I was never a believer in feng shui, which is about unblocking the way, so that the forces in life flow freely. So, I’m going to give you the best piece of advice you have ever had and you will thank me for the rest of your life.
If you wake up and something positive happens, then you could be having a good feng shui day. This is the time to do as many things as possible, because you will find everything will turn out excellently. Do all those things you were putting off to another day. Conversely, if you start the day negatively, my advice would be to go back to bed and do as little as possible.
I don’t need to explain to you what kind of day it was when we played Sheffield United.
Alternatively, I have another explanation. There is a Greek goddess called Astraea. She is the goddess of justice and purity. She has come back to earth and is wreaking vengeance. Individuals who have angered her include Geoffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and in our own backyard Max Clifford and Rolf Harris. Now she has turned her attention to Gold and Sullivan. She is slowly torturing them. Firstly, giving them Karen Brady. Then, offering them the opportunity to change grounds with disastrous consequences and offering them the opportunity to employ a world class manager at an extravagant sum. She helped to bring in players like Payet and Arnautovic to torture them. Finally, to empower a clown to direct player purchases.
This can be the only logical explanation as to what happened against Sheffield United.
After a few minutes, our most vital player, Fabulanski, pulled up with a strained thigh and immediately called for his own replacement. Then, we had the amateur incident where we conceded a goal. Anderson went head over heels and is probably injured. And finally, there was the completely, farcical VAR decision which brings both VAR and the game into disrepute.
So, let’s turn to the game itself. I have no criticism of David Moyes, who is obviously bringing a new spirit to the team. We looked solid in defence and kept our concentration and effort throughout the game. We have quickly seen what we need in defence, but more effort is needed in tactics moving forward. We were very direct against Sheffield United and perhaps, we needed to create opportunity by going from side to side.
I know we all feel sorry for David Martin. Actually, I don’t blame him fully for the goal. For some reason, Balbuena decided to charge back to accept the pass and this was a contributory factor to the cock up.I was surprised when Cresswell joined the back three and Diop was benched. This may be an indication that Diop is on his way out. This is not a criticism of Cresswell, but we lost the opportunity to make forward runs. You can’t criticise Zabaleta for effort, but it is obvious his time is up.
It does seem as if Fornals has been making significant progress. So, I was surprised to see him benched. Lanzini is not the player he was and perhaps should be used as a substitute for the time being.
Without Antonio, Haller was once again left drifting up front. At present, he doesn’t seem to have the positioning sense of players such as Harry Kane. Lanzini broke through at one point and if Haller had positioned himself better, a goal may have resulted.
As for VAR, we all know it was a perfectly good goal and the rules need to be changed in regard to handling. Other changes I would like to see – only your feet can be offside and it needs to be the whole foot and the whole process should be displayed on the big screens , so fans can see what is going on.
The fact that we had to put three youngsters on the bench indicates how desperately shallow our squad is.
All in all, we were beaten by bad feng shui or an unknown goddess, but, in fact, we could easily have won the game 1-0, if justice was on our side. I’m sure we all agree that we are on the right path but it’s going to be a hard road ahead. The game against Sheffield United demonstrated how fine the margins are between victory and defeat.