Liverpool v Everton

Well, at least we showed fight in the team.

At least it’s over with and we probably won’t be seeing those cunts and their bent refereeing friends for a little while. If we go down, I really won’t miss the derbies. Used to be the highlight of the season, now they’re just a nightmare

I'm glad that's over. We showed a lot of fight against a team that is light years ahead of us, and we made them sweat and fret for an hour. That's all we could have realistically expected before the game. I know that fight on its own isn't enough.

I've been resigned to our fate for a while now, although I have not given up all hope. And anyway, making up the numbers in the Greatest League in the World isn't all it's cracked up to be. So what if we go full Sunderland and remain exiled for ten years? I'm bored shitless with the Prem and what it has become. It will still be my club. So bring on Millwall and Lincoln.

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:I'm glad that's over. We showed a lot of fight against a team that is light years ahead of us, and we made them sweat and fret for an hour. That's all we could have realistically expected before the game. I know that fight on its own isn't enough.

I've been resigned to our fate for a while now, although I have not given up all hope. And anyway, making up the numbers in the Greatest League in the World isn't all it's cracked up to be. So what if we go full Sunderland and remain exiled for ten years? I'm bored shitless with the Prem and what it has become. It will still be my club. So bring on Millwall and Lincoln.

I've been saying much the same to my oldest mate, who I sit next to in the Upper Bullens.  He couldn't disagree more, he's just not having it.  I guess it's whether you'd rather have the groundhog day of us underperforming season after season, winning fuck all, getting beaten by the Shite, and finishing between 7th and 17th for the rest of your life, with the tiny one percent hope of it changing, or whether you're prepared - ok, resigned - to seeing something a bit different for a while.

Me, I'm okay with it.  It's still football.  Obviously, I'd like us to  bounce straight back up, preferably after comfortably winning the Championship and regularly scoring five against the likes of Luton and Rotherham.  But, whatever happens, it's the chance to re-set.  In order to do that, we really need to get shut of Bill and somehow convince Moshiri to bring in some professionals to run the club.  Will that happen? Probably not, but I;m not sure I want to watch another season of us desperately trying to keep up with not just the Sky Six, but also Newcastle, West Ham, and Wolves.

The PL is rigged and unbalanced.  The same teams are in the top six every season, and in the cup finals. It's really very shit. I'd rather watch it as a disinterested outsider, tuning in for the odd game like I do with the CL.

Again, my mate disagrees with me, but I'm still gutted the Sky Six didn't fuck off to the Super League and been thrown out of the PL. My ideal would be the rest of the PL plus six from the Championship battling it out in a much more even contest, with more stringent rules about how much you can spend in transfers and wages.

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:I'm glad that's over. We showed a lot of fight against a team that is light years ahead of us, and we made them sweat and fret for an hour. That's all we could have realistically expected before the game. I know that fight on its own isn't enough.

I've been resigned to our fate for a while now, although I have not given up all hope. And anyway, making up the numbers in the Greatest League in the World isn't all it's cracked up to be. So what if we go full Sunderland and remain exiled for ten years? I'm bored shitless with the Prem and what it has become. It will still be my club. So bring on Millwall and Lincoln.

I've been saying much the same to my oldest mate, who I sit next to in the Upper Bullens.  He couldn't disagree more, he's just not having it.  I guess it's whether you'd rather have the groundhog day of us underperforming season after season, winning fuck all, getting beaten by the Shite, and finishing between 7th and 17th for the rest of your life, with the tiny one percent hope of it changing, or whether you're prepared - ok, resigned - to seeing something a bit different for a while.

Me, I'm okay with it.  It's still football.  Obviously, I'd like us to  bounce straight back up, preferably after comfortably winning the Championship and regularly scoring five against the likes of Luton and Rotherham.  But, whatever happens, it's the chance to re-set.  In order to do that, we really need to get shut of Bill and somehow convince Moshiri to bring in some professionals to run the club.  Will that happen? Probably not, but I;m not sure I want to watch another season of us desperately trying to keep up with not just the Sky Six, but also Newcastle, West Ham, and Wolves.

The PL is rigged and unbalanced.  The same teams are in the top six every season, and in the cup finals. It's really very shit. I'd rather watch it as a disinterested outsider, tuning in for the odd game like I do with the CL.

Again, my mate disagrees with me, but I'm still gutted the Sky Six didn't fuck off to the Super League and been thrown out of the PL.  My ideal would be the rest of the PL plus six from the Championship battling it out in a much more even contest, with more stringent rules about how much you can spend in transfers and wages.

