e2e4

they paid 5mill for jacob butterfield. i'm sure theirs others. they paid a lot for tom ince, but amazingly doubled their money on him. seemed to spend a lot on one season wonders, it not work out, then give them frees when their contracts run down.

he played for crewe about 7 times before chester, so itll be that.

Dietmar Hamman Disease , think david dunn also caught this. theres interviews were he (andrews) explains it

cannot tell if joke or real. like that episode of star trek *goes off to check the news*

i think once january come, something happened where cheapo tobias phoenix methods were fucked off and it was realized big money and going all in on it was needed. salford probably still spent more , mind..

aye thats probably it . the tottenham at home okocha penalty 1-0 were also similar to today, nervous as owt. (that was also about 4 weeks before the end of the season). That one was on telly (on sky, not premplus PPV or whatever the southampton game wouldve been on) . i remember the showing of the penalty from the opposite goal in the morning (on the replay) , and going "woah!" at how he struck it, either coz it nearly got saved , or he turned his foot and hit it with the side or cuboid or summat daft. "thank god that went in" , even though i saw it happen the day before.

i just remember it not being good on the nerves. being relieved as anything once it finished. if i could find allardyces interview about it , id post it up. was years later , iirc, mightve been in 442 magazine or some newspaper (he was in with 'the sun' at the time, but it mustve been the independent or telegraph or that type) probably before he got the england job , but was out of work. probably in a magazine. but i read it on the internet. thatll do my head in now, but remember laughing that he hated it too.

probably this one in may https://us.soccerway.com/matches/2003/05/03/england/premier-league/southampton-fc/bolton-wanderers-football-club/9225/ rather than this one in february from the year before https://www.theguardian.com/football/2002/feb/24/match.sport4

maybe im getting mixed up , but i think fulham played liverpool (at craven cottage, i think ) earlier in the day and won. something like that, because we didnt kick off at the exact same time i remember allardyce moaning saying the pressure was mental in an interview years later. if i'm getting stuff mixed up . ill have to root around the internet to find out. think it was one of them "we were playing at an odd time, but not on telly" games that was kinda odd . wasnt the end of the season maybe 3 or 4 week before the end. ill look later.

i thought the grimsby result was the worst of the season, at the wrong time. dunno how they did this today. or the midweek game (but more today) really good. reminded me of when we needed to not lose at southampton under allardyce and i think they got an 0-0 draw. somethings right about all this.

kind of Off Topic , but harry enfield's "Loadsamoney" came about coz they did that at some football match either he or Paul Whitehouse went to.. dunno what me point is, but they were bobbins in the 80s, and its probably more to do with miners strikes, yuppies , and all that , than football per se. hmmm...

this is a New Coke punishment. "oops ! we fucked up , heres the old shit back" "oops ! our hostile reverse takeover collapsed , please give us money so we dont go bankrupt and can pay off our failed takeover loans" fwiw , i'd just forget it , but its kicked the can down the road for a while , cant see them trying any more shit anytime soon. maybe. still wouldnt be surprised if uefa orchestrated it , viewing figures in the covid era must be bobbins. josep guardiola most powerful man in sport amazing that he could imagine being shit , but the owners couldnt.

i dunno , i just wanted everyones bluff called. but it was either- never meant to get off the ground and was a ploy for a bigger slice of pie. or it was a setup by uefa to make their reforms to the european cup seem more pallatable by comparision. Like the rumour about the New Coke thing being a failure on purpose. So that when they brought the old stuff back folk would over buy it through nostalgia or fear of it going away again. i used the term "false flag" about getting folk onside. but the new coke comparision possibly works better than that in this context . i might not be right, but those are two things that came to mind. i'm just trying to work it out . i'm not really bothered about it , but parts of it dont ring true. all IMO

the real question is ,- who was this stalking horse cover for ? they tried papajohn-ing the owners of the sport out of their own game. but it collapsed within hours but the ringleaders are owners of mid level sports teams. the lack of self reflection or empathy is unlikely. seems false flag -y. probably a uefa ploy to make their batshit expanded european cup seem like a savior. i wanted everyones bluff called.

look at the teams owners. If the dallas cowboys wanted more money "just because" , teams like the buccs would lose out. to not even think youd get the shitty end of the stick when you yourself* own a mid tier sports team - is mental. I dont give a shit, adding 4 teams to the European Cup per country probably was the start, acting all against it now is a bit much from the likes of gary neville (neither bayern munich or united were champions of england or germany in '98) and even UEFA themselves. *the buccs or the LA Rams or denver nuggets or whoever