Death By 1000 Draws

Anthony McIntyre didn't watch Liverpool's tenuous grip on the Premiership title slip even further away. 

The stat of 64% of the possession yet only one shot on target reveals something about a soccer team that has pretensions but no ambitions to match. My son asked me to watch today's Old Trafford game where Manchester United hosted tail-chasing Liverpool, while the title-chasing blue half of Manchester was preparing for today's Carabao Cup final at Wembley, won just seconds ago by City after no small measure of controversy and theatre, occasioned by the Chelsea goalkeeper putting it right up the coach.  I told my son there wasn't a chance. I had arranged to meet somebody in town and even had I not, there was no way I would be watching that scrawny lot act out the pretence of being serious title contenders. The championship was theirs for the taking but is now slipping draw by draw out of their grasp.

Manchester United must be hugely disappointed that they didn't stuff the Merseysiders. It was theirs to win as according to the post-match commentary Liverpool never posed a serious assault on goal, seeming to feel that the pitch was 18 yards shorter than it actually was. With Lovren not in the side, there was a good chance the team would manage a clean sheet but at the other end, without the help of a deflection or an own goal who was going to put one past De Gea? A draw was as good as it was going to get for the Anfield side. It was pretty much a no-brainer that Ole Gunnar Solskjær's side were never going to come second best in this afternoon's fixture. As Jamie Carragher pointed out earlier this month United are a better side.

Perhaps the men from Manchester did not feel compassionate enough to have done the Liverpool fan base a favour and put them out of their misery with a crisp clear victory. Instead they have prolonged the agony until the next draw which will certainly come, maybe as early as the upcoming games against Watford and Everton. Had Utd taken all three points today, Manchester City would have been on top courtesy of goal difference and even the most loyal of Liverpool supporters would have realised there was no way back for a side so limited in options and imagination.

Liverpool are a team who are at the top solely by default. The failings of other sides' put them where they are and now that that the tide of good fortune is on its way out, Liverpool in that memorable Warren Buffet phrase, are pretty much exposed as naked. Imagine had the Sad Sacks of Anfield even a modicum of the passion, steel and determination of the title winning Leicester side a couple of seasons back, the outcome would have been very different. As it stands, when the season ends, Blew It And Threw It, will seem an appropriate swansong for ugly ducklings.

Anthony McIntyre blogs @ The Pensive Quill. 

Follow Anthony McIntyre on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre


36 comments:

  1. I have found football unwatchable for a while now, I don’t have the same interest in something whose players and managers are interchangeable to a degree that I’m firmly in the “too much money in football” camp.

    I will retain a nostalgia for the Class of ‘92. Football seems a microcosm of what assails our societies , importing an unconnected , aloof, elite and thinking the people will retain the same value for the product. If the clubs are determined to ring every last penny out of fans, and pick maximum price points for everything to finance themselves, it will outpace the value of the product eventually.

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  2. Daithi - I don't find it unwatchable. I find Liverpool unwatchable because of the dung they play. I saw a bit of Newcastle the other day and the one touch football played from box to box ending in hitting the post twice in the one move is why they call it the beautiful game. I enjoyed the Chelsea City game in the Carabao Cup final yesterday. But you are right about these money grabbing ballerinas. I have this thing about the Liverpool fans because of what happened to them in 89. Any player who puts the shirt on has to at least perform to the best of their ability. This crowd don't do that. They take the money and go. From the start of the season I did not trust them to do the right thing and they haven't and won't.

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  3. With all the dedications to Allah, Liverpool should be being richly rewarded on the pitch.

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  4. their reward is in the next life where 72 titles await them

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    Replies
    1. No mention whether they were male or female titles though!

