Communication Breakdown

Kick Off

Well it’s been quite the week of football and Football hasn’t it. I’ll address some of the issues later, during Half Time, because I can’t ignore talking about refs and VAR anymore and I’ve also got some things to say on the recent transfer rumours involving Bayern Munich.

But for now, let’s look at the small F football, the actual games, you know, the stuff where people kick a ball.

First of all, something delightful that unites the timeline in childish glee: yes, it’s Nice Brest time.

God bless Ligue 1 for giving us the best fixture of the entire football calendar. It’s so silly, so immature, so British to be laughing at but we love it. It’s just unfortunate that St Etienne are no longer in the league because when they play Lyon at home the hashtag is #ASSEOL which is also glorious.

The fact it ended 0-0, like boobs you see, was wonderful. Vive La France.

Elsewhere in France the big story of the season so far is Lyon and the fact that after seven games they’re rooted to the bottom of the table with only two points and three goals. Lyon are one of the Big Boys, this is like if one of the Big Six in the Premier League were having a terrible season… can you imagine such a thing?

Two of last season’s high flyers, Lens and Lorient are also in the bottom, with only Clermont Foot (so many body parts in French team names!) keeping Lens out of immediate danger. And even then they (Clermont) managed to get a 0-0 draw with PSG who are currently 5th.

And while PSG have very much dominated Ligue 1 over the past decade, we did see Lille pip them a couple of years ago and maybe this year will be the same. Monaco are top at the moment and looking good (and their Twitter graphics font is really nice, see below), although it’s Nice and Rennes who have yet to lose this season. Should I be watching more Ligue 1? Should you be watching more Ligue 1? Probably!

Over in La Liga however, after a brief blip, things are back to normal with Real top of the tree and Barcelona second.

After their going over by Atleti, Real got themselves together and beat Las Palmas and Girona with Jude back on the scoresheet.

On Friday Barcelona played the new Sergios Ramos inclusive Sevilla and boy oh boy did the narrative gods have a good laugh with this one, giving Barcelona the win via a solitary goal. An own goal. An own goal by Sergio Ramos. I yelped when I saw the notification.

In Italy, Napoli, who seemed to be the crisis team (and indeed probably still are given their treatment of Victor Osimhen, which if you want more information on I suggest checking out Friday’s Wrighty’s House) however they beat Lecce 0-4 on Friday and suddenly they’re 3rd, behind the Milans, both of whom won.

Despite a promising start, the table now looks very much as you would expect: Inter, Milan, Napoli, Juve, Atalanta. It’s still a very fun league to watch though so don’t be put off!

Finally then to Germany where Xabi Alonso’s darlings, Leverkusen, are still flying high at the top of the table, after Bayern drew with RB Leipzig.

Leverkusen beat Mainz 0-3 and on a personal level I’m not going to pretend it’s not painful to see Granit Xhaka posting on instagram about a ‘mannschaft’ [team] that isn’t Arsenal but I’m pleased he’s thriving and it’s never a bad thing for a league when a new challenger emerges.

It was nice as well to see Dortmund not fuck up against Bochum (Bensebaini’s red card aside) and to actually manage to keep a clean sheet. They sit 4th, behind Bayern on goal difference with surprise package Stuttgart in 2nd. I really hope they keep up their form, again, seeing a “new” team raising their standards makes for a much more exciting league.

Right then. The Premier League.

It’s the fixture that always gives something. Remember the other week, Sheffield United v Everton? Rubbish we all cried, only to be gifted a cup tie paced game with such a delicious own goal I’m still gently chuckling about it. Not to mention the fact that Pickford then made an incredible save and did the ‘Italian’ gesture.

Last season we also saw excitement when Arsenal played Villa and we had another beautiful goalkeeper own goal. The Liverpool Norwich 4-5 was a 12:30 KO. I’m sure there were others I’ve forgotten but what I do know is that I’ve rarely been bored by it, unlike the 5:30pm Saturday fixture which, though closely followed by MNF, is the worst fixture.

