Post by ange postecoslamp on Sept 9, 2017 9:42:29 GMT
Mate. Ah, mate. Mate; yes. Three Lions On Your Shirt, is it? En-ger-land? Eng-er-LAND, is it? Nah mate. Fuck it off. Sack precisely two-thirds of the Lions On Your Shirt off and stick a little crown on the remainder. Say it with me now: The Premier League is back.
SATURDAY 9th SEPTEMBER
Manchester City vs Liverpool 12:30
Arsenal vs Bournemouth 15:00
Brighton vs West Brom 15:00
Everton vs Tottenham 15:00
Leicester vs Chelsea 15:00
Southampton vs Watford 15:00
Stoke vs Manchester Utd 17:30
"SUPER" SUNDAY 10th SEPTEMBER; and let me just say right off the bat, no, there is nothing super about this Sunday lineup and therefore I will not be writing about any of these games
Burnley vs Crystal Palace 13:30
Swansea vs Newcastle 16:00
Manchester City vs Liverpool 12:30
Arsenal vs Bournemouth 15:00
Brighton vs West Brom 15:00
Everton vs Tottenham 15:00
Leicester vs Chelsea 15:00
Southampton vs Watford 15:00
Stoke vs Manchester Utd 17:30
"SUPER" SUNDAY 10th SEPTEMBER; and let me just say right off the bat, no, there is nothing super about this Sunday lineup and therefore I will not be writing about any of these games
Burnley vs Crystal Palace 13:30
Swansea vs Newcastle 16:00
And so, to the 5 interesting games:
I feel like football is reaching now a sort of natural climax. Ever since the world fell apart in 2016 and things have just ramped up on a weekly basis in terms of just utterly batshit happenings, the Premier League is sliding rapidly towards becoming the nonsensical world it was always designed to be, and nowhere is this more apparent than Everton v Tottenham.
Some things that Everton and Tottenham have done in the last 31 days alone:
- Paid more for Gylfi Sigurdsson than Zidane cost, even adjusted for inflation!
- Announced a special pitch that will have a second, secret pitch hiding underneath it especially for Americans and/or Little Mix!
- Reacted to Wayne Rooney's drink driving arrest by basically saying "Ah, classic Wayne. Loves his tins, doesn't he? This is just typical Wazza. Classic." and completely ignoring any concept that there might be legal repercussions!
- Signed an outspoken homophobe and everyone's just sort of been all "haha, cool" about it! Me included!
- Like, we are circa 4 weeks away from Serge Aurier calling Daniel Levy a “nonce” and then a “tax nonce”, and a “big, bald Cayman Island tax haven nonce”. There will almost definitely be a chapter in Harry Kane's memoirs about how Serge Aurier used to call him "Lisp-y Lohan" until he cried.
I. am. incredibly. here. for. it!
A man with Shakespearean depth to his character, at work.
To Stoke, then, and to the complex character that is Charlie Adam.
Did you think we were going to talk about Manchester United? We are not. Manchester United, with their players still dabbing in 2017, a full 18 months after Hillary Clinton did a dab and killed it forever. A club that thinks they are cool despite being 18 entire months behind Hillary actual Clinton on the letting-shitty-trends die curve. Manchester United are not worthy of your time. We are talking about Charlie Adam.
Because you don’t consider the complexities of Charlie Adam enough, do you? Your dad is shouting at the TV as Charlie Adam gets booked for artlessly charging sideways into a tricky winger. “What a donkey! I-“ your dad, puce now in his anger, his constant assurances that footballers all need to be more physical these days rendered impotent now by his rage at that very eventuality “-I could do a better job than him!” your dad says.
Your dad cannot. Not with his heart, the doctor is saying; your dad has driven you both all the way to the local GP just to ask him if he is, hypothetically, a viable centre-mid option for Stoke. The divorce is not treating him well.
But now you are thinking. You; you are young and once scored a hat-trick for your Sunday league team. You are fit enough to half-jog between the edge of the centre circle and the edge of the box for 30 minute halves once a week and you have not ever even once forgotten entirely what sport you are playing and tried to RKO Alexis Sanchez. Maybe - you wonder quietly to yourself – maybe – whisper it, or else your dad will hear you and proclaim you ‘too much of a wuss’ for the big stage – maybe you are better than professional footballer Charlie Adam.
