A week much like any other. It rained.
We’ve sent Uefa our squad for the Europa League. Two players who’ve left and one who’s out for the season have been omitted, two we’ve brought in and one we’ve brought back are in. You can guess the names.
There’s a story that Matty Cash is injured now. We all know what happens next.
Successful teams are able to win when they’re playing badly and if that’s the case we might as well call ourselves champions already if beating Brighton was anything to go by. There’s winning ugly and then there’s this, the Peter Beardsley of success. Cash was indeed injured, but not very seriously according to sources; he’s got a bruised knee and he’ll be out for a couple of matches.
Then the match began. Nothing much happened in the first half, except for James Milner coming on to equal the league appearance record and the best keeper in the world on form again. After the break Unai started bringing on subs to change things round and there wasn’t exactly much of a difference.
Alysson was one of them and looked okay but the game was petering out when we got a corner, Tyrone Migs got his head to it and it wound up in the back of the net with the help of a deflection. It wasn’t pretty but it was effective and it was three more points.
Rumours abound that John McGinn might be back earlier than expected. That’s definitely one for the ‘believe it when I see it’ file.
We’re going to be fined by Uefa again. We spent too much last season on wages, agents and bonuses, so we’ve got to pay more. That figures.
It might seem like the rain’s been coming down since 1957 but that’s a bit of an exaggeration. For a start the sun came out on Saturday, even if it had gone in again by the time we kicked off. The team was as strong as we could have hoped for and Newcastle had got some injuries according to the TV people. They didn’t mention ours. There’s no VAR in the cup and a good job too, as Tammy Abraham picked the ball up in a slightly offside position and scored his first goal for us in six years.
That should have been the start of a straightforward win but instead we decided to give up and for their turn Newcastle didn’t look much like scoring either. Then a bad pass, Marco Bizot comes charging out of his goal like a man possessed and we’re down to ten men.
We might have problems playing against teams a player short but Newcastle didn’t, and if they looked like they might we gave them enough help. A few cataclysmic defensive mistakes and that was it for another year. We can’t even blame the ref as he helped us more than any other ref for a long while. We’re never going to win this trophy again. It might stop raining though.
Then to round the weekend off, the women’s team let in seven goals against Spurs and Donyell Malen scored twice for Roma. That’s five in six matches
