It was outrageous.

With the best of intentions I telephoned The Bus en route to the League Cup tie at Chelsea. I wanted to wish everyone a safe journey and a good result. Instead, Texyla handed the phone to Mogsy and I got a summary chorus of, “You’re SHITE, and yer know yerraaaa!” from Mogs and Red Jeff. All this because the previous night Mogsy won his first snooker session in two months. Or it might have been three months. Whatever, he only won by playing desperate pinball snooker and having the kind of luck that requires. And of course this freak result was put right in the very next session. Class will tell. Mogsy’s gone sullen again.

You’ll be delighted to hear (or you might not be – couldn’t give a fuck what you think, actually) I retained my dignity and resisted the temptation to urge Mogsy and Jeff a collision with the nearest lamp standard.

Later on, listening to the radio commentary whilst working, I had to turn the set off when we went 2-0 down. Anymore of the disaster would have restricted the flow of creative design juices. It might also have threatened the existence of the radio. I didn’t know the final score until the next day, at which the waste paper basket was sent spiralling into the middle of the studio. Our run had truly reached its end. Gallantly, I refrained from sacking the nearest available already-demoralised pinky.

The following Saturday the opportunity for revenge over the Bates Motel was passed up in the middle of a Blue Kipper day out for thirty raucous loonballs. Lard’s organisation started at the Blue Anchor in Aintree at midday opening, where we watched the Mancs do for the Gooners while we disposed of a very acceptable nosh before getting bussed directly to the match, and ended at midnight in an appalling dive named Cooper’s Emporium near the Pierhead. Do not go to Cooper’s Emporium. Ever.

The game itself featured a lousy first half performance and two ridiculous goals by Ranieri’s collection of Italian-style boot boys before Nace got one back courtesy of some brilliant hold-up-and-pass play by SuperKev. We battered them in the second half but you can’t have an AWOL midfield, throw two goals away and hope to win at top level. Joey had his least effective game for us too. And you certainly can’t do it with the kind of refereeing which ended predictably in Unsy getting a red card for “violent conduct” after he dealt out the same kind of nonsense he had just had visited on him right in front of the referee. Naturally, the arsehead with the whistle only gave the perpetrator a yellow card………..before the same scored a third. For all that we only had ourselves to blame.

But the Bates Motel was an ugly collection of 60s/70s cynical Italian football methods, precisely the kind of thing we hoped the game was rid of for good. If that’s what Chelsea are willing to do to win things then we can look forward to a slowly deteriorating spectacle if everyone else wants to copy them. They might win more points, but so did Hitler and Mussolini. Initially. The fact that they have some very good players only serves to highlight their new policy to cheat at every available opportunity. Small wonder Italian footy is rotten to the core. The sooner Ranieri and his ilk disappear the better. Funny, but neighbours Fulham have the same sort of nasty, niggling, shirt-pulling, ankle-kicking attitude.

So we went from six wins in a row to three losses in a row. Reality impinges on the illusion.

After the match it was Wetherspoons, then we got bussed to the Blue comedy club. Actually, it’s called the Rawhide Comedy Store or something similar. A Jock apprentice comic did reasonably well, was succeeded by an untalented lad who looked uncannily like an unkempt Leon Trotsky and lasted barely ten minutes before disappearing in ignominy, and the final “turn” was the real m’coy, a pro who knew how to deal with an audience. Not that Trotsky was badly treated, he just couldn’t do his job, s’all – a bit like Wrighty for the second goal. Nevertheless, there was more than enough hilarity to go round. Especially when I got carefully looked after by a languid bird in miniskirt and loooong legs in loooong boots while Kipper looked on with a slack jaw. I mean, I wasn’t even trying. The ale flowed, the company got sozzled and we acquired a few new gags.

Afterwards, a short walk took us to Cooper’s. Now, I’m not a social snob though I believe firmly in the snobbery of ideas. But it has to be said that I wouldn’t dip even YOUR incapable miniscule pecker in the experience of Cooper’s. Appropriately, the “turn” was Cy Tucker and The Friars. Mercifully he didn’t sing, “My Prayer,” though I reckon that song is a powerful if hilariously unconscious argument for dumping all organised religion in the dustbin of history. It was my turn to have a slack jaw at the turn of events.

