We have got 3 games left and City have 4. We play against Bournemouth tomorrow, Man United Away and Everton on the last day of the season. City have Wolves, Fulham, Tottenham and West Ham to play. There is only one outcome of this… unless the gods decide to do us a favor.
The only way we can win the title this season is that City drop points (a loss, even a draw would do), and we win all of ours. We don’t need god for the latter.
Everyone’s fit, even Jurrien Timber. But if you are thinking that Mikel will start him in last 3 games of the season when there’s still some hope left for winning the title, and when he has played only a U-21 game in almost a year, then you are wrong. He can turn out to be a better player than Zinchenko and Kiwior combined in that LB position but now is not the time to test it. Lets stick to what’s working.
Chelsea schooled Tottenham last night and Spurs have to play Liverpool next. And I’m sure by the time they play City, they will be out of top 4 fight and hopeless. That’s not a good thing for us, because we needed them to put up a fight against City. However, looking at the sad state and misery they are in, makes me happy. There’s only 1 big club in London and the boys there wear red and white.
2 more weeks left for the season to end, and we are already hearing transfer rumours. It seems like we are open to selling Gabriel Jesus, and Zinchenko. Thomas Partey could leave too. There will a bunch of clearance to fund the CF and a Saka’s back up. Nketiah, Nelson, ESR, Vieira, Ramsdale might be in that list.
Going till the end for two consecutive seasons and falling short by a game, highlights how difficult Pep has made everyone’s life. Frankly, after last season’s collapse towards the end, I thought we would sulk and the players that gave everything would lose the motivation to try again (similar to Leicester’s winning season) but I was wrong. All of them stood up, and played even better. We lost few games that we should have won and those points could have been very crucial now, but that’s not the talk today. Two seasons, neck to neck against the 115 charges and Pep and we are still in the fight is an improvement to our last 10-15 years of football.
If we don’t make this season, we will do in the next. I don’t have any agenda as such for today, I will be back with the match day blog tomorrow.
Note : londonisred.com remains free and we will never go behind a paywall. Adblockers have killed the Ads revenue and we are running on the coffee you guys buy. Every help motivates me to keep it fun here.
OK so Brighton have done their bit the Spuddies now need to beat Liverpool to keep in the chase.
Rotherham died when the pits closed. A friend of mine was a miners son and he left school at 15 to work in the mine office. Now in his eighties I would love to be a pound behind him. He no longer lives in Rotherham (still has the accent). He spends his time in Switzerland and the US – a few years ago he sold his shopping mall in Pennsylvania to our Stan.
Marc
So you’re an old tree hugger nowadays? I dare say you’ll be out in an extinction rebellion outfit on the M25 tomorrow gluing yourself to a zebra crossing while eating home made muesli and drinking your own urine. You’re soooooo woke! It’s all that talk of Labour destroying the Tories that’s turning you into a Trotskyite. 🔨Just a hammer, no sickle emoji.
In essence, livelihoods of workers and viability of their communities are paramount in my heavily socialist influenced opinion. Even more important than recycling your cardboard and plastic! Someone with your southern shandy drinking sensibilities would struggle in a post industrial society. Playing dominos in a down-at-heel working men’s in Merthyr Tydfil? Whippet rearing in Mansfield fnarr fnarr? There’s no polenta in Pontypool mate.
Those industries could’ve and shd’ve been phased out sensitively and in such a way that people received help and training instead of being put on the scrap heap almost overnight. I lived in a steel town which the labour party killed in the late 70s by doing the same. But no, Thatcher and Tebbit and equal numbers of Labour cunts chose to put people in Wales, Yorkshire, Notts and Kent to the sword because they were poor and powerless. And now those places are fucked while areas in the south east catch up in a race to the bottom. Slough? Luton? Medway towns? St John’s Wood (joke).
In more important matters, that penalty given to Brighton was a fucking disgrace? I agree with you that a Villa loss might re-galvanise the Spuds to try against city. I think I want the lillywhites to beat the bin dippers in that case.
It’s funny mate. I greatly enjoy our political polemic. That guy Rich who used to try it on LG – RIP (new name) was an absolute cunt on the other hand. I wonder who he’s boring now Ped has shut everyone down?
Kroenke
Maybe you should be aware that I used to run a small manufacturing company and have had a hand in setting up other manufacturing setups. I’m in the Timber Industry so more reasonable for trees being cut down than hugging them! Of course all from sustainable sources etc.
