Kick Off
Hello friends!
We survived the turgid international break and club football is back, and seeing as it was really giving this weekend, so is TWUTAB.
It’s been a funny old season so far, I don’t really know how I’ve felt other than often disheartened, stressed and annoyed. But maybe this weekend is the start of my return to the good times.
I think that my move to Bluesky (find me here) has been part of it. I understand the desire to cling to Twitter, it’s been so good, given me so much but I made my peace with its death when I saw someone say “we moved on from MySpace, from Facebook” and in my case, from LiveJournal. LiveJournal did similar things for me to Twitter, gave me great friends, a brief and weird relationship, the idea and the confidence to follow a band around Europe which gave me some great memories, but I barely think about it these days, and so Twitter will follow in the same vein.
I’m not sure it’s possible to appreciate how toxic and stressful a place it is until you pull away. We’ve had a whole weekend of often very stupid football and I haven’t once felt my fight or flight response activated by a post, haven’t once had to mute someone for their spitefulness, haven’t seen any repulsive racism/homophobia/sexism.
But I digress, there are a million articles, substacks and blogposts out there breaking down the End of Twitter (this is my favourite), and this is a silly little football newsletter, so let’s get on with the business of silly little football.
Let’s start briefly in Germany shall we?
The first game back in the Bundesliga was Bayern v. Augsburg. We all know that Bayern are flying high, that Harry Kane is balling and in this match he became the fastest player to 50 goals, overtaking Lewandowski. And he also did this. Pure filth.
Honestly that’s all I have to say about European football, I’ve barely watched a second of it this season, have lost touch completely, maybe like the Premier League I’ll find my joy in it again and bring back the Euro roundup I used to do, which I enjoyed!
With that done, it means it’s time for the meat and potatoes of this newsletter. The Premier League.
It started at lunchtime on Saturday with the return to the King Power of Enzo Maresca. Andzzzzz, I don’t care. I’m sorry. Longtime readers/followers will know I hate Leicester with a fiery passion undulled in thirty years, cultivated from a minor grudge over a team I only notionally support these days. But also, I don’t care. I don’t like Maresca’s vibe, I don’t care what Leicester fans think of him. I don’t care.
Chelsea are no fun this season either. I know their fans won’t agree with that assessment but I miss my beloved clowns. Come back! Winning 1-2 against a pretty rubbish team is dull. SNORE.
So now we move onto the three pms. They were King Charles’ favourite band back in the day, did you know that?
Let’s get this out of the way first, Everton and Brentford drew 0-0. There.
The remaining KOs were marginally to very much more exciting than that.
Down on the south coast Brighton traveled to Bournemouth, a team who’ve been doing really well lately, and beat them 1-2, with goals from João Pedro and Karou Mitoma, the consolation from Bournemouth coming from David Brooks.
Next let’s pop to Villa Park where the Villans hosted beleaguered Crystal Palace. Villa came out of the traps flying this season, only to falter, to stumble, to stutter dramatically in recent weeks. Palace have been extremely poor and look in danger, so maybe this was a chance for Emery to get his lads back on track.
Alas. It was not to be as Palace took the lead thanks to a beautiful goal from Sarr and then took it again after Villa equalised, only for the points to be shared in the end thanks to a resurgent Ross Barkley.
In West London it was Fulham vs. Wolves. I like this fixture. I have no strong feelings for either team, I like them both, I like players on both sides, I have a cuddly Fulham Yeti and a woolly dog my mum knitted who via a convoluted series of naming conventions is a Wolves supporter, both managers are cute (trust me, Gary O’Neil is a stealth hottie) it’s a nice fixture for me.
It started off in favour of Alfie (my yeti) via an Iwobi goal (something I’ll always enjoy unless it’s against Arsenal) and it looked like it was going to be another day of misery for my woolly dog and for Gary O’Neil. But then Matheus Cunha equalised and Willy’s ears perked up. It remained that way until João Gomes scored for Wolves in the 53rd minute.
2-1 is a horrible scoreline imo. Almost worse than 1-0, because the losing team have proven they can score and at any moment they might do it again, so I imagine it was tense in the Cottage as Wolves fans begged their team to hang on while Fulham fans begged theirs to just do it again.
