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Nothing wrong with a draw at Stamford Bridge. At 2-0 up you’d like to think we’d see it but but we were ahead against the run of play and Chelsea were the better side for most of the game, and although the chance count was pretty even we probably didn’t deserve anything more than we got. The problem of course is that we needed to win because we fucked up against Leicester. We’ve taken two points from the last nine which isn’t good enough when you’re trying to keep pace with City. That’s why people are reacting the way they are. It’s unfair really, Klopp and this team have basically performed miracles to give us what they have, and even this season they’ve lost only twice. Sure, draws have been costly but three of the six draws have been against City and Chelsea. In the days before oil this would be title winning form. Now though? It gets you top four and maybe within 15 points of City. The frustrating thing to me is that five points from nine would have been sound, considering all three games were away and two of them were at Spurs and Chelsea. So yeah, the Leicester game has completely fucked everything and that’s the main reason we’ve gone from being neck and neck with City to being well off the pace. There are certainly things I can pick holes in from this performance but the fact is Chelsea are a really good side. They’re European Champions, they’ve got top players all over the park and they played really well. The best they’ve played in ages in fact. They were really good and we struggled to match their intensity. It’s not often teams have more possession than us and have us on the back foot so instead of complaining about how we played I think I’ll just accept that we’re talking about two very evenly matched teams here and we were never going to go there and play them off the park. They had more control and more possession than us and it’s understandable. I think we’re better than Chelsea and that the table in May will back that up, but there’s not much in it and they were at home and needing a win just as much as we were. That being said, they were wide open at times and that allowed us to still create chances even when they were on top. I’d have liked us to have played better but as I say, this result feels worse than it should because of what happened at Leicester. I don’t want to keep bringing that up but you’re probably best getting used to it as I can’t see me letting that one go any time soon. We’re in a bad moment. Players are dropping with COVID and injuries, we’re getting no luck whatsoever and to top it off City are getting every possible break imaginable. They’re so far ahead of us because any time they’ve been in a close game VAR has bailed them out with contentious decisions, while for us the opposite has happened. Compare what happened to us at Spurs with what happened to them at Arsenal. These things make a difference, especially when our margin for error is so small. Plus we’ve been ravaged by COVID and they’ve somehow been completely untouched by it. And of course, we lost at Leicester. That’s why there’s an 11 point gap, although it’s only eight if we beat Leeds in our game in hand. Eight is a fucking lot though. Even winning at the Etihad only closes it to five, but maybe if Chelsea beat them next week that changes things a little. I won’t hold my breath but it could happen. I wouldn’t have taken a point if it was offered before this game because a point is of very little use to us. Not in terms of the title. If we accept that we’re playing for second then a point was decent because it was more important for Chelsea to beat us than it was for us to beat them. I haven’t exactly accepted that we’re playing for second even though realistically we are. Miracles can happen, but currently I feel like we’re hanging from a ledge and City are standing over us laughing, about to stand on our fingers and send us hurtling to a Hans Gruber style death. If we’d beaten Chelsea it may have given us renewed vigour in our chase and we couldn’t have asked for a better start when Chelsea gifted us the opening goal. Chalobah should have cut the pass out but got himself into a muddle and didn’t know whether to clear with his foot or head. He tried a diving header, didn’t get enough on it and Sadio ran through to score. I wouldn’t say it was a good finish as it could easily have been blocked on the line. He showed good composure to go around the keeper and he scored so I’m not knocking it, but he came close to not finishing that and if he’d missed it he may not have scored again all season, as the knock to his confidence would have been huge. Chelsea will argue he shouldn’t have even been on the field having caught Azpilacueta with an elbow after just six seconds. I don’t think it was a red card but it wasn’t too far off it. The ref / VAR explanation of it was that it was reckless rather than violent. That’s pretty much spot on really. How often to players get a straight red for those type of incidents? Hardly ever. I also think it happening so early helped him out too. How many refs are going to send someone off six seconds into a game? You need an ego like Mike Dean to even consider it. Anthony Taylor got that right and actually had a good game overall. Still, Sadio was probably one more mistimed challenge away from an early bath and we’ve seen him subbed in those circumstances more than once. To his credit he did a tremendous job of avoiding any kind of situation that could have landed him in trouble and he had his best game in a while. Even before his goal he’d looked dangerous and he created a chance for Mo that was saved by Mendy. That too came from a Chalobah mistake, and he was all over the place early on before settling down and playing well. Chelsea were dominating possession and looked in control, yet any time we got in their half it looked like we could score because they were edgy at the back and our front three looked really lively. Two of them did anyway. Jota not so much. Mo made it 2-0 with yet another worldy to add to the collection. Great ball by Trent, brilliant first touch by Mo, an incredible little feint to make Alonso think he was cutting in on his left foot and then he just blew by him and finished past Mendy at the near post. World class. We had Chelsea on the ropes at that moment. The crowd were stunned after that goal and they were ripe for the picking if we could get a third. We nearly did when Trent split their defence again and sent Mo clear, but Chalobah did really well to get a toe in and force him wide and then did even better to hold him up and block the eventual shot. If we could have scored then