Whole swathes of manufacturing were wiped out under Bliar and continued since so we can import cheap tat from China.
The real issue is the Unions who decided to pick a fight with Thatcher to overthrow her Government – we cannot have small groups deciding to overthrow a democratically elected Government because they don’t agree with the politics etc.
We’re seeing it now with the Rail Unions who are pushing for train drivers (who are very well paid) to get even more when we’re on the cusp of driverless cars let alone trains.
Don’t these dopey fuckers ever learn from history?
COYS!
At least for the next 90 minutes.
Ambarish – don’t ban me, pleeeease!
Nice one Marc, I’m glad my vitriol roused you from your comfortable suburban Sunday afternoon soporific slumber. We have rather different takes on trade unions, industrial relations and social history…
Oh, and you keep suggesting that TB was a lefty and I was a supporter. If a bit of scatalogical imagery helps assuage your concern – the guy is a duplicitous, (illegal) warmongering right wing shit. 💩
Phew… Glad to have emptied my bowels onto Tony’s legacy.
Hi NORG
I’ve been to Burnley, Blackpool, Preston and Sheffield among others recently but nothing prepared me for Rotherham. As Captain Kurt (Marlon Brando) said in Apocalypse now about Vietnam,
‘The horror… The horror’
Liverpool looking highly dangerous but my new found friends from the awful part of n London at least look ready to fight.
Kurtz…
Phlegmy cannonballs is a beautiful turn of phrase Hoopah. Nice one.
Oh fuk. My dalliance with the cockerel jockeys didn’t last long.
Anyone who wants to get an unbiased glimpse at what we’ve been facing since the halfway point of the season, minus the Villa and City affairs, just have a looksee at the sorry performance by the Hammers against Chelsea today…based on that performance Artetites should be clammoring to pry Jackson away from our crosstown rivals, as he’s outperformed our little long-legged experiment by quite some margin, yet fans of that club would like nothing more than to replace his ass tout de suite…that’s why context matters…when evaluating the on-field talent, you can’t let your club’s respective record to cloud your judgement…there’s no doubt that if Chelsea were sitting where we are in the table the fanbase would be considerably more forgiving when it came to their Striker’s obvious shortcomings, like his lack of clinical finishing or his piss-poor linkup play at times or his myriad of careless/wasteful offsides etc…
as for the Villa/BHA match, what a fucking insipid performance by both clubs in the final third…I get that from BHA, as they’re still facing a multitude of key injury issues up front, but Villa just looked way too flat for a club playing for something…I believe this is their highest ever PL point total, but you would never know it by watching that dreck…this is another reason why Emi’s so fucking important, as he would be ripping everyone a new one if he were on the pitch today
KP—Rich the bitch ran to his little blog “mommy” after he and I tussled a time or two…he was another passive aggressive cunt of quite epic proportions…if only he had a mirror in his cave he might have been a worthy adversary
Killroy-in my mind the jury is still out on Mudryk, as the circumstances he’s encountered at Chelsea certainly haven’t favoured him…he wasn’t a Poch hire, so getting this rather raw talent sorted was by no means a high priority, and the tactics don’t really play into his strengths, especially with the backers creeping, which leaves him tucked inside too much, and their counter relying too heavily on Jackson in more central channels…he’s showed glimpses but nothing that would ever justify the inherent costs…he’s one for the future, just not sure if that future is at his current club…I would gladly take him as a wide side cover piece if the initial outlay was about half of what Chelsea paid, keeping in mind he’s on a lower salary than both Nelson and Eddie
Hoopah
I’m 68 and happy my music ramblings are proving fun to read. When you mentioned the 12 foot dish I immediately had visions of Del Boy & Rodney looking out their high-rise block, flat window where their Statalight dish was attracting aircraft from the Heathrow stacking and holding zone orbiting planes.
I’m assuming it was secured too the ground and not roof mounted with that size. Can’t imagine on getting through the monsoon season.
Norg
Wonderful story of your friend. I remember reading that Waldo Emerson went bankrupt 14 times before he made his first million dollars. Left school at 14 and wrote to CEOs to ask for advice so it’s been written.
KP
It’s been an eventful weekend for you and I did wince when I saw the score earlier. The highs are high and lows are sewer level low but we love it, so it’s ok.
Emery will be looking for Pool to do Villa a favour. Spuds with no shots on goal will self destruct anyway and then we want Palace to take the points from manure.
Whole swathes of manufacturing were wiped out under Bliar and continued since so we can import cheap tat from China
Tony B and his monstrous ego would be pleased to hear that he alone was responsible but the demise of manufacturing in first world countries is really down to neoliberalism, the formation of trading blocks, and the untramelled movement of capital. Oh, and the irredeemable greed of people like Richard Branson, James Dyson and Lee Iacocca backed by their political agents. You know… TB, Thatcher, Reagan, Macron, Chirac and Merkel. The type of wankers who say ‘we’re all in this together’ or ‘you’ve never had it so good’. And it’s not even as if workers in these new manufacturing hubs are feeling any benefit.They’re just doing the same shitty under recognised work formerly done in the west.
It wasn’t socialism that brought about the demise of industry. It was your idols, all of whom are billionaires mate.
Vieira – I knew I could count on you for a pitch perfect summary of that nasty little amoeba.
Tony
Your opening comment on this stream about God giving us Jesus made me spit communion wine and bits of cream crackers all over myself.
Spurs going Spursy mate.. and some of us were so dumb hoping they could beat Man City lol
the Gakpo non-penalty speaks to the rich get richer narrative that’s an all too familiar refrain in the PL during the modern era…somehow Havertz is applauded by match commentators for his Oscar-worthy flop, yet Gakpo is admonished, as if he were a pox on the footballing landscape…I wonder if the same would be said if Pool had not lost form and cocked up their title chances??? btw the vastly cheaper Dutch tweener has contributed more goals and one less assist, while playing a 1000 less minutes, than Havertz…just saying
So the Spud’s are actually playing out a cunning plan they’re going to make City think they’re so useless they don’t bother turning up.
the fact that Klopp has his players finish on the front foot in a match when they had a considerable lead going into half speaks to one of my chief concerns about our present manager moving forward…now there are undoubtedly times when one must proceed in a more cautious manner, but one should never underestimate the value of having maangerial balls
another continuing concern is our tactics, surely it wouldn’t take a genius to understand that if you want to beat the best you can’t simply adopt a poor man’s version of them and hope that they cock things up time and time again…instead you scope the footballing landscape, making careful note of who’s had the most success against Pep, then do your very best to replicate or better their respective formula…with this in mind, Klopp has been abnormally successful against Pep, both here and in the Bundesliga…they’ve faced each other 28 times, with the former winning 11 of those encounters, whereas the latter only secured all 3 on 10 occasions…as such, why would you not pursue a similar course of action, especially knowing that we had a couple key requisite pieces already in the fold, in Saka and Marts
even if you take a wider view you will find that clubs like Real or lesser lights, such as Brentford or BHA, have found a way to disrupt City’s perceived dominance by countering with pace and numbers…even that seems out of the realm of possibility with MA at the helm…maybe it’s the fact that MA seems more Jose than Klopp-like that gets my goat, after all the former has found it exceedingly difficult to replicate his earlier successes with that MO in the modern game…fuck I hate when anyone turns a blind eye to the most commonsensical pathway to success
on the more positive side of things, I think our off-season business is relatively straight-forward, get a Strkier with goals in his boots, shore up our midfield, especially if Partey departs, then get someone with real pace on the edge so that we have some viable cover/competition…now this won’t be a cake-walk, especially with the Euros on tap and the fact that we will desperately need to shed some periphery pieces, but you would think that a consdierable amount of the legwork will have already been completed by season’s end…as I’ve said all along, we desperately need those kind of players who can take us forward in spite of our manager’s more conservative inklings against those sides that matter most…after all, we’re not going to reach the mountaintop by outmanaging the likes of Pep or Ancelotti, we’re going to reign supreme because we have bought the required horses
The Sp*ds may not get 4th but if they don’t put in a performance for their last three games they may be out of Europe. That means Levy will be pissed because he will loose money. I believe we lost the title because of Refereeing since the Newcastle goal should have never stood and the other PGMOL fuck ups should also factor in not having the points we should have had. Can’t see City dropping points as they are in top form.
