first re-surfaced. When we brought him over a couple of years back when we were trying to get him to sign, Klopp apparently told him he sees him as Sadio’s successor. He wanted to play first team football now so he didn’t join us, but what has changed since then? He still wouldn’t be playing unless Sadio’s slump continues, which it won’t. I wouldn’t be against us signing him, but surely we need a central player more than another wide option? I don’t know who, but if we added that then I love our chances. I love them anyway, barring any more unforeseen injury issues, but if we replaced Origi with someone that will actually make a contribution then we’d be sound. Tuesday Aug 10: So Messi officially signs for PSG and his wages are obscene. They’ve already spent loads this summer and clearly neither them nor City give a flying fuck anymore. UEFA relaxed FFP which is mental considering almost every club in Europe has financial concerns of some sort. The rules were brought in mostly to stop the likes of City and PSG taking the piss, but now they’ve been given cart blanche to do it when nobody else (Chesea and United apart) has anything to spend. It’s a joke. PSG are blatantly cheating as virtually all of their major sponsors are Qatari companies, just like City are all Abu Dhabi. They’ll sign vastly inflated sponsorship deals to cover the costs of this summer’s spending and no-one will do anything about it. I’ll tell you something here and now though. PSG won’t win the CL this year. They’ll fancy themselves now, with all the superstars, but Neymar and Messi are bottlers and Mbappe shit the bed at the Euros too. I’d back us, City and Chelsea to beat them. Not United though, not unless they change managers midway through the season. You know what I really hate though? This shit is almost being normalised. When PSG and City are signing all these players, the narrative should be that they are only doing this by breaking rules and cheating. No-one ever says it though. I absolutely guarantee if you watch any discussion on Sky for example, when they’re talking about the title race, they’ll just mention about City signing Grealish and how it will or won’t improve them, and that if they get Kane no-one will be able to live with them etc but they’ll say it in a way where it’s just like any other club signing players. They all normalise this shit, which in turn makes it seem more more legitimate. EVERY discussion involving City and PSG should be prefaced with them cheating and how they aren’t playing by the same rules as everyone else. It literally never is though. The only TV pundit I can ever remember who addressed it was Martin Keown during a commentary when he just casually threw something in, and I fucking bet anything you like he was told off afterwards. Wednesday Aug 11: The figure being thrown around for Shaq now is as low as £8m. He’s worth more than that but it’s a Covid market now and prices are going to be lower for unwanted players. If you don’t want to sell, you can ask for a higher figure but you’re not getting big money for deadwood in this market. Should we take £8m for Shaq? I think so, if that’s the best we can get. We need to free up an overseas spot and getting his wages off the books helps too. With Elliott being promoted there’s just no place for Shaq and he’s too good to not play. £8m though, fucking hell the arse has fell out of this market hasn’t it? Although…. £34m for Tammy Abraham? I mean, he’s probably worth that, but you don’t expect an Italian side (in this case Roma) to be handing that kind of cash to English clubs. Usually they plead poverty and ask for loan deals or bargain prices and then they’ll go and splash the cash in the Bundesliga or Ligue One. And for it to be happening now, when no-one else is spending, it seems a little fishy. Chelsea have a history of selling players for massively inflated fees though. Remember all those lads they sold to China for extortionate amounts? Thursday Aug 12: New deal for Virg. Not really anything to add. Glad it’s done, its great for the club, it’s just pretty fucking boring when we’re announcing a new contract every week because our hands our tied in the transfer market until we shift Origi and Shaq. Klopp said “Imagine if we had to buy this boy now”. Er, newsflash boss. It wouldn’t happen. He’d be signing for a Manc team or Chelsea and we’d be talking about how we “have to find different solutions”. Thank fuck we got him when we did, and that we sold Coutinho when we did which allowed us to get Alisson and Fabinho. I’ve been watching a lot of the training videos as well as the friendly games, and I might be reading too much into this but the lads seem really fucking ready for this and seem to have that eye of the tiger thing going on. Having Virgil back helps everyone, but if Sadio is back on it that is massive too. And he looks like he is. Him and Bobby really suffered last season from not having fans in the stadium. I’m not saying that’s why they lost form, but it is why that loss of form continued as long as it did. Fans help players get through those spells and if either of them are struggling this season they’ll be getting their name belted out at Anfield and that helps. He was even talking about how me misses being booed at away grounds because he loves it and it gives him extra motivation. Full stadiums are going to give all the lads a huge shot in the arm. I keep reading and hearing people talking about this season and making predictions, and