Finished my daily early swim this morning at 7.30am to find a trio of swim buddies, all Reds, gathered at the shallow end for what can only be described as a 'mutual counselling session' as they discussed last night's events in Bilbao.
Of course, I offered my condolences and joined in the discussion to offer my services to help reduce their collective grief (..not!) over two matters in particular:
First - one Red chum railed against Spurs' tactics, saying they had very little possession, just one shot on goal and played with two deep banks of five in front their goalkeeper, or 'anti-football' as he described it. I just said 'Welcome to our world for the past 15 years..' (there may have been an 'effing' in there, I'll admit..!)
Second - the other two got going about how The Red Filth need to spend big on players over the Summer to 'get back to competing for trophies again'. I pointed out that without European football that would be difficult and, anyway, even the current state of The Filth's finances means that FFP will restrict their financial capability/flexibility. This was then met with 'Well, Ratcliffe will just have to get his hands in his pockets won't he..?' To which I replied with a sentence or three about the APT case and how loans were now treated as impacting on the FFP assessment (..and there were definitely a couple of 'effings' in there too, to emphasise the point!)
I headed for the showers leaving them looking even glummer, saying 'I've been telling you all this for ages, while you've all been banging on about '115' etc but you wouldn't listen.. now it's come back to bite you on your backside.. careful what you wish for, lads!'
Couldn't happen to a nicer club, could it? (..well, apart from The Red Scouse Filth and The Tarquins too..)