But it wasn’t Fulham who did it again, it was Wolves, via a second banger from Cunha. I rate him a lot, he’s a great player and he’s very handsome, which is all you want from a footballer. The deal was sealed at the death, on 90+5, via Gonçalo Guedes.
Here are Cunha’s two banger goals, also a shoutout for Wolves’ away kit which looks particularly bright and cheerful against Fulham’s white, a nice game visually.
That’s it for the 3pms then… hang on *earpiece crackles*, no wait I’m being told there was another game at 3pm, in North London? Right, yes, forgive me, for indeed Arsenal played at 3pm on Saturday.
For me, a welcome return to the blackout for my lads who have been causing me untold stress and disappointment for too long (too long compared to the previous two seasons of course, we all lived through Emery and early Arteta and haven’t forgotten either don’t worry). Having them feature solely on Soccer Saturday for me (I hate streaming) allows some degree of relaxation, even if my knees buckle and stomach flips every time I hear anyone make a noise of any kind in the studio.
It seems however that I was wrong to wish this game behind a curtain as by all accounts and by what I saw on MOTD we were back to our dominant, silky best. Much of that is of course down to having Martin Odegaard back in the fray, oh captain my captain how we’ve missed you! His performance even caused the official Arsenal instagram to post the kind of comp you normally see uploaded by the girlies [gender neutral] of Tumblr. This isn’t the Arsenal one but still, gaze upon my beautiful Norwegian son.
He assisted the first goal, a beautiful piece of play by Saka, which gave us a relief inducing early lead and continued like this throughout; how anyone is going to keep trying to make noises about what he actually gives to the team after the very obvious effects of his absence I don’t know, and not being on Twitter these days probably never will!
I’ve also heard rumours there was another goal before the one I’m about to talk about, a banger no less, from far out, but I’m not sure this is entirely true and no source can confirm the scorer. I don’t want to speculate or provide fake news so that’s all I’ll say about that.
What I am more than happy to talk about however is Ethan Nwaneri. 17 years old and already a wonderful baller. Every time he’s come on this season he’s truly been a breath of fresh air so it was delightful to see him score his first Premier League goal to seal our victory.
Moving briefly to Sunday then, before sliding back in time to Saturday for the finale, it was Ruben Amorim’s turn to face the Manchester United spotlight with a trip to newly promoted Ipswich (I have to call them that, it’s law) or as they’re more commonly known, Ed Sheeran FC.
You may see later in this newsletter that I’m a fan of Amorim. I don’t want anyone to think this will soften my stance on United but I think he’s good. I enjoyed him calmly shutting down Gary Neville over his panic about Rashford and Casemiro daring to have a holiday during the time the club had given them as holiday days and I also very very much enjoyed him, before Sporting’s game against City a couple of weeks ago, telling a reporter insisting he speak in English to, basically, fuck off and of course his annoyance at the aforementioned Ed Sheeran bulldozing his interview on Sky with the pundits post-match.
What I liked even more though was that he didn’t give United the new manager bounce, even against Ipswich. After two minutes it looked like maybe he would, Rashford scored (fuck you GNev) and I can imagine the collective joy and relief from United fans across the world. Alas, after a stunning Omari Hutchinson goal on the 43rd minute that was that. Neither team could break the deadlock nor looked particularly likely to. It was neither eventful nor funny enough given the rest of the weekend’s shenanigans, the only “fun” coming from Roy Keane having a set-to with an Ipswich fan after the game.
Before this we saw Liverpool fight their way to a 2-3 victory over bottom club Southampton, and as I said on Bluesky, not only was it top v bottom, it was baldest v hairiest manager. Like genuinely, have you ever seen such a head of thick luxurious hair as Russell Martin? Even if I didn’t think he was hot as fuck I’d want to run my fingers through it.
I’m going to level with everyone here too, I slept through a lot of this, including the fire in Stockley Park that knocked out VAR for ten minutes, but what I didn’t sleep through was 6’6” Paul Onuachu’s ludicrous skill in keeping the ball, only to top it off with a (beautiful) no look pass.