Since we finished fourth in 2005, CL qualifiers from England have been...

Chelsea 13 times
Man U 12
Arsenal 11
Man C 11
Shite 10
Spuds 6
Leicester 1

They're having their own competition within a competition. The rest of us are cannon-fodder, they only need us because a league of six would be really shit. The one time Leicester upset the applecart, they were rewarded by having their best players picked off by Chelsea and City one-by-one. The thing that Leicester built from their freak season was respectability, financial stability and a position at or near the top of the also-rans. It helped that they've been well-run. But even with that stable, sensible governance that we so sorely lack, 2016 didn't allow Leicester to join the "club." And that was after they won the bloody league, and reached the CL QF the season after. So my point is, we've already been subject to a form of relegation anyway. That reality already exists whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

My answer to anyone who were to say to me "ah you're only talking like this because you're in the bottom three" would be yeah, you're correct to an extent. We're staring relegation in the face and have to rationalise our attitudes towards it. It's something we didn't have to consider from the comfort of perpetual mid-table, when we just went along with the new normal while hoping that for some economics-defying reason next season would be different. I would also add that a lot of us were saying this same thing a year ago (at which time we were doing OK) when the Super League nonsense landed. That was when everyone had to recognise that, economically at least, we were effectively demoted at least a couple of decades ago, regardless of actual league structure. The Super League proposal was the logical continuation of that ongoing process - ironically, a process facilitated largely by UEFA, to allow a small number of clubs to fuck the rest of European football, precisely to avoid the Super League from happening.

Of course, the embarrassment of relegation will make me squirm for a good while. The proud history of never having gone down since my old man was doing his National Service will go up in smoke. But the actual reality of life as a Premier League also-ran, I'm not sure I'll miss that much at all really. Others, like your mate, will of course feel differently but that's where I am at the moment. You're right, it's still football. Also, for better or worse, it's still Everton.

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:I'm glad that's over. We showed a lot of fight against a team that is light years ahead of us, and we made them sweat and fret for an hour. That's all we could have realistically expected before the game. I know that fight on its own isn't enough.

I've been resigned to our fate for a while now, although I have not given up all hope. And anyway, making up the numbers in the Greatest League in the World isn't all it's cracked up to be. So what if we go full Sunderland and remain exiled for ten years? I'm bored shitless with the Prem and what it has become. It will still be my club. So bring on Millwall and Lincoln.

I've been saying much the same to my oldest mate, who I sit next to in the Upper Bullens.  He couldn't disagree more, he's just not having it.  I guess it's whether you'd rather have the groundhog day of us underperforming season after season, winning fuck all, getting beaten by the Shite, and finishing between 7th and 17th for the rest of your life, with the tiny one percent hope of it changing, or whether you're prepared - ok, resigned - to seeing something a bit different for a while.

Me, I'm okay with it.  It's still football.  Obviously, I'd like us to  bounce straight back up, preferably after comfortably winning the Championship and regularly scoring five against the likes of Luton and Rotherham.  But, whatever happens, it's the chance to re-set.  In order to do that, we really need to get shut of Bill and somehow convince Moshiri to bring in some professionals to run the club.  Will that happen? Probably not, but I;m not sure I want to watch another season of us desperately trying to keep up with not just the Sky Six, but also Newcastle, West Ham, and Wolves.

The PL is rigged and unbalanced.  The same teams are in the top six every season, and in the cup finals. It's really very shit. I'd rather watch it as a disinterested outsider, tuning in for the odd game like I do with the CL.

Again, my mate disagrees with me, but I'm still gutted the Sky Six didn't fuck off to the Super League and been thrown out of the PL.  My ideal would be the rest of the PL plus six from the Championship battling it out in a much more even contest, with more stringent rules about how much you can spend in transfers and wages.

Since we finished fourth in 2005, CL qualifiers from England have been...

