Andy's Glasses

If there has ever been a worse week for any football fans anywhere in the (un)civilised world, I’d like to hear about it. I won’t necessarily sympathise, we don’t do that, we laugh and gloat, but I’d like to hear anyway.

It started last Sunday at the Emirates where arch enemies, local rivals, most hated of the hated (except for Chelsea, obviously), Arsenal, demonstrated the massive gulf that exists between our two teams as they thrashed us 4-1. Then we went to European Champions Paris St Germain and fought valiantly, even scoring 3 goals in our champions league match, only to concede 5. And then last night. Last night…

Since when do we have 8 o’clock matches on Saturday night? ‘We’ are out. We’re eating. We’re in the pub. At the theatre. Out on Hampstead Heath looking for stray men. We’re BUSY. But Sky say: we can cram in one more advertisement stream; play at 8, and that’s what they do. So the players cancelled their dinner bookings, gave away their tickets to the opera (as if) and turned up to play Fulham at The Lane. How hard can that be? Fulham. Worst away form in the league. One point only away from Craven Cottage. How can they turn their fortunes around? Well, send them to Spurs, the team with the worst home record of every team in the whole world. Ok, there are worse records. But not many. We’re 3rd from bottom in the ‘shit teams at home, all of 2025’. See, we do feature in the records!

I would say ‘the match started badly’ but that really doesn’t cover conceding 2 goals in the opening 6 minutes. But heh, you can overcome that. We can’t. But YOU can. If you’re Sunderland you did. If you’re Leeds you almost did until Man City did a big ‘cheat’ so they could have (literally) a Pep talk on the sideline. Spurs can’t. Its difficult if you lack a decent attack, struggles with creativity on the pitch and generally, find it more beneficial to ‘roll over and play dead’ than mount any kind of concerted effort.

I said it last Sunday. I repeated it on Wednesday. By yesterday it just needed repeating: THE WORST WEEK OF MY LIFE!!!

I hate football. And I hate Spurs. I’m done with it. Forever!!! As usual.

Sunday

A xxxx

Joey is in his ‘men in uniform’ phase. Not like when his mother was, that was different. Really different. This is the innocent’s obsession with uniforms which he wants to then wear. And, fortunately, Amazon, as in all walks of life, can provide. So some days he can be a soldier, others, a US ‘cop’, or another 6-year-old’s aspiration, a fireman.

If he was on the other side of the Atlantic, he might want to be a ‘firefighter’. But he’s not. He’s here. And over here, we have firemen.

Except one. She’s a firewoman. A firefightress. Anything but a ‘fireman’!!! To such an extent that she took her wing commander, or fire chief, or whatever he’s called, to court for persecution. Abuse. Misogyny. Mental stress brought on by constantly being called a ‘fireman’, just because she was dressed like one.

Ok, strictly speaking she has a point. I can’t bring myself to call it ‘discrimination’ because rather than using discriminatory terminology, they used the word to include her. Similarly, it would be ‘sexism’ if she was treated differently from all the… errrrr… from all the firepeople-with-testicles.

I’m sure there was banter going on. Offering her an iron or a mop, all the usual silly hi-jinks that boys do when there’s pressure on them to act in a civilised manner for which we’re simply not constructed.

I have a very simple rule of thumb for whether an issue should be brought to court. One question. Does it matter?

Obviously, we need to know to whom it might, or might not matter; that’s quite important. So, for consistency and ease-of-use, we’ll go with ‘does it matter to me. To Andy?’ And in the case of this fireperson, I’m; afraid it fails the test. It’s like suing Burger King because you weren’t served by a royal. ‘Fireman’ is just a name. It’s not a literal description.

And talking of names, today we’re naming ‘my party’. The political one. Currently called ‘Your Party’ but we’ve realised that such a name is almost as pathetic as those in it. So me and Jezza (Corbyn) and Zarah (Sultana) and a few other misfits, retards, simpletons and Arsenal fans are having a naming today. We need something that represents our ideology. We’re socialists, anti-imperialists, anti-zionists, anti-rich, anti-poor, anti-white, anti-social, anti-education and anti-freeze. We basically fucking hate everyone. Except Palestinians. Especially Hamas. We love them. As they represent the kind of tolerance, decency and inclusivity every political party should stand for. We like the IRA for similar reasons. In fact, any bunch of ‘freedom fighters’ works for us. However much murder and torture and sexism and discrimination and general death they stand for.

