I watched the Aston Villa game on my computer, paying the one-off charge of £9.99. Wasn’t it £7.99 last season? I practiced that I had got the log in details correct a couple of times during the day and sure enough , there I was sat before my computer at 8.00pm, having skipped the hour of the load of bollocks pundits.
There can be no comparison between watching a game on TV or computer and watching it from the stands. I can’t put my finger on it, but it might be the same as watching pornography or engaging in the act yourself.
Also, when watching the game on TV, my mind begins to wander. How do you pronounce Haller? If it’s French, you would definitely drop the H. Then, is it Aller or Allere? I looked up his Wiki entry, which shows you how to pronounce the name but it’s written in Klingon (try it yourself). It took me weeks to learn that you pronounced Payet with a T, because that’s how they pronounced it on Reunion. This is going to keep me up at nights.
What was going on in the game? Wow, it looked like the West Ham side had finally learnt how to pass the ball. Could there be a new found confidence in the side? We beat Norwich, Norwich beat Man City, so that makes us the best team in Europe.
Rice also seemed to have regained his touch. I was getting a bit worried about him. It would seem once a player starts to dream of greener pastures, their game goes downhill. I was beginning to think, if Man U offered £90 million, we should grab it.
OK, back to Heller. I’m going to try and transcribe the phonetic language. The H is definitely not pronounced. The e is pronounced like the e in best. But, the final r is a guttural r , roughly like the ch in loch, or it might be like the r in the french word ‘regarder’, in which case you roll it. So, it’s Allerrrrrrrrr, or Allech. Oh, why couldn’t we buy a player like Wojciech Szczesny, whose name you can pronounce straight off?
Back to the computer. Here we go again with the West Ham speciality, the old one two free kick. It must be absolutely brilliant on the training ground. It’s definitely going to be better against Aston Villa, because Snodgrass isn’t involved. There a saying which goes,’ If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ The West Ham version is,’If at first you don’t succeed, try, try , try, try, try, try, try, try, try…………………..
I suffer from Tony Gale syndrome. I was there when he was red carded in 1991 in the seventh minute and essentially, the ref ruined the game. This couldn’t possibly happen with Mike Dean, who has only ever given a few red cards in his career, just over 100. Next down the list is Phil Dowd on 67. But that tackle by Masuaku was brutal, He definitely should have a nine game ban for that offence, which seem to involve touching the opponent’s shirt and spoiling the crease. Or perhaps it’s time to bring Dean’s career to an end and get a new ref who doesn’t need to go to Specsavers.
Wait a minute, this was after I thought Dean was going for new record, red carding an Aston Villas player for head butting his teammate.
So, on we go to the game against Man U. We just have to remember, you can’t win a game if you don’t get a shot on goal.