Lard came in later than the rest of us and was promptly disrobed by an extremely fat sequined female singer who came off the stage to do it. Afterward, Lard wandered unconcerned for a bevy at the bar, kecks in flagrante delicto trailing his ankles and his shirt open to the moon like an intoxicated werewolf. It was surreal, man. It was also extremely funny. In the background, local fat hoods and their peroxide fat molls eyed us suspiciously from beneath beetling narrow foreheads. Excess cellulite and slight neanderthal foreheads are an unfortunate combination. As the thirty of us crowded in the hoods probably thought it was a raid by Inspector Knacker in neat mufti. How they accounted for the near-keckless Lard is more difficult to say. Maybe the fat singerette was looking for a Bizzy warrant card when she examined his boxers.

Anyway, the whole experience was so disorienting it prevented me from delivering a match report for the Bates Motel match. I have been shaking my head ever since. Shoulders too.

Meanwhile, Moyesy deservedly won the Manager of the Month trinket and The Duke went on to win BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year. In the latter case, the arsewipe metro media subsequently tried to do a mass number on the kid because he had his tie undone, chewed gum and didn’t make an unctuous speech a la Gary Lineker. I’m all in favour of sartorial elegance and am quite willing to concede Generation X has the dress sense of a disturbed yeti and the eating habits of a pack of dingos, but come ON. Journos whose chief athletic achievement consists of doing fuck all but jeer vicariously at easy targets queued up to demonstrate unconsciously once again why anyone with common sense loathes the lot of ‘em.

Personally I couldn’t care less if The Dook turned up with his adolescent tackle dangling if he can score goals the way he did against The Arse and The Sheepshaggers. But the empty-headed right-wing media will never change, which is why their muck ought to go unbought, and why it would help if you told them at two minute intervals what a bunch of untalented, unemployable right-wing Americanised lying cunts they all are. Don’t argue with them, TELL them, and tell them in your thousands. My, but that goal against The Arse must have stung the metro journos even more than we hoped. Keep it up, Dook.

Par for the course, the same leech journo types were also bladdering the Yank Poodle’s wife in Downing Street. The daft bint made the huge mistake of trusting someone she didn’t know, a professional conman, and then made the even bigger mistake in assuming “objective” journos would get it in perspective. Fat and ugly Murdoch gobshite Andrew Neil is the latest bandwagon jumper, and really that tells you all you need to know.

You would have thought, wouldn’t you, that the Poodle’s wife would have understood by now that the chief reason for the anglo-saxon establishment right-wing media’s existence is to be, er, anglo-saxon establishment right-wing. Ergo proctor sum, they’ll behave like the Volkischer Beobachter at every available opportunity. It all helps to keep the suburbs in a sort of self-righteous paranoia diffused through scatty smugness. John Pilger uses the term “happy face fascism” to describe this condition. How apt.

Hence, for example, the millions of dollars spent on proving the quite useless fact that Clinton’s cigar ended up in some unusual and interesting boxes, one of them labelled “Lewinsky’s,” in the Oval Office. Even more millions were spent on sickening efforts to discredit Hilary Clinton’s diluted attempts to partly humanise the disgusting Yank health “care” (read:profits) system. It also helps to divert attention from, for another example, the latest bombing mass-murder of innocents planned by our western garrison states.

Never underestimate these sour ranting righties, friends. They’ll turn their miserable mass propaganda on anybody who has the temerity to hold even mildly opposing views, even a political traitor like the Yank Poodle or a pliant placeman like Clinton. So……...the Dook coming from Merseyside ‘n’ all………..they pile in like the unprincipled media bully boys, cowards and thugs they are.

The greatest hilarity is the sight of Mail on Sunday/Daily Mail/Daily Telegraph/Daily Express/Sun/Times/Sunday Times/Evening Standard apparachik-clerks foaming hypocrisy at their extremist mouths. It goes without saying none of them would know an ethic if they tripped over it on the way out of their lunch time wine bars. It’s difficult to avoid splitting your sides when the very same people come on shouting about “mistrust between journalists and Downing Street” or you read a right-wing editorial peddling the same muck. The rest of us know you would trust a rabid rat before you trusted a journo.

And one day, inevitably through arrogance, they will go too far, as they did over the Hillsborough disaster. Meanwhile, as I suggested, just don’t buy their lies. Remember with pride how an outraged Merseyside got its own back on The Sun and destroyed its local circulation through spontaneous boycott. Remember too the words of great and good Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “I stopped arguing with the nazis when they became too stupid to argue with.” History will do the rest. It always does.

