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Monday Jan 3: United are proper fucking shit aren’t they? Anyone can lose 1-0 to Wolves as they’re very much a 1-0 type of team if you aren’t quite at it, but by all accounts this should have been 4-0 as Wolves played them off the park. It’s great, the new fella hasn’t been able to get anything out of them that Solskjaer couldn’t, and that has given the “Ole Loyalists” the chance to jump on him and say he isn’t doing any better than their guy. They’re absolutely fucked and it doesn’t look like a quick fix. Until now I expected them to sneak into fourth by the end of the season but I can’t see it. They’re not as good as Arsenal or Spurs. Can you believe that? Damn. Saw some rumours today that Neco wants out. That would be a mistake. Why leave now? His Wales place isn’t under threat as they’re not going to drop him for some League One jabroni just because he’s ‘only’ on our bench. If he wants to go in the summer that would be more understandable, but leaving now when there’s a chance of winning trophies here makes no sense. And the other thing is we should not even be entertaining the idea of letting anyone leave if they might be needed. So that also goes for Joe Gomez who is on the radar of Stevie. Again, we’d have to be fucking mental to let him leave now. I do think a decision is going to have to be made on him this summer and that decision will probably be to sell him. He’s fourth choice and it’s difficult to see how that changes when the other three are all better than him. His situation reminds me of where Ox was a couple of months ago. He doesn’t get many opportunities and when he does he doesn’t look good because he’s not in match shape, which in turn means less opportunities. I like Joe but his future here doesn’t look good right now. I mentioned last week about us supposedly being after some lad from Benfica. I got that wrong, it wasn’t Benfica it was Porto. Luis Diaz. I vaguely remember him from the group matches we had. Isn’t he the lad who played on the right and kept throwing himself to the floor all the time? It’s a no from me, and at £60m I’m confident in saying it’s a no from FSG too. Nothing to see here, move along. Tuesday Jan 4: Fucking hell it really is silly season. Reports online that Klopp wants Eden Hazard “as cover” for Salah and Mané. His wages are probably more than Sadio and Mo combined and he has the fitness levels of Thiago. There’s more chance of us signing Micky Hazard. It’s a shame what’s happened to him though as I can honestly say he’s one of the best players I’ve ever seen. He was fucking incredible, especially when he played against us. He’s finished now though. New Melwood is set to be closed after more COVID cases and we’ve asked for the game to be postponed. The keeper coaches all have it and the rumour is all the keepers do too. Except for one that is. One of them couldn’t even catch COVID. I almost want it to go ahead now though so we can have the “Karius redemption game”. What a story that would be. I know he’s a knobhead but I feel bad for him. No-one wanted him, even on loan, and he’s had to stay here and train even though he’s about fifth in line for a game. Of course he’s being well compensated for it, but money doesn’t solve everything and it might be a tough time for him mentally. Of course it’s also possible he’s not that arsed and I actually hope that is the case. Wednesday Jan 5: City announce a new “luxury hotel partner”. Of course it’s one in Abu Dhabi that the Sheikh owns. DO they have any sponsors that are actually legit? I bet they don’t. It would be nice if this was called out in the media but other than a few journos on twitter (Tariq Panja & Nick Harris especially) and Simon Jordan on Talksport, no-one else really seems to be arsed. It’s almost like they’re all told to avoid it at all costs as it’s never fucking mentioned. It should be mentioned as a caveat in every single conversation about City, but it never is. Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along. *sigh* Ljinders cancels his presser as he’s now tested positive. There were more cases of players getting it too apparently and eventually the EFL agreed to the request to postpone. It’s a farce, everyone has been cancelling games while we’ve played through even without our manager and key players. Then as soon as we ask for postpone a game we’re suddenly the bad guys. The idea that we’d pull a fast one because we’re scared of Arsenal is offensive, especially as we’ve now lost home advantage in the second leg as it’s been switched around. The way Arsenal fans have carried on over this I’m even more desperate to spank the twats now. I’m only sorry that the second leg wasn’t put back a few more days so there would be a chance that Sadio and Mo could get back in time if their nations are knocked out early. Imagine the fume. Meanwhile, we’ve down a £7m bid for Big Nat from a Serie A club and we’re holding out for £15m, which we’ll probably get from a club over here. I’d love him to go to Napoli or somewhere with a really passionate fanbase that will shower him with love and affection. Imagine murals of Nat adorning the streets of Naples alongside the ones of Diego. I’ll be gutted if he ends up at fucking Newcastle, but I could see that happening as they need a centre half and have apparently targeted Tarkowski, who will cost five times what Nat will despite being half the player. West Ham would be alright, I could live with that. The Bobby Moore comparisons would be inevitable but that’s a price he’ll have to pay. Newcastle are being linked with Divock too. Weirdly, there are reports that we only want £7m for him because his wages are so high that’s putting clubs off. I can believe the second part, but £7m?? Fucking hell, he’s worth more to us here as he’s capable of scoring decisive goals that can make us millions. If we sell him for £7m I’ll be disgusted. On a related note, I’ll say again, Michael Edwards need to fuck off now as he shouldn’t be playing any part in any deals we do in or out. Thursday Jan 6: Fuck all happening at the moment so Talksport turned their attention to Newcastle today. Every time I jumped in the car and stuck the radio on they were speculating about who Newcastle might buy. This is obscene really. It’s this kind of shit that normalises (and glamourises) what’s going on up there. We had the initial uproar about human rights abusers buying another one of our teams and how we don’t want “another Man City” but as soon as the dust settles the likes of Sky, Talksport and some of the papers suddenly don’t care about that because they get to talk bollocks about how much money they’ll spend and who they’ll spend it on. Sickening. I mean, if only they dedicated the same attention to City’s continued cheating. For the second day running they announced a massive sponsorship deal with a company owned by their owner, and no-one other than Liverpool fans (and the usual handful of dogged journalists) seem to give a fuck about it. I don’t know what’s happening here though because wasn’t a restriction put in place about this shit as soon as the Newcastle deal happened? Remember, when 18 clubs voted against this kind of sponsorship deal and only two voted for it. Actually I think City abstained, but I may be wrong. Either way, this was voted on and it’s not supposed to be happening. So how come City have announced these two deals? Staying with City, all of a sudden they’ve had a COVID outbreak. Well ain’t that convenient. They’ve avoided it all this time but now they have an FA Cup game at a lower league club and don’t need their first teamers, suddenly they have COVID. I’m not buying it. I don’t think they have had an outbreak at all. I reckon this is bullshit. I reckon they’ve been ignoring positive tests or they haven’t been testing at all, but now to throw people off the scent (there’s been a groundswell of people asking how come they’ve been COVID free) they’ve telling us Guardiola and seven players have it. I wouldn’t believe a fucking word that comes out of that club as there are no depths they wouldn’t plumb to get what they want. Cunts. Meanwhile, Coutinho is close to linking up with Stevie at Villa. It’s a loan deal and it’s claimed five other English clubs are interested. No word on whether we’re one of them. Given our current predicament with Mo, Sadio, Div and Taki all unavailable you could make a case for doing this. We rarely do anything in January and that’s understandable in some ways, not least because it takes players a while to learn how we play and very few will make an instant impact. Coutinho knows how we play though so that’s one problem we wouldn’t have to worry about. We won’t do it because in three or four weeks we’ll probably have everyone available again and won’t need him, but getting him on loan would be a decent insurance policy for the rest of the season. Not gonna happen though and I’m completely fine with that. However, if it did happen I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be absolutely buzzing about it. There’s also an argument to be had that he might be shite now as he’s done nothing since he left. He might be another Torres. Friday Jan 7: Looks like we’ll be fielding a lot of kids in the cup tomorrow against Shrewsbury because the talk is that we’ve got loads of COVID cases. The youth approach worked last time. I had a great time that night at Anfield when we beat them 1-0 but I’m not sure we’ll be able to pull that off again. Most of the lads who played in that one aren’t even here anymore though. That’s the downside to all these loan deals for people like Cain and Clarkson, although Clarkson is back after his move to Blackburn didn’t go well. Maybe he’ll play, but it depends which first teamers are available. Normally I’d say rest everyone but not this time. Any senior player who is fit and available should start this one because they need the minutes. We know how shite we are when we have time off and I want to see them get some minutes before we play Arsenal. Presumably we’ll have Alisson, Bobby and Joel back, so those three should play along with whoever else hasn’t been hit by COVID. In other FA CUP / COVID related news, poor old Man City were still able to field what looked very much like a first choice line up at Swindon tonight. There was one kid in the team but that didn’t stop that bootlicking cunt Henry Winter from tweeting this…. I mean where do you fucking start with that? It’s this kind of enabling shit that allows City to do what they do with the financial doping. Winter should be hammering them for that, but instead he’s giving them ‘kudos’ for ‘just getting on with it’ with their ten full internationals against League Two opponents. What a pompous little twat he is. Honestly, if you were to search his tweets and break them down into percentages, a good half of them will include “Foden” and “Etihad Campus”. He’s like a fucking hype man for Abu Dhabi. You’ve got journals like Nick Harris with a fraction of the followers Winter has at least trying to address the giant elephant in the room(and getting absolute dogs abuse in the replies from the sports washed City mob) but the “nation’s number one football writer” is vying with fat Martin Samuel to see who can blow the most smoke up City’s arse. Absolutely zero journalistic integrity in that fucker. He’ll be the same with Newcastle in a few years if things play out the way they hope, the absolutely dreadful twat. I wouldn’t normally see any of it as avoid City like the plague, but I was at my parents house and they had it on so I caught bits and pieces of the first half. Swindon were fucking around at the back and trying to play out through the keeper, but the keeper had two left feet and didn’t look comfortable. I’m certainly not against lower league teams playing a passing game and building from the back, but there is a price to be paid for that and the days of lower league clubs pulling off upsets against the good teams will soon be over if everyone does that. Cup upsets are usually down to long balls, set-pieces, physical football. The bigger clubs don’t like going to shitty stadiums with muddy pitches and physical opponents, but that hardly happens anymore. The pitches are great, most teams try and play football and generally it’s a lot less likely that you’ll get an upset. I’m not talking about Championship sides beating Premier League sides. They can do it by playing football. League One and Two sides though, they’re not going to beat a top flight side by playing like Ajax. That’s not how the Crazy Gang did it. It’ll be interesting to see what Shrewsbury do this weekend because last time they came here they shit their pants against a team of teenagers. They played like they were up against our first team and paid us too much respect, but from what I remember they were quite alehouse and only threatened from crosses and set-pieces. ….and that was the week that was.