Football Thread 2021/22: pre-seasons in the abyss

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Hope Daniel Levy adopts the same beard.

[chveik]

And there will be some money to buy Portuguese players with our new stadium sponsorship deal. Yes, welcome to the Nandos Arena!

they should go after Pedro Neto, he looks dead good

[imitationleather]

A manager with a beard? Now I really have seen it all!

[DrGreggles]

Lets have it right---

"Benítez first referred to Moyes' club as being smaller in his pre-match briefing last week, then repeated it in television, radio and other interviews in the wake of Saturday's infuriating stalemate. He is canny enough to realise the weight his words carry and, when put in that context, his comments appeared nothing but inflammatory, even if the spark of debate was appreciated after the mishmash served up on the pitch."

Looks like you've quoted an opinion, but failed to mention whose.

_{They are a smaller club though...}

[BlodwynPig]

Nandos is South African, racist

[Inspector Norse]

Nandos is South African. HOW MANY TIMES?????

Qualified for Portugal thanks to his grandmother

[Bernice]

Nah he's just a fat dull but competent timeserver who nearly every Everton fan will have got used to managing them after about 3 games.

Yeah, exactly. Which is precisely why I didn't want him, and also precisely why I already don't care

[Wonderful Butternut]

He`s a fat toxic mess who shouldn`t be anywhere near Everton---I hope the Max & Paddy-headed twat is run out of town and he has to sell his beloved Wirral home.

Hope that man, who wants to try and help your shithouse small club become something other than shithouse and small, has his personal life ruined because of who he managed 11 years ago and stuff he said 15 years ago.

Why are Everton fans referred to as bitter again? Someone remind me, I forget.

Pray tell, sir, what will you do if he ends up being successful? Still hope he's run out of town? Or just pretend you never posted this?

[Bernice]

Thank God you're here to pompously take hyperbole at face value in a football thread on CaB. Pray tell, sir! Alack! Forsooth and so on.

[Blofelds Cat]

Hope that man, who wants to try and help your shithouse small club become something other than shithouse and small, has his personal life ruined because of who he managed 11 years ago and stuff he said 15 years ago.

Why are Everton fans referred to as bitter again? Someone remind me, I forget.

Pray tell, sir, what will you do if he ends up being successful? Still hope he's run out of town? Or just pretend you never posted this?

How long has Boris Johnson been posting on here?

[Blofelds Cat]

Looks like you've quoted an opinion, but failed to mention whose.

_{They are a smaller club though...}

Ees fax as someone once said.

Spanglish??  ODFO...not like a Kopite to be revisionist...oh look...heres another one...seems Benitez wasnt so great after all...

https://www.sundayworld.com/sport/soccer/everton-are-weighing-up-a-move-for-rafa-benitez-but-their-fans-would-never-accept-it-40558032.html

[DrGreggles]

I just asked who said what you quoted.

You didn't lose a bedsheet the other day by any chance, did you?

[lankyguy95]

Ees fax as someone once said.

Spanglish??  ODFO...not like a Kopite to be revisionist...oh look...heres another one...seems Benitez wasnt so great after all...

https://www.sundayworld.com/sport/soccer/everton-are-weighing-up-a-move-for-rafa-benitez-but-their-fans-would-never-accept-it-40558032.html

Almost everything in this is complete nonsense by the way. Aldridge is a bitter old man who was even snide about Kenny Dalglish. People don't take him seriously.

[Ted-Maul]

He will obviously have known before signing what the fans reaction was going to be like and has taken the job anyway. Maybe that shows a strong determination to succeed and win the fans over in the face of adversity. Maybe he's another Allardyce taking our Mr. Moneybags to the cleaners as he knows he'll never be accepted, doesn't give two shits about the club anyway and will be happily counting down the days until he's sacked.

As things stand, I honestly don't know which is more likely but I wish I didn't have to find out.

[Kankurette]

Nah he's just a fat dull but competent timeserver who nearly every Everton fan will have got used to managing them after about 3 games.

So basically like Moyes, but chunkier and Spanisher.

[Kankurette]

I really, really fucking hate being called bitter and this kind of shit is exactly why I don't like being around Liverpool fans. Online or in real life. I've had years of shit off them, including one who was downright fucking evil over it. I'm not some kind of subhuman just because I support a football team.

Rafa deserves as much of a chance as anyone else.

[DrGreggles]

Messi is no longer a Barcelona player!

Mike Ashley ponders offering him £500 a week IN CASH to join the Toon.

[DrGreggles]

[JamesTC]

"Can I just shock you? Football isn't blue, despite what I said earlier."

[thehungerartist]

Benitez left Liverpool ELEVEN years ago, and when he did our fanbase was pretty split as to whether his time was up. Some whispers even emerged that he actively sought constructive dismissal as he suspected the club's prospects were bleak and was due a nice fat payoff. He's a professional whose career highs overlapped with his time working at LFC, and his wife happens to enjoy living in the area. He's no Liverpool supporter.

All this Evertonian rage is amusing but weirdly misplaced; leeches like Kenwright and Marcel Brands have done far more damage to that club than Rafa ever did.

Ees fax as someone once said.

