Kieran Davies steps away from a week of touchline martial arts, whinging, and Loose Women to fully take in the insanity.
It has been another seven days that would be more at home in a J.K. Rowling novel than being classed as modern reality in the world of football. Patrice Evra seems to think he is Patrick Swayze’s replacement in a remake of Roadhouse as he kicked one of his own fans in the head. Dejan Lovren was rewarded with his horrendous form that single handedly cost his club valuable points by being awarded with Liverpool’s ‘Player of the Month’ award. And Jose Boreinho continues to sulk like a spoilt teenager who has been told he can’t go to his friends Halloween party as he hasn’t tidied his room. Football and those involved in the sport, really does beg belief at times as an alternate reality. Evra was told by a fan to give up football and stick to his videos he constantly blogs. A professional footballer has an image to maintain for those who look up to him and his actions are deplorable and criminal proceedings should be taken against him as it would any person who were to attack someone on the street. Lovren was voted by fans for the Liverpool award due to a death threat sent to him on Twitter. The reality of the world we live in is that anything within the public sphere is open to every idiot with an internet connection to comment on, of which there are more and more ‘keyboard warriors’ by the day. For £100k a week, you could send me death threats on the hour, every hour. In fact, I could make a valid comment on any public post on Facebook now and I would bet that within 24 hours someone would have targeted my post with some threat or obscenity. Does this entitle me to a Pulitzer Prize?
Then we get to the curious case of Jose Mourinho. A wage of £24m per year and the mindset of a six-year-old. Whinging to anyone who will listen about his fans, how pundits target him and they are the only team in the world who suffer from injuries. It really is quite pathetic. The amount of money fans are milked for by the British game, for me, entitles them to have an air of expectation for what they see on the pitch. If they are not happy, they can voice their concerns in whatever way they see fit. The Portuguese Kevin and Perry needs to realise without the fans he is nothing, without the fans, he is jobless. And I certainly can’t see him getting a job as pundit the way he has been ridiculing that profession of late. Listening to his inane rants on Sky Sports News makes me want to put Loose Women on instead. He is an incredibly negative influence on the game we love. Enough of the negatives and onto things of a far more positive nature………Tottenham Hotspur. While Arsenal were sending fans into comas up and down the country with their Europa League performance, the evening before Pochettino’s side were giving Madrid the sort of spanking Ronaldo hasn’t experienced since he spilt his mums favourite perfume all those years ago in Madeira. It’s questionable as to whether the Real side is weaker than the one who only won the trophy six months or so ago but this aside, Zidane’s boys took a beating none the less. Kudos to Pochettino and his boys and he will personally use this as a gauge of the side’s growth under his tenure.
There is potential this season we may actually see five British sides in the knockout phase of the Champions League. This would be a huge marker for the Premier League. With Madrid and Barcelona struggling to show the form of past glories, you would struggle to argue that currently Pep’s Man City are not the best team in Europe. Their free-flowing attacking football is beating all put in front of them and it is hard to see anyone beating them. Not something Arsenal fans will want to hear with their impending visit to the Etihad this weekend. I really can’t see Wenger getting anything out of this game other than a mini shop window to add January value to players like Ozil and Sanchez but both of these players are known to go missing in these big games like they both own Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility. Say after me Mesut and Alexis………’I do solemnly swear that I am up to no good!’ Touche both! Meanwhile as Arsene takes his side from London to Manchester, Boreinho makes the trip in the opposite direction as he faces Conte’s Chelsea. With lots of talk of Abramovic having already decided the Italian’s fate at the club, a victory against a man the Russian has very little time for could actually win him favour with the oligarch. With Matic, Lukaku and Boreinho returning Chelsea will be looking to penetrate that bus and leave it well and truly smashed up in West London on Sunday.
Swansea will be hoping that an England call up for Tammy Abraham will give him the impetus to go and grab some goals this weekend at home against Brighton and give the South Wales club a much needed three points at home. With Palace travelling to Wembley to face Tottenham and knowing how difficult Woy Hodgson found winning there at times, this could be a chance to distance themselves somewhat with some of the teams at the bottom. Everton currently look like a team who couldn’t win a raffle if they bought the only tickets and there is very much a deja vu feeling with Unsworth’s reign that he could repeat the feat of a certain Alan Shearer and take his beloved club down. With West Ham hosting Liverpool at the London Stadium most teams in that bottom half must fear being dragged into those relegation places. Dejan Lovren may be planning a hat-trick of own goals to see if he is given the freedom of the city of Liverpool as a reward if recent events are anything to go by. Only time will tell but just to stay on the pitch for longer than thirty minutes before being hauled off in embarrassing fashion would probably be seen as somewhat of an achievement for the unreliable Croatian. With most of the sides at the top not playing until Sunday, the shape of the rest of the table will be at stake still come Saturday afternoon. The rollercoaster of emotions of being a football fan begin all over again with no predictability of whether it will be a weekend to enjoy or one to tear the television off the wall in an animalistic rage…….ah football, this fickle beast often treats us that badly we feel like we are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome staying loyal to our teams all so often.
