Here’s 5 things we learnt:

1. Even without some of our first choice players I find it very difficult to believe that United can catch us now.

2. But you’rOh!! It’s a joke!

3. If you have dinner and miss the game the result seems better because you didn’t watch all the bad football.

(@Benglorious)

After I celebrated the dawning of the new year with a glass of apple juice and some dry crackers, I am actually looking forward to today’s game. Not having had anything with any flavour in it for the last few days has given me a true appreciation for Jose Mourinho’s approach to football. Here’s to more of the same in 2018, especially the shitting myself to death part.

Prediction: Things to only get better lol. 0-0 United.

m

 (@tom_mcghee)

I have very good feelings about playing against ex-United legend, and club record-goalscorer Wayne Rooney. Very good feelings indeed. Yes. Very good.

Schitt’$ Creek (2015- )

Although not quite the natural successor to Arrested Development as was promised, this Canadian comedy still has enough charm, humour, and dysfunction to help kill a whole day when you’re lying ill on the sofa.

Prediction: Roonsquad to do a Roonsquad. Rash to be life. Martial to do a madness. I don’t even know what any of this means any more. 0-0 United.

m

(@bifurcated_utd)

Sorry for the spoiler lads, but I know how this one ends: Wayne and Big Sam licking gravy off each other’s tits.

Prediction: See above. 0-0 United.

Footballiversity Issue #3 – Footballiverse 16

January

Footballiverse 16 is the land of the most disreputable, unlikable, pantomime villainous figures outside of Luis Suarez – investment bankers. Players are stocks and shares, and managers are those guys in suits who yell ‘Time is money dammit’ before breaking their telephones and going off to smoke a cigar and rip off pensioners.

A montage of The City [stock footage, we can’t afford to go there ourselves, have you seen trans-Footballiverse ticket prices?!]. Twenty cars with tinted windows roll up to the crass, bombastic building that is Premier League HQ. Jose clips Manuel’s heels as they cross paths entering the office and swaggers away, chuckling. Ginger Sean growls a thank you to his driver who offers him a cough sweet, but Sean declines. He’s not needed medicine since he was four years old, he’s not going to break his record now – cough sweets are a sign of weakness. Arsene takes his time, waiting for an empty lift, reading the paper. He doesn’t need to rush. He’s been in the top group of stockbrokers basically since he got here, and being one of the best is pretty much the same as being the best, right?

The day starts slowly – there’s not much value in the market. At some point Louis snaps up some cheap VIC-VAL stock, which is a potentially strange move as there might not be room for them alongside his valuable DDG shares in his portfolio. Louis’ desk is also a source for discussion because, while all of the data suggests his stock should be falling, his position is staying stable, despite some notable underperformers (FAL, RVP, and EVA-SMAL-JO).

Jose’s shares take a hit, losing out at the expense of Mauricio and Manuel, while Manuel’s shares take a big hit in turn when Arsene’s portfolio seems to grow substantially more solid and reliable. The financial press goes into overdrive, hailing this turn in Arsene’s strategy. At the other end of the office, Unhappy Paul has a particularly bad day, his only business being an acquisition of GIL while the rest of his shares steadily began to fall.

The close of the day looming, more deals begin to be done. Jose sells TORR and brings in CUAD, who many had been keeping an eye on; Arsene buys GAB, boosting one of the thinner areas of his portfolio; talk emerges of ADE moving away from his place in Mauricio’s group and into Big Sam’s, but no deal could be made. Out of nowhere, HIR [High Intensity Runs] gains a large amount of interest following media exposure, but the interest quickly fades.

The office table football tournament really heats up in the late afternoon with Manuel losing to a northern junior analyst and Jose – yes, the ever self-confident Jose – loses to a teaboy. He proceeds to have a strop for the rest of the day. (Mauricio also lost to Nigel (or Big Nige, as he likes to call himself – the nickname hasn’t caught on), but this was overshadowed by the other giant-killings).

The day ends with Jose still sulking, despite leading the race for the coveted Premier League Employee of the Month trophy, with Steve, ‘Arry, and Big Nige all in danger of getting the sack.

