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Monday Jun 20: Calvin Ramsay signed yesterday. His interview was really good, he walked the line perfectly between supreme self belief and cockiness. He didn’t come across at all arrogant or cocky, yet you can tell he isn’t going to be overawed. We’ve got a good little group of kids now who will hopefully form the cornerstone of the future squad. Trent, Ibou, Curtis, Harvey, Carvalho and now Ramsay. If we add the Bellingham brothers to that then even better. I’d like to see us sign another young striker though, Not for now, but someone boss to play in the u21s and maybe the cup games. Maybe Cannonnier will come through to be that player but it concerns me that despite all his goals for the 18s he wasn’t promoted to the 23s. I’ve watched him a fair bit and think he’s good, but he’s very much an Aguero type, penalty box goalscorer, and we don’t really play like that do we? We might see him, Carvalho and Gordon a fair bit in the 21s this year though, which would be enough to make me tune in to their games for the first time in a good few years. That level has been a waste of time in recent seasons. The 18s are always good to watch but the 23s has just not really had anything to get my attention and make me want to tune in. Meanwhile, Gini suffered the ignominy of being voted the biggest flop in Ligue 1. Let me state for the record I love Gini Wijnaldum and think he’s fucking boss. What I’m about to say is not an indictment of him, but rather just highlighting the Klopp factor. In the season before he joined us, he was relegated at Newcastle. In the season after he left, he’s been voted the biggest flop in the league and been dropped by the national team for which he was a fucking superstar while he was with us. In between he was fucking boss and played virtually every week in the best team in Europe, while tearing shit up for Holland. I’d like to say that others (Salah especially) should look at the fate of Gini (and Coutinho) and see them as warnings as to what happens when you leave the sanctity of Klopp and this team, but it doesn’t work that way because players always think they’ll be a success wherever they go. They see others struggle and think “that won’t happen to me, I’m too good”. They have to think that way I guess, as without that self belief they’d never have gotten as far as they have. There was a twitter rumour today that we were looking at Gini on loan as a stop gap until we can get Bellingham next summer. I’m calling bullshit on that. You could make a case for why it would make a lot of sense, especially if we sell Ox, but I just don’t think Klopp thinks that way. Once you’re gone he moves on and doesn’t look back. I’m good either way, if we did bring him back on loan I’d be happy but if it was my call I probably wouldn’t do it. Speaking of Ox though, the reports of late claim we aren’t going to sell him. I’m calling bullshit on that too. He never played, he could barely even make a nine man bench, he’s on a good wedge and he’ll be able to leave for free in 12 months. If we aren’t looking to sell him then someone needs to look for another job as that’s batshit crazy. And speaking of batshit crazy, African twitter everybody…. Tuesday Jun 21: So much for any forlorn hope we had that UEFA might actually for once do the decent thing, take responsibility and exonerate fans from blame for the shambles of Paris. But no, they’ve had all this time to get to the bottom of it but they’re blaming fans with fake tickets and the club for insisting on paper tickets and not digital ones. Absolute fucking Tory cunts they are, passing the buck, lying through their teeth, making claims with no evidence to back any of it up and smearing the easy target. That press conference today was an absolute fucking disgrace. I don’t know what we can do about it though. Part of me would love us to boycott this year’s CL but it’s cutting our nose off to spite our face. The club won’t do it and nor should they. I’d be proud if we did, but ultimately we’d be the ones to suffer so it’s pointless. We could target the sponsors but there won’t be enough of an appetite for it, people would quickly get bored. Boycotting CL games hits our own club in the pocket so what can we do? They’ll just keep blaming us and ignoring anything the club says to dispute it, because they know they can. I’m no legal expert but as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t see any reason why fans can’t sue UEFA for what happened in Paris, and we could also sue them for slander too after this shit today and what they said at the time. In any other walk of life they would be sued for that shit, but for some reason in football you’re allowed to treat people like criminals with no recourse. Chelsea and Arsenal have joined Spurs in the fight to land Richarlison. The only club missing in this “cunt’s row” are United. Come on Ten Hag, you know it makes sense. Richarlison going to any of those would be quite fitting though because it wouldn’t go well for him. Playing for any of those clubs, you can’t get away with scoring half a dozen goals from open play every year. Unlike Evertonians, the fans of those clubs won’t settle for that or be blinded to it by a few instagram posts trolling the Reds. Chelsea are also after Sterling, which would be a strange move for him given his history with them. Maybe he thinks joining them is the best way to stop the racial abuse? I wouldn’t bet on it myself like. And defo don’t be trying to get on trains down there. Sterling is an interesting one though because City have been looking to move him on for a while it seems, but because of his huge salary there aren’t many potential destinations for him. He won’t want to take a step down from City but he’s not