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Monday Nov 1: There’s an interview with Suarez on UEFA.com where he spoke about when he TWICE wanted to leave and that Brendan and Stevie talked him out of it. We knew about the Arsenal thing, but turns out he wanted to leave the summer than Kenny was sacked and Brendan had to call him in Uurguay and give him a big sales pitch to get him to stay. Fucking hell, he’d only been here five minutes and he was wanting to go. This is arguably worse than him wanting to go to Arsenal that time. Why the fuck did he leave Ajax two join us in the first place if he was going to be wanting to leave a year later? It’s not like he joined a good team and we suddenly went shit. The summer he first wanted out we’d just won one cup and lost in the final of another. And although he was boss, he was nowhere near as good as he ended up a couple of years later. He was too good for us when he eventually did leave. He wasn’t too good for us the other two times though. He’s gonna do something mental on Wednesday, I can feel it. He’s either banging in a hat-trick or he’s getting sent off for trying to chop Robbo in two. Also today, Spurs sacked Nuno. What’s that, ten games? What exactly has happened in ten games to make them think any differently about him than they did when they hired him, because this is pretty much what most people expected. He’s a counter attacking manager who doesn’t play good football. This shouldn’t be any great surprise to Spurs. Daniel Levy is a fucking bum. He might be great at refusing to be low balled on players, but he’s shit at everything else. Tuesday Nov 2: Simeone says he won’t shake Klopp’s hand after the game tomorrow because he doesn’t believe in it. Apparently it’s a “British thing” and it’s phoney. He’s such a piece of work that fella isn’t he? His dedication to the shithouse craft is admirable though in its own way. Klopp says he wasn’t aware of Simeone’s policy on handshakes and if he had been he wouldn’t have approached him for one. Fuck that. If I was Klopp tomorrow night, with about 30 seconds left I’d be going to stand in the tunnel to cut him off. I’d extend my hand, and if he didn’t take it he’d look like a bellend, and if he did I’d do this…. Meanwhile, Conte is the new Spurs boss and Newcastle are trying to get Unai Emery. Conte is too good for Spurs but that doesn’t mean he’ll do a good job. He’s going to need money to spend and by all accounts they’re skint. They’ll be better than they have been under Nuno but the best they can hope for is to finish above Arsenal. Right now I wouldn’t even bet on that as Arsenal are getting better. Emery would be a massive risk for Newcastle at this moment in time. In the summer, sure. But right now they’re in a relegation dogfight. I can’t see Emery coming in and getting them out of the shit, so I absolutely hope this happens. Short of us winning the title or CL, nothing would make me happier this season than Newcastle going down. Wednesday Nov 3: L 2 Atletico 0. Well that was a lot less eventful and a lot more routine than I expected. There were no Suarez fireworks, Simeone was subdued and we basically just put them over our knee and spanked them. We’ve thrown away two goal leads a few times this season but even before the sending off I never felt like there was any chance of that. We had the bit between our teeth and it just looked to me like Atletico knew there was nothing they could do about it. Even their shithousing was half arsed. It was one of those fast starts we often have in these games, when we just blow the opposition away with the speed and intensity of our play. Mo and Sadio were on fire and we had proper quality coming in from the two full backs all night. Trent made two goals but on the other side Kostas put some fucking boss balls in too. The midfield dominated the game and Joel and Virg barely gave Suarez a sniff. The sending off was hilarious. That was the very definition of ‘what goes around comes around’. All these years of their manager and players acting like twats and showing no respect to officials or the rules of the game. And then one of them is getting a yellow card but it gets upgraded to a red because he acted like a twat with no respect for the officials. Beautiful. As I said in the report, I was totally fine with the booing of Suarez during the game but I hated it when he was subbed. Proper small time, Soccer AM style shit that was. Like the shouting of “SHOOOOOOOT” whenever Virg or Joel got the ball in their half. It wasn’t a European night atmosphere, it was a bit weird. Presumably because the stakes weren’t so high. We were pretty much through regardless of what happened