Leaderboard

Monday Dec 27: Guardiola insists fans should wear masks at all times in the stadium. I don’t have any issue with the message (I’ve worn a mask for the entirety of the last two home games) but I sure as hell have a problem with the messenger. When your squad are fully vaccinated then maybe you’re in a position to comment on what the rest of us should do. But he said a couple of weeks ago that some of his players aren’t. They shouldn’t allowed in the stadium then. If we have to have proof of our vaccination status to attend games how come players don’t? His team were 4-0 up after 25 minutes against Leicester yesterday. One of those was a farcical penalty awarded by VAR. Who was the VAR? Paul Tierney. Who was the on field ref? Chris Kavanagh. Two Manchester refs. You couldn’t make this shit up. Last week, when it was us, the bar for how much contact constitutes a penalty kick was so high that Peter Crouch couldn’t reach it. Now, when it’s City, it’s so low that even Bernardo Silva can’t walk under it. It ended up 6-3 and Leicester actually got within a goal of them at one stage, but it’s pretty fucking galling how they’re getting to play against all these weakened opponents and they’ve wiped out our goal difference advantage in about a week. We were nine goals better than them before they played Leeds. Now it’s just a case of us having to keep winning games just to stay with them until they drop points again, which they will. People need to remember that they lost at home to Palace and drew 0-0 with Southampton. They aren’t unstoppable but they are really good front runners. The key to overcoming them is to stay with them when they have these big winning runs. That’s what we have to do, starting with tomorrow night’s game at Leicester. There’s a chance there to not only win, but also win handsomely and claw back some of the damage that’s been done to our goal difference. Leicester will be weakened further tomorrow night as many of their regular starters featured at the Etihad today and will be knackered. They’ve got a few to come back in, but we’ll be full strength and coming off six days rest. Let’s go and fuck them all over the place like we did two years ago when we came back from the World Club Cup. That was one of our best performances under Klopp, so let’s do that again. Staying with Leicester, Ricardo says he’s lucky his season wasn’t needed by that Tyler Morton challenge last week. He fractured his tibia and will miss 6-8 weeks. It was a really bad one and Tyler is lucky there is no VAR in the cup or he’d have seen red and we’d be out. Needs to learn from that. Tuesday Dec 28: Leicester 1 L 0. I’ve said most of what I needed to say in the match report which I wrote right on the final whistle. I don’t usually do that, I like to let a result breathe a bit before writing about it, but sometimes I need to capture the emotion I’m feeling right away. It might be a big win when I’m on a high, or a fucking shitshow like this when I’m so pissed off I need to get everything out there before I go to bed. It took me about two hours to get to sleep after I went to bed tonight. I was fucking fuming and had all sorts of thoughts buzzing around in my head. It’s not often I feel as though we have the right to be angry with this team. They always give us everything they have and even tonight I don’t question the effort. They very rarely let us down but tonight they did. You just can’t lose this game. Can’t do it. It’s unacceptable. Leicester away is a tricky fixture and in normal circumstances I’d shrug this one off. The West Ham defeat hasn’t stayed with me because it can happen. Teams will lose games. City lost at home to Palace. It happens. What can’t happen is losing when you have absolutely every advantage in your favour like we had tonight. You can’t lose to an injury hit, fatigued, makeshift Leicester coming off conceding six at Man City two days ago. You especially can’t do it when you’re basically full strength and fully rested up. You can’t do it. Simple as that. This one won’t go away. I won’t get past it. It’s there for the rest of the season now. Every time I look at the table I’ll think “we should be three points better than this” because we should be. You have to win this game. No two ways about it. I said in the report it’s the worst loss we’ve had under Klopp and I’d bet that he’d agree with that, probably not publicly but I’d bet that privately he feels like this is the most inexcusable, inexplicable loss we’ve had under him. Part of the reason I’m as angry as I am is because I didn’t even contemplate the possibility we wouldn’t win this. I’d already bagged the points and the only question was how many we would score. And we scored fucking none. I can’t believe it. It’s fucking scandalous how shit we were in attack tonight. It reminded me of a game we had a few years ago when the players had been to Dubai or Spain or somewhere for warm weather training after being knocked out of the cup. We came back and looked like dogshit. Same as tonight. We’re fucking crap when we’re rested. We need to play every three or four days because that’s when we have our best rhythm. Mo looked off tonight, Jota wasn’t at it either and Sadio was