Manny

The fuck is Conor getting a booking for you fucking blind cunt!?

Hamster’s fat little pep talk worked eh? Cunts.

The funny thing is - on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to Everton to be a crook.

Haha, you beat me to it. Was just writing that if anyone knows a thing or two about corruption it would be fat Joe. He's probably just miffed he's not getting a cut of whatever the fuck it is he's insinuating.

Had a quick look on transfermarkt: Everton 0-1 Luton | 30th September 2023 Everton XI purchase value: €140m Everton subs purchase value: €110m Total value: €250m Luton XI purchase value: €11m Luton subs purchase value: €14m Total value: €25m Difference: €225m Liverpool 4-1 Luton | 21st February 2024 Liverpool XI purchase value: €281m Liverpool subs purchase value: €62m Total value: €343m Luton XI purchase value: €10m Luton subs purchase value: €0 Total value: €10m Difference: €333m So our team did cost more than theirs, but there's something that stands out from the above more than that, and that's the fact that both of us have a massive financial advantage over Luton. Difference is, we hammered them. Everton, well, didn't.

His own dodged taxes would go a fair way towards it, the fucking scumbag, so maybe be should put his own grubby paws into his cobwebbed wallet and pay for it himself and leave us to spend taxes on shit that's important and necessary to all of us, not just some fucking orcs up the M62.

Oh yeah I've no doubt that he'd be fine given how well Leverkusen are doing in the Europa. It's more that a competition he'd never managed in before will become the currency he's judged on if he goes to Bayern. More yardsticks he'd be measured against here, less ruthlessly one note.

Also, I think the fact the SNP stormed out with the tories doesn't help convince me they weren't pissed off with an opportunity to stir the pot lost. I get their anger, but if they'd have voted with Labour on the amendment and been "this isn't the last of this" then I'd be more sympathetic that this was a motion of pure interest in Gaza, but they scrambled to the outraged moral high ground whilst letting a different motion blow in the wind with a set of hypocritical cunts I've got zero sympathy for. As I say, nobody comes out of this looking good - although I do find all of the handwringing about this relative to the situation in Gaza a bit pointless. Even if it carried unanimously the IDF would continue to shell the fuck out of Rafah indiscriminately because that's what they do. Unless the EU and, far more importantly, the US threaten much more hardline measures than a mealy mouthed criticism and request for peace, then they'll continue to do so because realistically, who will stop them?

My take on it was that it was a debate the SNP put forward to cause mischief for Labour, which the tories agreed to have knowing it would cause mischief for Labour. Starmer has obviously “convinced” Hoyle to table Labour’s amendment, which causes himself less mischief but causes uproar, largely because the tories (who ride roughshod over precedent on a weekly basis) have missed out on a rare opportunity to turn the tables. In short: SNP are shitstirrers, Tories are hypocritical shitstirrers, Starmer is canny but a bit of a cunt, Hoyle is a wetwipe. Nobody comes out looking good, and in the meantime the bodies continue to pile up in Gaza. If nothing else I hope this teaches Hoyle that you can’t appease the Tories. He’s been soft as fuck on them since he got in but the first time he steps away from their bidding they throw their toys out the pram.

There's an added disincentive to Alonso going to Bayern: if he repeated his (likely) feat from this year and wins the league, it's not even a 'par' for him, it would be the same achievement yet with far less kudos attached to it. In terms of the German league, he's likely going to gain the holy grail this season: dethroning Bayern by winning the league with another club (and I really can't stress enough how mental it would be for Leverkusen of all clubs to win it; they make our 30 year wait look like a queue in the fucking supermarket). He'd be judged at Bayern entirely on the European Cup (a competition he's never managed in) and a load of other intangibles that are set and benchmarked by their legions of ex-players in the hierarchy and dotted throughout football at large. One thing he's shown a real knack for so far is managing his career and I think, genuinely, that he'd look at Bayern and see it as being a job where ultimately you're on a countdown to failure, because almost none of the competitions they're involved in year to year mean anything to the fans or the hierarchy. He spent enough time here to know it'd be different at LFC. He might stay at Leverkusen another year, that would be my concern given his circumspect approach to managing his career - but if he has genuine aspirations of managing here then he'd probably realise he might never get a better chance.

Aren't you forgetting about the millions of fans who'll instantly switch allegiances and bend the knee to Everton the moment they unveil the BMD Ark? All somehow local and born, yet imported and manufactured at the same time.

Serious question here as I don't watch them but is that Mainoo kid any good? It does feel like all one of their players has to do is complete a series of short passes and they'll be hailed as the Next Big Thing (I keep seeing horrendous Twitter aggregator accounts proclaiming him and the nightmarish looking pair of Garnacho and Hojlund as the heirs apparent to Messi/Suarez/Neymar), but maybe he is good? I don't know. All I do know is there's a serious wankfest around Ratcliffe and his investment at the mancs which completely and totally ignores how bang average his Nice side have been in a far less competitive environment in France. All he has to do here though is roll out somebody once connected to Team GB and a team with a kind run of fixtures going on a winning run is saluted as being transformed under The Great Innovator in a New Era of Professionalism at United. Cunts. Sick of them again.

It's not funny because it's kicking down. His life probably is better than the journo's, he gets paid an awful lot more to do a job which he presumably enjoys to some extent since he could have packed it in and retired years ago. But you don't make light of that, IMO, especially considering the power imbalance in the room. They're all there to speak to Guardiola so they're not going to all stand up and call him a cunt, he knows that, so this feels to me like a way of belittling him. It doesn't help that he's got virtually no emotional intelligence either. It's not a very funny joke to start with - but it's delivered by one of the least personable cunts of all time so it falls flatter still. They're only laughing because gaining access to that room requires a degree of sycophancy as an essential skill.

Yeah that's true. There was one the other week funded by some Tory cunt, I forget who, which basically said that a change of Tory leader would give them the edge in a head to head against Keir Starmer. It would be really, really interesting stuff if the new leader was drawn from within the ranks but no, virtually none of the runners and riders in the party would do any better than the sixth former. The candidate who would trounce Keir Starmer is "a new, tax-cutting Tory leader with a tougher approach to legal and illegal migration" - no doubt he or she would also cure cancer and personally deliver a brand new gold plated rocket car to each and every voter in the UK as well. Of the 7 candidates who were otherwise mentioned, only 4 (Hatstand Badenoch, Cleverly, Maudant and Braverman) would even be eligible; 2 of the other 3 (Cameron and Johnson) aren't even MPs and the third (Farage) isn't even a fucking Tory. The desperation would be more enjoyable if it didn't have such a stench of "born to rule" shite around it - even their infighting has to be presented in a way that's supposed to make them look professional. It's pathetic.

Fucking hell, as someone who works in research that's an utter clusterfuck of a question that's designed to do nothing other than give you a few soundbites rather than any kind of meaningful plans. The fact that the only headline you can get is zeroing in on a small group of people who fulfil not just one (ex Tory voters), but two (ex Tory voters who are undecided on their next vote) criteria says it all. At most it gives you a bit of insight into why they might have changed allegiance but in the absence of any other questions about other factors that may have driven them away, it's utterly meaningless. Propaganda dressed as 'research' - boils my piss.

It's been said a thousand times but fuck it, once more can't hurt: If they're such an attractive investment and categorically NOT a money laundering vehicle for a mate of Vlad's, then why couldn't they just swap to an almost-as-lucrative sponsor for Finch Farm and BMD the minute that fat slug Usmanov's assets were frozen? Oh yeah, because there was barely any interest in sponsoring either for useful sums of cash beyond said fat slug's unspecified purposes. They should just count their lucky stars the PL has been so circumspect about challenging their Covid losses (because they'd have an even bigger deduction if they took the dim view they should have about theoretical valuations of players sourced from SteveO), and that these point deductions are coming for them in a year of historically bad football teams in the league. Honestly, their sense of outrage about all of this is fucking scandalous. They're bang to rights and yet are probably going to be let off without any kind of meaningful punishment, but they can't help being cheeky bastards and foaming at the mouth about it. The karmic reckoning of 777 ownership and financial oblivion is more than they fucking deserve.

Scumbag club from top to bottom. Unashamed, bullying cheating cunts.

I'll echo the bad timing of this game, probably our 2nd toughest away of the season. I don't necessarily go in for first elevens thesedays as it's so much a squad game - even more so now we've got 5 subs. But, I don't think I'd be alone in suggesting that our default eleven would look something like this: Alisson - fit and played Trent - lacking match fitness after a month layoff, had to start anyway VVD - fit and played Robbo - lacking match fitness after a three month layoff, didn't start Mac Allister - fit and played Jones - fit and played Szoboszlai - injured Nunez - carrying a knock, didn't start Jota - fit and played Salah - injured It's not exactly bare bones, but it's a few compromises in a game where you don't want to be making any, ideally. Arsenal I'd suggest are the following: Raya - fit and played Shite - fit and played (an argument they might pick Timber there but he's played like 20 minutes for them so hard to judge) Saliba - fit and played Gabriel - fit and played Zinchenko - fit and played Rice - fit and played Odegaard - fit and played Havertz - played out of position Martinelli - fit and played Jesus - injured Saka - fit and played They literally had to bring in Jorginho for Jesus and shunt Havertz up top (they might do that regularly anyway, I don't follow them that closely) but basically they didn't have to compromise anywhere; we had to shuffle our whole right side around, bringing an unfit player back: I don't think it's a coincidence that Martinelli and Jorginho, on Arsenal's left, were their most effective players. They also had an extra day to prepare (having played Tuesday midweek to our Wednesday), and had home advantage. Losing Dom whilst Salah is out was a killer; we couldn't play Mac there either as Endo is not back yet, we couldn't try Trent there from the start (he's drifted there late in games after subs) as he's needed at right back because Bradley was unavailable and Gomez is needed at left back because of Robertson's fitness and Tsimikas' injury. It's fucking annoying as if this game was swapped with Burnley at home (as our next fixture is), we'd have had enough to get by; equally if this game had come next weekend, we'd probably have a few more players back and more options. The wrong game at the wrong time, compounded by inexplicable errors from usually reliable players. We'll see what it means in the weeks to come but I have a lot of optimism this can be put in a box labelled with a lot of extenuating circumstances.