Wrong. You are wrong and you have not given Charlie Adam enough credit for carving out a career as a top-level athlete despite having the absolute least viable body type for any athletic pursuit conceivable. Charlie Adam, essentially a fridge that somebody taught to kick indiscriminately. Charlie Adam, a lab experiment in sentient white goods that got out of hand. The quiet truth is, the truth you daren’t admit to yourself – Charlie Adam would absolutely body you if you ever went toe-to-toe on the pitch.
I think everyone who plays football at any organised level has played with or against someone who has been through the professional youth system. These people are called Jake, or Lee, and they were a Sunderland under-13s player before being let go. You see how the ball dances between their feet, the ethereal quality of absolute, total control over the ball. You see that and then you remember “fuck, this kid was deemed not good enough, for Sunderland, before he’d even hit puberty”.
Charlie Adam’s level of technical ability is several echelons above the best footballer you’ve ever faced.
That sound is him, deftly feinting to his left before flicking the ball past you to the right. How does a man with the approximate dimensions of an IKEA wardrobe move so quickly? So incisively? That sound is the thud of foot-on-ball behind you, a 50mph thunderbolt that your keeper is not even going to try and save. That sound is your dad, furiously unzipping his jacket and preparing to sub himself on; your dad also manages your Sunday league team, you see, and this has pushed him over the edge, finally cracked him. That sound is you, crying quietly, reduced to a tangle of legs on the ground.
You are dead, and Charlie Adam has killed you.
So there’s that. And yet. And yet – Charlie Adam is also a bit shit and useless and you’re definitely better than him. Such is the duality of Charlie Adam. Such is the duality of Stoke.
MANCHESTER CITY vs LIVERPOOL
Hard to know where to start, in many ways, as it always is. Quietly doing more or less what's expected of them has become quite the M.O. for these teams and as such, not very interesting to write about. First game and I am already phoning this in.
Hard to know where to start, in many ways, as it always is. Quietly doing more or less what's expected of them has become quite the M.O. for these teams and as such, not very interesting to write about. First game and I am already phoning this in.
ARSENAL vs BOURNEMOUTH
"Forgot to photoshop out Sergio Aguero's barely visible forearm tattoo, I see, Darren. Consider this unpaid internship at UniLAD Sports over!"
"Forgot to photoshop out Sergio Aguero's barely visible forearm tattoo, I see, Darren. Consider this unpaid internship at UniLAD Sports over!"
The theme of the waning transfer window was very much one of South Americans being told they can't go and live with their dads, no; listen, Alexis - Craig is your stepfather now and you're just going to have to accept that! Don't slam doors in my household young man! Very much of that.
Still, you can only assume that at some point he will stop sulking in his room and come down for dinner and a 10-15 goal season. Take comfort in that, Arsenal fans, because the way things are going so far Bournemouth will at the very least nick a scrappy away draw.
Still, you can only assume that at some point he will stop sulking in his room and come down for dinner and a 10-15 goal season. Take comfort in that, Arsenal fans, because the way things are going so far Bournemouth will at the very least nick a scrappy away draw.
LEICESTER vs CHELSEA
Champions vs Champions here, two teams who have started the season pretty unimpressively but very much give the impression that they'll turn it around and finish 10th and 2nd respectively. We're going to skip right over the low level nonsense that this fixture represents (because you'd kind of forgotten, hadn't you, that Jamie Vardy has a Premier League winners medal. That Danny Simpson, the most average right back ever to exist, can try and give it large to Jamie Carragher over twitter about his career accomplishments).
We are going to skip right over all of that, Danny Drinkwater £40m revenge game and all, because there's some extremely high-key nonsense to be found elsewhere.
We are going to skip right over all of that, Danny Drinkwater £40m revenge game and all, because there's some extremely high-key nonsense to be found elsewhere.
EVERTON vs TOTTENHAM
I am not at liberty to speculate the blood-alcohol content pictured here.
I am not at liberty to speculate the blood-alcohol content pictured here.
I feel like football is reaching now a sort of natural climax. Ever since the world fell apart in 2016 and things have just ramped up on a weekly basis in terms of just utterly batshit happenings, the Premier League is sliding rapidly towards becoming the nonsensical world it was always designed to be, and nowhere is this more apparent than Everton v Tottenham.