going to be taking a big pay cut either, so where does that leave him? Real Madrid maybe? Personally I don’t get why City aren’t doing all they can to keep him as he’s been a massive part of what they’ve done, but then we didn’t go balls out to keep Mané, who I suppose would be our Sterling equivalent in terms of position and the huge impact he’s had. Wednesday Jun 22: “When my agent first told me about Bayern’s interest, I was immediately excited. I saw myself there right away. I was hooked…it’s one of the biggest clubs in the world and the team is always fighting for every title. So for me, it was a very good idea and the right decision to come here. My agent told me that there were enquiries from other clubs. That’s part of the business. But I got the feeling right away when Bayern presented their plan to me. I found myself in Bayern’s plan more than anyone else. I’m here for FC Bayern. And I will do everything to win titles with my team-mates!” That all just makes me sad, especially as he hasn’t even signed for them yet. I don’t think any less of Sadio and none of that changes what I think about him, or indeed how I suspected the whole thing played out. He knew months ago he was going to leave because in my opinion he got the feeling he wasn’t wanted. I’ve felt all along that the club have tried much harder to keep Mo than they have Sadio and I’m sure he felt that way too. I don’t think he’s bothered as I expect he is happy to have a change of scenery and a new challenge after all he’s achieved here. I don’t think the club are bothered either as they plan two years in advance and probably had every intention of moving him on this summer anyway. This is a deal that suited all partiers except those of us who love Sadio and would rather he stayed. Taki is gone too. £12.5m to Monaco. He’s worth more than that. A lot more. But so far it does look like the market has slowed down a bit this summer. Considering what we paid for him and the fact he helped us win two cups, it’s a decent enough bit of business. We’ve now lost Mané, Origi and Taki from the group of forwards and added Nunez and Carvalho. As things stand, we’re considerably weaker than we were but it all depends on how good the new lads are and if Kaide Gordon can step up. My trust in Klopp and the staff mean I’m confident we’ll be fine, but if I take a step back from it and put that faith to one side, this might not go well. Will we be as dominant in the league and in Europe without Sadio? He’s been a mainstay in everything we’ve done and he dovetailed brilliantly with the other forwards. Nunez looks exciting but he’s a completely different player to Sadio (which is kind of the point, I know). There’s risk involved here, even if I believe we’ll be fine. It isn’t just about how our first choice line up has been impacted though. Taki and Div didn’t play much this season but their contributions were the reason we were able to progress through the early rounds of the cups. Without that, we don’t win a couple double and we end the season empty handed. We’ve now lost both of them. Are we going to get the same kind of contributions in those cups from whoever fills the spots they would have had? Hopefully, but who knows. This is probably the most significant summer we’ve had since the one when we missed out on Van Dijk. Ever since then it’s just been fine tuning, nothing more. This is more of a retooling job. Thursday Jun 23: Forest join Fulham in the race to sign Neco. £15m or so is the reported fee, which is probably on the low side but again, it’s a sign of the market this year. Forest’s best player was their right back but he’s going (or gone, I’m not sure) to Spurs and they want Neco as a replacement. If I was him I’d join Fulham as he’s done well there and they like him. He can live in London, play with his mate Harry Wilson and not have to be around Forest fans. No brainer really. Depends on who offers us the most money though I guess. Forest are already inadvertently boosting our coffers by signing that lad we sold to Germany after loaning him out for about five years. Taiwo Adoniyi I think. We had a sell on clause and will pocket £1.6m or something for him when he signs for Forest. Do we still have that South American full back who has been on loan since about 2015? Anderson Aroya or something? *checks wiki* Yeah, Anderson Arroyo. Still an LFC player officially. Him and Awoniyi, the kind of mad signings I’d make on footy manager knowing that they would never get a work permit but they had boss stats and were cheap. We had the Brazilian lad too, Allan was it? Defo Michael Edwards having a footy manager phase that. Good business though to be fair to him, we made a few quid on Adoniyi. Be interesting to see him at Forest to see how good he actually is. Meanwhile, City have made another signing. Kalvin Phillips has joined them for around £50m or so. Good player but he’s going to be on their bench a lot as he’s not better than Rodri. He can keep Grealish company. Friday June 24: I’ve been thinking a fair bit about Newcastle this week. Mainly because of all the shit the Saudis are doing to ruin golf. At the moment there’s uproar in the golf world about that but it’ll die down as it just wears you down after a while. It just becomes normalised because people eventually lose the appetite to argue against it or to even think about it. It’s already happened at Newcastle. The initial storm about them being taken over by Saudis has died down and all you’re going to get now is people talking about them as a legitimate football club ready to take on the big boys. The only talk around them these days is who will they buy and how much will they spend. Ray Parlour, who I actually like as he seems like a genuine fella who just enjoys life, said today they