No More Harry - Premier League 2020/21

[DCI Harry Batt]

I dunno, I mean, what is the point? No matter how much someone says, you're going to get someone bowling in and saying something which suggests they've neither read nor are interested in anything other than their initial knee-jeek.

So yeah, there's no point.

[Diable Rouge]

I don't think even TAB could imagine Harry Maguire lifting the Premier League trophy in May, but at least the table makes for better personal reading than it has in the last eight years.

[Snake Plissken]

That thing where people/groups/institutions with large reach leverage that reach in a deniable way to target individuals or groups they don't like is called stochastic terrorism. "Twitter is a cesspit" is only partially true, because a lot of it comes from newspapers and broadcasters, but what is true is that Twitter makes this particularly easy to do. A good example from 2019 is Laura Kuenssberg doxing a member of the public who was bothered about conditions in hospitals with a "here he is" tweet.

And it's not as if this is a particularly new or unknown phenomenon - I can name three people (all comedians, oddly) who have happily retweeted criticism and abuse knowing that they have a lot of followers that they can unleash on them.

Funnily enough, what made me wince a little this week was our new Chairman being the first person from the club to officially acknowledge the existence of the fans hashtag. I've always liked the fact that the official club accounts haven't ever used that hashtag - not even for score updates or match lineups - so to see him use it, albeit in a completely well intentioned way, was a bit of a "oh, I don't think you really want to be doing that" moment.

[Jah Womble]

"But of course there’s more mileage to be had for others in the placing of out-of-context comments in amusing ‘quote’ marks to misrepresent a point that differs from theirs."

"Sure, let’s just continue with the ‘chop off their hands!’..."

Well, if that’s the game people wish to play...

[Sporting]

I'm lost.

[ale]

A week ago Allardici telling us Arsenal in a relegation battle. And that he could do things Klopp couldnt. Bloke is a massive fraud.

[Tony C]

Read an interesting take on Allardyce the other day - namely that in his previous 'firefighting' successes he has taken over underachieving teams and brought them to safety by getting them to play to their ability level. On this occasion he has inherited a squad which is generally considered to be one of the worst three in the PL, so here he will clearly have to overachieve in order to keep them.in the division, a substantially more challenging task.

[Jon]

He's also going to have to pull out the stops in the transfer window. I don't know how much he has been promised. Bilic got very little but I'm assuming that allardyce was given assurances that would be money to spend in January. I can't see how they lured him to the hawthorns without the promise of some cash in January.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

He's also going to have to pull out the stops in the transfer window. I don't know how much he has been promised. Bilic got very little but I'm assuming that allardyce was given assurances that would be money to spend in January. I can't see how they lured him to the hawthorns without the promise of some cash in January.

Oh, sorry, you meant cash he had to spend on players. As you were.

[Gangster Octopus]

Apparently Fernandes has now scored 14 penalties for Manchester United. I assume that he's been playing for them for at least five years...

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Read an interesting take on Allardyce the other day - namely that in his previous 'firefighting' successes he has taken over underachieving teams and brought them to safety by getting them to play to their ability level. On this occasion he has inherited a squad which is generally considered to be one of the worst three in the PL, so here he will clearly have to overachieve in order to keep them.in the division, a substantially more challenging task.

also football has changed about as much in the last two and a half seasons as it did in the rest of sam allardyce's career. He's fucking miles behind. Between VAR, Penalties, and everyone taking short kickouts and playing it out from the back, it's a very different game.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I don't think even TAB could imagine Harry Maguire lifting the Premier League trophy in May, but at least the table makes for better personal reading than it has in the last eight years.

It might well happen, but it shouldn't be that much of a surprise. The Winter break is 11 months ago now, and since then united have played 29 league games, and that is broken into two sections, a six game spell where they're struggling with having a severely truncated preseason compared to all the teams they're playing, and getting 7 points in six games, or the other 80% of the time where they're rampaging around like a 95 point a season mongol horde.

If you're sticking to your hot take that solksjaer is shit, (like Jonathan "The big brain" Wilson on second captains today) well you're leaning very heavily on those 6 games being the real manchester united, and discounting the other 23 games. The games from last season don't count towards the league this season, but I do mention them to point out that man utd have actually been consistently winning most of their games for long periods of time, and not really getting any credit for it .Though the sudden over-correction with people talking up man utd is inevitably overblown, as it always is in these matters, but barring the mangled preseason and the sheer weight of games precipitating some sort of collapse

It's also worth noting that Man city have basically the same set of results over the last 11 months. It's worth considering that rumours of their demise might also be exaggerated. City got 30 points in the last 13 games of last season to man utd's 31, and if they win their game in hand on man utd, they'll be a point behind this season as well. Liverpool have managed a steady 2 points per game pretty much throughout the last 11 months. There has been a fairly notable fall off from their form over the previous 25 months.

[Third rate Leszno]

I wouldn't be remotely surprised to see either of the Manchester clubs win the league, Liverpool have been patchy for weeks now and tonight may be more of the same. Will be interesting to see whether Henderson will play at centre back alongside Fabinho now that Thiago is finally fit to step into the defensive midfield role.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

That strikes me as quite a bit of a risk. Liverpool's two centre halves and three midfielders make a very solid X shape on the pitch and dominate the central space, leaving the full backs to be the primary width, with the three forwards playing relatively narrow. That's worked very well for them for a long time. Thiago kind of strikes me as a high end Berbatov. A good player, but it requires a substantial fundamental change in the way that the team plays in order to fit him in.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

It seems it is happening tonight. Lucky that che Adams is out.

[Third rate Leszno]

I love Danny Ings, but I really wish he hadn't done that.

[Toby Gymshorts]

FFS Liverpool.

[EIM]

Well well well

[EIM]

It's criminal negligence that football is allowed to continue during this pandemic. The right and proper thing to do is cancel the season and restart only when safe to do so. If that's next season then so be it.

*checks score*

Football is vital for the morale of the nation. If NHS workers are key workers, then so are Premier League footballers. The show must go on. We will revisit this after the weekend.

[Satchmo Distel]

Man City have a lot more depth than Man U and seem to have found a better formation against Chelsea than they used in 2020. You'd have to make them strong favourites unless Liverpool rediscover their mojo.

I wonder in hindsight if Liverpool were found out by Atletico last March and haven't been the same since, or if the shutdown from March-June fatally disrupted their momentum. They've lost their edge in attack for reasons that are not clear; everything is a yard slower. OTOH I thought they looked fine against Spurs the other week so there are also issues that have emerged since then, maybe connected to COVID or to how Klopp has been ranting even more than usual in recent weeks.

[The Mighty Trin]

I wish I'd watched the last two episodes of Bridgerton instead of that.

[Toby Gymshorts]

There's a water leak into our bathroom that I could have spent a couple of hours staring dispassionately at, I suppose.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Kloppo has gone full RAWK VARAnon. Not a good look.

[EIM]

Kloppo has gone full RAWK VARAnon. Not a good look.

I think any right thinking football fan is hoping for a winning 97th minute Bruno Fernandes VAR penalty in just under two weeks time.

[Janik]

Well, yes, that would do. As long as, quid pro quo, what follows it is the annual 3-month Solskjwindrought. That is getting overdue.