Some things that Everton and Tottenham have done in the last 31 days alone:
- Paid more for Gylfi Sigurdsson than Zidane cost, even adjusted for inflation!
- Announced a special pitch that will have a second, secret pitch hiding underneath it especially for Americans and/or Little Mix!
- Reacted to Wayne Rooney's drink driving arrest by basically saying "Ah, classic Wayne. Loves his tins, doesn't he? This is just typical Wazza. Classic." and completely ignoring any concept that there might be legal repercussions!
- Signed an outspoken homophobe and everyone's just sort of been all "haha, cool" about it! Me included!
- Like, we are circa 4 weeks away from Serge Aurier calling Daniel Levy a “nonce” and then a “tax nonce”, and a “big, bald Cayman Island tax haven nonce”. There will almost definitely be a chapter in Harry Kane's memoirs about how Serge Aurier used to call him "Lisp-y Lohan" until he cried.
I. am. incredibly. here. for. it!
STOKE vs MANCHESTER UNITED
A man with Shakespearean depth to his character, at work.
To Stoke, then, and to the complex character that is Charlie Adam.
Did you think we were going to talk about Manchester United? We are not. Manchester United, with their players still dabbing in 2017, a full 18 months after Hillary Clinton did a dab and killed it forever. A club that thinks they are cool despite being 18 entire months behind Hillary actual Clinton on the letting-shitty-trends die curve. Manchester United are not worthy of your time. We are talking about Charlie Adam.
Because you don’t consider the complexities of Charlie Adam enough, do you? Your dad is shouting at the TV as Charlie Adam gets booked for artlessly charging sideways into a tricky winger. “What a donkey! I-“ your dad, puce now in his anger, his constant assurances that footballers all need to be more physical these days rendered impotent now by his rage at that very eventuality “-I could do a better job than him!” your dad says.
Your dad cannot. Not with his heart, the doctor is saying; your dad has driven you both all the way to the local GP just to ask him if he is, hypothetically, a viable centre-mid option for Stoke. The divorce is not treating him well.
But now you are thinking. You; you are young and once scored a hat-trick for your Sunday league team. You are fit enough to half-jog between the edge of the centre circle and the edge of the box for 30 minute halves once a week and you have not ever even once forgotten entirely what sport you are playing and tried to RKO Alexis Sanchez. Maybe - you wonder quietly to yourself – maybe – whisper it, or else your dad will hear you and proclaim you ‘too much of a wuss’ for the big stage – maybe you are better than professional footballer Charlie Adam.
Wrong. You are wrong and you have not given Charlie Adam enough credit for carving out a career as a top-level athlete despite having the absolute least viable body type for any athletic pursuit conceivable. Charlie Adam, essentially a fridge that somebody taught to kick indiscriminately. Charlie Adam, a lab experiment in sentient white goods that got out of hand. The quiet truth is, the truth you daren’t admit to yourself – Charlie Adam would absolutely body you if you ever went toe-to-toe on the pitch.
I think everyone who plays football at any organised level has played with or against someone who has been through the professional youth system. These people are called Jake, or Lee, and they were a Sunderland under-13s player before being let go. You see how the ball dances between their feet, the ethereal quality of absolute, total control over the ball. You see that and then you remember “fuck, this kid was deemed not good enough, for Sunderland, before he’d even hit puberty”.
Charlie Adam’s level of technical ability is several echelons above the best footballer you’ve ever faced.
That sound is him, deftly feinting to his left before flicking the ball past you to the right. How does a man with the approximate dimensions of an IKEA wardrobe move so quickly? So incisively? That sound is the thud of foot-on-ball behind you, a 50mph thunderbolt that your keeper is not even going to try and save. That sound is your dad, furiously unzipping his jacket and preparing to sub himself on; your dad also manages your Sunday league team, you see, and this has pushed him over the edge, finally cracked him. That sound is you, crying quietly, reduced to a tangle of legs on the ground.
You are dead, and Charlie Adam has killed you.
So there’s that. And yet. And yet – Charlie Adam is also a bit shit and useless and you’re definitely better than him. Such is the duality of Charlie Adam. Such is the duality of Stoke.