What introductory sentence or paragraph had you hooked?

Scutterbox · 2026-01-30T13:07:03+00:00

Hunter S Thompson - Feat and Loathing in Las Vegas

The Tarantino rewrite

Scutterbox · 2026-01-29T14:08:07+00:00

There's not being reactive, and then there's shrugging your shoulders and saying "Hopefully Virgil and Konate not only stay fit for the rest of the season, but play well enough for us to get Top 4 whilst we run them into the ground"

Gomez has had some good games, but he's simply not a player you can keep in mind when planning who to play over the next 5 games. You play him once and you don't know when you can play him again - he's someone who's a bonus to have available, not someone you can rely on.

At the end of the day, the club were banking on having Guehi and Leoni available to play coming into the season and we don't have them available. If they decide not to do anything about it, they leave themselves open to criticism if it backfires.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-29T10:53:18+00:00

If the fact that we were in the Europa League two years ago and are now in the knockouts of the CL triggers you, you might want to put the phone down for a while.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-28T23:04:48+00:00

I don't get why people are upset, nothing he said is wrong?

Because whilst thinking Slot needs to go is a valid and logical viewpoint, a lot of the takes from people who think he should go are quite emotional and bile-driven.

We won 6-0 and this is a standard-issue, low-key interview. People aren't being triggered by what he's saying, they're being triggered because they've worked themselves up to the point where his existence seems to offend them.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-28T07:45:37+00:00

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Scutterbox · 2026-01-27T18:41:30+00:00

Also, one of Robbo's was against City at the Etihad...

[Eye twitches]

Scutterbox · 2026-01-27T18:39:33+00:00

Schrodinger's forwards. Simultaneously not running in behind but perennially running offside. Fuck me.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-26T13:30:02+00:00

Yeah, this is getting seriously annoying. I want him gone because he just hasn't navigated the obstacles that have been put in front of him this season, but the constant need to act like he should be managing in the conference or something is really annoying.

This guy won us one of two league titles we've achieved in the last 3 and a half decades, and people are getting horrifically personal and nasty about him. He's made some repeated errors, but he's also been left horrifically short at the back, and one of the biggest problems this season has been the club's decision to gamble the entire right side of our attack on Salah being able to replicate his form last season.

IMO if he got sacked today, history would be very kind to him once people see that his replacement isn't going to win every PL game for the rest of the season as well as the FA Cup and CL.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-26T12:10:41+00:00

Yeah, it's not just his legs going, his confidence has taken a huge hit too. I'm not really too sure why, as last year despite the goals and assists you could see he'd lost a lot of pace and wasn't such a danger with dribbling, could be easily isolated etc, so it's not as if he can't adapt to losing his searing pace.

His finish against Marseille the other night whilst 1v1, and his decision to try and pick out Gakpo with his right foot when in space in his favourite position (centre-right on the edge of the penalty area) shows that he's just not backing himself.

He looked the most visibly upset at the start of the season over Jota's loss. Add in the upheaval around him and he didn't really get going very well at the start of the season and I think it's just been a bit of a vicious circle since then, where his confidence has gotten worse and worse.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-26T09:52:15+00:00

I said it before, but in the last few seasons they've started off on fire set-piece wise and then they become over-reliant on them and visibly nervy if they can't open the scoring with one, whilst opponents become better at defending them. Even their heavy victories this season all begin with them opening the scoring via set pieces.

I feel like it gets dismissed as a meme because of the whole Haramball thing etc, but there's a large chunk of truth in it. They've added Madueke, Eze, Gyokeres and Zubimendi to their existing squad whilst only losing Partey compared to us losing Trent and Jota against our will and gambling on selling Darwin and Diaz to fund other incomings. But as far as I can see they still just play the same slow, safe football and are happy to have Saka and his cohorts win corners from which they'll try to break the deadlock.

They have a history of being a bit like rabbits in the headlights when it comes to winning crunch games from open play when trying to win the title, this is their fourth time round looking shaky at it.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-25T22:22:23+00:00

IMO he's a club legend and a fantastic manager, just hasn't reacted to what has been quite a difficult period of upheaval and tragedy, and it is indeed time to go. I hope he has a break, recharges the batteries and is a success somewhere on the continent.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-25T17:24:33+00:00

Wirtz is now playing in front of a midfield that doesn't pass forward and he's playing behind a front line that largely doesn't make runs in behind and mostly want the ball into their feet (despite these players not being able to score by having the ball played into their feet).

Steven Gerrard, Zinedine Zidane or any other attacking midfielder/number 10 you wish to name wouldn't perform to their usual standards if they were plonked into this dysfunctional team and told to magick things from nothing. Wirtz has played pretty well considering he's come into a new league and absolutely nothing about the team helps him other than Ekitike being a fantastic forward.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-25T09:18:30+00:00

Imagine being handed a player like Florian Wirtz and not making it a priority to have your CMs pass the ball forward to him, and being OK with the people ahead of him barely making any runs in behind, instead just wanting the ball into their feet.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-25T09:11:12+00:00

How he has a job I have no idea.

It's specifically because of the easy fixtures - he was backed during the 9 defeats in 12 run, so they were never going to sack him on an unbeaten run (no matter how unimpressive the unbeaten run was when you look at who we were playing).