wasteful as fuck. That chance he wasted was the game’s biggest turning point for me. He’s now in the longest goal drought of his LFC career, which surprised me because it felt like he went three months without a goal last season. This has kind of sneaked up on me because I think he’s been playing pretty well for the most part so I hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t scored. It’s a worry though. Wednesday Dec 29: Friends was on the telly today. I haven’t watched it for years but I loved it back in the day. The affection I had for the other five characters was such that I could overlook how much of an annoying twat Phoebe was. I saw five minutes of it today and that’s no longer the case. The contempt I’ve got for Phoebe outweighs how much I like the others and I realised I can no longer watch it. Not sure where I’m going with that. You might have thought it was a metaphor for something else but it really isn’t. It just popped into my head so I wrote it down because I really don’t want to even be thinking about footy today, let alone writing about it. Although I suppose when you dig deep into it, maybe we're going to reach a stage where I can't watch footy anymore because of what Man City have done to it? Fuck me, I'm in foul form after that game last night. Thursday Dec 30: Garth Crooks picks his team of the year and everyone loses their shit over it. I get it, the team was beyond ridiculous, but this is what he does. Put it this way, if Garth Crooks picked his team of the year and it was full of sensible choices that everyone would agree on, no fucker would be talking about it because who gives a shit about Garth Crooks? He was an average top flight striker in the 1980s, the only thing that keeps him relevant today is being as mad as a box of frogs. The only reason anyone could leave Salah out of a team of the year (let alone in favour of Antonio!) is to create controversy and attract attention. So job done, Garth. We’re approaching January now so expect the rumour mill to go into overdrive. Most of it is bollocks but sites have got to get their clicks and this is the time of year to get them. One name we’ve been linked with is Saka from Arsenal. I mean, as if. Don’t get me wrong, I’d happily have him here, but Arsenal aren’t going to sell and if they do there’s zero chance FSG would pay what it would cost to get him. With players like him, we either get them before they sign a pro deal or we move on to another target. Same with Bellingham. There’s no fucking chance we’ll go and pay £100m or whatever it would cost to get him. The time to get Saka was before he committed to Arsenal. The time to get Bellingham was when he left Birimgham. We tried for both, apparently, so I’m not having a go at anyone here. Just stating the reality of the situation. Even Jarrod Bowen kind of falls into that category. We wanted him last summer but his value will have gone up now as he’s having a good season. I don’t want him for a couple of reasons. One, he doesn’t score enough (although I concede that in a better team like ours that might change) and two, he basically only plays in that right of the front three spot that Mo occupies. He’s only coming in if Mo leaves in my opinion, and that would be…. well I don’t even need to say how deflating that would be. We’re not quite talking Balotelli replacing Suarez but it’s not far off. We’re being linked with some forward from Benfica too. His name has been mentioned a few times recently and there might be something in it, but we never do anything in January so don’t hold your breath on that. Besides, it feels like any forward we get linked with is going to be a replacement for someone leaving. Bobby is the obvious one but his value has plummeted. Sadio really ought to be looking over his shoulder based on the last 12 months, but until Mo signs that deal the fear is always going to be that he’s the one who will go and we’ll tie Sadio and Bobby down to new deals, which frankly would be depressing as fuck. Things were ticking along swimmingly but all of a sudden everything feels a bit shit right now after dropping five points in two games, players getting covid or injured or about to fuck off to AFCON and our domestic season seemingly heading into a make or break territory over the next few weeks. Announcing a new deal for Mo would give everyone a much needed lift. Meanwhile, Lukaku has gone after Tuchel in an interview with Sky Italia. Tuchel himself has responded saying he isn’t happy about it and it’s "created a noise they can do without". Ain’t that just great. Nailed on Lukaku winner followed by running to the bench to embrace Tuchel this Sunday then. Ok, now this sounds much more like an FSG transfer. Frank Kessie on a free from Milan. His contract is up this summer and we’re said to be leading the chase. I think he’s shite based on the two games he played against us but that’s no real barometer of a player as we can be really hard to look good against. We can dream of Jude Bellingham but we’re much more likely to get a deal like this. And in theory that’s fine, I love a good Bosman deal. Joel Matip is one hell of a player and he cost us fuck all. Milner too (although his wages were massive at the