Smacky The Frog

So, this is slightly off-topic, but I was reading the "Steven Gerrard's Autobiography" thread on RedCafe because I felt like I needed a laugh, and guess what I found there? A morally upright Charlton fan, like our very own Gladstonian Liber, lecturing the United supporters on a United forum for making fun of one of their most hated rivals. He goes by "David Court" and here's his post: So, are all Charlton fans sanctimonious twats or are David Court and Gladstonian Liber the same sad person? Or, and this might be it, do Arsenal and Liverpool fans (two very similar fanbases, one just 5-7 more years of failure and a few poetry lessons behind the other) use Charlton as a front to defend their teams on rival forums because the notion of a "Charlton Fan" is so alien that none of us would even consider that they're lying?

1) Diego Costa did not intentionally break anyone's leg, so your hypothetical example of an Arsenal player doing the same and it causing you - the moral authority on all things - to stop supporting him is utterly meaningless. I do, however, remember a lot of Arsenal fans commending Welbeck for the two-footed, attempted leg-breaker he tried on Fabregas last season. But I'm sure you tsk-tsk'd it, sadly shaking your head at the television screen, because you are a wonderful and pure human being. 2) Just because you and large sections of your fanbase are immensely fickle in support of your lead striker, doesn't mean we have to be the same with ours. We cheer him on because he gives it all on the pitch. No one's going, "YEAAAAH DIEGO! GENTLY SLAP HIM IN THE FACE MATE!!! DIEGO DIEGO DIEGO!!!" Most of us are, at best, lukewarm / mildly uncomfortable over his other antics, and you'd have known that if you'd actually read most of this thread instead of coming in firing shots with your cute little custom-made waterpistol. One day, after Arsene leaves following another 5 years of not winning the League and embarrassing himself and English football in the Champions League, you'll once again find a striker who isn't terrible and actually gives a sh*t, and you'll get it. 3) Your club tried to buy Luis Suarez. Talk about abandoning your morals.

Liked for this. I've noticed it too. Was it last year when the Chelsea fans started mockingly chanting "Handball" at Anfield because they just wouldn't.stop.appealing for it every time a ball went above knee height? What is it with Scousers and handballs?

As for your second question - which carries a false assumption that I'll get to later - I think the most I'd be able to muster is a "lol united", because frankly, why would I even care? And why in the world would I compliment your club for keeping a player against his wishes? Would you have gone "good on you, Chelsea!" if we'd forced Cech to stay? Sidenote - I know this whole ordeal can't have been pleasant for you (or anyone, really), but it would help if you'd ease up on the generalizations about us. It's difficult to have a reasonable discussion with someone who tars every Chelsea fan under the same brush a sentence after asking us to take club biases out of it. It would be like me going onto your forum and saying "we all know every Everton fan is just a Liverpool fan that's still in the closet, but club biases aside, what do you think your chances are at making top four?" and expecting a bunch of considered responses. Also, this doesn't really matter, but if there's anyone who has been doing the attacking and condemning, it's your manager - you know, someone who actually speaks for your club, instead of a few fans on an internet forum.

While a more even spread of the best players would help make the league more competitive, it would not make the league "better". It would just make every team range between mediocre to good, which is pretty close to where we are right now. A league that can have Stoke sign Shaqiri and Everton sign a highly touted Chelsea prospect for 28 million pounds, isn't exactly a league lacking in competitiveness. But it is lacking in quality and that is clearly evident in Europe. It also wouldn't help the development of the best players because the best need to play with the best to get better. I mean, sure, watching Aguero play for Sunderland might be an interesting experiment to observe for a while and it would be great for Sunderland fans, but would it be good for him? No. So while it might sound like a good idea in theory, all it would lead to is the rest of Europe getting even stronger by poaching ALL our best players, thus leaving our league even further behind in a bubble of its own hype and self-importance. And that bubble would burst very, very quickly. Also, it could lead to Liverpool winning the league. Are you seriously willing to risk that? But all of that is irrelevant, because that's not how the league works, does it? That's not how any of the major leagues work, and Evertons' stance, whilst beneficial to you (at least in the short term), will do nothing to change that. There's always been a food chain and unless something drastic happens - you holding onto Stones is not it - there always will be. You were at the top of that food chain once (and I'm aware how lucky we are to be there now), and you're still pretty high up there, so let's not pretend for a second that you haven't taken advantage of your status over some other team below you in the pecking order, with zero consideration over how it would affect the league or that team.

