A Chelsea fan brings his annual Clearlake update, while Andy Robertson’s performance for Liverpool against Bournemouth is praised. Plus, Arsenal pressure, conspiracies, Godwin’s Law, Man Utd and more…
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Annual Clearlake update
It was a strange start to the season with Chelsea actually winning games.
Jackson doing his usual scoring 8 or 9 goals in quick succession and then not scoring again for the rest of the season did a nice old end to that.
Again despite the morons in charge of Chelsea spending £1billion + the squad is woefully shite.
Jackson isn’t going to be the world class striker every pundit in October seemed to think he would be. And Maresca refuses to give Guiu a go. Fernandez is one of the most average central midfielders in the league. Disasi and Badiashile have been disastrous. Mudryk pointless. Neto had done next to nothing. Felix has done next to nothing. Sancho has done not much more. Madueke is our most consistent attacker with 7 goals and 3 assists in 21 games. 4 goals came against maybe the worst performance Wolves have put in for a very, very long time.
Caicedo has improved, but still not at the level he was at Brighton.
Sanchez is a disaster. None of the other 50 goalkeepers signed in the last 2 years are anywhere near good enough for top 10 let alone top 4.
Cole Palmer is the only great signing made. And a great one he is. But he can’t carry the trash around him.
Maresca is doing as well now as a lot of Chelsea fans thought he would in the summer. Not a lot of goals scored, let loads in.
Now see Tomori linked with Spurs. A player better than any current cfc cb. Guehi who they f**ked off is also better obviously.
Fofana’s career is unfortunately now done because of injuries, heel never play more than 10 games a season. Same for Lavia. You might say not entirely Twatlakes fault, except both were signed injured, with both having a long injury history despite their age.
And because Egbahli, Winstanley, Lawrence and co have f**ked everything up so badly, there is no money to spend. So cfc stay stuck with the dross they have.
That early season push was incredibly fortunate (as has most other teams twatting about this season) because it means Chelsea should get top 8. Which obviously isn’t good enough for the amount of money spent on this shower.
Will (Lawrence and Winstanley obviously not behind Brighton’s great recruitment. Chuckle brothers have no idea what they’re doing)
The pressure is on Arsenal…
Bournemouth are an excellent side. Maybe one of the best we have played this season. It probably helped that their confidence was sky high and they had home advantage but that was a mostly nail biting and tense game.
Liverpool dominated the ball and territory but until we scored it felt like Bournemouth had the better chances. They probably could’ve scored 2 on the day if things had been different with the Semenyo and Kluivert chances.
My stream wasn’t good enough quality to judge the penalty but the commentator seemed convinced it was sloppy defending and in the tight games you’ve got to take your luck where you get it.
Robertson must’ve had it in his head that Kerkez was auditioning for his job today because he put in a blinder of a performance compared to the level he’s been all season. On the other side it’s hard to say if Trent was having a poor game or if Bournemouth made him look poor. There were quite a few unforced errors to my mind which were a bit frustrating when the game was finely balanced for so long.
Onto the next one. 9 points clear piles more pressure onto Arsenal who have a horrible game against a resurgent City tomorrow. If they concede first then you might just see their players crack up.
Minty, LFC
READ MORE: Arsenal edge Man City combined XI as Raya pips Ederson and Saliba partners Gabriel
Different angles at Bournemouth
Low stakes complaint here but the low-slung camera at the Vitality ground has always bothered me (though probably some prefer it, who knows). I do understand it’s a smaller ground, so they can’t mount higher for any better vantage.
Anyway since their camera is mounted a great deal lower, I initially thought the second of Salah’s goals was a badly mistimed cross-come-shot that would curve miles wide; those kinds of comedy misses are just as much his trademark as was this beauty of a strike that ended the contest.
Relief, because Bournemouth really are brilliant as advertised. Their camera levels might be crap but wow the football levels assuredly not. This was a big win on a small ground with a low-slung camera is what I’m saying here in too many words. Snatch the points and run.
Eric, Los Angeles CA
It’s a conspiracy I tell ya
Thank you Mr Tickner for voicing all the situations where I feel like I want to cave in my own skull with my sawn-off left leg whenever I hear/read the phrase ‘it only happens to our club.’
It is all such mind-numbing naval gazing I just cannot comprehend how so many people are beset by the same illogical thoughts all at once (but then Brexit and Trump, so…..).*
This is particularly acute when the conspiracies against a particular club come to ‘light’. As though an evil cabal of referees (led by Michael Oliver), Premier League officials, ‘other’ clubs, the Government, God, the Americans, the Illuminati, JFK and Basil Brush have all got together to conspire against your team to prevent them from some dastardly achievement such as ‘Reaching-The-Top-4’, ‘Winning-The-Carabao’ or, perhaps most damning of all, ‘Winning-An-Otherwise-Non-Descript-Home-Game-vs-Everton-Just-Because-They-Don’t-Like-Us’).
Quite why all these nefarious actors have such a grudge against your team is never fully explained. Nor has any evidence ever come out to say something along the lines of ‘we need to stop XXXX FC by any means necessary’. But there is clearly something about the human condition that lends itself to such behaviour and thoughts so maybe it is best that I just take my pills and shrug.
*Obviously this does not include Leicester who are absolutely, 100% being targeted by the cabal for dodging the PSR penalties and, thus, the PL and EFL (led by Basil B) are definitely out to get us, I can guarantee you that.
