Babb'sBurstNad

Been trying some local ciders from the Purbeck Cider Company recently. Nice stuff, particularly the medium sweet.

Still a long way to go in the window, but the rumblings of potentially waiting until the summer are ominous. I honestly thought we'd have something all lined up, bar the formalities, if we were to let one of our best players leave halfway through the season. There really was no logical reason to sell otherwise.

Wenger leads to hate, hate leads to ArsenalFanTV

Happy birthday, and stay bearded.

Hope you had a good one.

They mostly come out at night. Mostly.

He'll do well there. I reckon his link up play with Salah around the edge of the area this season is what finally convinced them to stump up the cash, it's exactly what they'll want him to do with Suarez and Messi, those little one-twos with dinked balls over the defensive line.

Wool on both counts I reckon. Looks like a wool Harrington to me, possibly vintage to boot considering the pattern. It's a little bit moddish, northern soul, I like it, so shoot me (don't shoot me).

I like his jacket.

No one comes into the starting eleven to be fucked at.

I've only just reluctantly bagged up my copy of that with a bunch of books to give to my local charity shop. God knows how many years I've had it.

Yay! I'm going to read these later whilst having a nice relaxing poo.

The only question mark around Mahrez is whether he's got the work rate. We've had far lazier and weaker tacklers who've benefitted from Klopp's kick up the arse, so I reckon he'd be alright. Particularly in a midfield with Keita's work rate next season. The big plus point for me is his ability to spot a run and work with fast, counter attacking players. If him coming in means we finally get a decent keeper then I'm all in.

We're quietly building an African All Stars team, and I like it.

Gotta feel for a bit for Holgate; yes, he's a blue, and possibly a cloth-eared one to boot, but to think someone's abused you in such a way in one of the biggest games of your life, well I doubt many would react differently. Like the Adeyemi claim, which turned out to be untrue IIRC, his reaction is based on sheer shock. I reacted similarly when a family member described my beard as "hipster".

I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan Not very funny if you don't like Alan Partridge though.

Beyond parody.

That all sounded great, until I got to Butland. It's going to be Butland, isn't it?

Tried one for a while, but I found the whole helmet and gear thing a bit of a hassle. Plus I could never get out of the cycling urge to mount the pavement.

I wouldn't be shocked if we'd told Coutinho in the summer he could leave if Barca met our valuation, but they left it too late. Now they want a do-over, but this isn't the window for all that. For anything to happen in January it needs to be fast and with the nod from the selling club that they can get their targets. Barca are likely playing the "It's now or never" card, twisting his tit like they did last summer, convincing him that they can't leave it until after the WC as they'll get dragged into a bidding war and fees will go up again. Bit of a stand off then - Barca tell Coutinho we're being unreasonable; we tell Coutinho Barca aren't stumping up fast enough, meanwhile Coutinho is wheeled around in his wicker bathchair by his agent with a blanket on his lap, coughing into a hankie, pretending to have consumption. At least he isn't staring out of a window at Insua.

I say give more indirect free kicks; haven't seen one of those in ages. There was a comical value to seeing everyone standing on the goal line, hands in front of bollocks, and someone blasting it at them from all of three yards out.

Bugger, so Woolster still won.

The issue for me is Lemar being cup-tied for the CL. I don't begrudge Coutinho wanting to go - all players are transient employees and we benefit more than most from that - but after the damp squib of our last CL campaign this feels like the comeback we all wanted. The chance to ruffle a few feathers in the latter rounds and make our mark is potentially season-defining for a young side developing under Klopp. Sell now, tie up Lemar, but both players stay at their respective clubs until the summer. Klopp's worked with players he knows are leaving six months later before and got good performances out of them.

"There was contact, so he had a right to go down" is up there with "He touched the ball, so it isn't a foul". I associate both with the phrase "for me, Clive". The problem is referees don't tend to look for illegal contact anywhere on the pitch - it's far too hard to discern - they go largely by body language and the aftermath of a coming together. The stride pattern, posture etc. are far easier to read from twenty yards away than whether two knees, for example, might have collided at speed. Hence why a player fouled who goes down theatrically will get booked and one not fouled but convincing enough can get a pen.

Books that don't have what they're about written anywhere on them. "Praise for the author" doesn't help me, as it could be a biography of Loose Women for all I know.