here’s a couple of examples why context and the “eye test” matter:
(1) if one was to apply simply math when comparing Havertz and Jesus, the latter would presumably have scored roughly 16 goals and added some 16 assists by this juncture, if he were to have played the same amount of minutes as his Arsenal counterpart…at twice the minutes played, Havertz has 13 tallies and 6 assists…if you listened to the match commentators and/or read all the overhyped reviews, you would think that Kai was by far the superior performer…that said, from an eye test perspective neither have performed anywhere near the level one should logically expect from our highest paid players and as such we shouldn’t hesitate one iota to find a proper Striker replacement, regardless of what transpires between now and season’s end
(2) in the coming days you will invariably hear ample chatter about our 5th starting Keeper since MA’s arrival on the scene…this talk will be inspired by him being bestowed with the once-coveted Golden Gloves award…this was all but insured when Luton scored against Everton, thus making it mathematically impossible for Pickford to match Raya’s clean sheet tally…since it’s origins in 2004-05, the list of winners has included a veritable who’s who of the best Keepers in the business, Cech, Van der Sar, Reina, Courtois, Alisson, De Gea and Ederson, so one might be under the false impression that this award cements your place as the top Keeper League-wide and maybe beyond
in this particular case, Raya might not even be a top 10 shot-stopper in the PL, let alone a top 25 Keeper in world football…in fact, I might give more kudos to Pickford for even being part of the mix considering his piss-poor club, but then I remember he’s playing for a man who loves nothing more than desperately negative football, Mr. Sean Dyche…I know this is likely an anomaly, as some of the main contenders have missed chunks of time and others have had to endure some rather substantial backline transitions, but if this were to happen again the PL might want to have a bit of a rethink when it comes to the criteria they use to determine what some see as a “best” Keeper award…sadly it’s another avoidable loss for team eye test
TRVL
I had to read it twice that Raya was the golden glove contender this season. Sometimes awards get devalued by the level of ability on display albeit through injuries or an off season.
https://www.football365.com/news/feature-premier-league-keepers-ranked-2023-24-psxg
Who is the best keeper in the Premier League?
A good read by football365 and as set out below, Raya doesn’t match up.
Who is the best goalkeeper in the Premier League in 2023/24?
1) Emiliano Martínez (Aston Villa): +6.8. …
2) Jose Sa (Wolves): +5.8. …
3) Arijanet Muric (Burnley): +4.7. …
4) Andre Onana (Manchester United): +4.2. …
5) Jordan Pickford (Everton): +4.1. …
6) Alphonse Areola (West Ham): +4.0. …
7) Guglielmo Vicario (Tottenham): +2.7.
.
.
.
20) David Raya (Arsenal): -2.3
He will win the Golden Glove for most clean sheets but the truth is that he has not been kept busy at all.
Says it all really where Emi was always our best keeper and would have won us titles last and this season imho. Emi would have got use the points we needed imho.
Tony
Emi is a personality that some find annoying (El B for one). His heroics won El B a piece of silver and then was sold.
KP
Business billionaires and union execs are as bad as each other. In between feature the slimy politicians.
At present most of the global problems exist because there are too many people.
Norg
El B is a 24 carat cnut, but if he wins the PL & CL for us, he’ll still be a cnut to me for his disregarding way with people, he just be a winning cnut I will have to put up with.
I felt the same about Emi, but at least Emi had done his apprenticeship for 10 years behind the scenes with us, and was brilliant when we needed him to be, El B, too as you rightly pointed out.
Being from the East with all it’s mystique I do wonder if El B’s karma tank is like the Spud’s trophy cabinet: empty! Lady luck is also a main ingredient to being successful.
That being said, the players deserve their karma barring Havertz & White’s dark arts antics.
I’m of the honorable type that prefers to win without cheating or should I say visibly cheating. Wee get a pen for what White does in every game repeatedly. Havertz buys us a pen dragging his foot across the keepers ankle.
Be interesting to see if there are class B, dark art rule changes made for next season……
“Business billionaires and union execs are as bad as each other. In between feature the slimy politicians.
At present most of the global problems exist because there are too many people.”
Couldn’t agree with that more.
TRVL
Raya might win the Golden Gloves but he’s playing behind a very very good defence.
The last couple of matches he’s had moments where he looks like a headless chicken. He’s at best a marginal improvement on Ramsdale.
My guess is after paying a total outlay of £40 plus million for him we’ll be looking for another keeper in 2 – 3 years.
Marc
The pairing of Gabriel and Saliba is the strongest in the premiership. El B wanted Gabriel out (not one of his signings) but he could not justify the change. Saliba will be the one that leaves – his ambition is to play for RM. If we end up trophyless this season and do not win anything next he will then have 2 years left on his contract.
El B also wanted Saliba out but events led to his change of mind.
Norg
Arteta is someone who trips over positive outcomes rather than create them either that or does something so obvious (Rice’s signing) that the idea that it was a move by a genius is laughable.