Rob (off to find a non-rusty saw for my left leg), Leicester
Squillions of dosh
On the back of the relatively young Jhon Durán going east, I’ve tried, and failed miserably, to construct a ‘type’ of geezer that cannot say no to pif’s filthy lucre, – though is it really so filthy? That is a long and complex debate (albeit slightly less tedious than VAR mails).
Seeing as Mohamed signed, from what may be termed, a left-field Roma , as was Becker, it becomes tricky to guess from where his Anfield replacement may be plucked .
When the merengues got their Mbappe I saw a few rumours in the press around their right sided attacker, Rodrygo who I still think is a bit under rated so he would be my first punt.
Even younger is of course , the astonishing Lamine Yamal who must be worth similar to what Neymar junior left FCB for, so probably a little out of Liverpool’s budget. At least, if the redmen win the title, Salah leaving a la Keegan can be smooth ish .
You’d suppose that the suits at Liverpool will have some proper cash to splurge on replacement players, even more so as champions and young ‘stars’ will be chomping at the bit to get coached by Arne Slot and his merry men .
A question to Liverpool fans then, do yous see Ben D’Oak rising to become elite? King Benny?
Whatever happens in the summer, those going to play (walking) footie in one of the hottest places on earth, where, ironically they have a winter break, – ‘go figure’ as the americans say, will make many men, from many a varied background, rich beyond proper comprehension .
Peter. (would Barça be back in the black if they sold Yamal?) Andalucia.
Man Utd and race
It’s a good job Tom wants to leave it to “sharper minds” because I’ve met spaniels with better arguments…
Patrice Evra? Former club captain, adored by the fans, bombed up and down the line and only wouldn’t make an all time United XI because Sir Denis Irwin is the GOAT. Fans 100% behind him when another club donned their t-shirts…
How about Tony Valencia, also a former club captain and widely appreciated player thats game was based on industry (and smashing crosses into the shins of opposition full backs)?
Or Nani. A hot and cold maverick but never once accused of being lazy, just hit and miss with his decision making.
Then there’s Three-Lung Park, the hardest working player ever to play for United and an absolute fan favourite.
Or the Yorke and Cole double act? I was in the stands, we bloody loved them, they were electric.
It’s almost like you’re cherry picking evidence to fit your preconceived ideas. One of the biggest causes of political polarisation on both sides is that as we drown in a sea of information in the internet age, we can find sources that back up our opinions. Nothing is ever baseless because there’s always something, however spurious, saying we’re right. Study after study in behavioural psychology shows that people will skip over evidence that runs contrary to their viewpoint, or more specifically, the viewpoint of their tribe. Log off and read some books.
Have a great weekend everyone,
Lewis, Busby Way
As a counterbalance to the hand-wringing crap spouted by Tom E13 in Friday morning’s mailbox, here’s a few more Man Utd players who have been pilloried by fans, managers and/or the media at various points over the years.
Harry Maguire (slabhead, ex-captain, turning circle of the Titanic), Scott McTominay (headless chicken), Darren Fletcher (why do the Scots rate him?), Luke Shaw (high weight, low intelligence), Rasmus Hojlund (couldn’t score in a brothel), Phil Jones (too ashamed to accept a testimonial – look at his stupid face!), Bastian Schweinsteiger (take your world cup medal and go train with the under-16s), David May (celebrating like he won the champions league), Massimo Taibi (all-time #1 comedy goalkeeper), Mark Bosnich (a terrible professional), David de Gea (do us a favour and retire), Fabian Barthez (I still have a T-shirt from F365 with his face on a clown’s body), Lee Sharpe (party boy), Darren Ferguson (daddy’s boy)…
Martin, BRFC
Godwin’s Law.
In 1990 (yes, it really was 35 years ago! God, I feel old), Mike Godwin, surmised that once someone online compared a view to Naziism, the argument was well and truly over. Essentially, a person has ran out of thoughts, ideas, and coherent speech that they must accuse the other of behaving like a Nazi – obviously if one were to take on the traits, then, yes, you are indeed a Nazi.
It doesn’t mean they are one, just that the argument is lost and there’s nothing else to say but that. Ergo, the accuser has ran out of options and gone down the schoolyard approach.
My point is that within football, some fans will come up with/make up/discard some facts for narrative, to categorically state that this, that, and the other is against them. And there is no one who can bring them down. You can try but it will invariably lead to an argument of a ‘conspiracy against us’.
Godwin’s Law.
They can’t prove it of course, but the beauty is that you can’t prove that they are wrong either. Doesn’t matter that to pull off such a feat would require the (presumably paid for) silence of thousands across the globe to achieve it. Oddly, this is the go-to argument about the moon landing; Russia could have said “nope, never happened,” but they didn’t. They said “congratulations,” despite wanting nothing more than to refute it.
Naturally I am not likening these ridiculous thoughts to the Third Reich, but it does have a similar feel, no? Shit happens, whether it be by design or just because, but what it doesn’t mean is that The FA, The PL, and the hundreds of thousands of people employed within football have decided that they are going to target your club and make sure you never find out about it.
Okay, point at Cootes all you like, or Oliver, but it isn’t a conspiracy. It’s an individual who makes mistakes or had a difference of opinion. PGMOL for all its faults are not out to get you. If they were we would know by now, and football in this country would have collapsed a long time ago.
Stop with “A does not equal B, even though it’s the same, which proves I am right” nonsense. Don’t lose your argument by being that person.
Mike D
