deiseach

I'm old enough to remember when Everton were on the brink of going top of the league: Things are so much better now.

My oul fella hates football, so his response to the one time I took him to Anfield - yes, out-of-towners taking all the tickets, don't bottle it up - was to call it "90 of the most boring minutes of my life". However, the one thing he was fascinated by was the singing. Why did everyone start singing there? What was the cue? Who took the lead? Why does everyone know the words? The clientele didn't strike him as the type to be part of light opera societies. I thought of that watching the videos from the Kop of as the ripple of "we're gonna win the league!" turned into a roar. A guttural roar. Catharsis is right.

That's unfortunate. I was really hoping Twitter would can that indykaila beaut.

Dropped into the Jurgen Klopp thread on Red Café to have a bit (lot) of a gloat and stumbled upon this:

He wrote 'Merry Christmas, Everton'.

While there's something to be said for not leaving hostages to fortune, if you couldn't give it bifters when they're directly opposite then you're dead inside.

Sir, you take your prejudice against baldies too far! Hang your (admittedly immaculately coiffured) head in shame...

Cenk Tosun has inadvertently revealed Uzzy's grand plan: buy everyone and loan them out so they can't play against the Bloos. Hahaha, der Redshite will be reduced to playing their kids!

Credit where credit is due, if you need someone to eke out a 2-2 draw against a formidable challenge, Roy's your man!

I will not rise to the bait of posting Wire-related nonsense. After all, a man gotta have a code.

Whisper it, but I've only seen the first season of The Sopranos.

Anyone who thinks they'd have been okay with that Mané goal against Wolves being chalked off because they have a principled objection to VAR...

I know there have been plenty of Hillsborough threads but I thought it was worth adding something to this that may be of value to anyone having a 'discussion' with 'certain people'. My dad is, if I do say so myself, natural police, and I remember asking him whom he thought was to blame for Hillsborough and dreading the response from a man with a slightly authoritarian air that comes with being natural police. His response was unequivocal: 100% the fault of the police. His reasoning (and this is the bit worth adding to the discussion)? "He [Duckenfield] never walked the ground". As the senior policeman in my home town for the final years of his career, he had responsibility for the local race meeting that took place about 10 times a year. Hardly a Hillsborough-level event, with the numbers at all the meetings in a year put together unlikely to exceed 50,000. It didn't matter though. On the day of every meeting, he would personally walk through every nook and cranny of the course. Why is that there? Why is that different from last time? This is what policing is, and you can never, ever assume that someone else is going to do it for you. If you'd rather ponce around in a fancy uniform surveying the grunts on the battlefield, join a Civil War reenactment society.