So please vote now. The front runners for the name currently are:

The Moronic Party
The Useless Party that will never win a seat anywhere.
The Supporters of Terrorism Party.
Bunch’a C**ts. Party!

Happy voting

A xxxx

They went for ‘London’. In the budget. If you live outside the M25 you have no idea what a “2 million pound home!!” looks like. You think its a mansion, in 45 acres of grazing land with a lake, horses and… well, lots of mud and stuff. But its not. Its a little house in Chelsea. Its a flat in Highgate. Its a 2-up-2-down in the better parts of Islington. ‘Better parts’ being ‘away from fucking Arsenal’. So, yet again, when Labour refer (ad-fucking-nauseum) to ‘broader shoulders’, they actually mean ‘London shoulders’. Once again, the ‘northern powerhouse’ is actually to be powered by southern cash.

Do I mind that? Do I mind that my pension is being penalised (if I can work out precisely how) and that my ISAs are… doing something sinister, and my life is being ruined!!!! by this government so we can pay millions to Scotland so they can mount a campaign to leave us? If the money was going to paid to try and do something with their rugby team I could get that fully. But claiming ‘independence’ when you’re still funded by Westminster is like an aristocrat going off to ‘live by himself’ whilst totally funded by ‘daddy’. It’s all a bit ‘Prince Andrew’. As he used to be known. When he was a royal parasite. Rather than an almost common one.

They’re stealing money from me ‘by stealth’, the sneaky shit that HMRC do to make you poorer than you should be. And what about electric cars? They going to tax their mileage. To make up for the lost revenue in petrol. Whilst encouraging you to ‘buy electric’, yet providing very little in infrastructure, and now, even less incentive. Yet they want you weaned off petrol. There’s such a ridiculous circularity of the nonsensical in that, it takes a Rachel Reeves to propose it.

And then there was the football yesterday. Which I don’t want to talk about really, but feel I have to. Because seeing Arsenal on top of both the League here AND the Champions League table as well is arguably a worse punishment than anything our Chancellor did yesterday.

At Spurs, we don’t count points in the normal way. Basically because we rarely get them. So we define our season by the nature of the losses. There are ‘bad losses’, and yes, there are ‘good losses’. Bad ones, like Sunday at Arsenal (arguably, ‘the worst possible of bad losses), are when you play like a North-Western, relegation-bound team managed by Sam Allardyce. Good losses are when you play like the delusion all Spurs fans hold dear and attack with style. Like last night in Paris. We lost 5-3 but firstly there’s not much shame losing to the European Champions, and secondly, we got 3. And played like we wanted to score. Rather than like: we’re waiting to take a shower, is it ok if I hang round here for 90 minutes whilst the water heats up?

All in all, it wasn’t the best day of my life.

Happy Thursday (can only be better)

A xxxx

(Fucking) Nigel Farage is a RACIST!!! Oh no. I won’t be voting for him then. There again, I had no intention of voting for him before. But Farage, alleg-ed-ly, abused a Jewish person and was nasty to Indians. Allegations which, firstly if true, and secondly, if they occurred in a restaurant in Mayfair last week, would be positively horrendous. But they weren’t. They were ‘allegedly’ perpetrated in a school playground 50 years ago. Oh. Furthermore, they are being made by The Guardian.

The Guardian accusing someone of ‘antisemitism’ is like Kier Starmer accusing someone of being wet. It’s like Gordon Ramsay accusing someone of swearing too much. Like an Arsenal fan accusing you of being smug.

The Guardian has, since October ‘23, become the most anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, so close to anti-Semitic newspaper that it could possibly get away with. It follows the hard-left narrative on everything, including effectively supporting Hamas. Offering ‘justification’ for October 7.

And here they are, accusing far-right hate-figure Farage, who represents the absolute antithesis of everything they hold dear, of the anti-Semitism which, when spouted by the Corbyns of this world, they applaud and agree.