time). So if we can pick up another one or two like Joel then great, especially now we seem to have reached a point where we just aren’t going to spend any fucking money at all. Friday Dec 31: So three more cases (rumoured to be Alisson, Bobby and Joel or Naby) plus Thiago, Taki and Divock all still injured. This period we’re in now is going to fuck our league campaign up big time. The Leicester loss is 100% self inflicted but the points dropped at Spurs (and probably this Sunday) are mostly down to circumstances, and that Leeds game being called off worked out terribly for us. Meanwhile, City are the only club seemingly unaffected by it. Why is that? Just lucky, or something more sinister? If it was anyone else you’d say it was luck but with them you never know do you? Klopp mentioned it today in his presser but it was done in a completely innocent way and he wasn’t implying anything. Didn’t stop City twitter from going for him though, the fucking twats. I stumbled across all kinds of shit because I typed in “Man City COVID” to see if any of their players had it. There was nothing about that, but loads of sinister shite from them about how Klopp is wishing City players would get COVID. Usually I ignore all the shite I see on twitter but one thing in particular really bothered me as it was such a cunty thing to be suggesting. Some fucking twat in Nigeria who claims to support City and Barcelona made a crack about it. She had six thousand odd followers, most of whom have probably never touched a woman so they followed her in the hope of getting some interaction with a female for the first time in their lives. Sad cunts. Klopp implied nothing about City but if this carries on with them being completely unaffected then questions are going to need to be asked about it. Are they testing everybody daily, and if they are, are they ignoring the results as long as there are no symptoms? If that’s the case will anyone even give a fuck or will a blind eye be turned just like with the financial shenanigans? The EFL have said today they are no longer forcing clubs to test their players because there are too many games being called off. The PL will follow suit, but the question I would have is are City already doing that? Because how the fuck are they not having anyone test positive? Something stinks. 2021 can fuck right off but there’s absolutely nothing to suggest that 2022 will get any better. I’m not specifically talking footy there either, it’s more of general ‘state of the world’ thing. But yeah, City’s owners are ruining footy in the same way that other rich cunts are ruining the rest of the world, for their own personal gain. Happy New Year? Yeah I fucking doubt it. ….and that was the week that was.

What a difference a week makes. Six days ago our second eleven triumphed over a fresh and rested Leicester despite them fielding their best line up. Now we were the ones rested up and fielding our strongest side (minus Robbo and Thiago) and they were coming off an energy sapping 6-3 loss at the Etihad a couple of days earlier. And somehow we fucking lost. Honestly, I feel like this is the worst result we’ve had since Klopp arrived. I know how that sounds but I mean it. All things considered, this is the fucking worst defeat we’ve had under Klopp and it’s definitely the most inexcusable. We had some bad ones last season but there were no fans in stadiums and the whole thing was a charade that meant nothing. So I can easily shrug off anything that happened last season, including losing 7-1 (or was it 7-2?) at Villa and even losing to Everton at Anfield. We’ve had other bad defeats scattered throughout Klopp’s reign but we weren’t as accomplished a side as we are now so that was always something that could happen from time to time. This team is playing to win titles and the stakes are high in every game. You can't afford cheap losses and this team should NEVER be fucking losing this game. I’m struggling to keep a lid on how pissed off I am about it. I’d already decided prior to the game I wasn’t going to do the podcast on the final whistle and thank fuck for that as I’d have been doing the full Arsenal Fan TV mindless ranting. I know if I’d done it I’d have been embarrassed about it a couple of days later when I calmed down, and even this report will probably contain some things I might want to back away from a little when the dust settles. Right now though I’m definitely in a throwing the toys out of the pram frame of mind. And you know something else? I don’t ever want to hear Klopp fucking moaning about how “impossible” two games in three days is. He had me convinced and I was happy to fight his corner over it. But it’s absolute fucking bollocks. He was made to look like a tit by this defeat and even acknowledged it himself afterwards, saying “One of the guys who is constantly talking about how you should not play the 26th and 28th and only plays the 28th and loses against the team who plays the 26th and 28th - a funny story I know”. Yeah I’m not fucking laughing. You know who is though? Those Leicester cunts singing “feed the scousers” that’s who. Because we somehow lost to the fuckers. How did that happen? Because this “can’t play two games in three days” thing