How Many Weeks Till Pre Season?

June is a tough one. The season has only just finished, and there are weeks and weeks either of international dross (what the hell is the point of the Confederations thing?) or of no joy whatsoever. I'm going to hold off talking about the fixtures until I do a preview post for the season, but I thought I’d sift through the sports pages attempting to get past the endless coverage of egg chasing Lions and filler such as “top 100 football beards in history” in an attempt to find some bits that, even if they weren’t earth shattering, at least made me p*ss myself laughing in the last few weeks. 

The Good

Allardyce has gone? I didn’t even notice this happen. Although someone will have been sacked at some a*se-end of the table club by November and the northern cockroach will be back to bore the sh*t out of us all again. Player holiday snaps. I approve of these. Alonso, who looks like something out of a pervy aftershave ad hanging off the back of a boat can upload as many of those as he wants, and any and all pictures of Joel Ward and Charlie Austin wearing next to nothing are much welcomed. Not to mention saved on my phone. Oscar kicked off a mass brawl in China, which is about the highlight of his being there so far. And brave when you are the size of a twelve year-old.  Oh and some England youth team won a trophy of some description. I didn’t watch it, because it was on Eurosport, which I regard as the ultimate pikey in sports channels, with Annabel Croft wafting around in hooker shoes, its tinny sound and badly dubbed foreign adverts for randomness you have no interest in, such as a cyclist with socks rammed down his lycra shorts talking about the boner he gets using a cooker that magically extracts air.

The Bad

On that subject, is there anything more unbearable, even more so than the mini heatwave we had this month, than Cesc’s cringey, soft porn holiday snaps? I think not. He even had what looked like a semi in one of them. This I do not need to see. Aside from this, at one point the Daily Fail were filling their empty football pages with Rob Green dressed up as Danger Mouse on the Isle of Wight. Yes, it really was a slow news week. We’ve had Evra getting molested by a dolphin, hours of tedious coverage of Messi’s wedding plans, (I didn’t know a woman marrying a bearded ferret was legal in South America) Brendan Rodgers took his mid life crisis a step further by marrying a bird half his age, Rooney and his identikit meatheaded kids had their days out covered in minute detail, and Pogba has been jetting around the planet with his personalised pillow. Where do they find this sh*t? If only he put as much effort into getting around a football pitch. He might be worth 30% of what United paid for him. The press plebs even ran a story telling us that old Ronaldo is overweight - complete with pictures. 

1. This is not news. 
2. Leave the poor fat f*cker alone, maybe he just likes burgers. ​

Typical press pleb angle on Salah: discarded by the pantomime villains at Stamford Bridge, blah, blah, gets another chance from the benevolent, blah, lovely, blah, scruff-bag widow twanky that is Kilppity Klopp. This loveable rogue sh*t they peddle on the Scousers makes me want to projectile vomit. Like when Gary goes out the back of the bar in Team America. “I really want to win something’ Salah says. Great choice then mate. Enjoy!

The Ugly

Costagate. No, not the old meltdown, a new one. Conte has seemingly had enough of him, because he did send that text. Whatever, I found the media speculation about his future hilarious, as it was based on him being angry because the club had not made any signings, before the transfer window was properly open, when we are waiting for the Adidas contract to expire lest we give them millions of pounds worth of free advertising with their shirts being waved about when Nike are waiting in the wings. A week later they were banging on about the boss signing a new contract. Tossers. It doesn’t change the fact that the whole rift is distasteful, but whether he was right or wrong to do it the way he did, the club has to stand behind Conte. You can’t have a working scenario where players can go whining to the owner and undermine him. I don’t resent Costa, far from it. But f*cking hell he’s hard work. 