I don’t like Nigel Farage, certainly don’t trust the man, but I fucking hate The Guardian. Which, like all ‘left-of-Labourites’, fears the Reform party’s progress and successes in all the polls. Leaving Nigel with the obvious defence of ‘political motives’ to the allegations. Trying to discredit a man who’s past is always viewed as a bit shadowy.

But, like it or not, even the most super-woke, PC-obsessed, probably HR consultant, dickhead, simply HAS to realise that there are places, and times, when all types of verbal abuse happen. It certainly did in the 70s and 80s. I was there. I was guilty. And the ultimate banter-arena is a school playground. And if, in the sole quest of ‘scoring points’, the lines which would be drawn in 2018 were crossed, no-one gave a shit. No-one knew how the world would develop. Thus they didn’t care. Some of us don’t care now. And seek out un-PC environments. Not to abuse. Not to hurt anyone, or cause offence but just to say what you like without tossers like The Guardian taking humorous ‘banter’ as ‘opinion’, taking ‘taking the piss’ as ‘offensive’. Not understanding the context of such comments.

So whatever Farage said when he was 14 years old in a school playground is simply irrelevant. Why waste the print space on that when Spurs are in such deep trouble?

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I’m sure you all remember the golden rule: ‘all statistics is bollocks’. I have it tattooed on my right arm, just in case I’m ever tempted to think, “ooooh, 95% of people under 52 whose names begin with Q find tying their shoelaces difficult; that’s amazing”, it reminds me to ignore it. Someone pays for all statistical analysis, therefore it has a ‘bias’. A bit like the BBC but possibly more subtle. ‘Subtle’ here being an euphemism for ‘underhand’. That’s how we get VW car exhaust and economy statistics, that’s how new drugs, ‘trialled and proven’, manage to kill half the people taking them.

But some statistics you can’t question. They’re paid for by neutral parties. And they can’t be ‘manipulated’ in the way that industry and economists distort them for their own wicked ends. (cyinical? moi???)

In football, where you used to say: ‘ere, Portsmouth are on a good run, played really well and have won about 4 games out’a their last 6’; you now say, ‘ere (because you have to when starting any type of football mansplaining), Portsmouth have won 4 out of 6, the highest win ratio of any team in the top 12 of any league, they have an average goal difference in excess of that of PSG and Barcelona and their xG figures are over 7, whilst maintaining a consistent 62.4% possession.

Yes, it IS still all bollocks, but it is accurately and precisely quantified bollocks. No-one wants to be mansplained inaccurate rubbish.

Its now all about the “xG” figure. Stands for ‘expected goals’. Which is basically a measure how many times a player/team is in a position to score and the likelihood of him/them scoring from that position. So, basically, it is just one more method of persecuting my football team. Another rod for their back. Like we didn’t know how bad we were before they let a bunch of actuaries loose in the analysis box.

And so to the disaster which occurred at the horrible Emirates stadium yesterday afternoon. When our ‘expected goals’ dropped to an insanely low 0.07. No teams play with that. In fact, arguably, you’re not actually ‘playing’, but just turning up and standing still.

Therefore we shall now invent a new metric. uG. For unexpected goals. Like Richarlison’s. He had to score it from pretty much the half way line, as Thomas Frank had insisted that the team spend as little time in ‘their half’ as possible, so they can all stay back to defend ineptly. The expectedness of a goal from there is minimal. The expectedness of our errant Brazilian ever scoring a goal is minimal.

Thus his goal, as totally unexpected as it was, perhaps because of that, stands as a beacon of minor contentment (we were way beyond ‘joy’ by that point) in an afternoon of abject misery. A real uG.

Happy miserable Monday (how many Arsenal fans have YOU spoken to today?)

A xxxx

Well yesterday was the outdoor tennis player’s nightmare. Rain. More rain. Then more rain. The worst of all worst days. When it never even got properly light. I don’t suffer from SADS, but on days like that, I wish I did. Glad it’s over. So I can enjoy today. Which may be a bit limited… by the football.