Spanglish??  ODFO...not like a Kopite to be revisionist...oh look...heres another one...seems Benitez wasnt so great after all...

https://www.sundayworld.com/sport/soccer/everton-are-weighing-up-a-move-for-rafa-benitez-but-their-fans-would-never-accept-it-40558032.html

Christ, what a cunt.

As for John Aldridge - his bitterness is renowned on Merseyside, so you'll have to do better than that.

[Bernice]

Not sure why Kenwright or Brands are leeches.

The Benítez appointment is what it is. A strangely divisive decision by a spoilt owner desperate to make his toy car go vroom, a man who thinks that his ill-gotten wealth qualifies him to make decisions on... well, basically anything, really. He is rich, therefore he is a winner, therefore he knows what it takes to win in any given sphere. Fine. At a certain point you have to accept that top-level football is run by bored billionaires for their own amusement.

The Evertonian outcry, which is real even if it's extent is overstated, is a product of frustration and wounded pride. All anyone wants, as a football fan, is to have something to believe in, to feel yourself part of the collective protagonism in a story in which you get to win, or at the very least fight with dignity. But for that to function well you need to be able to project onto the club some quality you possess and are proud of, or some virtue you would like more of. In Everton you can only really see a basket case to rival your own confusing, disappointed life: five managers in five years, minimal on-pitch identity, players passing through without connecting, 26 years without silverware. Spending too much to be an underdog, performing too poorly to be one of the big boys.

Into that you throw, casually, one more insult: the appointment of a man whose greatest achievements were won long ago with your rivals. Rivals who get to win things and fight with dignity while you flounder in mid-table apathy. The punchlines write themselves. You are losers.

Ultimately the whole enterprise becomes stripped of the necessary illusion and all you see is the naked fact of it: this thing you love, like everything else in this world, is the plaything of a man who makes more in a year than you and everyone you know will make in a lifetime.

Most Evertonians, myself included, will swallow this latest indignity because blind hope and maybe ifs are the fuel the whole machinery of illusion runs on, and we want the illusion to work. And maybe Benítez will be good, and Everton will be good, and we'll all get to feel good, just for a little bit.

But, weird threats aside, it's hard to chastise people too much for overblown and ridiculous reactions to this sense of spiralling dejection. Irrational responses to trivial shit are the lifeblood of football support.

[JamesTC]

Ultimately the whole enterprise becomes stripped of the necessary illusion and all you see is the naked fact of it: this thing you love, like everything else in this world, is the plaything of a man who makes more in a year than you and everyone you know will make in a lifetime.

Christ, I've just realised Everton are the sporting equivalent of Star Trek. More money than ever thrown at it all in the service of talentless charlatans and a pathetic desperation to emulate their successful peers without understanding what made them good.

[Blofelds Cat]

Benitez left Liverpool ELEVEN years ago, and when he did our fanbase was pretty split as to whether his time was up. Some whispers even emerged that he actively sought constructive dismissal as he suspected the club's prospects were bleak and was due a nice fat payoff. He's a professional whose career highs overlapped with his time working at LFC, and his wife happens to enjoy living in the area. He's no Liverpool supporter.

All this Evertonian rage is amusing but weirdly misplaced; leeches like Kenwright and Marcel Brands have done far more damage to that club than Rafa ever did.

Christ, what a cunt.

As for John Aldridge - his bitterness is renowned on Merseyside, so you'll have to do better than that.

You`re like a demented gibbon smearing schite everywhere and over yourself--just made a post in accord with the Aldridge article while attempting to have a go at me for pointing out  Kopites are the masters of revisionism...

I`d call you a cunt but you appear to be making a sterling effort all by yourself...

[sevendaughters]

did not see thread title becoming so prescient

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Christ, I've just realised Everton are the sporting equivalent of Star Trek. More money than ever thrown at it all in the service of talentless charlatans and a pathetic desperation to emulate their successful peers without understanding what made them good.

Can't knock the Star Trek critique

[Mobius]

Arsenal to sign bloke who kisses dogs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU_Mj91K_1s

[sevendaughters]

did not know

i. Scotty Pawkah had left Fulham
ii. Scotty Pawkah had joined Bournemouth
iii. Marco Silva had joined Fulham

[Bernice]

I'd missed that too - why did Parker leave? Looked like a bright manager. Got a lot of fondness for Marco, quite look forward to seeing what he can do there. Could never quite fathom Fulham last year, like Brighton they were a side that looked reallybright and fun whenever I watched them, but could never seem to win a game. Still fancy either of them to make a run for the Europa places this coming season.

[Kankurette]

Maybe now that Marco has a job, Greg O'Keefe will stop obsessing over him. I always liked him, hope he does well. And doesn't steal Richarlison off us.

Re identity: what even is identity? It's another of those words football fans use a lot that I don't get. What does it even mean? How does a club have an identity? Is it like when Man United had a reputation of being a bunch of ruthless godmoding bastards?

I also don't have any pride regarding Everton, apart from being proud of the good work EITC does. I'm well aware that I'm not a rational person either, tbf.

[sevendaughters]

identity is the new philosophy (and the two, in sport-speak, are interchangeable). it's the hope that attractive on-field tactics and results can be subsequently parlayed into the soft power of the club. no one gives a shit about the philosophy of Oldham Athletic or Burton.