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Another weekend dominated by refs and VAR as controversial decisions for Arsenal and Man City, plus yet another one against Wolves ensured the officials were the biggest talking point of the weekend once more. It’s par for the course now and even when they’re right it’s still a shitstorm. I’ll start with City’s trip to Palace. The only thing I’ve seen from the game are clips on twitter of the Palace opening goal by Mateta (who looks a different player since the managerial change) and the stonewall penalty they were denied just before half time. Nothing will be made of it because it never is when it’s City. Can you imagine the inquest if that was us though? It should be a penalty but because refs have been allowing stuff like that all season (usually from set-pieces rather than open play like this one) it’s easy for pundits to just gloss over it as one of those “you won some you lose some” calls (which it is) instead of asking how come these decisions ALWAYS go in City’s favour. It’s virtually the same as the one Everton were awarded at Newcastle last week, and I haven’t seen anyone claiming that wasn’t a pen. Even Newcastle fans didn’t dispute it. Yet no-one in the media cared that Manchester’s own Paul Tierney dismissed it and that VAR looked at it for all of 5 seconds before clearing it. City would probably have gone on to win the game anyway as they usually do, but every fucking year it’s the same. Every set of fans in the country thinks the refs are against their team and they all have countless incidents they can point to as to why that is. It doesn’t mean they’re right, it just shows that every team gets fucked over from time to time. Every team except one. The one with the most money and who pays for refs to fly over to the Middle East on lucrative side gigs. As Matt Le Tissier would say, makes you think.

Monday Apr 1: Been thinking about what I said last week about not having any better suggestions than the managers that have been linked with us so far, which is basically Amorim and De Zerbi as there hasn’t really been any credible links to anyone else. It’s a sad state of affairs that neither of those feel right at all and I don’t want either, but there isn’t anyone else who ticks all boxes either. So if there’s no-one who ticks every box, no clear outstanding candidate, then shouldn’t we just go with someone who we at least know understands the club? My first choice would be Pep Lijnders, but for whatever reason he isn’t even getting any consideration from the club and he’s definitely leaving. So how about, and hear me out here, we at least speak to Gerrard and sound him out? I know he was shit at Villa and that they’ve gone from strength to strength without him, but you can’t just dismiss what he did at Rangers and he did spend time here with the 18s learning about Klopp’s methods. He played a big part in developing Curtis so at least we know the kids coming through would be in good hands. I know it’s far from ideal, but put it this way, if he’d stayed at Rangers and the Villa debacle had never happened, he’d be by far and away the obvious choice to succeed Jurgen, so in the absence of any clear and obvious better option, should we not at least be giving him an interview? There are obviously reasons against it, but I can give you reasons against De Zerbi, Amorim or whoever else you want to mention too. And none of them are Liverpool legends who get the club, know what it means to play for this club and who have won trophies with the club. If you take away his time at Villa his CV is actually very similar to Alonso, and we all wanted Xabi so is this such a mad shout? It’s no madder than going for Italian Brendan who was single handedly responsible for letting Everton stay up last season. It’s been Stevie’s dream to manage us and what could be better than Gerrard finally getting his Premier League winners medal as our manager? Just imagine! We’re an emotional club, an emotional fanbase and we need to be able to connect with our manager. I’ll take Gerrard over some beardy Portuguese fella none of us had heard of up until a couple of months ago. I was always dead set against him being manager even when he was doing well at Rangers, so I accept that this is a big change of direction for me, but these are desperate times and you also have to figure in what date it is today. Boom! Gotcha. On a serious note though, replacing Klopp the manager is something we might be able to do if we get lucky. It’s not inconceivable that we find a coach who really knows his shit and can maybe get the team playing even better. It’s not likely, but it’s definitely plausible. Replacing the Klopp the man on the other hand is impossible. There’s no-one like him, before or since. Shanks is the only one comparable and he was a one off too. Watching that video today of Klopp with Sean Cox just brings it all home. There’s no-one like him, never mind the football side of it, he’s just such a special human being. The way he is with people, it’s all just so genuine, heartfelt and warm. You can’t fake how he is, he’s just a genuinely great man and we can’t replace that. When people talk about how difficult it will be for someone following on from him, they usually mean because of the on pitch success and the results we’ve had, but that’s really not the hardest thing. Of course it’s a challenge and it won’t be easy, but Paisley followed Shankly and outdid him. It can be done. The real difficulty for whoever comes next is being judged against Klopp the man. Also today, Guardiola was being a bellend again because he didn’t like a question he was asked. The question was a legitimate one too. The reporter asked him why he gave Grealish such a public and animated dressing down on the pitch and could it not have waited until they got back to the dressing room. Passive Aggressive Pep (might actually start calling him “Pap” from now on) did that horrible sarcastic tone he does and was saying something along the lines of “it’s because of my ego, I need everyone to be looking at me and talking about me”. Which is funny because that’s EXACTLY what it is. He also had to respond to Keane’s comments at the weekend about Haaland looking like a League Two player (can’t think why Keane would have a grudge against Haaland….). Obviously he went overboard, as he tends to do, but there is an element of truth to what he said. Haaland is the best in the world at what he does, but he’s pretty shit at everything else. It’s kind of like me in a way. I discovered tonight that I’m actually number one in the world at something. No joke this time, I’m deadly serious. You know how on Call of Duty there are little extra games you can play, like Zombies? Well the machines at the driving range have it too. Zombies appear on the screen and it shows you the distance and direction they are located and you then have to hit a golf ball out onto the range to kill them. I played it last year and was there for about 20 minutes until I ran out of balls and had to stop playing. I had the top score, and not just at the range where I was playing, I’m talking worldwide. Every Foresight Sports fitted driving range throughout the world that has this technology linked up and I had the best score (which was double the next best one by the way) but I didn’t think much of it at the time as I assumed it was just because the game was new and not many people had played it yet. Tonight I decided to play again, and guess what? My name was still at the top and nobody had beaten my score. Until tonight that is, when I beat it. So now I’ve got the two best scores in the entire world on ‘Wave’ and I’m also top on ’Survival’ mode too. I reckon I could beat Rory McIlroy at this game. So I might be League Two at everything else, but like Haaland I’m the fucking top dog at the thing I’m good at.