Such is the level of optimism these days that we go into the game with
Manchester City at the Etihad just looking to keep the score down. Regardless
of how well or badly we have been playing, City have been burying everybody by
an average of about 4-0 so if we keep it down below that then I think we can be
quite satisfied with our days work. Sooner or later, City are going to stick
eight or nine past someone but with professional footballers being as they are,
usually a team get three goals ahead and just play the game out.
Kevin de Bruyne getting injured in midweek means City are without their best
player but when you have a squad worth billions and you bear in mind that they
have been doing without him more or less all season, it doesn’t really make
much difference to our prospects of getting anything out of this game. David
Silva, Leroy Sané, Sergio Agüero, Bernardo Silva, Raheem Sterling, Gabriel
Jesus, Riyad Mahrez… For fuck’s sake. They can put out the third team and still
have a decent shout of beating us. Such is the ridiculousness of the haves and
have nots in the Premier League.
Talking of which, the European super league has been back on the agenda with
all of the top six apart from Tottenham seemingly involved in the discussions
as I’ve said before in this blog-I can’t fucking wait for it to happen. Off you
go and take all the shithouse players, managers and Sky Sports and Liverpundits
with you. Don’t let the door hit your arse. I wrote a manifesto for the English
game post-Euro Super League here.
Last year in this game, we set up to defend the shit out of it and very nearly
got away with it, only losing to Sterling’s 97th minute winner in a game that
will be remembered mainly for Guardiola’s strange interaction with Nathan
Redmond after the game. One thing I remember about this game But no one in the
media will highlight, was van Dijk strolling around like he didn’t give a fuck
and making a horrendous error for the first City goal. He doesn’t make mistakes
now he plays for Liverpool of course – he is the best defender in the world.
defensively perfect to get anything out of the game, some panicky shit in
defence and the ball gets fired at JWP who can’t control it. Aguero picks it up, feeds David Silva who
slots Sane in and his cross is smashed into the net by Wesley Hoedt and all the
people who had Hoedt as ‘First Own Goal Scorer’ at odds of 1-50, celebrated
wildly. A bit unfortunate for him as he
had to do something with Sterling right behind him but smashing it into the
roof of your own net isn’t a great option.
later, Sterling picks it up on the left and slalom’s into the box whilst we
watch him, moving about as much as dead bodies in a fucking morgue. Sterling gets to the line, cuts out Macca
with the pull back and Sergio Aguero doesn’t often miss from 5 yards with an
open goal. He’s no Shane Long that’s for
sure.
It nearly gets worse straight away as Bernardo Silva plays in Aguero and
McCarthy pulls off a superb save to turn it wide as the defenders who are
supposed to be helping him, collectively shite themselves. The respite lasts for about 5 minutes when we
have three chances to clear the ball and take none of them. Eventually, after a few passes, Sterling has
it on the right and he stands up a cross.
No worries, Jack Stephens is under it but the Hindenburg (shit in the
air) doesn’t get off the ground and Sane flicks it on to David Silva who is
hiding in plain sight about 10 yards out and he belts it into the top
corner. If you useless twats could mark
the players in the light blue shirts – that would be really good.
Then the afternoon took a turn for the surreal and Southampton did a goal. Bertrand took time off from not tackling or
marking and played a superb ball through the defence to meet up with Ings run
and Ederson came out and trashed him.
Lee Mason gave the penalty and no one argued in the slightest. Up stepped Ings to roll it into the corner
for 3-1 to give us a real chance of turning it around. Ha ha fucking ha!
conceding as City manage to string together about 10 passes in an area of about
two square metres around our penalty spot.
No one tackles, no one clears it, there are a couple of nutmegs in there
and the smell of brown trousers is overpowering. Someone has a shot and it hits Hoedt and
bounces clear.
Winner Cedric Soares decides to try and shield a ball out of play and it all
goes full schoolboy as Aguero takes it off him and passes to Sterling who gets
a bit lucky as his airshot sends Hoedt for a hotdog and he then smashes it in. Great defending Cedric. A real safety first classic.
Can we go home yet? Oh no, just another
45 to go. My money is on 8-1.
thing of the match by stepping over it.
Everything that involves touching the ball he’s fucking useless at. Anyway, JWP picks it up again and smashes a
shot at Ederson who parries it out and does well to save Ings follow up.
We have another effort from a corner as Ings meets it at the near post and
Ederson saves superbly in the bottom corner.
Now that’s over, it’s clearly time to let in another goal but not just
yet as Sane’s ridiculous shot from the right smashes off the left hand
post. 90 seconds later and Aguero slides
Sterling in again and he scores through Macca’s legs to make it five.
contribution is to create a chance for Long which he predictably fucks up. On the next attack we give it away on the
edge of their box and you know they’re going to score – it’s just a case of
who. Sterling finds Sane and he scores from
15 yards. McCarthy should keep that one
out but why fucking bother when you’ve spent the whole game watching your
defence and midfield completely go missing.
I watched this game on a dodgy internet stream. It should’ve been only
accessible via the dark web. I nearly switched off at 3-0 but the timing of
Danny Ings goal meant I watched until half-time. I managed about 15 minutes of
the second-half until the fifth goal went in and then the dodgy stream
collapsed and I just couldn’t be fucking bothered to find another one. I have to say that City were brilliant. It gives me great comfort to know that Liverpool won’t win the League because City will. They will probably win the Champions League as well and if they play 60 games this season, they won’t have an easier one than this.
I haven’t criticised Hughes too much until now as the problems are more than
just his butt playing a narrow three-man midfield which basically allowed Sane,
David Silva, Bernardo Silva and Sterling to run whenever they liked completely
unhindered, was fucking ridiculous. We didn’t get close to David Silva all
afternoon. I know he is a great player but him picking up the ball when there
are five of our players circling him but none within 20 yards is absolutely
woeful. And Hughes picked Shane Long again and once again, he was fucking
garbage – hardly a surprise is it?. Michael
Obafemi will hopefully get more chances and the longer he spends around the
first team, the more likely it is that he will learn not to pass the ball to
Shane Long if he wants to get an assist at Premier League level. My personal
Shane highlight of the day was when we had a break on the left hand side and he
basically just trod on the ball and let City have it. Hughes was going mental
at that point on the sideline but I bet he still picks the useless twat next
week.
Personally, I think that Hughes has to leave Long and Austin out of the 18
altogether and use Sam Gallagher (if fit), Obafemi and Marcus Barnes because
they cannot possibly be worse. If Hughes continues to select Long and Austin
then it will cost him his job and I will have absolutely no sympathy if he
hasn’t at least tried the youngsters.
And so much for that bollocks from the last two games about our improved
defence. Two clean sheet against two teams that didn’t muster a single attack
between them is not quite the same as Manchester City going in dry. You can’t
give goals away against anybody, let alone the big boys. JWP getting his feet
in a mess on the edge of the box lead directly to Wesley smashing in his second
own goal of the season. Jack Hindenburg-Stephens not even getting off the
ground and getting beaten in the air by Sane which lead directly to David
Silva’s goal. There was some classic schoolboy from Cedric getting tackled
whilst trying to shield the ball out of play. Not that we would’ve got anything
out of the game but we had just scored and 3-1 down going into half time when
he fucked that up.
Elsewhere, Ryan Bertrand didn’t do himself any favours in front of the watching
Gareth Southgate and having being given a chance, JWP had an absolute fucking
nightmare. I usually defend Bertrand as he is a very good player (see the pass
for Ings goal) but today he just looked like he was going through the motions
and that is simply not acceptable, especially when you are the captain. Also,
when you are as utterly fucking shit as we were, it’s the captain’s
responsibility to come out and do the post match interviews. If you don’t want
to stand at the front when things are going badly, let Pierre Hojbjerg take the
armband because he seems to be the only one who is willing to put his hand up
and talk to the media and say that it basically isn’t good enough.
I can deal with the fact that we lost and I can deal with the fact that City
and their players are miles better than us but what I can’t deal with is that
City did the basics better than we did. They ran without the ball, they
pressed, they marked players. The only way you can beat teams that are better
than you is by outworking them. If you don’t have the ability then you can make
up for this by working incredibly hard but when the other team has more ability
than you and they are also working harder, then you get absolutely fucking
dicked like we did today.
highlighting that Hughes set us up 4-3-3 and the intention was to press high
but no one did. He highlighted occasions
where because we were narrow and not pressing, one pass from the back and City
bypassed our front 6 and engineered 5 vs 4 attacking situations. Is that Hughes fault or is it the
players? I felt a bit differently after
watching that because he picked a side of high-energy players as much as he
could with Long instead of Austin etc – maybe they didn’t follow instructions,
maybe they didn’t get enough instruction, maybe they couldn’t be arsed to play for the manager. Who knows? Murphy used to play
for Hughes at Fulham so he has insight into the manager and also said that
Hughes would rather go out against the big boys with an attacking plan rather
than sitting back. Maybe the big boys
are just too good now.
Today isn’t terminal for our season because we got exactly the amount of points
that we thought we were going to get but it is another nail in the coffin
regarding my enjoyment of brand Premier League. In a week where the European
Super League is back on the table, this was a bloody good advert for it both in
terms of the complete mismatch which went on at the Etihad this afternoon and
in terms of me wanting the big clubs to just fuck off and go and play with
their own ball, somewhere where I don’t have to pay any attention to it.
English football would be better off without them.
Next up, Watford at home. Where the odds on 0-0?
side avenge a 5-1 defeat to the same opposition a month ago, with a marvellous
performance and a 7-2 win with the added bonus of my centre half offspring
scoring a really good header. The most
enjoyable game of football I’ve seen for ages.
Football really is a great game when your team plays with maximum effort
and application.
League 1 Minus 10 
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