Anyway, all of this is to say that this week’s 12:30 was a gem. Aston Villa v. Brighton sounds, on paper, like it’s going to be a good game anyway to be honest. Two teams who’ve come on leaps and bounds over the past few years since their respective promotions [back] into the Premier League, who both made it into Europe last season. Both with likeable and good managers and interesting teams.

You would have thought, probably, that Brighton may have pipped it, however it was Villa who opened the scoring after 14 minutes with an Ollie Watkins goal. Just seven minutes later he got his second. Five minutes later Estupiñan scored an own goal after tripping over his own feet and fumbling the ball goalwards.

In the second half Brighton got one back via Ansu Fati’s first goal for the club and for a moment it seemed like maybe we’d have A Contest on our hands, but sadly, hampered by their sweaty shirts and unable to play propely, Villa somehow managed to put a further three goals past Jason Steele with Ollie Watkins getting his hattrick, Jacob Ramsey adding one and then Douglas Luiz joining the party with the last kick of the game, that caused Steele to collapse backwards onto the turf.

The teams are now 6th and 7th respectively with Villa ahead due to this game really and the goal difference they tucked away.

As for the 3pms, well, firstly Crystal Palace got revenge on Manchester United for dumping them out of the Carabao Cup by winning 0-1 thanks to a 25th minute strike by Joachim Andersen. Newcastle added to Burnley’s woes, winning 2-0, West Ham continued their good form beating Sheffield United 2-0 but there was a glimmer of hope among the promoted teams as Luton Town got their first ever win in the top flight against Everton. They are now, remarkably, out of the relegation zone.

The thirsty bitches among us were also treated to Rob Edwards celebrating in the rain *sigh*

Everton, to their credit, also posted a top notch loss graphic.

It was lovely to see Arsenal winning 0-4 against Bournemouth, the Good Vibes fixture. Last season we played in our lovely pink shirts, in the sun, and the Saliba chant was born. This year it was the turn of Kai Havertz, who was quite literally handed his first goal when a second penalty was awarded and Bukayo and Martin, the two usual penalty takers, gave him the ball and he was off the mark.

I was so so happy for him, he’s such a soft sweet boy and, the obvious aside, you all know my feelings on that, it’s just a wonderful thing to love your players.

And let’s not forget that football hater Benny Blanco also got on the score sheet.

City won.

*earpiece crackles* what? They did what? *coughs*

Well, I’ve just been informed that City did not win and that Wolverhampton Wanderers beat them 2-1 at Molineux.

Before the game, Pep was asked if there were any Wolves players he needed to look out for and he replied ‘the Korean guy’. Probably not the worst thing he’s said but it’s a classic micro-agression (maybe perhaps a midi-agression?) to not bother learning or trying to pronouce an Asian name, one which is actually extremely straightforward. I’m sure some people will argue he simply forgot in the heat of the moment, sure, it happens, but he’s an experienced professional who we all know will have done his research. It’s just lazy and dismissive.

Anyway, after not having had their fill on Friday with the Ramos og, the narrative gods decided that it would be Hwang who would score the winning goal and so it was that City recorded their first league loss of the season.

That made it two losses on the trot for City after they were disptached by a pure balls out second half performance from Newcastle in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday.

In the last Saturday game, Tottenham beat Liverpool 2-1 and well, we’ll leave that one for later.

Finally, on Sunday, Forest and Brentford drew 1-1 in what was a pretty tedious game all told.

So that was the Premier League. City are still top, Spurs and Arsenal are 2nd and 3rd respectively on goal difference, Liverpool are 4th and Villa as mentioned earlier, are 5th. At the bottom Sheffield United and Burnley are still without a win and it’s Bournemouth who’ve dropped into the dangerzone after Luton’s win.

This weekend also saw the start of the WSL. I confess I did not watch any of it, either live or on the TV but I gave you some resources to check out last week if you want to know the ins and outs.

At the moment Leicester sit top of the table which simply cannot be allowed to continue (yes yes good for the game blah blah, not them though, not them!) and there were also wins for United, City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Brighton.

Arsenal lost to Liverpool and you can’t help but wonder, given the debacle with the Champions League too, if it’s time to start asking questions about Eidevall. He’s a funny one for me, I know he’s extremely unpopular and frankly he embarrasses me more than not, but I also like him quite a lot as a pundit. Maybe that’s his calling and he should get out of management, who knows…

OK, that’s the good stuff out of the way. Brace yourselves for half time because we’re discussing The Incident. I would not blame you one bit if you felt unable to cope with the conversation and instead skipped to Full Time, I’m not looking forward to writing about it!

Half Time

Unfortunately, sometimes, when you write about a subject, it feels like an obligation to get involved in the discourse, and so it is with the subject of the disallowed Luis Díaz goal from Saturday night’s fixture between Spurs and Liverpool.

Firstly I want to be quite clear. I’m not here to talk about the red cards or the overall officiating, nor the own goal. This is the kind of minutiae that makes me want to gouge my own eyes out with a rusty spoon. It’s tribal, it’s fraught, you can’t be objective because someone is always ready to jump down your throat, and so I avoid it. It’s not to say I don’t have opinions but they will remain where they belong, on WhatsApp.

What I am going to talk about is the disallowed goal and how it came to be disallowed. I think we could all see that it was onside, so onside that even though there should have been, there wasn’t really any need for lines. It was a lovely goal too.

That the linesman flagged it as offside is disappointing but you can take it, we’ve got a VAR now right? And an AVAR. And other assistants helping with the tech itself. Whether you agree with what does and doesn’t constitute offside, as I’ve said a million times, it’s black and white, you either are, or you aren’t, there’s no liminal space with offside.

However none of that matters when you get a communication breakdown the likes of which happened on Saturday. In short, Darren England, the VAR, immediately confirmed check complete because it was so obviously onside and he believed it had been flagged as such. How? What mistake was made that caused him to think that? Yes it was very definitely onside but in many ways that’s irrelevant, he should have been paying attention to the onfield decision, and as he wasn’t, he should have pulled back play the second he noticed Spurs were getting in shape to play a free kick rather than to restart the game from the centre circle. It felt weird in real time watching it on TV and it was weird, no proper offside check is that quick, it didn’t add up.

As with all of these things it may or may not have had a massive outcome on the result of the game, we can’t ever know how it would have panned out and as such I don’t personally believe that the game should be replayed or that there should be any kind of points adjustment (has anyone suggested there should? I haven’t seen so, I’m just spitballing here). There do, again, in my view, need to be consequences for PGMOL. I’m not suggesting we strip someone of their livelihood or throw them to the lions, although, let’s be frank, they’re already there, but somehow this needs to be fixed in a way to ensure it doesn’t happen again because right now no-one is happy.

I’m also going to be straight up and say that I believe that some of the pushback here is coming because it happened to Liverpool. If this had happened to Brighton or Bournemouth, or indeed Luton and had, say, deprived them of a first Premier League win, I find it hard to believe you’d get anyone saying ‘who cares’ or ‘deal with it’. Unfortunately however, the hatred for Liverpool runs so deep it’s going to colour the discussions about it when in reality it’s an issue that affects every team and could have happened to anyone. Do you really want PGMOL to just say, d’aw shucks soz and that be the end of it? Really?

I’ll end by saying that tribalism is a fun and necessary part of football, we need it, we need rivalries, and to feel competitive against other teams, it’s all good and all fine, but sometimes, just sometimes, we need to put that aside and work together for the greater good.

I’m afraid after an extremely fallow ‘Half Time’ recently there are two things to talk about this week. The other that I want to briefly mention here are the rumours around Bayern Munich looking to sign free agent Jerome Boateng.

Jerome Boateng is a convicted domestic abuser who was made to pay 1.3m euros in damages. There is a lot more to the story and it involves a number of things that may be triggering so I’m not going to link to it nor mention anything else about it, but know that we’re not talking about anything that can be easily dismissed here and unlike other high profile cases this actually did go through the courts.

For me, it’s one thing (a bad thing! A thing that’s dealt with disappointingly at every turn!) to have a player in your team who committed an act of violence or abuse against a woman or women when they were already contracted to you, but it’s quite another to sign someone when that information is out there in the public domain and they have, as I’ve mentioned, been convicted in a court of law. To ignore that information is so negligent, so dismissive of the female fanbase (and I always want to caveat this with the fact that of course men are victims of DV too and are often vehemently opposed to abusers, but let’s be clear also that the vast majority of victims are women) that even if they don’t end up signing him they have, like Getafe, like Lorient, proved that they just don’t care about it.

Full Time

So I’ve said my piece about the VAR incident and while there are a lot of interminable takes flying around, this tweet absolutely sent me into space on Saturday evening. Every time I scroll past it (which has been a lot while I’ve been putting the newsletter together) I laugh all over again.

The other utterly glorious piece of Content to come out of it was this incredible piece of work from Gary Neville who injected some much needed, unintentional, comedy into Kelly Cates reading out the PGMOL statement.

After the saga of Tux the cat being driven off in a Lyft we also had the horror of Ben Davies’ dog being stolen. But! Both stories have had happy endings, with the rightful owners being reunited with their beloved pets.

On a lighter note I produced a Little Bitch alignment chart this week. I’m no DND player but it was a lot of fun to do and made me realise that the vast majority of Little Bitches are, unsurprisingly, Chaotic Evil.

I think we all know how much I’d give to be Ibou here

It’s from this, which is great, whether you like Liverpool or not

I confess that I was ‘watching’ the beginning of the Salernitana Roma game and heard The Wall but I didn’t see (or maybe it wasn’t broadcast) the reason for this and it’s incredible. We don’t really have Tifo culture here yet, occasionally yes, but not like they do in Europe when it’s week in week out. It’s very very cool.

I really enjoy the Footie Scran Twitter, which is why you’ll see pics and links to them most weeks and, controversially, I really like the look of this, but then, tbqhwy, I’m a slut for edible fats.

Young Ange fresh from recording Out of Touch with his mate Daryl.

It’s Black History Month! And we all know the importance of Black players in the history of English football, so why not start off the month by reading about their faith in this article in the Athletic, part of their BHM series.

Also please, if you haven’t already and if not why not, read Calum Jacobs’ wonderful A New Formation. I read it in hardback but the paperback is beautiful.

I’ll be highlighting some more resources for the rest of the month so if there’s anything you think I should mention, either something you’ve loved, think is important, or that you do, please let me know!

Shirt of the Week

It’s a no brainer this week. Do I even need to explain it or shall I just let the glorious pictures do the talking?

It is of course, Roma’s stunning, stunning third kit. It is everything.

Thirst Trap

The Thirst Trap this week is a mini WSL Hot List. As you know I do a Premier League one and a Euros/World Cup one but after seeing the freak out some WSL fans had over the joke sign the Counter Pressed gang made for Kate Longhurst I decided against starting a full WSL one as I just didn’t want to deal with anyone’s shit.

Anyway! That aside I did some brief research, thought about who I liked already, and have seven players for you to check out. Yes, two are Arsenal and two are Chelsea, it’s the same in the Prem, the better the team, the hotter the players, sorry but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. (Also yes they’re all already well known, so sue me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

So from left to right and going clockwise we have: Chelsea’s Catarina Macario; Manchester United’s Mary Earps; Arsenal’s Lina Hurtig; Arsenal’s Katie McCabe; Chelsea’s Zećira Mušović; Liverpool’s Taylor Hinds; and finally Aston Villa’s Alisha Lehmann.

So there we have it, there’s MNF tonight with Frank Lampard, I’ll be playing a drinking game where you drink two fingers every time he does a Lampardian transition, though I’m not entirely sure I have enough booze in the house…😜

And then tomorrow, we’re back in Europe for the Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference League. I’m excited! There are some good games coming up! PSG Newcastle!

Remember, you can still sign up as a paid subscriber and be rewarded with my deep and undying love (the yearly option is the cheapest) or just stick to the free level, I love you either way just for being here to be honest. So until next week, have a good one! 😘