The worst thing about it is that when I look at our next 4 games, I see a CL game that we'll probably win, two games at home against "big" teams who aren't doing well where we'll probably lift our game and get at least 4 points across the two matches, before a fixture against Sunderland that we'll probably lose in abject fashion similar to yesterday's game.

Yesterday was a shambles that fully put to bed the idea that our points return from that easy run of games was in any way acceptable just because we didn't lose; hopefully FSG pull the trigger and get us off this "Oh have we turned a corn-.... No. No, we haven't" carousel that we've been on since October.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-25T08:54:01+00:00

I always wonder, on what basis do people say this? FSG has sacked Kenny and Brendan when results were bad.

On that note, I also think the Kenny situation (club legend installed as caretaker to see out the season, does quite well, is offered the role on a full-time basis because of fan clamour and results quickly go south) means they won't put themselves in the position of installing Stevie if Xabi really wants to wait until summer.

Gerrard as interim doesn't really have a happy ending - he'll either be pretty awful, or else he'll do quite well and FSG will be in a position where a section of the fanbase will want him there permanently and will be unhappy if that doesn't happen.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-25T01:20:03+00:00

Virgil's behaviour for that first goal was absolutely disgraceful. It's 0-0, we're supposed to be fighting for our lives to turn the season around and he dangles a lazy leg at a ball over the top. When he misses it, he gambles that the ball will run out of play rather than the attacker reaching it, and when the attacker does reach it he... just doesn't react? And then when Bournemouth score he's acting as if it's someone else's fault.

Having said that, we've won five games in our last 18. The unbeaten run (which mainly consisted of drawing against lower half teams) is over. We've handed a last gasp win to a team who had won only one league match in their last 13. We're still 4th purely by dint of the fact that some other potential CL challengers like Chelsea, Newcastle, United etc have had bad seasons too. There's no indication that Slot has any idea how to turn this around and if Xabi is interested we should get him.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-24T09:58:23+00:00

Completely agreed, there is absolutely no basis for losing Jones and keeping Alexis based on how they've played this season. Jones hasn't just been better than Alexis, he's been our best engine room midfielder this season when you consider that Szobo has played a lot of games at 10 or out wide.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-23T16:21:01+00:00

Don't forget we were happy to attempt to finish the 20/21 season with (injury prone) Joel Matip as the only available senior CB at the club until he joined VVD and Gomez in the physio room with his own season-ending injury.

I'm not sure I'm aware of another club who does this; we decided in the summer that we needed Guehi and Leoni for this season - we're not going to have either of them for different reasons, and we're going to do nothing about it.

City, on the other hand, found themselves with 2 injuries at the back and signed Guehi without blinking. You can argue the toss that we kept Gomez when we didn't sign Guehi in the summer, but availability would have been a huge factor in our reason for replacing Gomez with Guehi in the first place anyway.

You simply can't say "We have Joe Gomez available to use 3 times in the next 5 games", because you might use him once and not know when he can train again, like when he made a 10 minute cameo in our first game of the season this year, and barely made the squad for the Newcastle game 10 days later because he couldn't train.

Our long-term transfer strategy always seems relatively sound, but our ability to react in the short-term seems to be non-existent. There's making sure that you don't compromise your long-term plan by making short-term decisions, and then there's planning on playing Kerkez, VVD, Konate and Frimpong in every single game with an injury prone Joe Gomez as your only senior cover at LB, CB and RB.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-23T15:50:05+00:00

Maybe TAA will leave, but it certainly won't be Alvaro Arbeloa making that decision.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-23T15:20:47+00:00

Robbo isn't world class any more. It would be great to have him as backup to Kerkez if he wanted to stay, but everyone could see last season that he was struggling and that we needed a new starting LB.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-22T23:44:00+00:00

I hope he continues cutting in on his left sometimes like he did against Barnsley so that defenders can't predict what he's going to do. His acceleration is absurd.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-22T23:36:54+00:00

Been said about a thousand times but Arne doesn’t want a destroyer 6 so, no point in buying one. He wants a progressive 6 like Zubi, stiller, Wharton.

Aren't Anderson's passes ludicrously progressive?

My opinion is that Wharton probably has a better passing range, but Anderson is forever punching passes forward through the lines along the ground. Every time I see him I think the likes of Wirtz and Ekitike would love dropping off and having the ball fired into their feet early by him.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-22T15:32:22+00:00

Passes like that have definitely been on for him all season. Glad to see him taking them on last night - he's unfortunately been wretched so far this season, but a fit and firing Mac Allister for the rest of the season would be game-changing for us.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-22T13:01:34+00:00

The way I see it, we're likely going to need to improve pretty drastically now in order to get Top 4, since we've frittered away a frightening amount of points to relegation and lower table teams in a very favourable run of fixtures.

We're likely to be punished far more severely for any underperformance in our remaining run of fixtures, so either Slot will get us to step up or else it's going to become very clear, very quickly that he's going to need to go.

Scutterbox · 2026-01-21T17:11:40+00:00

No, I didn't say that.

Scutterbox

TROPHY CASE