I don't think how much we offer matters anymore. This stopped being a negotiation a while ago, if it ever even was one. Everton have taken a "moral" stand and they'd look like total hypocrites if they sold him a few days after the sanctimonious "money can't buy everything" lecture by Martinez. Plus, unlike with Sterling, where the Liverpool media and his manager slowly but surely threw him under the bus and basically drove him away by constantly belittling him and his ambition, Martinez, for all his faults, has done a good job of protecting Stones, or at least trying to. Instead of making Stones the villain, as Rodgers and Liverpool did with Sterling, he's made Chelsea and Mourinho the scapegoats with his "I'm just a good, honest man trying to do my job and take care of my children, but this evil corporation (Chelsea) just won't let us be!" act. I can't stand him, but this is good management and media manipulation, something we're used to from our own manager. Maybe if we'd gone after him earlier, things would've played out further, Stones would've gotten sick of Boberto's act the way Sterling did with Rodgers, the fans would've turned completely against him, thereby pushing him away and we'd have more of a chance, but I think we've left it too late and if the reports of him crying are true, Stones clearly isn't emotionally ready to handle the consequences of being seen as the villain (he's still a kid and I feel for him regardless of his eventual decision). It's not just about business anymore, it's about pride and it takes longer to negotiate a price for pride, as was the case with Sterling, where it took months and months for Liverpool's official narrative to go from "we don't need to sell. We're a HUGE club! Look at us! We are so BIG, yo momma looks at us and says "hmm, I'm actually quite petite compared to how MASSIVE Liverpool Football Club is" to "City are idiots for paying us so much. We don't need him anyway". It also probably doesn't help our case that Stones' agent appears to not be a lunatic. And from a purely practical and unemotional point of view, we haven't given Everton enough time to find a suitable replacement.

To be fair to bluedylan, it was in response to a few posts by us playing into that stereotype by calling Everton a feeder club who won't win anything and how they should just accept that. I don't think his stance was ever "Everton are a bigger club with better players", so really, it just seems petty for us to shove that in his face like it has anything to do with his belief and desire to see Stones stay. I don't think he'd said anything particularly controversial or derogatory towards us until then. I mean, I know I'm nobody to lecture people on how to interact with oppo fans, but I feel like the bile would be better directed towards Boberto Martinez, who is actually trying to play up the Evil Chelsea angle while he sits on his whiny high horse, instead of some fan who has been pretty reasonable considering we're trying to buy one of his team's best players. I just don't like the idea of us, as fans, using the "we're a bigger club than you are na na na na" argument. It smacks of insecurity and childishness, like a kid bragging about how his dad is stronger and richer than yours or me bragging about how big my dick is (it's huge). You know, the kind you see when United fans try and convince themselves they're bigger than Real Madrid or when Liverpool fans cry out "5 times!!!" after every defeat and/or failed sexual conquest. I realize some Everton fans have been complete twats about this, but using him as the stick to beat them with is unfair and uncalled for, and ultimately counterproductive, because it leads to the nonsense he responded with, which was also unfair, uncalled for and ultimately counterproductive.

Love this guy. Just found out it was he who started the counter for the 2nd goal with the excellent pass to Willian. I don't know if it was a tactical adjustment or it just happened naturally as the game went on, but I feel like him and Ivanovic switched roles in this game, in that Dave seemed to have a lot more freedom to go forward while Iva mostly stayed back. Didn't particularly help Iva's performance any (though we did get to see fewer crosses slammed into the middle of an opponent's chest / face from 2 feet away), but it paid off with Dave.

ugh..the type of stereotypical nonsense about Chelsea and Mourinho you expect to hear from a Liverpool fan.