————————————–

“Issue 4: February”, coming 4/3/15; subsequent Issues coming on the first Wednesday after the end of the month

Give us this day our Danny Blind and forgive us our long passes, as we were playing them that long pass against us. And lead us not into tenth place please; with deliveries from Tony. Four-Five-One is the kingdom. And the power, and the glory, for Ander Herrera. Amen.

Capper Roondog has come under a lot of criticism recently from the United fateful. Whereas others find it easy to defend him: Coulson and Nelson from Cambridge and Morgan and Wasilewski from Leicester being the most recent examples. idgi. The truth is we’re not playing to RooRoo’s  strengths: he needs wider and taller players around him, so there’s more surface area to hit with his creativity. He needs more support and vision in and around him for those incredibly shortest of short maverick no luck passes he drops off in situations where lesser beings would simply control the ball. And also we’re playing him out of position: he’s no midfielder. He really needs to be in behind our front two – Giggsy and Vangle. SONIC BOOM!! isdgi.

Doc from Back to the Future in a wig is struggling to impress in his role as world footballing superstar Radamel Falcao; who was tragically kidnapped by a dolphin consortium in 2014. Valencia is wrestling with universal truths: I think therefore I’m spam. And Vangle still has great hair.

It’s like the saying goes: Form is dependant on the team formation and tactics suiting the player’s strengths, an individual’s specific adaptability to the opposition and their particular formation and tactics, any ongoing contract negotiations or transfer speculation, competition for places, the form of team mates and opponents, changes in home life, relationships, love, the lunar cycle, diet, compulsions, abstentions, whether the player is getting a good nights sleep etc..  Class is a subjective measure of a player’s ability, and somewhat dependant on the evolving standard of their contemporaries.

Onwards, and upwards, or downwards. Whichever suits.

Thought for the day: As his legs to torso ratio increases week on week, it’s important to ask: Is Van Persie disappearing into his own legs?

Note to self: find out when lesser beings were allowed to join in. I know they were talking on Radio 4 about letting them get married…

Benno (@Benglorious)

Poor old Ander Herrera.  First, Vangle calls him a nice guy and then says he’s a great player.  The guy can’t catch a break.  Anyone would think there’s better players ahead of him in the team rather than football-related legal issues that could be damaging to United in the future.  My advice to Ander is to steal the captain’s armband off Rooney when he’s sleeping off a Haribo binge.  That would make him untouchable.  That’s enough serious stuff for now.  I don’t want to spend another night locked in the basement with only Brett’s recordings of Nick Grimshaw on loop.  I’m more of a Westwood fan.

United visit the Boleyn Ground today which was built out of Henry VIII’s wife’s bones.  Catherine of Aragon’s, I believe.  Vangle will be looking to capitalise on City’s dropped points yesterday by beating West HaWEST HAM!!  IT’S A COMPASS MADE OF HAMS AND IT’S POINTING TO THE LEFT, OR “WEST”, HAM!!  That boy is too good for this website.

Prediction:  Vangle will distract Sam Allardyce with the amazing rebus at the top of this page, leaving him unable to motivate his team properly.  We all know that footballers need their manager to tell them how to play football before every match due to them being a bit dim, so West Ham will really struggle today unless Big Sam cracks the conundrum.  Herrera will start as captain after Rooney somehow mislays his armband, and the talented Spanishman will be the architect of United’s most convincing performance of the season.  Falcao will prove one three-hundredth of his worth by scoring his first hat-trick for the team, and someone else will score the fourth.  Robin, let’s say.  1-0 West Ham.

United’s new record signing was only too happy to chat to me as I ran alongside his car on the A56 earlier in the week.  He listed his likes as leather gloves, minimal psy-trance and shuffleboard tournaments:

Tom (@tom_mcghee)

What the hell happened to North and South Ham? I mean, not only is it weird to name an area after a pork product (possible racists?), but why then leave out the two most vital directions? I was going to use this opportunity to “preview” the game but, compelled by curiosity, I did a little research using books and that, and I think the results will speak for themselves:

