Almost 20 years ago, I was a solicitor working at a law firm that acted for one of the PL's top clubs. We had some dealings with Real Madrid at one point and their people came across as the biggest bunch of obnoxious, self-entitled arseholes you could ever have the misfortune to do business with. I've loathed them ever since.
Meanwhile, my best mate at university was a Liverpool fan from north Wales. I used to go and watch them with him in the days of Barnes and Beardsley at a time when they were commonly acknowledged to be playing some of the best football ever then seen in our league, and I loved attending their matches. Down the years, I always retained a bit of a soft spot for them, too, which I felt justified in a kind of 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' type of spirit. Even though I now live abroad, I manage to see my mate twice a year and we've always wished one another's team well. I'm godfather to his eldest son, who's a Liverpool fan, too.
So there should be no doubt where my loyalties lie for Saturday's game. And there isn't. I hope the weapons-grade Spanish ****s absolutely fucking eviscerate the Scouse filth.
I'm sorry, but the nauseating LFC exceptionalism we've been subjected to on social media and in the press ever since we drew them in the CL has been unbearable. One of the most egregious examples was an article I haven't seen referred to on here, though it may have been, by Paul Joyce of The Times. He's their northern football correspondent and wrote a piece claiming that, while City might be perfect for Guardiola in terms of the set-up created for him, it's not an ideal job because he'll never have the kind of bond with us that Klopp does with the Anfield crowd.
If he ever succeeds in extracting his head from his arse, Joyce should be fucking embarrassed to write like one of those dreadful bedwetting teenage bloggers. How fucking dare he? We as a fanbase wrote the book on sticking with a club through adversity and we more than know how to make our heroes feel appreciated. Ask Roberto Mancini if he thinks we bonded with him.
Joyce is typical, regrettably, and that's why this is exactly the kind of situation for which the phrase 'lesser of two evils' was invented. In this case, the lesser, emphatically, is Real.