I think the red card definitely played a part in his tentativeness. Also, on my feed, the analysts mentioned he was too far back in goal at the start of the move and I think that might be residue from the Charlie Adam wondergoal from last season. I thought some of the stick he got for that was unfair at the time and nothing has changed my mind about it since. I'd much rather risk a strike like that going in once every 5 years due to overaggressive positioning from the GK, instead of having a timid GK stationed to his line, giving strikes ample room to get on to throughballs behind our defense, which can happen in pretty much every single game. But top-class GKs don't like to look silly and it's an understandable reaction, if it did have any part to play. Anyway, despite that slight misjudgement, I thought he was excellent today. Him catching those high crosses is such a pressure reliever.

Please start more sentences with "wouldn't it be great if..." and make super specific wishes for things we want. Here are some to get you started: - Wouldn't it be great if we won the quadruple with a 6-0 victory over Real Madrid in the Champions League final leaving Benitez in tears and Bale joining us next season? - Wouldn't it be great if this prompted Lionel Messi to join us on a free? - Wouldn't it be great if Hazard scored 60 goals this season, 28 of them set up by Willian in the same game at the Emirates? - Wouldn't it be great if everyone started calling Roberto Martinez "Boberto Martinez" and pretended that it was a totally normal thing to do despite his increasingly whiny protests? - Wouldn't it be great if Mikel scored a hattrick? - Wouldn't it be great if Smacky The Frog and Kate Upton had sex several times and she thought his performances in bed were adequate? Okay, maybe the last two are a bit too unrealistic, but you get the gist.

I think he'll be even better when Oscar comes back. Great performance today. I know it's early days, and this was West Brom (not that we can take anyone lightly the way we've been playing), but he's a much better dribbler than I thought he was. As someone who wasn't initially keen on him, I hope he keeps proving me emphatically wrong.

@Davey Baby, I don't disagree with your view that Willian might be better in midfield, but I think you're really, really reaching with the Iniesta comparison. The only thing the two have in common is a lack of end product. Iniesta is a magnificent dribbler who can skip past two players in a tight spot, execute the right pass at precisely the right time and turn a potentially dangerous situation for his own team into a fatal one for his opponent. In a similar situation, Willian usually dribbles 5 yards backwards, looks around, dribbles a further 5 yards backwards, looks around, then makes the simplest possible pass (backwards or sidewards) which gets us to the grand destination of absolutely nowhere. Iniesta is unpredictable when he has the ball at his feet because he has every trick in the book and the talent to execute it, and that's what makes him so dangerous. Willian is probably one of the most predictable players in the league. Every pass and move is telegraphed well in advance except for the occasionally delightful backflicks. And as far as vision, Iniesta executes passes Willian doesn't even have the ability to see. Willian in midfield has much more of a chance to be a Makele than he does an Iniesta. And I don't think he has much of a chance to be a Makelele. These are special players with special skillsets, and as much as I like him, the only thing special about Willian is his stamina and his magnificent hair.

It's shocking how unclinical he is at finishing for a professional footballer, and an attacker no less. It's just completely unnatural to him - like Fellaini trying not to elbow someone in the face but worse. His miss today is one of many where a teammate has done all the hard work and put it on an absolute platter for him, only for him to completely fluff his lines (he had about three or four last season with the ones at West Ham and Swansea being glaring examples). It's like the more time he has to aim the less likely the ball is to go in. Dave, of all people, showed more of a natural eye for goal than he did. Plus, despite executing a decent pass today that you really should expect one of your forwards to make in acres of space (couldn't see who it was, but the pass to Willian was more impressive), for all his speed and decent dribbling skills, he's often shocking on the counterattack as well. Despite my obvious frustrations, I do still like him because he seems like a nice, humble person, and a guy that works so hard for the club is tough not to like, but I'm at that point again where I'm thinking, surely we could do better? And I don't even mean going out and buying someone. When Oscar comes back and presumably (hopefully) starts, do you really want Willian as your game-changing attacking option off the bench when we're a goal down? I'd rather have Traore or Remy or even Musonda come on before him. Perhaps we can use Willian as the attacking mid version of Mikel to come on to kill a game when we're ahead.

Classic Cahill right here.