brummie

Although also, the rectangle followed by the hand crossing "no goal" or "no red card" thing. That's even better.

Does anyone else find themselves thinking if they were a referee they'd LOVE doing the make the shape of a rectangle and point to the penalty spot thing?

Yeah. *shifts uncomfortably in chair*

I know. If it makes you feel better, it doesn't normally last

Evening, all. Players improved under Gerrard in a year: Ramsey (at a push). Players improved under Emery in 15 games: McGinn, Watkins, Ramsey, Luiz, Mings, Buendia. And there are probably more. I still feel all this sticks in the craw of the cheerleaders for the traditional wanker British managers who can't handle Stevie G failing, but the difference here is absolutely night and day, no comparison. Under Emery, we play like we have a plan, and a collective brain and an effort to make it happen. I never really feel like we are going to lose - we do lose, obviously, but I go into matches thinking we'll quite possibly win. Week after week. We've scored in every game under him. We had one game against Leicester where we made four poor mistakes and every one of them was punished. We lost at home to Arsenal, but were at 2-2 until the 93rd minute when a shot hit the crossbar, bounced in and went in off our keeper's head. I was wrong about a few of these players. I thought Watkins wasn't up to it, I thought McGinn was a busted flush, but we're seeing the impact a proper coach with a properly professional backroom staff can make, it's remarkable, and I just wish we hadn't wasted the first third of the season on that cunt Gerrard. EDIT - and another thing, in 15 games he has entirely changed the way we play, totally different. He has us playing out from the keeper to the defenders, ball to feet, all the time, something we never did under Gerrard. We now keep the ball, he goes nuts when we give it away cheaply. 15 games, remarkable.

This is the sort of signing that, at first thought deeply underwhelming (and let's be honest, it would be) depends massively on who else you sign.

Looking at the table in recent years, I don't really get what Spurs fans are moaning about. A series of top four finishes, a CL final, a brilliant new stadium. Yeah yeah no silverware for a bit, but this is a club whose last title win was closer to the reign of Queen Victoria than it is today, and they've only won it twice, so a degree of "much fart, not so much shit" is to be expected from them. However, myself supporting a club which for decades also had a man who made himself as high profile as the club itself, I can understand why they'd have had enough of Levy. He and his right hand man are by all accounts highly visible at the training ground, which straight off is a red flag. It seems to be what Conte was referring to, the running-to-the-chairman thing (see that Danny Rose All or Nothing clip for an example). Anyway, ultimately, it's Spurs. Fuck them.

Pretty incredible that Bellingham is still only 19.

Kalvin Phillips looks like a teenage girl struggling with puppy fat.

Some dreadful tattoos on show from the Italians. Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo by HMHB playing in background to this post.

They're 12th so normally, you'd think no need to do anything rash - how many seasons in the last 20 years have you and us had where we'd take being mid table? The difference is that this year's table is insane - 4 points between 12th and 20th. Fuck me, that's got to be stressful for the nine clubs involved in that.

Randomly, I have just remembered when Spurs offered us Josh Onomah plus £2m for Grealish. Spurs, ha ha ha.

Grealish is a brilliant player, absolutely brimful of talent. He is just in a team now where he's told exactly what to do by his manager, unlike when he was with us and Smith just gave him pretty much free rein to make things happen (I know that is what everyone says, but it is true). As a result, we're seeing a more restrained version of him emerge. Oddly enough, if he came back to us now, I don't think he'd necessarily do that well under Emery, who is another manager who tells his players exactly what he wants them to do, and I suspect he'd have the same limitations. What annoys me here is that Man City didn't really need Grealish, they just had to have him, to show they could.

He'll be back with us inside three years.