it would have been over, but instead we conceded not long after and Chelsea were right back in it. Incredible strike by Kovacic but it all came from a silly free-kick conceded by Milner. He didn’t need to make that challenge as Havertz had over-ran the ball. Kelleher did well to punch Alonso’s shot out to the edge of the box but had no chance with the volley from Kovacic. Great finish, not really anything we could do to prevent it. That got the crowd back into it and instead of taking the sting out of it until half time we went toe to toe with them and let them score again. Mo was beaten too easily by Rudiger and after that it was just bump bump bump and Pulisic is running clean through on goal. Virgil could have come across to apply some pressure but did that fucking mad ‘run back in a straight line’ thing instead. I highlighted it this in the West Ham game. This wasn’t as bad as that but it was fucking weird. Again though, nothing Kelleher could do. He was very good actually and made a brilliant save at 0-0 to deny Pulisic after a poor clearance by Trent. He was really composed on the ball too. He’s a talent, we probably won’t be able to keep him for much longer. Still, his fee will help pay for the Anny Road so all good, right? So 2-2 at half time and just a massive downer. They had all the momentum now and although I still felt that we’d get chances the likelihood was that we’d lose. But we didn’t, and in the second half we didn’t really give up too many chances. Kelleher made a save from point bank range but it was straight at him. Aside from that Chelsea had loads of the ball, lots of it around our box, but we defended pretty well. We didn’t have too many chances either. Sadio had one shot saved after a nice run and Mo was within a whisker of another amazing goal but his chip just wasn’t high enough and Mendy got back to turn it around the post. Klopp wasn’t there and who knows how involved he was. We made changes, sending on Keita and Ox for Milner and Jota. I think Jota may even have been protected for next week’s game at Arsenal as currently he’s our only available forward for that game. Ox did nothing really. Not bad, but not good. Keita didn’t do much either, a couple of nice passes into the front players but that was it. Sadio was replaced by Jones late on too, and we won’t see him for a month now. Remember a few years ago when we were in great shape when he left and when he came back the whole thing had burned to the ground? Not gonna lie, the possibility of a repeat has crossed my mind. The second half was alright. We had as many chances as they did and neither side did enough to win. The only winners were City really. I was angry at the lads after Leicester but after this I just feel sorry for them. They battled, they gave everything they had and they came away with a creditable draw despite blowing a two goal lead. It feels well worse than it should do though. The annoying thing is that against Leicester it was the forwards who were off and that cost us. Against Chelsea we had Sadio and Mo delivering but the rest of the performance was a little off. Especially the midfield. Hendo’s performance was weird. I can’t remember him being less influential than this in any game for a long time. Every time he had the ball he seemed to have zero time and had to either pop it off one touch or just knock it forward, often at full stretch. The second goal comes from that. He still had some nice little interchanges with Trent and Mo but he was hardly in it. Then there’s Fabinho. Every time he had the ball I thought he was going to get caught in possession, and a few times he did. Nowhere near his best. He has had COVID recently though and that might have had an impact on him, especially as he’ll have missed some training. Milner was actually the pick of the midfield but that free-kick he gave away was just stupid and unnecessary. Other than that he was pretty good until he was replaced by Keita. We got a decent hour out of him, apart from that fucking foul. Midfield has been an issue of late as we’ve just had to make so many changes from game to game. When we had Thiago and Fabinho with Hendo (or even Ox) we looked great. Since then, it’s been mix and match But of course fucking Thiago is injured again. And of course it’s one that has the medical staff baffled. It always is. Getting absolutely fed up with it now. He’s great and we’re a much more formidable team when he’s in it, but we can’t rely on him and it’s so frustrating. He’s not quite as flaky as Keita but the difference is that when Keita is injured I don’t really care as he’s not important. Thiago is. And I’ll ask again, just where the fuck is Origi? Klopp’s done his usual trick there. Said it’s a minor injury, didn’t elaborate what it actually was and then before you know it a month has passed and the player still isn’t back in training. It’s AFCON time now and the players we had earmarked to replace Sadio and Mo are ALL unavailable. I mean fucking hell, what can you do about that? It’s easy for fans to complain about lack of investment and there’s obviously merit to that, but the plan to cope without Sadio and Mo was for Jota, Bobby, Divock and Taki to fill in for a few games and that’s really not a bad plan. But circumstances have conspired against us and Jota is the only one left standing so we’re basically fucked now for the Arsenal game. Everything has turned to shit over the last couple of weeks and only a small part of that is actually our own fault. The Leicester loss is entirely on us but pretty much everything else that has happened is incredibly bad luck and it’s really fucking demoralising. It obviously hasn’t helped that we’ve blown so many leads too. That’s been a problem all season and I don’t know why. Game management has become a big problem for some reason. It was criminal to concede twice before half time but we’ve also done this shit against Brentford and Brighton too. It happened against Milan as well. We just need to battle through this now because it’s a really bad moment for us. Arsenal away is going to be really tough given the personnel problems we have but at least there’s a second leg. We need to get a result that keeps it alive for the Anfield game when hopefully some of the absentees will be back. Star man is Kostas. I thought Konate was decent too, while Sadio and Mo were very good in the first half and less impactful in the second. Kelleher is in the conversation too. Team: Kelleher; Alexander-Arnold, Konate, Van Dijk, Tsimikas; Fabinho, Henderson, Milner (Keita); Salah, Jota (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Mané (Jones):

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.