Ham was first used to describe that part of London in 1787 and it took only two generations before the entire region was split into its four quadrants; East and West seem to have enjoyed a fairly stable relationship but North & South, locked in a battle for nuclear supremacy, soon came to blows* As the more peaceful cockney types left to the East and West to roll out barrels and play the ol’ joanna, the North soon became a Totalitarian state and continued to ramp up arms production despite the very vocal opposition of Lambeth Council, culminating in the now not-famous Bethnal Green Treaty of 1825 where both sides were told ‘To stop being ruddy idiots”**. Things seemed to have stayed relatively peaceful for the next 50 years or so until the death of the North’s Supreme Leader Tim John-Hill (a benevolent and friendly leader and top class drinks waiter) who was succeeded by his son (also called Tim). Its here that historical records get a little hazy but it seems obvious that with the re-introduction of a nuclear arms policy, disaster was inevitable. And so it proved: November 12th 1895, a seemingly innocuous nuclear meltdown, spun by a disparate media as a pre-emptive attack on the North by a craven South, soon engulfed Ham in bloody conflict – scientists with science have now proved over 254*** nuclear warheads were detonated over the 3 day conflict – which explains Ilford – literally blowing both regions clear off the map. May God have mercy on their Chas N Dave Souls. To this day people have no idea how both West & East Ham escaped the fallout or sustained so little damage but if you drive through there and really look, you can see the nightmares haunting every face. And it explains the lack of glottal stop. Probably.

Prediction: Nuclear War will destroy us all. 2-0 United (the red ones. Boy theres a lot of Uniteds aren’t there?) goals scored by divine intervention like how Moses did that trick with the Red Sea.

*Further reading ‘1898 – Knees Up Mother Brown: A barrow-boys nuclear winter’

** A quote mistakenly attributed to King Arthur who we now know to be either fictitious or long dead by then.

*** 255

Brett (@bifurcated_mufc)

This game illustrates just how tight the footballers’ league is this session. League one side Westham can get within four points of us if they win and are awarded three points for that win. Three points, if awarded four points. Two points, if five etc. Fingers crossed The Pools Panel don’t award them any. Of course, we have no need to worry about Westham winning, as Vangle’s boys will no doubt give it to them like the modern day Bon Jovi we deserve: slippery when wet, laying them down in a bed of roses, and shaking it up just like Barry Venison. They don’t call us a football club for nothing. It’s cos we beat teams with a club made from hat-tricks.

Though the transfer window has shut, no-ones mentioned the transfer door, and with the FA being so nostalgic (*find a kinder word for ‘archaic’. *remember to delete this note. *if you don’t delete it, don’t worry all the people Paul will probably think it was accidentally on purpose. *nice use of the strike-thru btw.*p.s 2008 just called and they’re sending a courier to take it back. *p.s 2009 just called *etc) they’ve probably left it on the latch like you could do when they were young, so Vangle should use this opportunity to chuck some money at his I call bull shit  philosophy squad. We need a young hard-working technically-superior good-hearted midfield player who is capable of goal-getting feats of wonder, cos we haven’t Ander Herrera one of those for, like, time. And a young hard-working lightening-paced forward with mad-skills, the world at his feet, and a heart of gold, cos we haven’t Danny one of those either. Yer feel me?

No need to worry about Westham and their tacticals: I’ve sent Chief Biggum Sammum a rebus that will have him distracted from telling his team where the goals are.

Final thought: Could it be that from a distance Vangle thinks Herrera is a rabbit?! And doesn’t want to mix up his toasties? Makes you think.

Prediction: Always, keep the faith, these days. I believe. Blood on blood. This ain’t a love song. Have a nice day. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. New jersey. 7800° Fahrenheit. United win.

Note to self: Find out what Bon Jovi is, and what it does.

Brett:

Like the old saying goes,  every cloud saves nine, but you can’t make it drink, and I think you’d struggle to find anything better to say about this, or anything, than that.  Even if you had Susie Dent off of Countdown with a really powerful magnifying glass, or perhaps a microscope with a 1000x setting aimed right at a dictionary. Or if you had someone with a really nice voice, like that bloke off of Radio 4, that always makes things sound a lot better than they actually are and you found something not quite as good as that to say, but hoped if you made that bloke off of Radio 4 say it with his voice it might sound better, it wouldn’t. Or if you said, “anything better to say about this, or anything, than that”, as a way of being clever, because I don’t think that actually works.

Think about it like this: David de Gea is the cloud. David de Gea saves nine goals. And if David de Gea refused to drink, you couldn’t force him to, because he’s an adult. You might be able to get his mum to talk him round, extolling the virtues of staying hydrated, but ultimately it’s his choice. It’s important to note that he might not be too keen on being referred to as an ‘it’, but as English is only his second language, he’d perhaps put it down to his own misinterpretation of the use of the correct form (fingers crossed).

