Nelly-Szoboszlai

Utter scumbags.

They’re out of control and are being given the green light to do what ever they want. Instead of being complicit in war crimes, us and the Yanks need to cut these bloodthirsty lunatics off before they do something that escalates beyond control. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/01/israeli-airstrike-on-iranian-consulate-in-damascus-kills-six-including-irgc-commander

City players and their fans are such bad not winners after the Arsenal game. Loads of their fans are complaining because Arsenal had the audacity to not want to try and go toe to toe with a multi million pound squad assembled with a fair bit of cheating involved and instead decided to defend deep, play for a point and try to maybe nick a 1-0. How dare they behave in such a way towards the illustrious Manchester City! Also, Akanji is moaning today, accusing Arsenal of stopping City from playing by committing lots of tactical fouls and saying that the referee should’ve took action against them. Amazing stuff. A complete lack of self awareness. He mustn’t have heard of Fernandinho and must have his eyes closed when Bernardo Silva and Rodri constantly do and get away with the same thing whenever City are playing a team who have a bit of a go at them.

It’s infuriating. We’d be about 8 points ahead. And, that’s why I’m not getting too excited yet. We’re going to have to win it the hard way and against all manner of adversity. See where we are with 3 or 4 games to go.

Taylor will probably get plaudits after the game for not taking centre stage in a big game and for letting the game flow. But, I think he’s been fairly poor. Particularly when you look at what Mac Allister and van Dijk were booked for earlier today. There’s been a few incidents in this game that were more worthy of a booking. I can see the arguments for championing a more at distance/hands off approach to refereeing. But, where’s the “consistency, kids?” Players should go onto the pitch knowing what they should and shouldn’t get booked for. And that should be determined by the rules of the game, rather than by what mood the referee is in on a particular day.

Boring as fuck, this. Arsenal just sitting in and going long and City passing it around until Arsenal’s penalty area then going backwards just to do the same again.

That’ll do. On another day we win that more comfortably. About 5-2. Mac Allister was superb. Szoboszlai good in the second half. Another good performance from Bradley. He was slightly off it in the first half but the calls to take off one of our main match winners, in a still returning to full match speed Salah, were utter bobbins. Have a word with yourselves, lads! Going behind and winning yet again. You get the feeling that the mentality monsters are on their way back. It’ll be a tough thing for Klopp’s replacement to maintain and replicate. Three points. One more game done. One of the difficult ones too. Up the you should’ve learned by now to not take the lead against us Reds!

Big 45 coming up. Salah needs to improve his finishing and touch. Brighton look dangerous on the break, particularly down our right side. Coote has been awful. The Mac Allister booking is a nonsense. He’s giving every soft free kick to Brighton. Weird how he appeared to give Brighton two set piece decisions based on nothing else but the length and strength of their appeals. The lino running the half towards the Anny Road has been poor too. The other one has let play go on for tight-ish calls and let the VAR call it. Which is what they’re meant to do. The Anny Road lino was just getting his flag up straight away for our attacks. I’ll be very suspicious if this pattern changes in the second half. I’d take a scrappy 2-1 win. Just get the 3 points.

Get them all before a war crimes tribunal - Netanyahu, Sunak, Cameron, Biden, the lot. In other news, 200k attendees and just 4 arrests in today's latest “hate march” in London…

Seamus Owngoal-man I fear for them…

I was tempted to go with Lijnders for continuity. But, I’m not sure we need continuity. And would Lijnders give us that or a diminished version of what we had before? Plus, his last foray into management didn’t go great. I’ve gone for Nagelsmann. His sacking at Bayern needs to be reexamined in the context of their performance this season. Tuchel was able to utilise a much improved attack this season with Kane and they’ve struggled to keep pace with Leverkusen. Nagelsmann was sacked when a point or two behind Dortmund at the top. They’d won 8 out 8 in their CL group. They possibly could’ve gone on and won the title if Nagelsmann stayed. Also, his win percentage at Bayern was very good. Just north of 70%. Then you have to look at his other “achievements.” They’re relative achievement for the clubs he was at at the time. Getting Hoffenheim into the CL (almost twice) is a massive achievement for a club of their stature. Getting Leipzig to a Champions League semi final is decent too. Then onto the Germany job. It was a shaky start for him, albeit with experimental line ups - Havertz at left back and left wing back - and a feeling that he was testing the waters in his first couple of games. But, he now appears to have settled on a line up and system and the results have improved, with recent wins against France and the Netherlands. The performances have improved too, with players like Kroos saying in the press that something has clicked and they seem to be working as a team again for the first time in a while. Plus, the German sports press have gone from doom and gloom to thinking that Die Mannschaft are now genuine contenders for the upcoming Euros. Plus, he apparently plays a possession based game with focus also on pressing and winning the ball back quickly. It’s a style of play that our existing players are familiar with and probably wouldn’t take too much adjusting to his tactics. He's one of the standout candidates for me. I’d like Inzaghi too, but he appears similar to Alonso, in that he doesn’t seem to be available currently. And we also don’t seem to be interested if the lack of links are anything to go by.

Slaughtering people in Syria now. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/29/syria-israel-airstrike-soldiers-killed-aleppo

Other not top level managers get plaudits too. That alone doesn’t make them good enough for the Liverpool job. What are the nature of these plaudits? That they played some nice football, gave us a tough game, but we still beat them? It’s partly down to football etiquette too. Managers and players are freer with praise than criticism. I mean Dyche was hardly going to come out and say he was shite and that we constantly targeted this or that weakness in his set up when Everton beat them 1-5. Nor was rookie coach De Rossi when Roma tonked them 4-0. Nor Emery when Villa beat them 6-1. Nor Moyes when he played rope-a-dope when West Ham sat off them and cut through them on the counter to win 1-3 at the Amex. And, while I’m not sure that you’re trying to do this anyway, it’ll take more than a few words of praise from others in the game to convince me that a manager who has won some obscure cup with Foggia and the Ukrainian Super Cup with Shakhtar will ever be good enough to manage a club who’s current manager has raised the bar to a level where challenging for titles is expected.

If Xabi is off the cards, I’m all in on the ABDZ hand - anyone but De Zerbi. Just don’t see him doing anything for us. I didn’t mind him for us, but he reminds me of Brendan Rodgers when he joined us. Seems stubbornly wedded to an easy on the eye style of play, but doesn’t have the tactical nous to change if that style is causing the team to be open and leaking goals. And, like Rodgers, he’d be coming because he got a smaller team to play some decent stuff, but without any real record of winning stuff. Which is needed to justify getting the Liverpool job. Just look at two recent managers who came to us whose CV didn’t have recent honours recorded on it. Hodgson and Rodgers. One was a complete disaster. The other ultimately turned out to just not be quite good enough. Then Klopp came in. That broke the recent mould. We need another appointment like that. A manager who’s won something recently. Or who looks like they’re more than a flash in the pan like De Zerbi does. I’d sooner have someone who gets the team playing uglier football but can be a bit more savvy if there’s signs that it’s not working or if the team is getting humped. I’d genuinely sooner have someone like Nagelsmann, Maresca, Slot, Spaletti, Flick or even Gerrard or Mourinho over RDZ.

Gareth Barry it is then.

Such inhumane barbarity. It never ends.

Okay, this looks fairly fucking awful.

You’d have thought that Fox would be happy that they fucked up on the paperwork. He won’t suffer the embarrassment of his inevitably shite voting figures and he’ll have a spare £10k to pay to the people he’s defamed/Billie and the kids/whoever is next to sue him.

The FA’s statement gives a date range for Tonali’s alleged breaches. They allegedly commenced on 12th August 2023. Newcastle beat Aston Villa 5-1 on this day. Tonali was subbed off in second half injury time. During which, the below happened. Hmmmmmm…

Just have a good brisk walk and buy some resistance bands/tubes for at home. People have mentioned the mental health and social side of the gym. But, they’re largely full of posing biffs or women who only do glute exercises and film themselves doing so for their Insta. I’d rather stay at home. On the topic of walking, I’ve just boxed off the equivalent of three marathons in March and that’s without walking every day and only counting planned walks and not counting everyday life walks to the shop, round town, out with mates/family etc.

Nice work.

Awful penalty. James didn’t look confident. Did Ward go to his right for all of the penalties too?

Great capture of Rodri’s penalty. Haha!