Mino Railoa - is most definitely on the ugly list. Super agent. Looks like the only thing he is super for is evading personal hygiene, but my hatred of him is mainly based on the fact that he also looks like a cab driver who moves so little that he’s welded to his car seat and yet he makes millions and millions for seemingly doing less work than Theresa May’s personality coach. I wonder if he needs an assistant…

The Downright Hilarious 

Mike Pejic claimed that Gary Cahill is a woeful defender. He claims that he didn’t deserve his league winners medal last season. Firstly, I googled who Mike Pejic was. Which already means I don’t give a f*ck about his opinion. Secondly, he looks like the hound from Game of Thrones. After the fire. Thirdly, he played for Stoke, so I doubt he’s capable of the amount of syllables it would have taken to articulate this opinion. Fool. Elsewhere Jordan Pickford (I know, who?) is now the third most expensive goalkeeper in history, and Saint Joseph of Barton claims that the FA are “oblivious” to match-fixing he heard about on a dubious grapevine of no specificity. “They didn’t know about me and I was betting in plain view for 12 years.” That’s going to help your appeal. Although I don’t see what he is appealing against? His own stupidity? The FA can’t help you there, bellend. Rio looked at Ramos’s shameful play-acting in the CL Final and said that he’d be ashamed to look his boy in the eye after that. Whilst this was indeed, stupid, presumably Rio has forgotten that footage of him assaulting a woman. Hypocrite. Besides, more offensive than Ramos’s play-acting was his copious use of a selfie stick during the Real celebrations. Which immediately renders people dead to me.

Arsenal’s cycle of failure has already started again. Huzzah. Having gone from telling everyone that they could look forward to exciting things going forward, Wenger then gave a warning that the club wouldn’t spend money on more than three transfers. And from one of those supposedly being Mbappe, the most exciting young player on the planet, who was a dead cert to arrive at the Emirates, just like Suarez, Benzema, and about 3000 other world class players that have never even been to North London, they’re now looking at taking Martial from United for the princely sum of £40m. I’m quaking with fear. Credit to the Goon on Twatter that said their transfer talk reminded him of the year when he spent all summer learning how to say the name Higuain, and finding out that it was pronounced “Sanogo”. Another funny one coming from a Gooner on Griezmann and Lukaku both rejecting the idea of playing for HWWNBN inside a week. “What a time to be alive. No-one wants to play left back for Chequebook Pulis. Chequebook Pulis. Brilliant. I think this is what I’m going to refer to him as next season. 

Transfers

So far all the Goons have done is pick up a nobody from Schalke on a free. Now I’ve said that watch Kolosinac light up the league. The Scouse have got our two cast-offs, City have brought in Silva and Ederson and released Clichy, Navas and Zabaleta. United have bought Lindelhof, and there has been less movement at Sp*rs in the ranks than in their trophy cabinet for the last fifty years. 

As for us, the press plebs started off gleefully trying to will Hazard into leaving us for Real. He isn’t going anywhere. Presumably they then realised this and instead of wasting our time telling us he was going, they generated a dozen more bits of crap telling us he is staying at Chelsea. Ah, the old transfer window ploy of publishing every possibility then gloating about being right. We’ve already waved off Begovic and Ake (don’t get me started - but I'm hearing the impetus was with the player, not the club) to Bournemouth. Bertrand Traore has departed for Lyon, Atsu has made his move to Newcastle permanent, and there is talk of Tammy Abraham going there on loan too. Solanke has slinked off to the Scouse having moaned about money endlessly and Chequebook Pulis is apparently buzzing round Matic like a fly who has eyed a choice turd.

In return, nobody has yet come in officially, but bring on tomorrow, when there are Nike shirts a plenty for signings to hold and we start revealing the business which has been going on in the background. 

I’ll spare the endless speculation about each and every player and stick to what I know, or what I think I know… Caballero is done. I also think you can start practicing how to pronounce Bakayoko’s name. Because you’ll be using it. Van Dijk and Bonucci, who knows? At this stage don’t hold your breath. As for Sandro and Lukaku, the fat lady isn’t singing yet, but you’ve got every reason to be excited about both. I can’t help but hope we are not about to pay £100m for Lukaku. I want to cry thinking about it. For that I should be able to buy Lukaku, a super yacht, a night with Scott Eastwood and a decent supply of Tanqueray Rangpur to last me till I die.

Until tomorrow then, when the real fun starts for us. As you were.

AC

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