Yeah, it's an easy one to laugh at this, at face value, but if you think about it, between now and the end of the season, it is the most sensible move. He'll keep them up (they are fucking dire, mind) and they'll have a much better choice of manager in the summer than now.

re Conte, I read a tweet by Matt Law of the Torygraph yesterday about that situation, and he referred to a telling snippet of the Spurs All or Nothing documentary, where Danny Rose is moaning at Mourinho about why he isn't getting more game time. Mourinho tries to explain to him and is relatively logical about it, and Rose finishes with "Well, I am going to go and talk to Daniel about this". Law's take on it was whether that is an example of the fucked up dynamic Conte is referring to, as far as Levy is concerned. Far, far too present at the training ground too 'close' to the players.

Gone to the MLS

re support at Wembley in post above (can’t be arsed to quote, on phone) - my general theory is that Wembley visits inspire the least passionate support for all clubs. People who usually go to natural singing areas of club grounds get spread all over a massive area which doesn’t help. Then you have more people absolutely shitfaced on their big day out, more people who got tickets through some corporate connection, and thousands of people who never normally go to games but managed to get tickets, despite them all selling out almost immediately. The worst support I’ve seen in recent Wembley trips was Derby in the play off final - thousands of people in just bought replica kits, people who you just know has never been to a match before - Derby allowed anyone to buy up to six tickets, and still didn’t sell them all. For the 2020 LC final I fancied a treat so paid 500 quid for a Club Wembley seat. It was at the Man City end of ground (although mixed obviously). Their fans utterly silent, it was so humdrum for them.

I said similar the other day, thank fuck we are not involved in it this year too, it would be absolutely horrific,

We are much better away than at home, although in recent games he's started to improve us at home too. The guy is doing a truly phenomenal job. 26 points from 14 games - across a season that'd be 70 points, exceptional, and he's done it all with the same players Gerrard had, with Moreno added and with Ings taken out. If we had a really prolific striker we'd be doing even better. Worth noting that in that period he has completely changed the way we play, starting right from fundamentals - play out to feet from the keeper, hold on to the ball, pull opponents out of shape by using a bit of in game intelligence. Compare that with that fucking relic Gerrard. What a change.

Indeed they do - I have long not understood why people don't get this. Do they think that every time a club posts an exact-capacity attendance that means that every single ST holder was able to go?

Keown: "This could be the start of something special for Arsenal" *five minutes pass, in which they lose* Keown: "Well, this could be a blessing in disguise for Arsenal, how important will this result turn out to be?" So fucking annoying to hear pundits commentating on 'their' clubs as if they're doing a fucking club podcast.

Fucking hell, Southgate is so predictable. I've got almost as many PL minutes this season as Kalvin Phillips. The likes of him and Maguire getting picked, that must be soul destroying for players who play in that position but don't get a look in. Also, Eric fucking Dier.

My concern with the likes of Frank, Potter in the past and now de Zerbi is how much their achievements are down to them and their assistants, and therefore transferrable to another club, or how much do they actually reflect the fact that they are in a role at a club which is extremely well run, much deeper than just the coaching staff. Look also at Silva, disaster at Everton - a poorly run club all round - and excelling at a relatively well run club like Fulham. So if you were take someone like Frank to Spurs, is he going to be able to be as successful there, with their set up, and the way they are run? What is there about Frank that will succeed where Conte has not? If Frank then does go there, he finds himself without the all-pervasive support network of a very well run club, and exposed to the elevated expectations of a club which has a bit of a weird set of expectations. A club with a marvellous, very large stadium, which has played in the CL a lot and generates a lot of cash, but then hasn't won anything at all for a long time now, has only ever won the league twice (and the last time was closer to the reign of Queen Victoria than today), and appears to have developed a bit of a crisis of identity (which isn't unusual with clubs going through the amount of change they have the last few years). I am not having a go at Spurs here - I have nothing against Spurs at all* - just wondering aloud how much the success of some of these seemingly excellent managers is transferrable elsewhere, and whether the real problem is much deeper within the club. * - well, I do actually, I fucking hate them, but that's not why I am saying this.

Awful against us last week, and dirty cunts with it, too.