Morning.
A quick Sunday blog for you. I was out last night so I haven’t had a chance to watch endure Match of the Day. It looked like Liverpool were going to drop a couple of points against Nottingham Forest, but with the benefit of an incorrect refereeing decision, they grabbed a late winner through Darwin Nunez (I have seen the goal).
Obviously, I want Liverpool to drop points. That goes without saying, and yet another refereeing mistake this season will raise more debate about the standard of officiating in the Premier League. Nevertheless, Forest could just have … you know … whacked the ball clear instead of fannying around with it on the edge of their own box. Not to mention they have apparently hired Mark Clattenburg as a ‘referee analyst’ so, leaving aside the frustration we feel as fellow title contenders that a rival won a game late, we have to acknowledge Forest’s all-round dickheadedness.
Mark Clattenburg, come on. What’s his job anyway – to count up the various decisions he feels went against them in a season before sending a strongly worded letter to PGMOL?
Dear Mr Webb,
it has come to our attention that your refs are a bit shit …
[37 pages of bollocks]
So, in conclusion we’d like some points back.
Yours etc,
Marky-Mark.
Listen, if Howard Webb can go an actual TV show with Michael Owen that is basically refereeing agitprop, we know he is a man with no shame. He won’t be moved by a letter, a communiqué, a missive, a memo, a digital thesis with clips downloaded from Wyscout, or anything else. He’ll just go on Sky with Owen and talk about all the times his refs got things right, ignore the stuff they get wrong and the lad from ESPN will Refsplain us for another week.
Anyway, point is Liverpool winning like that is really annoying. Couldn’t they just have won 4-0 or something? That seems like the decent thing to do. That’s why the game later will be much easier to deal with. When Erling Haaland finds himself unmarked in the United box yet again to slot home his fourth goal, we’ll all just say ‘Of course’, comforted only by the TV cameras panning to a weeping Bruno Fernandes. He’s not crying because of the scoreline, but because John Stones’ shoelace brushed off his stud and he didn’t get a free kick for it despite the fact he leaped through the air like a constipated salmon.
Then the cameras will cut to Erik ten Hag on the sideline, the rain lashing down on him, sending rivulets teeming across his face. It won’t actually be raining in Manchester itself, just over him. His charisma vacuum and deeply internalised fury at Antony has created a localised rain-cloud over his own head. He just always looks like a man who would buy a new suit only to walk outside and for a bird to shit all the way down the back of it.
For me, the solution today will be cheeseburgers and dogs. I will make some of them and eat them, and worry about football tomorrow when we actually play. I should clarify, I will eat the cheeseburgers, not the dogs. I will walk them. I might even make the buns too.
So, for now, enjoy your Sunday folks.