As a further illustration, recently Blue Kipper had a vaguely interesting telephone call from a Mail on Sunday sports journo, an information clerk named Peter Higgs. Actually he called me and Kipper twice each, ostensibly about the Kings Dock project. He said an article was planned for the following weekend. But it quickly became apparent he was after something else, whatever it was. It became so patently obvious that even Kipper, normally the mildest of conversationalists, was moved to ask him if he was “fishing for something.” All the Mail yob did was try to place clumsy, absurd questions about our rivalry with the pinkies and generally sound like a low level Gestapo binman looking for gossip enough to have someone interrogated with cattle prods. Needless to say no article appeared. We gave him nothing - which is way above what the dipshit and his right-wing rag is worth.

Then along came an even better illustration of my point. With the so-called “transfer window” coming up all sorts of rumours were bound to be manufactured by the media clerks. Joey Yobo and The Duke are both changing agents just as they start contract negotiations. But the best example is Joey’s situation. Take this garbage from some hair gel and dandruff-ridden Murdoch yesman:
“JOSEPH YOBO last night denied he had signed an Everton contract.
The Nigerian international defender insisted he won't commit himself to a long-term deal until the terms are right.
Everton said last week they had completed a move for Yobo after agreeing a £4million fee with Marseille to turn his year-long loan into a permanent transfer.
The player said: "Everton have agreed a deal with Marseille but not with me so I am still on loan.
"Everything has been put on hold because I have changed my agent."
Boss David Moyes wants to keep Yobo but won't be held to ransom.”
And then read this direct quote from the man himself:
“Everton have agreed a deal with Marseille but they have not agreed a deal with me, so at the moment I am still on loan here."

“Everything is sorted with Marseille but I'm still waiting to see what is going to happen. Hopefully we will reach a deal but if not then I am technically still on loan.”

"Everything has been put on hold because I've changed my agent. I wasn't happy with a few things and I need my future secured if I'm to stay with Everton. That has delayed things but hopefully we will put something together and finish the deal off soon."

If you can’t tell the difference of fact or intent in these reports then you are better off going to live where there are plenty of Murdoch sheep and no real people, somewhere like Milton Keynes, Telford, Bracknell or Crosby.

All Joey was saying straightforwardly is he wants to stay but the deal still isn’t done. The idea that someone’s trying to manipulate him out of the club is absolute bollocks. Originally, Moyesy told Bill Kenwright he wanted the brilliant Nigerian. Unilaterally, BK sanctioned the dosh. The board then (rightly) bladdered BK and told him to put up the dosh himself (which he did) because they had all previously agreed to a moratorium on new transfer spending. Ergo, Joey leaves free over Moyesy’s and BK’s dead bodies, new arsebandit agent or no new arsebandit agent.

Not of course that that will stop assorted hysterical no-brain goonies having a go at everyone from Moyesy to Joey to Bill Kenwright to the entire board to Fred the doorman. You get the same sort of thing from FA badged part-time “coaches” who figure dealing with pub or youth teams somehow makes their opinions superior to your average fan. Which, needless to say, it isn’t. These “coaches” are living proof that sometimes qualifications are the counterfeits of intelligence. There’s absolutely no point wishing these people would go away. The best tactic is not to be in their company. Leave them to stew. Dickheads will always exist, otherwise our lousy newspapers and media wouldn’t exist too. Naturally the same applies to their propaganda treatment of important issues. Treat them to contempt long and hard and expose their lies and looniness whenever you get the chance. It helps pass the time by the hearth on dark winter evenings.

Late in the week The Little Yank left us when his contract ran out and wasn’t renewed. I always liked Joe Max, a gutsy little bugger who tried like hell to make up for an obvious shortfall in the finer arts. All Can-Do Yank, he was always at his best close in in the box, the place where it hurts most. Sadly, his only all-too-short run of really good form wasn’t maintained when Smiffy moved him to midfield. He didn’t have the passing ability or the tactical nous to play there. He goes with my best wishes even though Kipper famously opines that JMM couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo. Well, on this issue the only arse in sight is Kipper’s, the one he’s talking through. Good luck, Joe Max, thanks for your wholehearted efforts……………I hope you survive the Victoria Beckham song. Home on the range, stay away from the cattle.