is completely overstated garbage. Is it ideal? No. Can it be done? Yeah it fucking can. Next time I buy into that shit someone please give me a slap. Leicester have given the Simon Jordans and Alan Brazils of this world all the ammunition now to rip into Klopp whenever he moans about it and he can thank his players for that because they well and truly shit the bed here. All the things Klopp said we should expect from players when they play twice in three days happened anyway, and that was with six days off! In fact, I say six days off but it’s actually more than that for most of them as loads didn’t even play last week. Apparently if we’d had to play the 26th and the 28th we would see attacking players making bad decisions and not being sharp. Fuck me, imagine how shit we’d have been if we’d played Boxing Day then. Or maybe we wouldn’t, maybe we’d have actually had more sharpness and focus as let’s face it, we couldn’t have had less. Honestly, I’m so fucking pissed off I just feel like lashing out in all directions. It’s because I didn’t even contemplate for one second that we wouldn’t win this game, and win it well. I was even ripping into a couple of lads in the group chat who were worried about the game beforehand. Usually Leicester away is a fixture I’d be wary about too, but I wasn’t this time and if I actually stop and think about why that is, it’s 100% because I bought into Jurgen’s shite about player fatigue. I mean, how can we possibly fail to beat a team who are trying to do the “impossible”? By Klopp's logic, Leicester should have been out on their feet, ripe for the picking. I bought into that, but guess what, they never really looked tired at all and in the second half they were quite comfortable. They had the two toughest fixtures imaginable too, it’s not like they played Norwich and Everton. Leicester were 4-0 down at Man City and fought tooth and nail to get back in that game before eventually losing 6-3. Then they had to face us two days later. And they fucking beat us, so no I don’t want to hear that shit about how important rest is anymore. Let’s be honest here, we’re usually fucking shite when we’re rested up. We always come out under cooked and lo and behold, we did it again. Alisson, Trent, Virgil, Matip, Fabinho, Salah and Mané had loads of time to rest up as they didn’t play last week and some didn’t play the games before either. Did that help? Did it fuck. No intensity, no sharpness. The finishing was a fucking disgrace. It started with Mo’s penalty but it wasn’t just him. It was everybody who had a sniff of goal. There wasn’t one decent effort all night. I wasn’t worried after Mo missed the pen as it was early and we were playing ok. It felt like we’d keep creating chances and eventually take one. After all, we’ve been doing that all season so there was no reason to not think that. When Sadio blazed that sitter over the bar in the second half though, that’s when my arse went. It just had that “they’ll get one chance and score” feel about it and so it proved. Their goal was shite. Obviously Lookman has done well, that’s not what I mean. It’s a good goal from him but it was shite and half arsed from us. Trent never even bothered chasing him back but that was typical of his second half performance. I’ve never seen him play worse, which is mad because he was good in the first half. He looked fucked after the break, he could hardly run. And what the fuck is Virgil doing? Just letting him shoot, presumably thinking “go on then, you’re not beating Alisson on the near post”. He can’t have been watching Alisson that closely this season then. He should save it. It was the only thing we needed him to do all night but sadly he wasn’t up to it. What makes it worse is the cunt at the other end saved everything. In the first half anyway. After the break I don’t remember him needing to do anything other than make one routine save with his foot from Van Dijk. Pretty much everything else missed the target. Just fucking shite. I don’t know if it was complacency or tiredness or we were ‘too rested’ or what, but that second half was truly pathetic. The first half was unlucky. We played quite well and should have been in front but the second half was disjointed shite, full of terrible decision making and erratic play, not helped by shit substitutions that hampered us further. Mané was the most glaring example but it’s too easy to single him out. It wasn’t just him, but that chance he put over the bar….. fucking hell. I’d have subbed him immediately. He had another chance a few minutes later and produced a little powder puff shot straight at Schmeichel. The only thing I can say in his defence is he never hid and continued looking for the ball. It wasn’t his night but he wasn’t alone in that. *Sigh* So fucking demoralising. Where does this leave us now? There’s an awful lot of football left but it’s hard to shake the feeling we’re probably playing for second after this. I fucking hate saying that because I’ve been confident all season and I know it’s knee jerk to throw the towel in after one loss. In fact, it’s defeatist and deplorable and thankfully Klopp and the players won’t be feeling like that, but the difference is they can actually