it’s fucking mental to me how we’re being almost written off. Apparently it’s between City and Chelsea. Why? I’ll tell you why. Grealish and Lukaku. Everyone getting carried away by a big money signing. Here’s something that doesn’t seem to be getting mentioned by hardly anyone in the media. Last season was a complete fucking anomaly and none of it means shit in terms of what will happen this year. There were no fans in stadiums for almost the entire season and that hugely distorts everything. City finished 17 points ahead of us but we lost six home games on the bounce. That would not have happened with fans inside Anfield. How do I know that? Because it was quite literally NEVER happened before. City had an easy ride last year because so many games were like training sessions and that suits them perfectly. As for Chelsea, they’ve got a great squad and now they have a capable manager to go with that and a proven goalscorer. They’ll be strong, but we finished above them last season despite having to play the last dozen games or so with Phillips and Williams / Kabak in defence. Pretty sure we got more points than them after Tuchel arrived too, although I may be wrong there. Doesn’t matter. The point is, people are talking like we’re miles behind them when the last time we had ‘normal’ footy 9ie with fans) we blew them all away and we have basically the same players we had then other than we’ve added Thiago, Jota and Konate while losing Gini. So let them keep writing us off, I reckon we’re about to fucking steamroller everyone again. Us top, City second, Chelsea and United fighting for third and fourth. Friday Aug 13: Messi has unfollowed Barcelona on Instagram. Self absorbed little prick. He’s just as much of a wanker as Ronmaldo is, except Ronaldo is far more up front about who he is. Sick of Messi pretending he’s the good guy. Little wanker. Klopp’s press conference was eventful, not least because of the way he murdered James Pearce for asking whether he’d be signing a replacement for Gini. Fuck me that was harsh. “I’m really interested. Not angry, not annoyed, I’m just interested. Which kind of player should we sign?”. Then Pearce tentatively said “I think a lot of fans would say there’s been a lack of goals from midfield so that would be one element that people might say could be improved” and Klopp’s face was just dripping with disdain. He laughed derisively and then pretended to be deep in thought and said “So we should score more goals from midfield. Ok, yeah, Makes sense”. It was fucking brutal! He then explained why it isn’t about finding players who score more goals, it’s about whether the system allows for that, and basically it doesn’t because the midfield have to do a lot of filling in spaces to prevent counter attacks and cover for the full backs. He’s 100% right too. Most of us would like to see more goals from midfield, but the perfect example of that is actually Wijnaldum. Goalscoring midfielder at Newcastle, goalscoring midfielder for Holland. If he’d never played for us and we were signing him now, he’d be regarded as someone that could add goals to our midfield. He didn’t though, did he? Sure, he popped up and scored massively important goals for us at times, but he wasn’t scoring 12 a season even though he could easily have done so if that was his role. It wasn’t his role, that’s not how our midfield plays. Curtis Jones could score loads too if he was given the licence to do so. But for that to happen the tactical approach would have to change quite a bit and we wouldn’t have Trent and Robbo marauding forward at will. I’d like another midfielder, but it would be to replace Keita. If he’s staying (which he clearly is) then I wouldn’t sign another midfielder because all that does is push Jones and Elliott back down the pecking order. Tell you something else. I’ve had this feeling all week that this will be the year of the Ox. Just to clarify something there, I never usually refer to him as ‘the Ox’ as I’m not my dad or Phil Thompson, who are the only people I know who call him that. I usually just say ‘Ox’, but because I was going with ‘the year of the…’ it had to be that way. Anyway, yeah, like I was saying. I’ve been thinking this week that he’s going to surprise everyone this season and really play a significant part. I’m expecting him to play like he did in the second half of his first season here, before he got that injury. Don’t know why, it’s just a hunch based on what I’ve seen in pre-season where he seems to have had that explosiveness back. With Gini gone, that’s one less player ahead of him in the queue and I’d back him to make more of an impact than Keita. Come on Ox lad, prove me right so I can be all smug about it. On the field tonight Arsenal went the full Arsenal in losing to Brentford. The most damning thing about this is nobody will have been surprised. Absolutely nobody. Except maybe poor little Ty, who was arguing with Carra, Neville and Keane at a fans Q&A thing on sky because he didn’t think they were taking Arsenal seriously enough! Then Arsenal go and lose to a team playing their first ever top flight game. Carra even mentioned him in commentary, which was surreal but also funny as fuck. “My mate Ty is not gonna be happy about this at all”. I’m off to buy some popcorn and settle down to watch some Arsenal Fan TV. Update. Ty was interviewed and the title of his video was “we mustn’t get carried away by one loss”. Of course. ….and that was the week that was.