HOLD THE FRONT PAGE! CANCEL THE TORY CONFERENCE! HAVE A CEASEFIRE IN UKRAINE! FORGET THAT SADIQ KAHN IS A TOTAL NOB!

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE SPURS/LIVERPOOL GAME LAST NIGHT!!!

A match so steeped in controversy, so riddled with errors and mistakes, a game so mired in issues and technicalities that it went on for about an hour too long. Thank God, because that extra, extra time, the 96th minute of ‘full time’, not counting the added 10 minutes plus an extra 3 to the first half, is when Spurs do their best work. We save it to the end.

If I was a Liverpool fan… I’d probably be in prison, but that’s not the point here. Though even those currently serving at His Majesty’s Pleasure would be indeed royally, and understandably pissed off with the events at the Lane. And even though Liverpool fans are famous for moaning and complaining, this time they may actually have a point. Or indeed several. This may need a… PUBLIC INQUIRY!!!!

The game was going swimmingly, Liverpool, lying second in the league in the morning, were overtaken by Arsenal’s lucky, 4-nil win at Bournemouth, whilst the leaders and obviously eventual winners, Man City actually lost at Wolves, with Brighton (3rd) getting mullered by Aston Villa. And Spurs were settling into their game for 24 minutes until…

A vicious, over the ball, studs to shin tackle on Yves Bissouma by Curtis Jones saw the Liverpool man get a yellow card. And rightly so. Or wrongly so. Because whilst VAR was agonising and analysing whether the event should be upgraded to a red card, us viewers at home watched it in 37 views from 96 angles. Half of which made it look like the worst tackle since Roy Keane retired, and half of which made it look like an accidental slip. So they asked the ref to watch it. And he immediately changed his yellow to red.

Spurs were now playing against 10 men, so that’s good, right? Normally, yeah, but Liverpool are special and within a few minutes they had the ball in the net. A lovely finish from Luis Diaz, who timed his run beautifully and was onside. But the VAR obligatory check, see today’s pic, showed quite obviously that he was quite a way offside and the goal was rightly disallowed. Because we only have VAR for one thing really, the only thing that is scientifically qualifiable and not subject to individual interpretation, like a handball or a foul. For offside. Thus we have replaced a system which works fairly well allowing for refs and linesmen to make the odd mistake, with a ‘full-proof’ system where they still make major league fuck-ups, but we get to waste 20 minutes each game waiting for them to do it.

Then Spurs scored. A real, non-controversial, lovely, clean Sonny-type goal. But 10 man-Liverpool fought boldly. And on the stroke of half time Gakpo equalised for the reds. Crippling himself in the process.

Spurs couldn’t break through. They kept pleading with the VAR to give them something, anything, but no, they just kept plugging away. Until the 68th minute when Diogo Jota fouled our fab left back Udogie and got a yellow card. But he enjoyed it so much, he repeated it 2 minutes later and got his second, and thus, a compulsory expulsion from the game. Re-arrange this well-known phrase: Tosser Portuguese.

So now Spurs were playing 9 men, such a massive and obvious advantage that… they still couldn’t break the 1-1 deadlock. And time was running out. Then it did run out. Except just before, with possibly the last move of the game, Porro fired the ball into the Liverpool area and Joel Matip slammed the ball brilliantly into his own net. The perfect end to a perfect game.

So many serious questions to be answered:
Should VAR be scrapped?
Did their official ‘apology’ to Klopp and Liverpool afterwards make any fan or player any happier in even the most minimal way?
Why couldn’t Spurs capitalise playing against 9 for so long???
Did Spurs deserve to win?
Does any Spurs fan really give a shit about any of that lot, because we won the game and pocketed another 3 points? AND stayed above Arsenal.

Which made it, quite frankly, the best day of my life.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx