Jose to Liverpool Shocker!

I don't get time and space to comment much on current footballing matters these days, but some reports I noticed this week over dim sum and kopi, made me laugh out loud, and so I am compelled to offer my comments on them here.

No less a person than Stanley 'flash the lights once to watch and twice to join in' Collymore Esquire reckons Liverpool should dispense with Rafa Benitez, which is one of the more obvious comments he has made, in his 'Stating the Obvious' editorials for a scumbag tabloid I do not care to recall the name of just now. What made me laugh though, is that he reckons Liverpool should replace The Paella-eating One with The Special One.

Now get back onto your chair and ask your mate for a tissue to clean up the torrent of whatever you were drinking, that has now gone down your top. If you just got coffee down an expensive tie, don't blame me, blame Stan Collymore. Actually not just him. If you Google it, there are 896,000 articles or tidbits from disgruntled Red Mickeys who all want Jose Mourinho as their new manager.

This is the same Jose Mourinho who was the most hated man on the planet when he was with us, and who was generally attributed by the Liverpool faithful as being the man mainly responsible for killing the English game, just pipping Roman Abramovich into second place, and with Didier Drogba a distant third. They all told us how he had no class, no dignity and no respect, and Jamie 'class is permanent and its just a form blip eh la' Carragher actually went on SkySports to say this very thing. So vitriolic was the abuse from the enraged bin dippers, that he actually turned to the Liverpool faithful in that most memorable of League Cup finals in his first season with us (on his way to us winning the trophy I am compelled to point out) and shushed them. Cue mass pandemonium on 909, and a mysterious disappearance of all the letter paper and envelopes from every Staples in Merseyside, as the red hordes, all incandescent with rage at his gesture, all demanded that he be banned/fined/heavily censured/deported/imprisoned etc. So now we are led to believe that he IS NOT the enemy of football, and that HE DOES have the class and dignity to manage the classiest and most dignified team on the planet la, eh. Who knew, eh?

It also represents a tacit agreement to what we've been saying all along. He has done absolutely nothing at Liverpool apart from waste untold hundreds of millions of stealth-pounds, which suddenly disappear from everyone's collective conciousness whenever the subject of Chelsea and our spending comes up. Fact is they've spent nearly as much as we have, and have a lot less to show for it than we do. You could point at the Champions League win in 2005 as proof that he isnt a total idiot, but I would respectfully contend that it has been an albatross for them since then, as he fluked it once, and everyone at the club is sort of hoping he can do it again. They have a saying out here - the sun even shines on a dog poo sometimes. That probably resonates with a certain familiarity to most Liverpool fans, and I'm not talking about what coats the streets of Toxteth and Huyton. It was clearly the luckiest, most absolutely ludicrously flukey European Cup win of all time, and had much more to do with the Golden Age of Jamie Carragher and St Steven Gerrard MotM and none of their opposition turning up for their games in the run up to the final, than it did with Rafa's supposed tactical brilliance.

But the funniest part of it all is that not that they suddenly rate Jose as their chosen messiah, but that they think he would come to them.

Have they forgotten the abuse, the spit, the vitriol and the hatred they rained on him as he went about winning Chelsea back to back Premiership titles? I bet he hasn't. He wouldn't go to Liverpool if they were the last club on the face of the planet after the abuse they gave him.

And its not like they can afford him anyway. He is one of the best paid managers in the world, on a vast and constantly improving contract at a constantly improving Inter Milan. They are an absolute nailed on certainty to clinch another Scudetto this season and he is loved and adored by all at the Nerrazurri. Its warm there. They have (very) edible food and wine that comes in glass bottles instead of plastic cups. Compare and contrast this with the grim northern wasteland, the 'cultural' street crime epidemic, the freezing rain and the bitterness ingrained into a city's people on a genetic level because they know they'll never be as good or as successful as the other reds from up the road in Salford. Then you have Anfield. Quiet as a grave on league games and vastly overrated by the media for those special 'Anfield Nights' which are a bit like 'Boogie Nights' only with more perms and drugs, and a lot fewer attractive women. Anfield is, to be fair, a legendary stadium and one of the most historic in the world, much like the San Siro. But Liverpool have grand stadium plans of their own, to bring their matchday experience up to the likes of Hull City, Bolton and Southhampton. Only they cant afford it so its a grassy area which has been completely cleared of dog poo, but then the money ran out. San Siro or grassy area near Stanley Knife Park? Tough one.

So. They cant afford to buy another striker to back up one-man army Fernando Torres, or indeed to build another stadium. What in the world makes them think they can afford Jose Mourinho, much less afford him and then give him the cash to build a challenging team that has more than two decent players. Do they really think he'll sign on for a KP Skips multipack and six cans of Skol? Yes they are a very historic club, and yes it must (all joking aside) be an honour to manage such a club, but then again so was Chelsea. So is Inter Milan. And now that he's wont titles in England and Italy, you can get its a huge honour to manage the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona as well, come the end of this season. Do we really think Jose would turn his back on that, for a fighting-for-fourth-but-very-sorry-for-all-the-nasty-things-we-said-about-you-not-having-any-class Liverpool?

Nope, me neither.

But they honestly believe it. They honestly think it is going to happen.

You just have to laugh sometimes don't you.

CAREFREE!!

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