Chelsea 13 times
Man U 12
Arsenal 11
Man C 11
Shite 10
Spuds 6
Leicester 1

They're having their own competition within a competition. The rest of us are cannon-fodder, they only need us because a league of six would be really shit. The one time Leicester upset the applecart, they were rewarded by having their best players picked off by Chelsea and City one-by-one. The thing that Leicester built from their freak season was respectability, financial stability and a position at or near the top of the also-rans. It helped that they've been well-run. But even with that stable, sensible governance that we so sorely lack, 2016 didn't allow Leicester to join the "club." And that was after they won the bloody league, and reached the CL QF the season after. So my point is, we've already been subject to a form of relegation anyway. That reality already exists whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

My answer to anyone who were to say to me "ah you're only talking like this because you're in the bottom three" would be yeah, you're correct to an extent. We're staring relegation in the face and have to rationalise our attitudes towards it. It's something we didn't have to consider from the comfort of perpetual mid-table, when we just went along with the new normal while hoping that for some economics-defying reason next season would be different. I would also add that a lot of us were saying this same thing a year ago (at which time we were doing OK) when the Super League nonsense landed. That was when everyone had to recognise that, economically at least, we were effectively demoted at least a couple of decades ago, regardless of actual league structure. The Super League proposal was the logical continuation of that ongoing process - ironically, a process facilitated largely by UEFA, to allow a small number of clubs to fuck the rest of European football, precisely to avoid the Super League from happening.

Of course, the embarrassment of relegation will make me squirm for a good while. The proud history of never having gone down since my old man was doing his National Service will go up in smoke. But the actual reality of life as a Premier League also-ran, I'm not sure I'll miss that much at all really. Others, like your mate, will of course feel differently but that's where I am at the moment. You're right, it's still football. Also, for better or worse, it's still Everton.

Yes, all true. And yes, we’d probably be saying most of this even if we weren’t going down. As you say, we’ve already been relegated once in a way, and that relegation was confirmed not just by the statistics you quote, but also by the fact that the game yesterday was changed by subs and next season the Sky Six have convinced us that they need five subs per game.

Look at Man U this year - an embarrassment if a team but will still probably finish in the Top 6 with their Sky pals. Why isn’t that being talked about as a negative? How entrenched the power is still m football and how it’s about to get worse with the rule change?

I guess the answer to my question is that most in the game - including the fans - like it this way. Weird.

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:

hairy cataract wrote:

Rotterdam 1985 wrote:I'm glad that's over. We showed a lot of fight against a team that is light years ahead of us, and we made them sweat and fret for an hour. That's all we could have realistically expected before the game. I know that fight on its own isn't enough.

I've been resigned to our fate for a while now, although I have not given up all hope. And anyway, making up the numbers in the Greatest League in the World isn't all it's cracked up to be. So what if we go full Sunderland and remain exiled for ten years? I'm bored shitless with the Prem and what it has become. It will still be my club. So bring on Millwall and Lincoln.

I've been saying much the same to my oldest mate, who I sit next to in the Upper Bullens.  He couldn't disagree more, he's just not having it.  I guess it's whether you'd rather have the groundhog day of us underperforming season after season, winning fuck all, getting beaten by the Shite, and finishing between 7th and 17th for the rest of your life, with the tiny one percent hope of it changing, or whether you're prepared - ok, resigned - to seeing something a bit different for a while.

Me, I'm okay with it.  It's still football.  Obviously, I'd like us to  bounce straight back up, preferably after comfortably winning the Championship and regularly scoring five against the likes of Luton and Rotherham.  But, whatever happens, it's the chance to re-set.  In order to do that, we really need to get shut of Bill and somehow convince Moshiri to bring in some professionals to run the club.  Will that happen? Probably not, but I;m not sure I want to watch another season of us desperately trying to keep up with not just the Sky Six, but also Newcastle, West Ham, and Wolves.

The PL is rigged and unbalanced.  The same teams are in the top six every season, and in the cup finals. It's really very shit. I'd rather watch it as a disinterested outsider, tuning in for the odd game like I do with the CL.

Again, my mate disagrees with me, but I'm still gutted the Sky Six didn't fuck off to the Super League and been thrown out of the PL.  My ideal would be the rest of the PL plus six from the Championship battling it out in a much more even contest, with more stringent rules about how much you can spend in transfers and wages.

Since we finished fourth in 2005, CL qualifiers from England have been...