He’s like Suarez in Kenny’s full season, if Suarez had smashed a mirror with a bucket of salt and then ran over a black cat on his way out.

Watched the first episode of Masters of the Air last night. Looks great and feels high production, although the quieter lead character seems a bit cliched, sitting there brooding and chewing a matchstick. Will definitely persevere though, and this has prompted me to remember that I need to watch the Pacific, which weirdly I never got round to, despite having seen Band of Brothers several times. Would also echo the comments above on the British - I haven’t seen the episode yet but the teaser for episode 2 showing weedy posh RAF officers getting punched to the ground by action hero Americans has my eyes rolling to the back of my head - especially as the grandson of an RAF serviceman from that era. I’m no patriot but it does my head in to see our historical role caricatured in such a way. I bet there’s no commonwealth soldiers to be seen anywhere either. They did the same in Band of Brothers as well - the only British soldiers you hear from are a bunch of paratroopers that the brave Americans have to rescue, and a pig-headed posh tank commander who refuses to listen to salt-of-the-earth US NCO and gets killed as a result. I get why they do it - but for fuck’s sake, we were on the same fucking side.

I’m trying to imagine the sheer Everton of them getting their deduction cut to six points next week, taking the credit for it because they’re the toughest fanbase going and it was all down to the hilarious light show on the Liver Building etc., then being hit with another six the month after for the next charge leaving them worse off.

It's such a weird job and such a weird manager market at the moment that it's hard to know who we need. When we sacked Rodgers, the brief was challenging but obvious: we needed a manager with the vision and standing to build the club up and turn us into challengers - while working with a relative underdog. Klopp was the standout, towering candidate: he'd done exactly that at Dortmund - managing an expectant fanbase in the face of massive odds to success, and doing it with charm, personality and style. That made his first couple of years easier. There were moments I had very slight doubts in his early time - but they were quickly silenced by my rational brain recognising that if Klopp couldn't do it then it was because the brief was too difficult, not that there was a better candidate out there. This time it's different, we're a much better team with a really good age profile: some outstanding youngsters breaking through (but not too many to give the squad a callow feel), a crop of players approaching their peak (but not so many that the squad will go over the hill in one go), and a brains trust of experienced pros (but not so many that there'd be a changing room full of grognards). Ferguson left a team with success, but success built on a mix of honest but limited pros and aging stars having a last hurrah. Wenger left a team with a reasonable age profile but a squad that ultimately was repeatedly proven to be short of the required standard. I've never known anyone having to really step into such a settled environment. There'll be pressure to fill Jurgen's boots - but all the tools to be able to do it (whereas at Arsenal and the mancs there was all the pressure but none of the tools). I guess one thing will go in this guy's favour - they won't have to contend with a Klopp Liverpool (unlike every other managerial appointment in the league since 2015). I'm all in on Alonso, for what it's worth. I actually think that if he'd just been a classy player who'd had the same career away from Liverpool then I'd possibly be leaning towards de Zerbi due to a greater familiarity with Brighton (and I've been really impressed with them - he's changed how they're perceived massively) but Alonso's standing with the club shades it for me. He'll get the buy-in, which feels like the most important thing for such a big transition.

Yeah, exactly what I've just said to a mate. He's been managing for 24 years, almost 10 of them in one of the biggest jobs going. It's all-consuming, no respite, 24-7 work. And he's almost certainly just tired. Having a year or two off then coming back to manage at international level is akin to stepping down as CEO, having a couple of years sabbatical and then doing some well-paid consultancy work - less full-on, structured around yourself and your lifestyle. I'm gutted but I wish the man nothing but the very best in whatever he does. He's given us so much that he's more than earned our collective blessing to do whatever makes him happy in the future.