Omicron is serious. Nothing to do with case numbers, airport closures, party restrictions or even deaths. When football stops; its serious. And out of 10 fixtures this weekend, only 4 were played. Most of which didn’t count. The Arsenal match certainly was of no concern to anyone and Newcastle losing the Middle East derby match (Abu Dhabi vs Saudi Arabia) to Manchester City was a surprise to no-one south of Gateshead, east of Riyadh.

But fortunately, for all of football, for all of sport, for ALL OF MANKIND, one of the matches was simply magnificent. Of course, the term ‘magnificent’ is in the eye, the gut, the mind and the sanity, of the beholder. For Northerrners like Gary Neville, he can declare ‘the best football ah’ve sin all yer’, because he’s a semi-literate Mancunian (ie; one of the clever ones) whereas for Spurs fans… well Spurs fan numero uno, it was edge of the seat panic for 90 minutes plus stoppage time. But there was so much to admire. Brilliant play, by both teams, goals, squandered opportunities aplenty (by my team), excitement, passion, commitment and 2 instances of extreme violence. About which, I’d like to set the record straight.

Harry Kane’s yellow-card tackle on Andrew Robertson was perfectly fair and decent and innocent and innocuous. The fact he ‘appeared’ to take the ankle in a somewhat ‘studs up’ manner was just because he happened to be wearing football boots at the time. A coincidence. The referee made the right choice of coloured card. Jurgen Klopp disagreed, so he got one too.

The second incident was rather more sinister. The same Andrew Robertson, this time on the giving end to Emerson Royal. Who was brutally savaged onto the ground in a quite frankly unforgivable tackle. It deserved the red card which was, eventually, given. We simply can’t allow such reckless assault tarnish what was otherwise a truly beautiful game. Unless its perpetrated by my team.

The game did indeed live up to Gary N’s hyperbole. If you were a ‘neutral’, rather than an ‘ulcer grower’, it was just excitement and action, end-to-end, non-stop.

But what made me really happy and proud was that we were never ‘in awe’ of Liverpool, never put out of our stride, even when the pressure was on.

Antonio Conte is growing on me. Much like all our new managers do. For a while. But, as they sing in Cabaret, ‘maybe this time, he’ll stay’!!! (Pause for tears).

Very happy Monday

A xxxx