So I shall enjoy tennis, now it’s stopped raining this morning. And I shall definitely enjoy lunch. Then the football’s on. The nakba. Usually. There again, I don’t usually speak Arabic. But when Spurs play Arsenal, my mind leads me to catastrophise. I try to think positive, try to imagine great outcomes, try to convince myself that ‘you never know with derby matches’. But you do know. About this one. When Stephen King wrote ‘Misery’, I thought it was a history of North London Derbies. I was wrong. As it happens, seriously wrong. Not the first time.

The north London derby creates ‘bragging rights’. And as Arsenal fans do ‘brag’ better than the Gallaghers after a sell-out concert, better than the Aussies after an Ashes win, better than Donald Trump after… well, anything he does, it bodes ill for the immediate future. And I’ve been to my fair share of Arsenal games. Some good, some wonderful (the 4-all game at the Emirates the day after Harry Rednapp joined us) and some so horrendous I needed therapy for a year afterwards.

So even though I do not ‘hate’ Arsenal (when they’re playing other teams), like I ‘hate’ Chelsea, West Ham, all the others, this is match I dread. Basically, if you offered me a draw now, I’d bite your hand off.

Went to see the movie Nuremberg last night. Whilst not exactly a ‘fun flick’ it’s good. Russel Crowe as Herman Goering is unrecognisably wonderful and exceedingly fat. And Remi Malik, as ‘the psychiatrist’ (a real life character, as they all are), looked like Freddie Mercury doing ‘shrink’. He always looks like Freddie Mercury. Or he just looks like another really odd-looking bloke. It’s actually distracting. But the movie was almost as good as the pizza we had ‘pre-match’, with ‘Lovely Lynda’ and ‘not-so-lovely-Jeff’. Certainly worth a view. If you’re not necessarily looking for ‘feel good’.

Happy (GOD HELP MEEEEE) Sunday

A xxxx

What a brilliant deal! Struck up by Donald Trump. The great peacemaker. A man so keen on acquiring the Nobel peace prize next year, that he’d sell his own mother if she gets invaded by rampaging Cossacks! And the tragedy of that metaphor is indicative of the great unfairness, the moral disgrace and the complicity with a murderous tyrant, which Trump has condoned so he can ‘do the deal’. The only ‘deal’ which Russia would be prepared to accept. When they said on the news that ‘Russia is keen on this deal’, you immediately know that it was drawn up in the Kremlin and that Ukraine is going to get stuffed.

Trump presented this to the world, and to Ukraine, who’d been given no input whatsoever, obviously. They don’t count. And he presented it just after a really positive and friendly meeting with Zohran Mamdani, the Mayor of New York, who Trump has been slagging off for the last 3 months. Calling him a ‘communist’ (that’s not a political comment in America, it’s the gravest insult you can level at anyone. The shadow of J.Edgar Hoover is long and deep.) Threatening to cut off funding for NY City. And now they’re bffs.

The problem with Ukraine is that there are very few options. You give Russia what they want or they just keep going. They don’t care how many of its young men die in that process. They’ve never cared about that. It’s always been the way Russia does ‘war’. By massive sacrifice of its next generation. In fact Russia are shit at war. Always have been. They just do ‘war by swamping’. Wave after wave of kids getting slaughtered until the enemy run out of bullets or fall asleep.

Russia invaded in the first place because Ukraine had aspirations to join NATO. Basically, American military on the Russian border. Also, having ‘stolen’ the Crimea a few years back, Putin had designs on the Dombas region because it spans a lot of the border. So it would create a ‘buffer’. Vlad was also never keen on having nuclear NATO so close they could lob a bomb across the border by hand.

So here’s ’the deal’. Give Russia the Dombas, promise that Ukraine will NEVER join NATO, and have it reduce its army significantly. Great deal for Ukraine.

They don’t have to agree, of course. But if they don’t, America will ‘cut them off’. From arms and more importantly from ‘intel’. Without which, you can’t fight a war.

‘Europe’ is in deep disagreement with America on this. Which is akin to a flea on a dog going on strike. Because unless Macron (wimp) and Starmer, temporarily included in ‘European’, just for the duration of this fight, and Georgia Meloni (bit of a babe, but, like all Italians, better at running than fighting), intend to put boots on the ground, which is tantamount with declaring war on Russia, it just becomes so much hot air. As usual.

Basically, Ukraine is slowly but inexorably becoming swallowed by its evil neighbour. And Putin is rewarded for starting the war. Great message to China, Iran, North Korea…

And we lost the fucking cricket in Aus.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

We’re in the final countdown for the THE BUDGET!!!! Not just any old budget but a MASSIVE one with block capitals and exclamation marks. Because never before have a government, however incompetent they may have appeared at the time, spent so much time, effort and energy on dithering around speculating on every single facet of our financial well-being and considering how many ways they can ruin it and lead us into penury. We’re 6 days away from disaster.

But moronic, incapable, unqualified chancellors aside, we need to discuss ‘the leader’. The Boss. The Prime Minister of all England and a few other little countries too. Known collectively as ‘the liabilities’. Because we’ve all realised that we have a leader who can’t lead. A statesman who can’t state. A man with all the gravitas of a deer-in-the-headlights. Who puts fear into… no-one. A weak, pathetic… Arsenal fan!!!

So obviously he has to go. To where, that’s not my problem. And although the rumours have abated somewhat this week as to ‘a take-over’, a de-throning, they remain never far from the surface. As they would when the guv’nor is a wet rag and is greatly, unelectably unpopular with voters as well as his own party.

Yet in the last rounds of speculation over ‘the new leader’, we’ve had the Wes Streeting brigade, we’ve had the ‘bring Ange back from her shame and her six houses, none of which she’s paid stamp duty on, and make her the leader she should be because she was pregnant at 16 so therefore knows how to run the country’.

But the man originally tipped as the true heir to the throne of Labour Britain has gone all quiet. Though on tv this morning he refused to deny his leaderly aspirations.

Andy Burnham. Mayor of Manchester and professional northerner. He just hates ‘London’. Not just the City and the people, but the entire concept of ‘London’ in all it encompasses. When it rains in Manchester (every fucking day), it’s the fault of ‘Westminster’. He hates London, he resents it, he has a chip on his northern (narrow) shoulder about six km wide and he hates the fact that London generates a third of Britain’s GDP. That’ll be all those ‘non-working people’ then. According to the nonsensical and stupid definitions used by his party. These not-working-people seem to subsidise all the workers. Go figure.

If Burnham becomes PM Parliament will no longer be referred to as ‘Westminster’ because he’ll move it to the Wheeltappers & Shunters Club meeting house in Barnsley. Buckingham Palace is going to Burnley. Windsor Castle will become Widnes Castle and…

God help us all.

Happy Thursday, from here in LONDON!!!

A xxxx

It’s snowing outside my window. Remember snow? That white stuff we used to get at Christmas when Bing Crosby was still alive? Well, its mid-November, following the ‘mildest’ autumn in the entire history of mild autumnal things’, when just last week we were sunbathing on Tower Bridge and diving into the River to cool off (metaphor. BIG metaphor. Approaching hyperbole), and now we’re building snow men. Who look like Kier Starmer, particularly as they start to melt and lose their facial features. And then we go outside and KICK THE SHIT OUT OF THEM AND BEAT THEM WITH SHOVELS!!!

Sorry, where was I?

Oh yeah. Snow in November. Not unheard of but quite unusual. Like temperatures of almost 20 degrees in October. Unusual, but not unheard of. Floods in Wales. Ok, the water didn’t get all of it; they managed to play a football match in Cardiff last night, so it can’t have been that bad. Hurricanes in Jamaica, destroying half the country. Well, its hurricane season, what d’y’expct?

