Leaderboard

Monday May 23: The aftermath. I’m still pretty gutted today. Yesterday was hard to take and was made even worse for me when I got home from Anfield and threw the golf on the TV looking for a distraction, only to have salt poured into the open wound as Mito Pereira, a 110/1 outsider I’d bet on to win the US PGA Championship, went the full Aston Villa and blew a lead playing the 18th by hitting into the water. So yeah, a shitty day and today doesn’t feel any better. I’ll be fine by tomorrow I expect but right now I’m just full of resentment, anger and disgust. Towards Villa, City, the Premier League, fans of pretty much everyone other than Palace and of course to Mito fucking Pereira. I’m just catching up on some of the other stuff that happened yesterday and the first thing I want to do is talk about that Richarlison tweet. He’s done that to trigger us, to get under our skin, to rub our noses in the ‘disappointment’ of finishing with 92 points and second to a team that has blatantly cheated. It hasn’t worked though. I’m annoyed at the tweet but it’s not for the reasons he intended. What annoys me is his lack of self awareness. This cunt just seen his team lose 5-1 and they survived relegation by the skin of their teeth. Yet he thinks it’s acceptable to poke fun at Liverpool for not winning the fucking quadruple!! I mean, even by Everton standards that’s something else. This is the same cunt who posted a picture of himself with the number 7 on his back after Villa beat us 7-2, and then went crying to the Brazilian media about how Liverpool fans are always mocking Everton. He’s the fucking worst. Biggest cunt in football and I’m including the rapists and nonces in that. I don’t think I’ve ever wished serious injury on a footballer but I’d gladly make an exception for him. I don’t think ever seen him smile. I know he plays for Everton so there’s not much to smile about, but even allowing for that he seems like a miserable, ornery bastard. Even when he scores there’s no joy. He just looks angry all the time, the horrible little fucking scrote. The irony is that he’s doing all this shit to play to the gallery, but if another club comes calling for him this summer you won’t see him for dust (and whatsmore, he’d jump at the chance to come here if we were ever stupid enough to give him the opportunity). Then he’d tell the fans he had no choice and that the club forced him out to pay off their debts. They’ll believe it too, because “Richy lad fuckin’ loves us yeno”. Meanwhile, City had their parade today. If you can call it that. There were more people in the guard of honour for Divock yesterday than there were lining the streets of Manchester. My first reaction when I saw the footage was to laugh. The more I thought about it though, it stopped being funny and it just annoyed me. Even most of their own fans realise how hollow the success is, that’s why the parade’s are so shit. Any other team in the country that won a title would put this to shame. Fucking hell, Sunderland took 75,000 fans to London last week for the League Two playoffs. If they ever won a title, literally every non Newcastle fan in a 50 mile radius would be lining the streets. I resent them having days like this because they don’t fucking deserve them. It’s wasted on them and I’m not buying the excuse that it’s because it’s become normal now so they take it for granted. We wouldn’t. United didn’t. Besides, wasn’t their first parade an abject embarrassment too? I looked at De Bruyne on that coach today, staring down at the sparsely populated pavement and I just thought “knobhead”. Some might feel that it’s a shame and that he’s wasted there. That he deserves better. He doesn’t. He fucking chose to be there. No-one twisted his arm. He chose to extend his contract so fuck him. Fuck all of those players on that bus and especially fuck the manager. This is exactly what they deserve, the sportswashing pricks. When De Bruyne hangs it up he’ll be viewed as Aguero is. A great player who really shouldn’t have spent the best years of his career at a club not really befitting his talents. He’ll have medals of course, but its hollow success that means fuck all. Whatever happens in Paris on Saturday our lads will have one of the greatest days of their lives when the parade hits Liverpool next week. You think City players will be telling their grandkids about the 20 minute bus ride they had around the Etihad in front of fewer people than you get at an Everton pitch invasion? Our parade is over 8 miles and it will be packed the whole way around. Theirs was less than one mile and most of it looked like a deleted scene from “28 days later”. Look, I get it. It’s understandable they don’t have a million people showing up like we do. They just don’t have the fan base. It’s not that they’re a small club, clearly they aren’t and never have been. They have more fans than most clubs but they aren’t anywhere near as passionate as most. They might be the most apathetic fans in the entire league and it’s completely understandable too. How would you feel if we were owned by Qatar, Abu Dhabi or the Saudis? I wouldn’t be going to any trophy parades either. Nothing City win is worth anything. It’s hollow and meaningless and no-one gives a fuck. Even loads of their own fans can’t even be arsed showing up to celebrate it. So the next time when Guardiola is crysarsing about a lack of recognition for their ‘achievements’, maybe he should look a bit closer to home. If even their own fans are apathetic about it why should anyone else care? The laughable thing is City are claiming to have the most commercial revenue of any club in the world. Seriously, Everton would have