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    2. Steve, the number parallels the 72 gender options on Facebook . Obvz

      Asexual
      Female to male trans man
      Female to male transgender man
      Female to male transsexual man
      F2M
      Gender neutral
      Hermaphrodite
      Intersex man
      Intersex person
      Intersex woman
      Male to female trans woman
      Male to female transgender woman
      Male to female transsexual woman
      Man
      M2F
      Polygender
      T* man
      T* woman
      Two* person
      Two-spirit person
      Woman
      Agender
      Androgyne
      Androgynes
      Androgynous
      Bigender
      Cis
      Cis Female
      Cis Male
      Cis Man
      Cis Woman
      Cisgender
      Cisgender Female
      Cisgender Male
      Cisgender Man
      Cisgender Woman
      Female to Male
      FTM
      Gender Fluid
      Gender Nonconforming
      Gender Questioning
      Gender Variant
      Genderqueer
      Intersex
      Male to Female
      MTF
      Neither
      Neutrois
      Non-binary
      Other
      Pangender
      Trans
      Trans Female
      Trans Male
      Trans Man
      Trans Person
      Trans*Female
      Trans*Male
      Trans*Man
      Trans*Person
      Trans*Woman
      Transexual
      Transexual Female
      Transexual Male
      Transexual Man
      Transexual Person
      Transexual Woman
      Transgender Female
      Transgender Person
      Transmasculine
      Two-spirit



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    3. Daithi,

      Thank fuck I'm old fashioned and have no time for this latest pish regarding genders. There's only fucking two, male and female. The rest are a load of shite. Much like religion I suppose.

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    4. Steve R

      Gender dysmorphia is a recognised and psychological condition whether you choose to believe "this latest pish regarding genders". People do transition successfully and the fluidity of gender is acknowledged in UK census and equal opportunity documentation.

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    5. Steve, I’m afraid that meets the threshold to justify your removal from participating in civil society.AM is there too since he claimed to be Conor blind to race, which effectively advocates for genocidal erasure if a POC identity. There can be no place for bigots or their adjacents any longer.

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    6. Ps Steve, it will be our generations Everest or moon landing to be the first to smash the back doors in of all 72. (Consensually of course)

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    7. BG demonstrates that while the front of the ‘undercarriage’ so to speak, is the source of much new and disruptive thinking , arseholes remain pretty much static and predictable.

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    8. Barry,

      Psychological problems of a miniscule minority aside, until I see a 'trans' person give birth according to their 'preferred' gender I am not changing my stance. The Japanese have similar truck with this fucking pish.

      Daithi,

      Ah well, I'll just get me coat. I'm off for a pint at the kneebreakers arms if any dissidents from the mainstream zeitgeist fancy a few liquid socialbles.

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    9. DaithiD - Barry makes some very strong contributions on this blog. Those upended by his argument tend to attack his person.

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    10. His comment contributions by volume are accusing others of some phobia or another. If he is to be believed in even 1% of his allegations, he must of stumbled onto the Irish version of Stormfront in TPQ. His arguments are not without context, don’t be confused at which bothers me.

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    11. Daithi

      I do not seek to censor anyone on this blog; I merely seek to deconstruct.

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    12. I didn’t say censor, in a word you try to gaslight people , but since you never listen to replies you don’t know enough about the person to be effective. Trying to make a man with a Jewish daughter think he was anti-Semite was particularly tiring to read. It’s just lame and repetitive and you thought you could hijack this thread getting Steve to defend himself before I called you out on it.

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    13. DaithiOD

      "Gaslighting" is a psychological weapon used by abusive partners to make the other person question their sanity. It is not gaslighting for me who only has an unseen, cyber relationship with the party in question; I called out this person's persistent posting of Rothschild conspiracy theories and his support for the late journalist Helen Thomas' notorious for Israeli Jews to go back to :Poland and pointed out that having Jewish relatives or friends (or even being Jewish) is neither defence of or gives inoculation against having and dissemination such antisemitic sentiments.

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    14. BG : uses the rigid and wrong literal interpretation when it suits him, but mention Rothschilds and he will stretch it to mean Jews. You must understand better than anyone words evolve in meaning over time, it’s how you like to catch others out after all. You will waste no more of my time, you are a bad faith actor. (Call it a “win” if you like, you brave Nazi battler)

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    15. you on the drink Daithi? !!!

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    16. Moi? Never. Jokes aside no, have I made a load to typos ?

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    17. Without wanting to sound pretentious, I’m sort of like God in that I like to take Sundays off to relax, which is hard with a hangover.