You could also think about it like this: We, the fans, are the cloud. We, the fans,  save nine pounds sterling minimum by not turning up to a game. And like David de Gea, we have our own autonomy; we don’t have to have a drink when offered one. Admittedly, there is a little grey area here, as some of us, the fans, are minors, and therefore might probably feel unable to argue with a legal guardian on the matter of drinking or not, but it’s still the best thing to say. We, the fans, will probably take less exception to being referred to as ‘it’ as David might, as collectively we could technically be considered an ‘it’, I think.

Think about it.

Prediction: All of the above to play out exactly as I suggested.

.

p.s Benno (@Benglorious) sends his apologies: he’s spending the weekend in disposed. I’m not sure where that is but it sounds nice. And blah-blah-blah phone ringing, Mum etc. 0-1 West Ham.

Ben (Benglorious):

What a week, eh?  Finally got confirmation about my new flat and also going to save one whole pence off every pint I don’t buy.  Oh, and United somehow remembered that they were United and well and truly spanked those Greeks to earn a clash against some no-mark German team in the next round of the Champions League.

Today we visit Upton Park, named after Billy Joel’s classic 80’s hit Tell Her about It.  The ‘ammers have been in fine form this season under Sam Allardyce’s shrewd stewardship, banging in goals left, right, up, down and diagonally, whilst barely concedi… Sorry.  Can’t keep that up.  They’re one of those teams that aren’t really worth writing or caring about, even though they are the closest Premiership team to where I live.  Apart from Norwich.  The only notable thing abut them is that they play in Villa’s kit, probably because some Cockney nutjob back in the day stole a job lot whilst waving about a shoo’er, guv.

Key players to watch out for are Jürgen Klinsmann,  Franz Beckenbauer and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, although that may be West Germany I’m thinking of.  I don’t really care.  I think I mentioned the not caring before, you’ll have to read back and check as I can’t be bothered.

Prediction:  “Demis Roussos… Prince Philip… Poseidon… Socrates (the Greek one)… You boys tooka helluva beating!”  was the main part of my phone call to my local taverna after Wednesday night’s match, which wasn’t taken in the humour it was intended as the restaurant is actually owned by Clive from Southend.  Anyway, still buoyant from our final victory in Europe this season, I’m in a double, super-positive mood even with the loss of Robin for a few weeks.  Moyes will have the chance to try out a new forward line, so I’m seeing a goal a piece for Adnan and Danny, with Mata chipping in (literally) a third, all whilst Rooney bangs in the greatest hat-trick the world has ever seen.  The Irons won’t know what’s f*cking hit ‘em!!  1-0 West Ham.

About the author:  I really DO know @tom_mcghee in real life.  Yes, he really IS a massive b*ll.

.

Brett:

I could take a loss at this point – abject disappointment has become a good friend of mine over the course of the season *abject disappointment whispers ‘I hate you’* – if it meant we didn’t have to sit through the physical embodiment of banter that is Kevin Nolan’s goal celebration sponsored by #LADS.

I’m a goal celebration lover make no mistake, cut me and I bleed knee-slides: Goal Celebrations, United, Wife, Kids – in that order. But that one … oh, and the golf swing one. Come to think of it, the pointing at the name on the shirt is a bit meh these days. The baby cradling’s had its day – when Bebeto did it. And while we’re here those alleged racist ones are a bit very racist for my liking. Almost forgot about the pointing upwards one; I know where the sky is, thanks all the same. Lifting up your shirt to reveal a ‘Keep Calm…’ message; sorry Berba. That Robbie Keane one. That one Chandler off of Friends did that time. The punch in the eyes that is the Daniel Sturridge thing. Not to mention the myriad affected ones. And how could we forget the one I got my team to do as a protest against fox hunting, where we played out a whole scene, with the fox emerging victorious. Actually, that one was pretty good. Are there any celebrations left?

You think you know yourself.

Prediction: 2 – 3. Danny with his customary two (nice to have that back, like a warm hug). *A meat gag on account of the name Ham, with the punchline the stakes are too high (but steaks cos of the written/spoken thing)*