Chelsea 13 times
Man U 12
Arsenal 11
Man C 11
Shite 10
Spuds 6
Leicester 1

They're having their own competition within a competition. The rest of us are cannon-fodder, they only need us because a league of six would be really shit. The one time Leicester upset the applecart, they were rewarded by having their best players picked off by Chelsea and City one-by-one. The thing that Leicester built from their freak season was respectability, financial stability and a position at or near the top of the also-rans. It helped that they've been well-run. But even with that stable, sensible governance that we so sorely lack, 2016 didn't allow Leicester to join the "club." And that was after they won the bloody league, and reached the CL QF the season after. So my point is, we've already been subject to a form of relegation anyway. That reality already exists whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

My answer to anyone who were to say to me "ah you're only talking like this because you're in the bottom three" would be yeah, you're correct to an extent. We're staring relegation in the face and have to rationalise our attitudes towards it. It's something we didn't have to consider from the comfort of perpetual mid-table, when we just went along with the new normal while hoping that for some economics-defying reason next season would be different. I would also add that a lot of us were saying this same thing a year ago (at which time we were doing OK) when the Super League nonsense landed. That was when everyone had to recognise that, economically at least, we were effectively demoted at least a couple of decades ago, regardless of actual league structure. The Super League proposal was the logical continuation of that ongoing process - ironically, a process facilitated largely by UEFA, to allow a small number of clubs to fuck the rest of European football, precisely to avoid the Super League from happening.

Of course, the embarrassment of relegation will make me squirm for a good while. The proud history of never having gone down since my old man was doing his National Service will go up in smoke. But the actual reality of life as a Premier League also-ran, I'm not sure I'll miss that much at all really. Others, like your mate, will of course feel differently but that's where I am at the moment. You're right, it's still football. Also, for better or worse, it's still Everton.

Yes, all true. And yes, we’d probably be saying most of this even if we weren’t going down. As you say, we’ve already been relegated once in a way, and that relegation was confirmed not just by the statistics you quote, but also by the fact that the game yesterday was changed by subs and next season the Sky Six have convinced us that they need five subs per game.

Look at Man U this year - an embarrassment if a team but will still probably finish in the Top 6 with their Sky pals. Why isn’t that being talked about as a negative? How entrenched the power is still m football and how it’s about to get worse with the rule change?

I guess the answer to my question is that most in the  game - including the fans - like it this way. Weird.

Ah but this is the genius element of how the suits have stitched up football for themselves (and much though I loathe the people who have, in my opinion, destroyed the game forever, from a purely business sense I can't help but admire how they recognised football as easy pickings, and then ran rings around the idiots who are supposed to be the guardians of the game to get us to where we are now.)

The brilliance at the heart of their plan is that there are no set criteria for what constitutes "the fans." The number of actual match-going fans, and the number of what I would describe as arl arses like us who saw how football operated decades ago and are able to contrast that with how it is now, are dwarfed by the number of new EPL fanboys from around the globe. So we can argue until we're blue in the face that your opinion as a PL season ticket holder should count for far more than a recent Man City convert from Karachi or Chicago. But there is no mechanism to give you, or indeed any category of fan, a greater say than others.

So it's basically the old party-political game of divide-and-rule. The majority of "fans" who have any kind of passing interest in the Premier League or European football are happy with what we have now because that's all they know, and it's what they want, if the team they've latched onto is in the "club." And the suits have that zone of deniability to operate in - they feel legitimised in saying that how football is now is what "the fans" want. The game has never been so popular after all.

This is why, for me, the Super League split (and it has to be a proper split) has to happen. I would confidently assert that the majority of these new fans both in the UK and globally have attached themselves to one of the Super League Six. That's a reality that we can do nothing about now, the horse has long since bolted. There is simply too much at stake financially for anyone to change that. We are therefore faced with a choice - to continue to be their cannon fodder, or to hope they go off and do their own thing so that the rest of us - the remaining 99.999999% of football clubs in Europe - can go back to something akin to what it once was, with a fair element of competition, maybe with tighter rules on spending as you say, without feeling the need to aspire to the impossible, which is to compete with these Super League clubs without having an oil-rich government as a backer.

Let us not forget, also, the disingenuous nature of those anti-SL protests that United and Chelsea fans were getting pats on the back for last season. They don't want a Super League, not because they give the tiniest shit about us or the rest of football, but because they know that their own "product" and their own enjoyment will be diluted. They want us to know our place so that they can continue to share the silverware and the CL glory amongst themselves. They've had 20 years to protest about the increasingly anti-competitive nature of European football, but they've been having their fun haven't they?

We are the ordinary WWE wrestlers with ordinary names like Geoff Smith, who are occasionally rolled out to take on wrestlers with proper wrestling names like The Rock or The Undertaker to receive a proper twatting in between title bouts. Even the WWE knows that The Rock vs The Undertaker every single week would be boring as fuck.