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    18. That's it, I've had enough. Today I am identifying as a woman and remaining entirely blameless all day long. Tomorrow I may feel like identifying as cross-dressing bisexual and I will complain loudly so the rest of society feels shamed enough to capitulate to my whims. Liberating, for the 0.0006% of the population who really are trapped in the wrong body and not in anyway suffering from a mental health condition instead.

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    19. If you explore more than one gender that polygender Steve, not that I’m trying box you in like a Nazi or something.

      I’m thinking of exploring the trans-abled space since transgender is so 2015. Please respect my lived experience.

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    20. And yes that means rightfully sitting in designated disabled seating. Don’t let the bigots divide us.

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    21. I woke up today feeling like an honeybadger though, which got me to thinking...why is the rest of society being so persecutorial against my she/fellow trans-speciesists? I demand equal rights for trans-speciesists now! We want the right to hunt down our food while bollock-naked through Royal Avenue in Belfast and indeed any other city! No more persecution from the State when we shit and piss anywhere we choose!

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  5. As a neutral I recently watched Man Utd v Chelsea in the FA cup and Man City v Schalke in the Champions League and they were exciting matches to watch....really enjoyed both especially the Man City game....football is now a business first and a sport second and loyalty to club and fans suffers as a result of that...it has become a sport full of participants with self-interest as the main driving force at all times....from agent to manager to player....and in all that mix is a huge dose of over-ratededness for certain players!

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  6. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QubF5Afcuek

    AN, Could you ever imagine any of the current crop in either side caring enough to display this unabashed ecstasy?

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  7. Barry, what has the pink brigade got to do with a footy thread? Unless like the question you asked 'why no black managers', you were throwing it open to include all minority groups..

    What I know so far is it isn't only in this part of the world there is a lack of black football managers. 2018 Fifa World Cup: Why aren’t black managers invited to the party?

    The Senegal national football team has attracted worldwide attention in Russia in the past few days and it wasn’t just because they've had the only win, so far, for an African nation at the World Cup - a 2-1 victory over Poland in Group H.

    Their manager, Aliou Cisse, is the only black person in charge of any of the 32 nations taking part in the tournament, despite the prevalence of black players.

    "I am the only black coach in this World Cup. That is true, but really these are debates that disturb me," Cisse told reporters. "I think that football is a universal sport and that the colour of your skin is of very little importance."


    At France 1998, the first of the larger World Cups, there were no black coaches, despite an increase in the number of teams from countries with a majority black population - African nations, for example, went from three to five spots.

    Since then, only seven black professionals have had a chance to lead a campaign.


    Barry, this pink agenda that you among others keep throwing down peoples throats, knock it on the head. Re read The Year Of Trans Tyranny by Joanna Williams that appeared on TPQ a few week back or have a look at this paper published by the Arizona State University David Reimer and John Money Gender Reassignment Controversy: The John/Joan Case

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  8. Frankie

    It was Daithi and Steve R who introduced the pink/trans topic on this thread not me.

    Despite the abuses that have occurred at places like the Tavistock Gender Dysmorphia Clinic and the aggression and bullying that some trans activists engage in; it is established medical and psychological fact that people feel that they exist in the wrong body. I do not seek to ram trans or any other agenda down people's throats; I just respond to the pig ignorance that Steve R and Daithi have shown towards sexual minorities.

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    Replies
    1. Barry - it is a matter of who has the power to define how a person is seen. Can you not be free to see me as you do rather than deferring to my insistence on seeing me as I do?

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    2. Anthony

      If this does not sound pretentious I am with Martin Luther King in seeing people not through the prisms of skin colour, sexuality, gender, disability or the private practice of religious faith but through the content of their character, public profile and the framing narrative of their experiences. I do not have nor do I want the power to judge you any differently. Btw, I have great respect for your life's journey even though I disagree with some of your choices and your opinions which I do respectfully and never through personal attacks.

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    3. Barry - I appreciate that but it does not really address the query.

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  9. All liverpool have to do is win by 1-0..As a Man Utd supported since 1977, I hope Liverpool and not City win the EPL this year for my good friend Malaga Murphy...

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  10. I want them to win it too Frankie but only for the fans. I think there are other teams who deserve it better in terms of soccer ability and heart.

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  11. For sale...Pogba, Young, Smalling, Jones, De Gea, Sanchez, Martial...All offers considered...

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