double the amount of people at a parade if they ever win anything again. Granted, there’s more chance of Ed Sheehan making a decent song, but you get the point. In fact, City would have had a better turnout if they’d gone down County Road. I’m not even kidding. Tuesday May 25: I almost forgot, the Carvalho signing was made official yesterday and early reports say he won’t be loaned out. I’m not convinced by that at all and still expect him to go back top Fulham once pre-season is over, but then I suppose Divock won’t be here *wipes away tear* and maybe Taki goes as well, so there might be room in the squad for him. He’s apparently viewed as a front three player who could also play as a ten if we went 4-2-3-1. I’m still not in “Champions League Final mode” yet and I’m finding Sunday’s irritation and sense of injustice tough to shake off. Not for me. Not for the fans in general. I’m feeling bad for Klopp and the lads more than anything. It’s 2019 all over again. They had a season that would have won the title in virtually any other year but they were beaten by a club playing with loaded dice. You know what the worst part of Sunday was, and I only actually seen it this morning? The video taken from the lower Kenny stand of the lads celebration when Mo put us in front. I could see from my seat on the opposite side of the field that they were really excited and clearly thought this might be the goal that wins us the title. They didn’t know about Villa shitting all down their own legs. It’s only when I saw the video this morning though that the extent of it really hit me. They’re all massively fired up and Joel starts shouting to the fans “What’s the score? What’s the score?” The fans tell them 3-2 and you can just see the air being sucked out of the group. Shoulders slump, they turn to run back for the restart and although Mo does his customary celebration he was probably gutted too. That hurt me because they deserve better. I know they’ll all go home to their mansions and their hot wives and their lives won’t be any worse off for this, but I don’t care. I want success for them because they’re just a brilliant group of lads. It’s not just that they’re incredible footballers. Klopp has assembled a squad of great people who I love rooting for. We don’t have any dickheads, they’re all relatable, nice lads who work their fucking nuts off for our club. I look around the league at some of the other big clubs and the difference couldn’t be more stark. Look at that United squad. Imagine rooting for that group of knob heads. Arsenal too. It’s different with them as they’re nowhere near as awful as the United squad, but they’re still mentality midgets who love them smell of their own farts. I’m so thankful for what we have right now, and I just wish them the success they deserve, for them even more than for myself. Not sure if any of that makes sense but I’m just trying to articulate how I’m feeling today. Wednesday May 26: Klopp is voted Manager of the Year by the LMA and also wins the Premier League Manager of the Year award. The only people arguing about it are City fans who have been brainwashed by Guardiola’s conspiracy theories, and of course Evertonians. Apparently “whoever wins the league should get it”. If that was the case why would there even be a vote? Interestingly, apparently there was a small spattering of booing when Guardiola’s name was read out as a nominee. That tells me that Nick Harris, Tariq Panja, Miguel Delaney and a few others must have been in attendance and probably had their drink on. Love it lads. It’s mental that anyone can even dispute Klopp getting it though given that this season he has done something that’s never been done before. It was an open and shut case. City fans are whining like mad on Twitter and it just further convinces me that these pricks don’t really want to win stuff for themselves, they just don’t want us winning it. The fume from them that Klopp gets more respect than Guardiola is just ridiculous. We finished just one point behind them but we won two cups and might become European Champions. It’s really not a contentious decision. Mind you, these twitter accounts are probably mostly bots anyway paid for by Abu Dhabi. Shame they can’t get them to attend the parade as well. Some interesting stuff from Sadio and Mo today on their contracts. Mo said that he won’t talk about it ahead of the final but that come what may he’ll still be here next season. He gave the impression that he doesn’t think there’s any rush to get it done as a result of that. Sadio was asked about his future and said “I’ll tell you after the final” but didn’t give the same assurances that Mo did about being here. Some have taken that as a sign he’s leaving, but it didn’t look like it on the video. He was grinning when he said it and it didn’t look like someone who was saying “I’m off just as soon as this final is over”, but Sadio is a little bit of a strange cat and English isn’t his first language, so it could mean anything. I really hope he is close to agreeing a new deal and that it will be announced once they’ve finalised everything. I don’t think Mo is anywhere near agreeing anything but I don’t think he’s too bothered and I don’t think the club are either. He’s here next year and they’ll try to work the rest out as they go. If Mo is talking about leaving on a Bosman though that might be forcing our hand with Sadio if he is planning on doing the same. I can’t see the club letting both go for nothing. Bobby is an interesting one too though as he’s in the same boat but no-one ever talks about it. He told the Brazilian media he really wants to stay. He said it over and over in fact. I don’t think he’s