Then came the news that Stephen Hughes’ mainstream football career was finished at Watford. See

http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/display.var.677006.index.hughes_hobbles_out_vicarage_road.html

If anybody needed a lesson in the caprice of fate, footy or otherwise, then these two events were it. A salutary warning, one hopes, to The Duke. For some reason, relatively, The Little Yank made a fist of his limited playing life against the odds while Stephen Hughes didn’t. If Wayne Rooney can do his best, not fall amongst journos-Suits-thieves (basically all the same thing: gobshites), and take fate head on, then he will probably become a great player. He wants to. His family wants him to. We want him to. World footy wants him to. Nobody decent wants him to become the awful shell that is George Best, forever leeched on by ageing professional sycophants like Michael Parkinson. Nobody decent wants him to waste his talent at his peak the way tragic George did.

Get that considerable chin up, Duke, keep it up, and don’t let it down until you decide to stop playing altogether. Keep it clean, la. It will all be over faster than you can say, “Glory!” Enjoy it, really LOVE it, while you can. It’s up to you. We’re all rooting for you.

By match day the recent freezing cold wind had gone but we were still haunted by a marrow-deep chill. Blue Kipper assembled in the Stuart on Bedford Road. Having recently “been done out” there were electric cables sticking out of walls and new wallpaper in the back room. But the ale was acceptable and, more importantly these days, so were the prices. We settled in to reprise the previous week’s events.

Sausage showed up with a fractured arm in a splint and a morphine-induced bemused expression. All he did was slip over after the Bates Motel match. Now he looks like Kenneth More in “Reach For the Sky.” Keith appeared clutching a CD with music and words by our beloved vice chairman. For some reason the words were indecipherable, which was probably just as well for Keith’s peace of mind. BK refers to him in a magazine as “my mate Keith,” a disastrous PR exercise where Sower is concerned and one leading to interminable persecution by the venomously unimpressed. Lard was still massively hungover and so was Kipper. The only ones not talking licorice allsorts were Jogger and Sting Ray.

As we left for the match A Very Large And Unimpressed Tony BlueBlood said, “And you can fuck off too, Mickey. Take this.” And he handed me a small card. I like Tony a lot but it has to be said he’s shite when it comes to returning banners. Next Kipper “do,” there’ll be an armed guard and TB’s gonna be identified early on. Not that you could miss the fucker…..he’s as big as Unsy’s kecks.

Inside GP, almost a full house again. The only team change, The Duke for The Rad, executed, Moyesy said, to give our wunderkind some extended turf time. The Cloggies had an impressive array of expensive players courtesy of the Jack Walker Trust Fund. If only John Moores had thought to do the same for us. Still, that’s all in the past now.

Again, we almost got a first minute goal in the Park End. A sharp cross from the right got onto SuperKev’s noggin, right side penalty spot. Just as Nace should have buried it last week against the Bates Motel, so Kev should have put this one in but he didn’t get enough on it.

From then on, The Cloggies ran rings around us because of the brilliant Tugay and Thompson in centre midfield. It fluctuated slightly only because Thompson tired during the last third of the match and then Tugay dropped back after a Clog got sent off for a second yellow in the second half.

They scored after five minutes but really could have had two before Andy Cole got a typical unmarked header home from left side penalty spot, a superb piece of opportunism which whistled home off a quick cross form the same side. Unlike most I am not inclined to blame Wrighty for this one. Either Joey or Stubbsy should have had it away first time. Instead, Wrighty was left to make a desperate late rush to get their first, thus making himself look worse than he really was.

Our centre midfield was seemingly as AWOL as it was against Bates Motel. Thompson, Dunn and Tugay won and passed the ball almost any time they wanted. Li Tie was completely out of his depth. The Gravedigger was awful. Nace was lightweight and Lee Carsley had his work cut out helping Tony against Duff. We waited for fortunes to change, as they inevitably do. Five minutes later and quite against the run of play we got an equaliser when Kev was put clear on the right, drew a couple of defenders and then crossed it wickedly at ground level to The Duke, left side penalty spot. He clipped it beyond ex-pinky Fried Bread, it hit the inside of the post and rebounded across the goal area to Carsley who couldn’t miss. We were level but gawd knows how.

But the fact is we just can’t be written off these days if we go behind. Even when the tide is overwhelmingly against us that extra bit of Moyesy-induced fitness keeps us going. Furthermore, they simply won’t give up. It’s a heady mix. Already there is an air of expectancy around GP, even when we lose a goal.