But when you add up all these things, you have a choice. Its either ‘coincidence’ that about 120 really rare meteorological events occur almost simultaneously, (remember, we’re talking geological time here, measured in millions of years, so ‘within a few weeks’ is ‘simultaneous’), its just ‘the cycle of the planet’. Or you can actually start to think that in some ‘small’ way, we are influencing the environmental changes in our planet to the extent that the weather is really shitty today. We (I’m speaking for all 8.1 billion people in the world) have created… global warming!!!! And it’s real and its here and…

And we kind’a have to learn to live with it. Because for all the Greta Thunberg shit, before she joined Hamas and is following a new agenda, trying to make ‘environmentally friendly suicide bombs’, for all the Ed Miliband bollocks about ‘net zero’, at some point you have to realise that humans produce carbon. We exhale the fucking stuff. And we want to keep warm in our homes and we need to drive around sometimes and don’t want ‘range anxiety’, and we like the idea of AI, the world’s most energy-consuming… thing!!! So really, pragmatic limitations aside, we’ll have to learn to live with ‘global warming’ and snow in November.

But other things change too. Like ‘truth’. That’s changing. In fact it changed yesterday.

The old version of ‘truth’, was ‘whatever Donald Trump believed’. But then Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) visited him yesterday and I realised that this ‘truth’, as opposed to all the ‘fake news’, which is what Trump doesn’t agree with, can in fact be bought. Because for just a $1trillion trade deal, MBS has bought absolution from a horrendous crime. Previously, after the horrible murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, the American security and intelligence services declared that the ‘hit’ was approved, possibly originated, by MBS. Although that was only based on extensive research and physical proof and evidence. So fly a 12-digit sum in front of Donald and it becomes “MBS knew nothing about it. Things happen”. The new truth.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I’d just like to say, that if you’re blessed with footballing skills, if you are ‘sheer class’ on any footy pitch, if you’re a Sunday league Glenn Hoddle, more skilful than Liam Brady, more elegant than Zidane, stronger than Vieira, more aggressive than Roy Keane (that would involve weapons), then it is enduring. That is me. I put shorts on because I have to get ‘in character’, even for a 1-on-1 with Joey in his kitchen. Ok, I’d come from tennis, but proper attire is essential! Unfortunately, I lost. Not because of any lack of artistry, great goals, wonderful tactics or even not scoring enough. But the first rule, in his kitchen, is ‘Joey wins’. He manipulates numbers like the most skilful tax-avoidance accountant; he cries ‘foul’ when the only such thing going on is the chicken his mother is cooking. His ‘goal area’ is marked clearly, by precisely where he is on the pitch, allowing him to dive on the ball and grab it. Similarly, the ‘goal line’ is subject to interpretation. His interpretation. If we’re playing up to 5 and I get the 5th, then we’re playing to 10. Or its ‘half time’. But this is not ‘cheating’, how fucking dare you!!! My grandson!!! No, this is being competitive (good thing), its ‘creative’, its… sheer genius!! This action photo was taken by one of the press who’d turned up in droves with their long-lens Nikons. I probably fell over after the shot. Or needed medication of some sort. Whereas Joey is like the Duracell bunny. But rechargeable. Just insert a ‘snack’ and he’ll go on forever.

And I’d just like to say that even though I haven’t watched any of England’s amazing run to the World Cup finals, basically because for some reason, I don’t give a shit about my national team, they are impressive. Played 8, won 8, goals conceded: none. Not one, in 8 games. Ok, one of the countries was Andorra, so that tells you lots. Serbia? Albania?? And Latvia. Not exactly Spain, Germany and Brazil. But you know what, you can only play who’s in front of you. And if FIFA put that sorry lot in front of England (Beckham probably paid the 3 million Euro bribe) then that’s who you play. And beat.

But the rugby? Oh. My. God. England beat the All Blacks. For about the third time in my lifetime. We were indeed brilliant. But they were indeed crap. For an All Blacks team. There’s no Dan Carter. There’s no Tana Umaga. They have Boden Barrett but he can’t do it all. And in fact had a rotten game. Thankfully. We were lucky to have played them in a year when they simply don’t have the 15 superstars that they’ve managed to keep producing for over 50 years. Even the Hakka was lacklustre.

Yet I missed the game. Because it was on TNT. And I don’t have it. The most annoying channel on tv. I refuse to pay a penny more than the £697.23 a week I currently seem to pay for ‘every fucking channel in the world except the ones I actually want to watch’. If I had any mates I could have gone round to watch it. But I don’t get invited. Because I eat too much, make a big mess, shout a lot and break things. But Joey does all that regularly but we still seem to invite him round.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx