We could have done the double last year had we not lost to Man City in the finals. The loss to Man City was a disappointing one for us. Nico O’Reilly scored twice and ruined some of the fun that was about to come later. We also lost to PSG in the Champions League finals, and missed the treble. The getaway was that you shouldn’t lose finals but to learn from those losses, we must reach there again.
And the journey begins today. We are visiting Ipswich Town today in the third round of Carabao Cup / EFL cup. There are some good teams competing this time – Chelsea, Bournemouth, Sunderland, Palace, Newcastle have already made it to the next round. The fate of Arsenal, Man Utd, City, Liverpool and Spurs will be decided today.
We are unbeaten so far this season. 4 Premier League wins and a CL win so far, and we can add another one today. And it’s the second last game before we go into the international break, so the manager is under no duress to rest players. Though, I would like to see the likes of Max Dowman getting some game time today, Mikel likely prefers to go with the best fit XI.
Wenger used these cups to develop academy players and he would find some gems often. He invested his time and also cost the club a few points in doing so. But we are way past the development phase and we can spend 60m on players that would be second fiddle to Saliba and Rice, so don’t expect anything interesting. The best we can do is, WIN, and move on to the next round.
Every trophy matters. We have the best squad in the Premier League and we have already won the Premier League. The next target is to win more, and not just settle with the title this season.
In the team news, we would probably see Kepa back in the goals. There’s so much to do for Raya, so he will get some rest. We can also see a midfield of MLS and Guimaraes, with Merino in the Odegaard role. Madueke is a candidate to get a start and we might see Eze over Tzolis. Gyokeres could also get his start. I don’t care frankly who starts and if he is fatigued, we have got at least 2 players for each position and that removes the injury anxiety for me.
That’s all for today, see you during the game.
Marc—there was only two “real” differences between the two cases, (1) the belief that Chelsea wouldn’t have exceeded the loss limits even if they properly recorded their secret payments, whereas City supposedly would have by a substantial amount, and (2) Chelsea’s new owners cooperated with the investigation, which was to their ultimate benefit, whereas City fought it tooth-and-nail at every step (total apple-to-oranges situation due to the forced sale of Chelsea)
personally I don’t give a shit about any of it, except that I only want to see those non-football playing individuals involved to be severely punished, which includes agents…I don’t want to lose the ability to watch some of the most attractive football in Europe simply because some rich cunts did what they always do, cheat/circumvent the system at every turn…let’s keep in mind that no team ever, except Chelsea’s then new owners, rolled over during the investigation process, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that City acted as they did
TRVL
The money generated by PL clubs doesn’t need extra money injected by illicit means – if anything clubs doing this just creates false inflation in the game putting costs up.
Remember if a pub team with 3 regular fans got promoted to the PL they’d instantly become one of the 25 or so richest clubs in the world.
City need to be made an example of – they’re not even a big club so them being consigned to history isn’t a big deal.
Marc—I’m certainly not suggesting that those involved shouldn’t be punished severely, I just don’t want those who played no part to bear the weight of their actions…like I said, force the sale of the club, ban execs for life from the PL, give them all a fucking scarlet letter, but don’t punish the fanbase or the players who weren’t involved whatsoever…then release all the information for public consumption…it’s really quite simple, but it takes a lot of fucking balls to take those rich cunts to task
TRVL
The players won’t be punished they’d all be sold. As for the fans – tough they knew City were spending beyond their means. Anyone who says they didn’t is either a child or a moron.
City need to be destroyed as a club – seeing them rot in League 2 with all those amazing fans still showing up (all 2,000 of them the rest will be long gone) will send a permanent message to all clubs.
sorry, but I’m just not on the same page…killing the club now would be like charging a son for something his father did…force them to sell and excommunicate all involved…some of this shit is a decade old…punish the right people in such a definitive manner that the actual message you want to send is sent…the fans shouldn’t be the ones to suffer the most…furthermore, I don’t want us to win a title with another “asterisk” attached
TRVL
I didn’t say I’d strip them of titles etc – this undermines the competition.
It’d be like re reffing a match after the final whistle had gone. Fans though need to be responsible – they all push for their club to spend money, sign the big players etc.
This isn’t some little accounting or paperwork error (can’t remember who it was who fielded an unregistered player for a cup match won and were then kicked out of the competition) this was a deliberate massive fraud against the fans of the other 91 professional clubs in England.
As I said City were and are a small club – their fans knew or should have known something wasn’t right but they didn’t care “look at us we’re rich and winning stuff”.
What did Haaland say again “Stay humble”? Maybe he should have added “keep within the rules you’ve agreed to follow”.
I do think City’s record needs to be expunged. Otherwise, where’s the disincentive to do it again?
And I’m not quite sure how they’d enact such a rule but there also needs to be a prohibition on any new team seeking entry to the league structure that contain the words ‘Manchester’ and ‘City’ in it. There also needs to be lifetime bans from the PL for the main protagonists.
There’s little or no comparison to the whole Chicago white/black socks thing which was nearly a century ago but that level of cheating has been embroidered into MLB folklore. Not least in the excellent film called ‘Eighth Man Out ‘. It’s a much bigger deal than that tbh.
As someone who loathes City and what they’ve become, I’m happy for them to face the full extent of punishment, not least because it also puts sports washing and these foul oil kleptocracies in the negative light they so fully deserve.
