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I don’t think I’ve ever felt uncomfortable about us battering a team before but when the fourth goal went in and we hadn’t even reached the 15 minute mark, I was squirming a little bit. It just felt awkward. Like that video when Michael Owen was blasting volleys past a 12 year old keeper. I felt a bit sorry for Sparta but I was also annoyed with them too. It’s hard enough playing against us without doing the stupid shit they kept doing. It was the same last week too. How many of the goals we scored over both legs came from us winning the ball from them when they tried to play out from the back? At least four, probably more. Yet they kept doing it and we kept punishing them. It was uncomfortable and if we’d continued to play at full intensity we might have scored 20. I’m not even joking. Of course we were never going to do that because it would have been stupid. After that blistering start we dropped down to third gear and stayed there. Except Harvey, who came on at half time as was in sixth gear for the entire second half while everyone else was cruising along. I’m not going to say we shouldn’t be in the Europa League as we’re there for a reason, but it’s almost unfair to the other teams in it because we’re a Champions League calibre team and if we were in that competition we’d have a great chance of winning it. At this time of year we’re usually playing Porto, Barcelona, Inter etc so teams like Sparta are always going to be overmatched, especially when Klopp is putting out such strong line ups. In an ideal world I think most fans would have wanted every first teamer rested for this, but it just doesn’t work like that as managers tend to not operate that way. Klopp certainly doesn’t. There have been times when I think that’s cost us needlessly (Jota a couple o years ago in a dead rubber, Konate last week) but when I saw the line up I didn’t see too many surprises. I actually think given the scoreline from the first leg, Klopp was able to treat this almost like a kind of 11v 11 training match. We didn’t need to be flat out but it was a good session and an ideal tune up for the weekend. Players who needed a rest got it, players who needed minutes got them, everyone played well and the attacking five all got goals. Just what we needed.

Arsenal have been bitching about refs all season which really fucking winds me up as it’s not like they’ve suffered much, although I wouldn’t say they’ve benefited much either. In terms of the top three and officiating, you’ve City at one end of the scale, us at the other and Arsenal are somewhere in the middle. Yet their fans were some of the most vocal on twitter last week (they always are) after the drop ball nonsense at Forest, but this week they weren’t happy when people rightly pointed out that their winning goalscorer against Brentford should not have even been on the pitch when he scored. As great as last week’s win at Forest felt for us, and will have been a massive kick in the nuts for City and Arsenal, this week we were the ones getting kicked in the nuts as Arsenal got that contentious late winner against Brentford when it looked like they were going to drop points. There was nowhere near the same furore as there was about the drop ball nonsense though. Maybe if Brentford hired Uriah Rennie or Paul Durkin to bitch about it afterwards we'd have seen a bit more fuss made of it. Arsenal went in front and no doubt their fans were expecting another landslide. After all, these are the smug, smelling themselves wankers that had #prayforbrentford trending on Twitter before the game. It’s happening before all of their games now. They just make me cringe so much that my toes are permanently curled these days. Everything about Arsenal is getting on my tits now, from that God awful "North London forever" anthem they've just adopted this season to the bad try hard celebrations of Arteta and the players and pretty much everything else in between. There’s a lot of annoying faces in that team too... Ramsdale, Ben Shite, Gabriel, Saliba, Martinelli, Saka, Odegaard, Trossard, Jesus, Zinchenko… all massively annoying faces. Arsenal were so busy enjoying the smell of their own farts after Rice headed them in front that they forgot that it was only 1-0 and that Brentford aren’t really a side you want to fuck with. They certainly aren’t the soft touches that Burnley and Sheffield United are, so Brentford fought back. Ably assisted by Diet Pickford in goal it should be said. There’s a reason Arteta doesn’t like picking him and Ramsdale himself gave it away in an interview he did when he said he needs to get involved with the crowd during games because he gets bored and can’t concentrate otherwise. Not even David James had that bad of an attention span. So Ramsdale fucked up to let Brentford get back into it through Wissa, but he made a couple of saves in the second half so that’s all fine apparently and it showed what great character he has. Yeah, I think they should play him in every game now, let him prove just how great his “character” is. My boy Toney almost scored the goal of the season with a brilliant first time left foot half volley that was inches away from going over the despairing dive of Ramsdale, but he just got his fingers to it to keep it out. Brentford had other chances too and the second half was edgy as fuck for Arsenal. They were getting desperate and every time the ball went in the box an Arsenal player would hit the deck wanting a pen. Some of them were iffy and could have been given, but not the one from Havertz that should have seen him booked for cheating. It was obviously a dive, the ref knew immediately which is why he waved away the penalty appeal. He bottled out of giving him a second yellow card though and VAR can’t get involved unless it’s to overturn a penalty decision and then tell the ref it’s a dive and to produce a card. All these stupid fucking protocols they have just get in the way of them making the right decision. Attwell wouldn’t send Oliver to the screen at Anfield and they hide behind the “high bar for overturns” bollocks. There’s also been strong rumours that Oliver has given his colleagues strict instructions to not send him to the screen. Either way, this kind of shit just keeps stopping the officials from getting big decisions right. I’m not particularly arsed about the Havertz thing, this kind of shit happens all the time and Brentford had chances to win it and they had chances to stop Arsenal winning it. In the grand scheme of fucked up decisions this is low on the list. The thing that does annoy me is how little was made of it in relation to the shite we had to endure last week. Ultimately though three points is three points and it doesn’t matter that they were lucky and left it late. One way of looking at it is that they found a way. That’s what we’d say if it was us. Its not the first time they’ve done it either, so I don’t blame Arsenal fans for thinking like that. It’s not how I see it though. I see a team that was battered some shit teams lately and had people going over the top about how impressive they are and how they might win all of their remaining games. Scraping past Brentford at home and failing to beat Porto over 210 minutes tells me they will drop points. They’ve got tough games, so they’re dropping some points, I’m not concerned about that. My concern is only what we do. Ultimately it comes down to this. There’s 10 games left and we need to get more points in those ten games than Arsenal, and we need to ensure that City don't get more than us. Can we do that? Of course we can. Over the course of the season so far we’ve done it as the only reason, THE ONLY REASON, Arsenal are ahead of us on goal difference is because of PGMOL fucking us in games against Spurs, Arsenal and City.