and because of the lack of any edge maybe it took some of the intensity out of it. Plus the fact the game was so comfortable. We’ve won the group now because Porto drew in Milan. Hopefully Porto can beat Atletico and nick second, but I can’t see it. We might need to give them a helping hand by losing at Anfield. I don’t think we’ll do that because of the prize money at stake, but one thing we defo should do is give Big Nat a run out in that game because he’s earned that. Thursday Nov 4: Jesus fucking Christ, this Torres love in is nauseating. LFCTV fucking love him don’t they? There’s a big interview with him on there and the club social media have been loving all the behind the scenes stuff with him posing for pictures with Elliott and Kenny. It will never sit well with me how he’s embraced but Owen is virtually black balled. I don’t have any affection for him but I don’t dislike Torres anymore either. This fawning over him and attempts to re-integrate him into the “LFC Family” doesn’t sit right at all. He was here five minutes, he won fuck all and he downed tools before leaving for another English club. All this prodigal son shit is just not right. And what's with his fucking massive neck and shoulders these days? Meanwhile, there’s a story today that we’re battling United to sign a kid from City who has been labelled the new Phil Foden. He hasn’t signed a contract with them yet and that has put us on alert. Barca want him too apparently, and presumably if he’s that good then every other top club will want him as well. James McAtee. I’ve never heard of him to be honest. He’s 19 so he should be knocking on the for now but he’s only made one sub appearance in the league cup. He’s gonna end up at Dortmund isn’t he? They always do. I haven’t read much from Stevie Nicol in a while but I stumbled across one of his notoriously flaming hot takes today. Speaking about our current midfield issues he said “100 per cent I would take either Rice or Kalvin Phillips. I’ll tell you what, I’d take Doucoure from Everton.” Rice will cost £80m at least so that’s pie in the sky. Phillips wouldn’t be much cheaper either, but Leeds would not even consider selling him until next summer. And Doucoure?? Fuck me, if he was somebody we wanted (which at one time he apparently was) then we would have signed him when he left Watford. Everton would rather go bankrupt then accept a penny from us for a player so why even mention that? Come on Stevie lad, fucking hell. Friday Nov 5: Still, there are worse takes than Nicol’s. The Spanish press are claiming Klopp wants to sign Eden Hazard. Honestly, this is almost as bad as the Pogba story from last week. I say almost, because at least Hazard can play. But he’s on upward of 400k a week and has a terrible fitness record since leaving Chelsea. And from what I recall he missed a fair bit of time when he was there too. He’s also pushing 30, so this is right up there with the “least FSG signing” you could possibly come up with. Klopp’s presser was quite interesting today as he singled out Bowen and said “I like him a lot”. We were heavily linked with him over the summer so naturally now people will put two and two together and come up with Bowen in a red shirt. I’d say this makes it much less likely. If he was planning on signing him he’d keep quiet about him, surely? He also said Bobby’s hamstring is serious and it will be at least four weeks. That means it’s going to be at least six. I’m not too concerned as long as we can get him back to full speed in time for January when we lose Sadio and Mo. Bobby has been contributing a lot so he’ll be missed, yet weirdly I just have this feeling that Divock is going to step up and do something, and I’m also curious to see what Minamino could do in that role when surrounded by the actual senior lads rather than the league cup side. Today was a good day. It’s very rare an opportunity presents itself when you can use a famous TV or Movie line in normal conversation, but one fell into my lap today. I was on the phone to my mum and she said “Your dad went for his booster jab yesterday but he wasn’t sure it worked as he didn’t feel it. Just a tiny prick” I was in there immediately with “I know he is but he’s still my dad”. Del Boy would be proud. It reminded me of the time my mate Chris (who hosts the midweek TLW pod) lost his Pulp Fiction themed wallet. He knew he must have left it at the gym so he rang them up and they asked him could he describe it. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to put on a Samuel L Jackson voice and say “it’s the one that says Bad Muthafucka” but he shit out and I’ve never let him forget it. ….and that was the week that was.