getting a new deal but if he does it would have to be on reduced terms as he’s not the vital component he was when he signed his last one. It’s a fucking minefield, no wonder Michael Edwards is quitting. Thursday May 27: Paddy Power have a video of former Everton players ‘pretending’ to be Real Madrid fans. Some of it is quite funny actually. Reidy is sound, I like him and he’s just having a laugh. Kevin Campbell, who I really don’t like, was also pretty funny in fairness. Stubbs and Ball though, proper fucking bitter bastards them. They probably didn’t even want paying to do this. In fact, I bet they didn’t even need any lines, they were just being themselves. My big takeaway from it is that I can’t imagine our former players doing shit like this. Not least because I can’t imagine Everton in a European Cup final, but even if they were, could you see any of our lads doing that shit? Maybe the likes of Ruddock and Babb I suppose, but I’m not even sure they would. Ok, Ruddock 100% would, but it’s the fact that this is so natural to Blues players that’s really damning. There were probably dozens of them auditioning for the roles, including half the current team. Give it 15 years and it will be Pickford and Gordon doing this shit. The Sadio to Bayern thing is still being heavily reported in Germany and some weird rumours started here that we’re in for Kane to replace him. Couple of points here. Very few people despise Kane more than I do. Also, very few people rate him more highly than I do. He’s world class and would fit perfectly into our team with Mo and Diaz either side of him. That said, there’s no fucking way this is even remotely doable. Even City couldn’t afford him, so there’s no way we can and even if we could spend that, we wouldn’t. The idea of us spending 100m plus on a 29 year old is laughable. We’re not Real Madrid or Man United, that goes against everything that we do. Admittedly, I was really surprised when we signed Thiago but he only cost £30m. If we have £100m to spend on a player this summer, it would go on Bellingham who is 11 years younger than Kane. Friday May 28: I see Stevie showed up to our training session today. I wouldn’t have let him in. Not unless he had the severed head of Tyrone Mings in a sack as a peace offering. He did a video for the club website too wishing the lads luck and predicting a 2-0 win. Feels a bit weird having the manager of Villa doing that. Not sure I’d like that if I was a Villa fan, especially after the shit few months they’ve had and the embarrassing collapse on the final day. There’s been loads of good media stuff ahead of the game tomorrow. Trent and Robbo did a press conference, Sadio did a boss piece with Carra and Klopp has done various bits and pieces too. He’s done a sit down interview with Asif Kapadia (the guy who made the Maradona movie) which is more about the Klopp the man than the manager. It’s great, you should check it out. The Sadio stuff is really worrying me now as Klopp was even more cryptic than Sadio was on Wednesday. "I couldn't care less in the moment, we are all fully focused on this game. No concerns, completely normal - it's not the first time in my career before decisive games that Bayern Munich rumours come up!" Ok, so that was fine, I think. But then when he was pressed he said this… "This is the wrong moment to speak about that. Wherever Sadio will play next season, he will be a big player, definitely!" What the fuck? “Wherever he will play”. That really doesn’t sound encouraging at all. This is stressing me out when I should just be looking forward to the game and being excited about it. Instead I’m shitting myself that the game is going to finish, we’ll have lost and the Sadio is gonna reveal he’s off. The weird thing is that if you ask me who the club should keep if it’s a straight choice of Sadio or Mo, then I’d say Mo. If you ask me whose departure would upset me most on a personal level, it’s Sadio. I’ll be fucking gutted if he goes and it’s casting a bit of a shadow over the game for me. If we don’t win and then Sadio leaves, coming a week after what happened on the final day of the season, fucking hell that would leave a bad taste over the summer and make it hard to remember how amazing the rest of the season had been. And then just when it would seem things couldn’t get any more depressing, we might go and sign Kane… And totally redeem ourselves! Alright fucking hell, calm down, I’m not saying I’d be made up if we signed Kane*. At least Thiago was in training and looked to be at full speed. Whether that’s enough for him to make the starting eleven we’ll have to see, but having him on the pitch is going to be vital. Fabinho too, not least because it will free up Hendo to be able to help out Trent and cover for him when he goes forward. I don’t want Naby having to help out against Vinicius Jr. He’s the only Madrid player that genuinely scares me. Although they will have Bale and Hazard on the bench probably, which really unsettles me. Hazard has done fuck all since he’s been there but it would be typical of him to turn it on against us. He always did. I’ve been confident about this game all along but now that it’s upon us my arse is going a bit and I’m seeing all kinds of bad potential scenarios. I need to come down off the ledge because we are a much better team than them and ultimately if we perform we should win. I ask myself the question “do I trust Klopp and the players?” and the answer is that I trust them as much as it’s humanly possible to trust a sports team. So I need to focus on that and keep the negative thoughts out. Up the fucking Redmen, let’s do this. * I probably would be ….and that was the week that was