Rival watch

The fact that games tend to have more stoppage time when they're on Sky or BT is, of course, a complete coincidence

 

77th minute: Everton 2-1 Watford
91st minute: Everton 2-5 Watford

WTF happened here? that’s a monumental collapse in the space of 14 minutes!

 

1. 77'
   Substitution
   Substitution, Everton. Alex Iwobi replaces Demarai Gray.
   

 

Makes Villa's last week look like a stoppage time equaliser in comparison

 

Whatever you think about Arsenal’s inability to sell players over the years, scamming £35m out of Everton for Alex Iwobi was a pure master stroke.

 

You spent it on half a Pepe, though!

 

Yeah, but we don’t need to focus on that minor detail…

 

This won't age well:

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Guardiola is a genius, though.

 

31 minutes gone in the Brighton v Man City game.
So, about Graham Potter....

 

Lose heavily, lower reputation and value to prevent being priced out of a move… he knows, he knows

 

As I said for last month's round of "Waaaaaaaaaah, why didn't we bring in Graham Potter???????????????????", maybe wait until February/March before suggesting he is the solution to all of our problems and definitively work us chucking £20m off a cliff for, eh?

 

Waiting's worked brilliantly for us in the past.

We got Ndombele after a year and Nuno after about 10 weeks and 7 rejections.

 

On the other hand
- We got Poch because we waited on van Gaal
- We got Jol because we waited to bring in Arnesen
- We got Jol because we waited for Santini to rage quit and spare us paying compensation *ahem*
- We didn't get Joe Kinnear because we waited, and Wimbledon's form plateaued and even Alan ****earse had to look elsewhere
- We got Dele (when he was good) because we were willing to buy-and-loan-back
- We got van der Vaart by waiting
- We got Toby by waiting out Southampton triggering the option to make his loan permanent
- We got Hugo by waiting out Lyon expecting big offers, not getting them, then simply going back with our previous offer

 

van der Vaart by waiting? We got him within 24-48 hours once his Bayern move fell through and there was a day or two left of the window and his fee was massively reduced.

We pissed about for too long and then got told to do one over Grealish.
We waited about 2 years for Sessegnon.
We chased Nkoudou for a whole summer.
We waited about a year for Clarke.
We waited for Nagelsmann only for him to then get the Bayern job.
We’re still waiting for Harry Winks to come good.
We’re waiting over three years for Dele to regain his old form.

 

In other words, by waiting we got van der Vaart

As for the rest of the list
- We didn't wait for Grealish, we made a bid
- We actually had Nkoudou in a hotel room waiting for OM to stop pissing about
- We signed Clarke less than a year after his debut
- We didn't wait for Nagelsmann - we offered him the job when Poch was sacked, only to be told he didn't want to change jobs mid-season
- Winks did come good, then the team did the opposite and he nosedived worse than anyone who didn't have years of knocks built up in their legs entirely because those who nosedived due to wear and tear creating space for him to play, rather than spend three years as an ersatz DM
- We'd likely have reached the point we are now with Dele a year ago if the ubermensch actually played Dele rather than make him one of his "With me or against me" criteria

 

In other words, he became available to a club like us and we snapped him up. There was no waiting involved, we moved swiftly, just as we should for Potter…

We made multiple lowball bids for Grealish and by the time we made a respectable one towards the end of the window where we finally met their initial asking price, Villa eventually told us where to go.

And Clarke was on our radar for pretty much that full year.

Winks came good… what?! . He was a catalyst for the team nosediving, it was allowing mediocrity like that into the team amongst other factors that got us to where we are now.

If the club listened to Jose we could’ve got Dele out last January.

 

Or, we waited for his move to Bayern to fall through, rather rush in with an offer to try and match what Bayern had on the table

We bid for Grealish in June, not late in the window
Clarke being on our radar for most of the season of his breakthrough is hardly dawdling, is it?
Hang on, let's just ask everyone's favourite Francoists what they think of him...yup, they seem to think he was playing them off the pitch as a No8, just before three years as a No6
If the club listened to the ubermensch he'd probably still be here right now, rather than giving credence to the theory that qualifies as radioactive material given the last decade has consisted of there being a half life on things turning to **** when he's at the helm with Roma experiencing this six months quicker than we did. If he actually played Dele and let people realise he regressed, rather than bench him and single him out for patently overblown criticism for petty reasons on the rare occasions he got off the bench, then the club might have considered letting him go in January instead of have him become one of the many, many battle lines drawn with Captain No Mates in charge

 

wow, mourinhos actually getting blamed for deliberately not playing a **** player who he wanted to sell cause Levys hoping he's still worth the 100m that he is not

 

No, he's getting blamed for not playing Dele and being completely over the top with petty criticisms when he did play him, meaning half the fanbase sided with Dele due to the ubermensch being such a toxic berk that can't even freeze out a player properly - not least because the fanbase remember him acting the exact same way with Luke Shaw a couple of seasons before

If it was any other manager the fanbase wouldn't have been split into Team Dele and Team Toxic Berk especially after the SKC game against Stoke, but because it wasn't that effectively slowed down the realisation that Dele clearly needs to restart his career somewhere else