Time to get medieval on these cunts’ asses and consign them to history. They’re not a well supported entity so not many will miss them.
Send Sheikh Bollokov to Tennessee for some more botched justice.đź’‰
When the PL finally resumes, there’ll be a febrile atmosphere and some pretty fruity songs about City I hope. Moreover, I think their season is almost certain to start going seriously downhill as the recriminations and rancour start to fly.
I’d happily forsake any silverware if it meant spuds, city and the latter’s equally county neighbours were to disappear from the PL. Worth a bus parade just for that I’d say.
Tottenham CEO Vinai Venkatesham outlines De Zerbi stance and admits future transfer issues | Football London https://share.google/5tV3kStlczfgvKCvj
Anyone remember this useless fucking twat? I suppose he did us a favour by leaving to fuck up the spuds instead of staying to fuck Arsenal. How the bejesus is Vinay still holding down a job in football. Absolutely hopeless.
So Andrew Burnham fails to read the room by praising the city hierarchy..
He obviously hasn’t a clue how to win votes …
Someone should have a word in Burnham’s ear to keep out of the corruption at city as there are millions of football fans throughout the country who wouldn’t need much persuading to ditch labour , though the damage has probably been done..
Burnham probably already regrets the mistake of making his support for city public..
Slagsy
Burnham is a cunt.
He has already given a subtle warning, fuck all is to happen to the slippery cunts
He is balls deep with that lot over dodgy deals in Manchester housing and land purchases
When will you get in your thick head, they are all corrupt no good cunts , including our lot of no good cunts.
Thats how the premier league works.
They earn more
You pay more.
Cunts
Yep , just as I thought , Downing st have put out a statement saying “ there can’t be any suggestion that anyone is above the rules”, obviously they realise that Burnham is a as thick as shit with his naive praise of the city hierarchy..
Art
If you can be arsed – and I’d quite understand if you cannot – rank these erstwhile prime ministers in order of cuntery.
Blair
Brown
Cameron
May
Bojo
Truss
Sunak
Starmer
Burnham
None of them is good in my view but a cunt chart would be illuminating.
Here’s mine, in order. Least worse first.
2, 9, 4, 3, 7, 8, 1, 5, 6
9 varying degrees of PMs following Tory/Capitalist doctrine. Fuck me, I lost 4 minutes of my life doing that.
Burnham was known as “Flip Flop Andy” by political journalists when he was previously a Minister. He has a fundamental personality flaw for a leader in that he desperately needs to be liked.
He’s also having a problem breaking away from his previous role as Mayor of Manchester.
You bear that in mind and you can see why he commented and then had to roll back on it. An intelligent leader wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it.
Of course there’s a possibility City’s owners have some dirt of him (there’s serious rumours about property deals etc whilst he was Mayor) he may just be about to have the screw turned.
Kroenke
Just curious why you have Truss at the top of the list?
Blair Cunt No.1
What he did with Iraq should have seen him sent to Siberian Gulags, ideally with the moronic cunt in tow to keep him company.
Wicked cunt ended up killing more Iraqis and Kurds than Sadaam H ever did
Still poking his fuckin nose in everything, I notice.
Cunt.
Marc—get real, do you really think it was on the fans to organize themselves and revolt against the higher-ups?!? that’s fucking rich…let’s not forget that City had to pay way above the number in those pre-Pep years simply to get top class talent to shitty old City…furthermore the charges in question mainly stem from issues that happened between 2009 & 2018…all the charges after that, or during Pep’s time there, are only related to noncompliance
now whereas I agree with you on the whole expunging of their titles, I would say that they must make note of the mitigating circumstances in the record books..at some point common sense must enter the equation, so the last thing they can do is to kowtow to the wishes and whims of other top sides who have an axe to grind and/or something to be gained from their potential dismantling…as I’ve said, I would aggressively target only those who were directly implicated in the deceptive behaviour, which.likewise includes fucking agents, who likely came up with every ruse in the first fucking place…let’s not forget the role the PL played as they raked in some serious fucking dollars on the backs of City’s successes during this incredibly lengthy/mishandled process
as for the worst PM convo, I tend to agree with your top 3, but historically speaking I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Sir Eden (Suez Canal disaster fucktard) & Chamberlain, for his appeasement policies regarding that little Austrian cunt with the half-caterpillar for a mustache
last paragraph was directed towards KP…Cheers
TRVL
Fan groups put pressure on clubs all the time and City fans can’t complain they had no idea. How could City suddenly be spending so much money compared to other clubs who are far bigger etc etc?
My point is you don’t get to knock back Tequila’s all night and then complain you’ve got a headache the next morning.
As I said before this wasn’t a small amount – it was hundreds of millions of ÂŁ’s.
Will the football world be a poorer place if City are playing in League 2 next season and the answer is no. Their overseas fans will be supporting another team in 5 seconds and a large number of those hardcore English fans all came out of the woodwork after they started being successful.
Its the thing that used to fuck me off about ManU fans back in the Fergie days – I live in Hertfordshire and you’d come across all these ManU fans none of whom had any connection to Manchester (most had never even fucking been there) but they all had a story about why they were a Utd fan from way back – nothing to do with glory hunting at all.
It was all bollocks just like City fans whinging is all bollocks.
Art
Bliar is the closet thing we’ll ever see to the actual Anti Christ.
The guys the fucking devil – I’d have his entire genetic stain wiped from the planet and yes I mean what that implies.