could “do a Leicester” and win the league next year. That wasn’t even the most stupid thing he said either. He also claimed it would be a good thing because “its boring” seeing Man City and Liverpool dominating. I mean fucking hell, talk about taking the most simplistic possible view. Ray is thick as fuck. As I say, he seems like a good lad, but he’s not the brightest bulb in the box. Talking about Newcastle the way he is though just legitimises the cunts and gives them what they want. It worked with City and it will work with Newcastle, because only a handful of journalists will continue to fight the good fight, and the rest will go down the Parlour route and fixate on what Newcastle can do on the pitch with all the money they have. They signed Nick Pope today. He’s going to make fuck all difference to them really but this is the kind of signing they’ll need to make to begin with. You don’t go from where they are to all of a sudden signing the world’s best players. You have to steadily improve the quality of players until you secure European football and you can then go from there. When that happens, we have another Man City on our hands. I don’t think I’ll have the energy to bother with any of it if we reach that stage. There’s basically no point. I won’t even be able to watch golf instead because the oil cunts will have fucked that up too. On a lighter note today, United coach Darren Fletcher has recommended to their new gaffer that they may not need to sign a new midfielder because the answer to their problem lies within their ranks already. Who is he talking about? Wait for it…. Harry Maguire! Fuck me, imagine that big slow bastard playing centre mid against Bernardo and De Bruyne in a Manc derby. He turns slower than milk and they think the answer to that is to put him in an area of the pitch where he’ll get even more exposed. There’s no way this happens because Ten Hag isn’t a fucking moron, at least I assume he isn’t. Imagine if this happens though. We thought it was funny watching Maguire before, but this would take it to a whole new level. You know what else is funny? Pogba going back to Juve on a free. So United have lost him on a free to Juve twice, and in between they paid £90m to get him back. Is it any wonder they’re in the mess they are? Meanwhile, Ronaldo is threatening to leave because he’s not happy about their transfer dealings. Hang on, has anyone told him he’s 37 and not 27? He’s still acting like he could go and play for anyone and that clubs need to pacify him and matt his expectations. Where the fuck is he going to go if he leaves there? He can’t go to MLS because of the whole rape thing. Spain isn’t an option, Bayern wouldn’t take him, PSG are already overly stocked for over the hill, overpaid forwards so who does that leave? Newcastle I guess. ….and that was the week that was

This was undoubtedly Naby's best season for the club, which is damning with feint praise as it's not exactly a high bar he had to jump over. His improved consistency this year was surely not unrelated to the fact it was also the best year he had for avoiding injury, although he still had a couple of brief spells on the sidelines. He started the season well and scored cracking volleys against Palace and Atletico, before finding the net in a terrific individual and team performance at Old Trafford. That might be the best game he’s played for us. He got injured in the next game though and missed a month, which has been the story of his time here really. That early season promise sort of fizzled out and wasn’t helped by him heading off to AFCON and then picking up an injury when he got back. On his return he picked things up nicely again and was selected by Klopp for some very big games, usually at the expense of Henderson. He was excellent in the Wembley win over City and scored the only goal in a vital win at Newcastle. Lovely finish it was too. He’s been quite good this year but he still almost always leaves me wanting more, which is a result of the high expectation I had when he came here. i still haven't seen the player I thought we were getting and I'm resigned to the fact we never will. He doesn't exist, except on youtube clips from his time at Leipzig. He’s clearly very talented and a lot of the good work he does isn’t always obvious (he’s really good at pressuring and nicking the ball off opponents high up the pitch for example), but for me there’s still a significant gap between him and the three regular starters. Klopp seemingly doesn’t see it that way as he’s picked him ahead of Henderson occasionally, but we've got three midfielders who are a level above the others and Keita isn't one of those three, even though he was supposed to be. I don't think that's unfair. The lad cost £50m and had a massive reputation prior to coming here. Even his biggest supporters must surely agree that he hasn’t lived up to that, although he’s not been a flop either. Naby divides opinion like no-one else in the squad. His fanboys constantly overstate his contributions, while his detractors often understate them. The truth lies somewhere in between, hence the seven out of ten rating. Previous Season Ratings: 2020/21: Season doesn’t count 2019/20: 7/10 2018/19: 6/10 This Season’s Rating: 7/10 Overall he was decent this year. Best Moment: Scoring the opener at Old Trafford. His entire performance that day was excellent until he was taken out by a potential leg breaker from Pogba. Worst Moment: That fucking shot in Paris. The Future? He’ll probably get a new contract. I hope not, personally I’d sell him and get an upgrade but I don’t see that happening and this time next year I'll be writing exactly the same thing after another 7 out of 10 season in which he showed flashes but ultimately just left me unfulfilled.