do something about it. As fans we’re powerless really, all we have is faith and hope. I have faith in Klopp and the players but hope is in short supply because it isn’t in our hands anymore. The fact is that City’s years of unpunished financial rule breaking means you can no longer afford defeats like this if you want to win titles. It stinks, it’s not fair, but that’s the current situation. I mean fucking hell, we finished with 97 points one year and still came up short. When we eventually won it we had to win 23 on the spin to start the season or something mad like that. We ground City into the dirt that year until they gave up. They’re front runners, they don’t do well when chasing. But now they’re already well ahead and by the time we play next we’ll probably be 12 points behind them. So this loss was so, so, so fucking bad that it just feels like we’ve said to City “here you go lads, all yours”. If we’d won this and lost at Chelsea this weekend that wouldn’t have shaken me too much as that’s a game you can lose. It’s an occupational hazard, it can happen as Chelsea are a really good team. You can’t lose to a Leicester team who conceded six to City and according to Klopp were in an “impossible” situation of playing two games in three days. Going six points behind City means two things. We’ve got fuck all margin for error anymore and we also need to go to the Etihad and win. So yeah, I feel like this is a game we’re going to look at for the rest of the season and kick ourselves. I know that no matter what happens now until it’s over, every time I look at the table I’m going to think “if only we hadn’t lost that fucking stupid game at Leicester”. You can lose at West Ham. You can draw at Brentford. You can’t lose this game though under these circumstances. We were in great form going in, we had the benefit of plenty of rest and Leicester should have been out on their feet, at least according to Klopp’s rationale. You just can’t lose the game but we did and yeah, I’m not dealing with it very well. Under ordinary circumstances we should have been able to lose it and it not be catastrophic, but Abu Dhabi’s abomination have distorted the league so much now that if you’re not getting 90 plus points you’ve got no chance. They’ve ruined the competition and but for the incredible job Klopp has done with this team City would be going for their fifth title in a row. It baffles me how hardly anyone other than us seems arsed about their cheating. Even putting aside the potential title implications I’m struggling with this loss regardless. A draw would have been no good to us either really but I was still desperate for us to equalise late on. Not because of the point we’d have gained, I just wanted to stop those cunt fans from celebrating. I’m fucking fuming we allowed them to beat us. Star man is easy. Joel Matip was fucking immense all night. I can’t believe Carra picked Van Dijk over him in his team of the season so far, because Joel has been better than him all season and this game was further proof of that. What a man. What a player. Kostas was good too. Everyone else was varying degrees of shite, including the manager who made panic substitutions that fucked up our shite and made Leicester’s job a whole lot easier. I hate the four strikers thing. It doesn’t work. By all means bring Bobby on, but get Sadio off as it clearly wasn’t his night. You could even leave him on and sub Jota instead and I’d have been fine with that. Taking off all three midfielders though and leaving us with just Keita and Milner in there? What the fuck? We’re lucky Vardy did his hamstring and couldn’t run or they’d have probably done us on the break again. At least Keita contributed though. He was good in the last ten minutes and played several nice passes into the feet of Mané and Jota to allow them to roll their markers. Keita is one of the few who wasn’t just looking for the safe pass all the time so I have no complaints about him. Bobby was a fucking waste of time though. It would be played into him and his second touch would usually be a tackle. In fairness, he had his back to goal every time he received the ball and bringing him on to play in a four was pointless, as it so often is. This was just shit all around and it’s going to take me a while to shake this one off. So fucking needless. So fucking damaging. I wish we had played Leeds on Boxing Day now, because at least Klopp would have had an excuse for losing this one and the gap to City wouldn’t be as big as it’s about to get. And now we’ve got AFCON on the horizon. I’m not even arsed about Sadio going now as he blows hot and cold and right now he’s cold. Two goals in eleven games. Jota can take his spot on the left with Bobby coming into the centre and we shouldn’t really be too badly impacted. Losing Mo is obviously big though and we just need to hope that Minamino can contribute. And where the fuck is Origi? Another one of those where Klopp tells us it’s something minor and then the player is missing for six weeks. Just when we fucking need him most too. Fuck’s sake. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk, Tsimikas; Fabinho (Milner), Henderson (Firmino), Oxlade-Chamberlain (Keita); Salah, Jota, Mané: