Liverpool’s Premier League Trophy Revealed

Norwich away but before that, board level matters at
Southampton Football Club.

There have been a few rumours about Chairman Gao putting the club up for sale
for £250 million quid. I’m very, very cynical about this. I think there’s a big
difference between actively looking to sell something and just putting the word
out that maybe, if anyone has £250 million quid and fancies buying a football
club, I might be prepared to listen. If he really wanted or needed to sell it
for some reason, like the Chinese government having his nuts in a vice or
whatever, then I think the asking price would be less than £250 million. None
of this logic or logic like it has stopped the Twitterverse throwing up mocked
up Red Bull Southampton kits and rebranded stadiums and the like and in classic
fashion, people have been getting very very angry about what is obviously
someone pissing about.

The accounts got published and without going into specifics, probably gave a
good indication as to why Chairman Gao wants shot of the club as everything was
worse than it was last year with the headlines being that we lost £39 million
compared to the previous year and our wage bill was 77% of turnover which seems
very high – apparently the UEFA warning flag is thrown at 70%. This is us still
paying for the shite recruitment of the latter Les Reed years, work that was
continued by Ross Wilson who apparently was 100% responsible for the Carrillo
panic buy.

Having five big earning players out on loan, namely Forster,
Lemina, Elyounoussi, Carrillo and Hoedt is undoubtedly a major factor here.
Saints put Baldrick up to be interviewed (they changed his name to Toby Steele)
and he explained away the losses by saying that we could’ve sold those five
players if we wanted to and then in the same breath he said that we couldn’t
sell those players because there was no market for them but the loan market is
very buoyant. He was also asked if there was any truth in the chairman putting
the club up for sale and he answered a different question, given the answer
that no one was interested in buying the club as far as he knew. Nothing to
worry about then with guys like Baldrick pulling the strings.  Baldrick, like any man with a cunning plan that cunning,
did not fill me with confidence.  

The hole in the accounts Sir – I have a cunning plan!

However,
in Baldrick’s defence, you have to wonder what he or anyone else on the Saints
Board knows about Gao and his intentions.  If we are to be sustainable and want to
strengthen the team then we have to stop making such a balls of our
recruitment.  Aside from these five on
loan, we have the expensive Boufal, Vestergaard and Adams – none of whom are
first team regulars.  It does worry me
that if a bid does come in for the likes of Nathan Redmond, who we really don’t
want to lose, then we may find it hard to turn down.  If we do end up weakening the starting XI
going in to next season then we’re in trouble on the pitch and where then for
Gao’s investment if the worst happens.  Apparently, we would like some investment but who the hell is going to invest in Gao’s club who is not from China as you can rule out any Chinese associates he has due to the government not being too keen on Chinese money leaving the country.

Anyway… back to Norfolk and a rather important game.

Think of Norwich and what do you think of? Personally, I think of Alan
Partridge and Grant Holt for some reason. During our ascent of the leagues when
we were competing with Norwich who made the same journey as us, Grant Holt was
their talismanic striker in the same way that Sir Rickie Lambert was ours.
Whilst Rickie lost weight to play his best football, Grant Holt remained a big
fat bastard but he was effective for a short period of time.

I also remember Grant Holt falling over another guy who had a few weight issues
as well (and still does) in Luke Shaw and he won a penalty off of Mark
Twattenberg at Carrow Road. Holt missed the resulting penalty and we got a draw
out of the game but I didn’t stop Mauricio Pochettino marching across the pitch
to have words with Twattenberg after the game. Oh how I hated Mark Twattenberg
but in the eyes of many, he was a decent referee who got selected to go to
international tournaments, unlike any of the arseholes we’ve got refereeing
games at the moment. Can we please have a game today where neither team feels
like they’ve been fucked over either by the idiot in the middle or the idiot
looking at the VAR screens. You have to say the chances of that happening are
not very good because the man in the middle is Lee Mason who is usually shit.
On VAR we have John Moss and the consolation there is that at least when
watching a TV screen, no doubt with a pint and a burger, his lack of fitness
shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Of course, Norwich have the legendary Delia Smith and “lets be ‘avin you” when
pissed as a fart and all that stuff. Norwich have left themselves a mountain to
climb if they want to not get relegated at the end of the first season back in
the Premier League and this is a game that they must surely win to have any
chance as banking on Coronavirus getting the league voided is a bit of a
desperate tactic.

They have taken a few scalps at home but I see them as a bit of a soft touch
and we should be confident about getting a result from this game. They have
been described as the best team ever to have been bottom of the table. What a
load of horse shit, said by people who in the next breath say that this is the
worst standard Premier League of all time.

Norwich don’t have Grant Holt any more but they do have Teemu Pukki who for a
while looked like he was going to keep them up single-handedly but his goal
return has dried up and we could do with that remaining the case today. Todd
Cantwell and Emiliano Buendia have chipped in with a few goals from midfield
but just not enough and defensively, fuck me, they still have Grant Hanley in
the team. I’m sure there are League 1 sides that he would struggle to get in.
Tim Krul is in goal and he has always been decent and I like the look of Max
Aarons at right back.

….. And I wrote all that for nothing because of coronavirus.  I’ll probably use it again when the game does
get played.

There is talk of taking the current league positions as the final
positions and giving Liverpool the title and relegate in the bottom three –
lawsuit central if that happened. The rulebook does appear to have mention of
75% of games being the cut-off point but this is for if a team dropped out of
the league. This means that if a team dropped out of the league having played
75% of their games then the results of the clubs got against them would still
stand. The said rule doesn’t make it clear though if the league would then be
decided on average points per game or whatever because you clearly couldn’t
have some teams having played extra games purely because they played the
disbanded team earlier in the fixture list.  

Representatives of certain clubs have suggested canning the league,
relegating no one and promoting the top 2 from the Championship and having a
bigger division next season.  Brighton
and West Ham are up for this – I wonder why.  I wonder if they’d be so keen on relegating
all of the current bottom 6 as they’re all shit and having a smaller league
next season.  I really hope that when /
if the League resumes, Brighton and West Ham go down for even suggesting it.

There is also been talk of cancelling the Euros and pushing them back a year
and hopefully finishing the Premier League and the EFL in the summer. This is
what I believe will happen but what that means for the transfer window and
players contracts and all that is anyone’s guess.  With roughly 10 games left for every team, it
needs at least six weeks to finish the domestic season so all the problems will
really start if the fixtures don’t restart by the middle of May. The Premier
League in particular will want the games to be played, mainly for reasons of
money and this is either revenue from broadcasting or the potential threat of
being sued by various clubs if everything is cancelled. Games behind close
doors have already proved to bring crowds to hang around outside the stadium so
from a safety point of view, playing behind closed doors is not the answer but
I see this being the way forward if we approach mid May and the green light has
not yet been given to restart all matches in the usual fashion. Basically, it could
turn into a real fucking mess.

Anyway, football is not the priority right now as everyone
knows.  We will all miss it and it’s
going to be a great day when it comes back.