Just over ten minutes later we went ahead while we were still getting battered. I think it was Joey who lobbed it forward from the centre circle. The diminutive Duke got between their very large centre backs in a diagonal left-to-right run and did something you would expect – no shit – from Pelé. As the ball dropped, he sideways to goal, he headed it forward and to his right but he deliberately took the pace off it so it dropped just right for him. His pace completely murdered the two centre backs and anybody who thought they could catch him. He was clear. He clipped it home like it was second nature to him. Which it is. It was absolutely breathtaking and so lightning quick and certain in its execution you had to double-check he plays for us. I couldn’t give a brass shit what anyone says, the boy’s world class already. Anybody who says otherwise is a dickhead, and if that includes you, tough. Go watch a ludo championship. More to the point, he’s one of us.

Somehow we got to half time with our lead intact. Cole hit a post. Then again, the Duke got clear right side midfield after shrugging off Tugay and Dunn as though they weren’t there, instead of the magnificent players they are. His shot missed by a gnat’s fart. It was well nigh unbelievable.

The opening phase of the second half was mostly us, but only just. Then a Cloggy got sent off and incredibly the game turned against us. It was loony tunes time. No question in my mind, it was our midfield. Everyone of them was undiluted shite. Eventually Moyesy succumbed to the obvious and substituted Davey for Li Tie, which only made it worse as we retreated to the edge of the box a la Smiffy. Then he compounded it by bringing on Sandro at right back for Tony when the world and his wife know that Sandro’s only viable position is at left back. None of us can ever forget the Cup débacle at The Smoggies.

All of which meant Wrighty had to pull off a truly wonderful save from a close-in Craig Short header. Earlier he had knocked one over from the same player after our three centre backs left a clear opening.

Pre-season, I wrote of The Duke’s ability to pace his game. This match demonstrated how it will emerge if his career develops the way we all hope. Late on, he drifted wide left – where, at one time, he was surrounded by no less than three panicking Cloggies – and promptly delivered two utterly astonishing long passes into the middle. Respectively, they left Lee Carsley and The Gravedigger with clear opportunities. Both of them missed. On another occasion he weaved right through their right side defence to the byline and whacked over a ground cross which only needed a touch………………but SuperKev had stopped running on the basis that not even The Duke could go so far.

The match closed with us in disarray and screaming for the whistle. Yes, we still have a long, long way to go. Fact is, though, and we all know it, actually we should be higher. If Moyesy can find a couple of centre midfielders on a par with Joey’s ability, then………………………

Now, I know full well I have gone on about The Duke. All I can tell you is that after a lifetime of watching football I have seen nothing like him, not ever, not at his age, and, frankly, not any age. It isn’t a matter of hype. It’s a matter of what you see with your own eyes. You know it when you see it. I firmly believe the only reason we got something out of this game is because of his abilities. Had he not been there likely we would have been slaughtered. As it was, they had to keep a wary eye on him even when they were well on top. The match actually finished with Tugay marking him!

As to our immediate future, if we play like this against the pinkies we’ll get rolled over and no mistake. Don’t think the pinkies’ recent form is anything to go by. They’ll have at least four local lads in their side, perhaps three of them in midfield. Anyone who thinks they’ll just die is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Then again……….we’ll have The Duke. If he performs some of his dynamite magic in the derby match then Dixie’s statue might just have to make room for one more.

Fate, fickle as a woman at month’s end, will have the final word.(15/12/02)

Quotes

Moyesy says: “It was a strange game, with lots of ups and lots of downs in it. There were chances for both teams, but fortunately for us, we got the one that counted to get us all three points.”

In the last minute, when Pisto smacks the ball out for a corner, when it was easier to knock it out for a throw in. Jogger says: " You better win the header Pistone or I'm gunna kill you"

On Rooney. Kipper says: "Did you see that?"

Let's get ready to fumble.The boys will be up for this big time. Even though the results haven't gone our way Everton still have impressed especially the 2nd half against Chelsea. I think Moyesy will start the game with Wayne up front with Super, who celebrates his 100th league appearance for the Toffeemen. Lets give him a big hand.

Moyesy said: “Blackburn is a big match for us, a hard game for us, but we went there the other week and got a result when we didn’t play as well as we would have liked on the day. Hopefully, this is a chance for us to get another three points and put in a slightly better performance.

Sausage's eleven to start: Wright, Hibbert, Yobo, Stubbs, Unsworth, Carsley, Li Tie, Gravesen, Naysmith, Campbell, Rooney.