Tonight Liverpool play Manchester United. At football. In the Premier League. This is a big game. Particularly for Manchester United who, for the past… well, since Alex Ferguson left really, have been shit. They’ve had different mangers, they’ve changed their playing staff, they even bought Harry Maguire!!!, but still can’t seem to win a match. And this morning languish at the foot of the table. Along with West Ham. And I really wish I could be sad for the Hammers too, for playing 3, losing 3 and failing to score a single goal in any. But I can’t. It’s just not in me. I’m a nice guy, but obviously not that nice that I can stop sniggering gleefully at their horrible plight.

Because football is a game of rivalries. And Spurs fans hate West Ham fans. Not really anything to do with football matches, more that they are a bunch of low-life scumbags worthy of any decent person’s contempt. You see? It’s intellectual hatred, not just the moronic kind.

Thus with Liverpool and Manchester United. A rivalry as fierce as any. On a world scale these are ‘the big two’. Ok, Real Madrid are big, Barcelona, maybe Bayern Munich, but none of those have a fan-base circling the globe in big numbers, as do Liverpool and United. And both sets of fans share a completely unreasonable sense of entitlement. Yet the wonderful ‘ups and downs’ of football dictate that currently Liverpool are on a very big ‘up’ and United are about as ‘down’ as down can be. So if the form book prevails, Liverpool will slaughter the hapless Mancs tonight and send them into further misery. Possibly to the point of sacking their new manager before he’s even finished unpacking his socks.

Spurs won on Saturday, to the relief and joy of the whole world (of DECENT people), even though it was a win somewhat lacking conviction. The only result of the rest of all the matches that wasn’t on my wish-list was Arsenal’s win at Bournemouth. The rest were all wonderful. Even Manchester City dropped points at Newcastle. But best of all was Chelsea’s dire performance at Leeds. It was punishment for being horrible to Spurs last weekend and making such a ridiculous fuss about hair-pulling. Just one little tug on the hairy weed’s barnet and you’d think we’d invaded Ukraine. Ok, it was done with sufficient force to almost break his neck, but ‘it’s a contact sport’, innit? You don’t get sent off for that!! Not in the ref’s eyes anyway. I think he must go to Specsavers.

So do we want Liverpool to stamp their authority in the Northwest as Man City’s only real challengers, or do we want United to start their fight back and gain some pride?

If the answer to that is ‘neither’, then you’re welcome to come watch with me tonight.

Happy Monday

A xxxx