Liverpool secured the win with an 83rd minute penalty which keeps them top of the table, and how!
Of course, we can’t give all the credit to Liverpool, all they did was win their game. What we really need to talk about here is the events of 5:30pm to c. 7:22pm on Saturday.
First of all, a disclaimer? A confession? I’m an Arsenal fan. It’s my duty to hate Spurs and when we play them or when we’ve lost and they’ve won boy, do I hate them. I cannot stand James Maddison (much of this comes from his Leicester days, much of it from the fact he’s a prick). I never much liked Harry Kane. I can leave or take Ange. I don’t want them to do well. But, forgive me, the fact is there are teams I actively hate more than them. If they were more of a threat then perhaps my ire would be stronger, but it’s not. I’m sorry.
A lot of this has to do with the Spurs fans I know; I’ve never had any trouble with any of them, never seen any of them tweet anything that makes me rage, unlike various other fans of various other teams. They’re almost like family. During my teens my Mum was married to man I vehemently hated, and was proven correct to hate. He’s a truly awful person. But whenever my dad, who didn’t know him at all, tried to join in and slag him off I’d be like um, hang on a second, and in some ways that’s how I feel about Spurs.
Now I’ve got that off my chest let’s move on to the game in hand. Manchester City v Spurs at the Etihad. City on a run of four lost games in all comps, Spurs off the back of a loss to Ipswich and the suspension of Bentancur for being racist.
Obviously the best result for me would have been for a sinkhole to appear in the middle of the pitch, the game be declared null and void and un-replayable and no points allocated to either but sadly Mother Nature let me down on that front. So it went ahead.
And indeed, so did Spurs. After just 13 minutes the King of the Carvery himself, and on his birthday no less, James Maddison, received a gorgeous pass from Kulusevski and cut through the City defence to score. John Stones’ face in the background, a slo-mo panicked NOOOO was a picture.
But we know City, they go behind all the time, that’s how shitty they are, they like to give everyone hope before stamping it out with a flurry of their own goals. So no-one got too excited, even if it was terrible defending, even if they were on a losing streak. Lads, it’s Spurs.
Then seven minutes later something strange happened. Unburdened by a stomach full of roast potatoes and stuffing [legal ed. allegedly] Maddison did it again, to put Spurs 0-2 up.
(It’s killing me putting a picture of Maddison in here so thank god I found one where he’s doing neither his darts celebration nor heart hands)
Again, we kept our counsel, “spursy” is a word we all know and love for a reason. City haven’t won as many trophies as they have nor the treble without cheating, sorry, sorry, my fingers slipped, without being good and overcoming these situations. We all knew they’d come back after half time raring to go, some over complicated nonsense from Pep ringing in their ears, and Haaland would bash in three goals, job done.
But who’s this? It’s Manchester City reject Pedro Porro! And he’s not celebrating! He spent his entire time at City on loan, I had no idea until then he even played for them! My guy: Get. A. Grip.
0-3
Were… were Spurs going to do it?
Enter Brennan Johnson. Well, to be fair, enter Timo Werner, who managed to remember what offside is, not fall foul of it, and run through the City defence before passing to Johnson to slot home. Unfortunately, a haunted Victorian child then leaped on his back but he doesn’t look too pressed about it.
And that was it. 0-4. The first time ever Pep has lost five games in a row anywhere. The end of City’s 52 game run of home wins.
There’s only one thing left to say:
Half Time
I recently started listening to a podcast where the host refers to the listeners as “strangers”; she very cheerily starts each episode with “hello strangers!” and I like it, it’s a nice way to set boundaries and remind people that just because someone’s in your ears, it doesn’t make them a person you know.
I’m happy to stick with calling you guys ‘friends’, because a good section of you are, I also don’t have any boundaries online for better or worse. But it raises interesting questions for me about how easily we can feel like we both know someone in the public eye and own them.
Probably because I’m not really using Twitter anymore I missed any hoo-ha around this until Gary Neville’s interview with Ruben Amorim during the build up to the games yesterday, but his headloss about Marcus Rashford and Casemiro choosing to go the the US on their five days off was telling.
Both players have come under different types of criticism for their performances at United recently but with Rashford it’s really personal. The amount of conversation that swirls around him is like a large swarm of angry bees, where the buzzing is replaced by Mark Goldbridge losing his shit and kicking his chair across his room and a million keyboard warriors furiously banging their keys and pressing send on such sentiments as 'he should never play for us again’ through to straight up racism.
We need to remember that we don’t own anyone. They don’t owe us anything. It’s natural to want your team to win, to be successful, or if neither of those are forthcoming, to at least look like they’re trying and want to be there; but all sorts of things can affect this, just because someone is being paid revolting amounts of money or has a ridiculous price tag on their head doesn’t mean they’re not a person with feelings and sometimes inadvisable coping mechanisms.
I’m also thinking about Pepe as I write this, he’s spoken to the Athletic today about his experiences at Arsenal, a time I remember well, man was he hated, but he was young, new to living abroad, and this was the first time he had to deal with this pressure.
As always I believe those of you reading this are a converted crowd to whom I’m preaching but it’s always worth being reminded of this. There are some very unsavoury characters in football but sometimes a person is just being a person and we should be more sympathetic to that.
Speaking of unsavoury characters, I want add the open letter that Arsenal Supporters Against Sexual Violence have written.
This weekend has been the Premier League’s somewhat hollow and hypocritical White Ribbon weekend to end violence against women and girls. Of course, it’s always an important topic to highlight, we know intimate partner violence rises when a perpetrator’s team loses (and I’m sure just in general from the adrenaline of a match), we know far far too many women lose their lives both actually and metaphorically from these acts, but also, footballers telling us what’s what? Eesh.
Anyway, if we want clubs to change their ways, to make committing or being accused of these acts a red line we need to do things like sign these open letters and you can do so here.
Full Time
I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to put in this section now I don’t use Twitter. One thing I’ll say for it, and it will come to Bluesky in time, is that there was a lot more funny content to mine on there, content I’d normally put in this section. Although having said that, since Twitter stopped allowing Substack to embed tweets it’s been a ballache and reduced the posts I’ve been able to include, as anything with a gif or video became a no-go without a tortured explanation about clicking “this link” and looking at it for yourself, which I found no fun.
So maybe in the fullness of time I’ll rejig the format of the newsletter entirely. Maybe get rid of the gimmick of sections that mimic the stages of a football match. We’ll see. In the meantime I have found a few fun bits from the past week or so.
Yet again, the food at Hull City looks great
Ian Holloway, current Swindon Town manager, this week claimed that the training ground is haunted. (I’m from Swindon, it probably is)
Drip of the Week
This week’s drip is this third shirt from FC Copenhagen, which takes inspiration from the green benches seen around the city, and on which Thomas Delaney is perched in the second shot. I generally like green shirts a lot and this is super nice, especially with the gold details.
Speaking of green shirts, this is actually several years old but I must have it.
Thirst Trap
Before I move on to this week’s inductee, here’s a longstanding member proving why her inclusion was valid, I mean fucking hell Leah.
See also another former inductee, Cho Gue-Sung looking incredible for Louis Vuitton. Good dogs too.
OK OK, here it is, this week’s Thirst Trap and it is… new Manchester United Head Coach Ruben Amorim.
I like his vibe, I like his hair, I like his beard. I like his hands.
Maybe the United stench will infect him eventually but for now I’m happy for another handsome manager to be in the league. And while he does look good in these pictures he definitely looks better on film and presumably, although I’m sadly unlikely to ever know, in the flesh.
And there we have it! The first TWUTAB for a while and it’s turned out to be a bumper edition of verbose nonsense!
I hope you enjoyed it, please consider signing up if you’re reading via a link, this does nothing except massage my ego, but we all want a bit of that from time to time right?
I also can’t find where to change it but please ignore the link to Twitter below (I think there’s a link to Twitter below) and instead find me on Bluesky. I’ve linked to my profile already up there somewhere but here you go again.
Have a wonderful week, cross your fingers that Newcastle West Ham is a stupid game of football and, no promises, maybe I’ll see you next week x