Up Before The Beak

Right, little time to do anything today, as it's already gone into tomorrow on GMT. Mrs X has hogged the computer organising the honeymoon tonight. And I didn't even realise we weren't married.

Obviously the major news is that the FA have written a strongly worded letter to SuperKev, requesting an explaination as to his comments relating to Mark Clusterfuck after the Fulham game. It isn't like we didn't know it was coming and admirable as St Owen's defence of his captain was, there was little doubt that Lancaster Gate would be sharpening it's HB and putting the Queen's face on a letter, c/o T'Reebok. While SuperKev's comments hold a lot of weight, no doubt he will be given a warning and a fine, unless of course the disciplinary commitee is headed by Mr. Hustlebuck himself, in which case five years in Siberia will probably be counted as a lucky escape.

Otherwise it's just the usual "haven't we played well while losing" pieces on the crap website, this time from The New Gudni (I take a lot of time thinking up these names y'know), while in the former BEN, St Owen basically praises The Shitt whilst telling him that he has about as much chance of getting in the team as Alf Ippititimus. One for the kids there.

As Arnie would say, stay frosty. Until tomorrow.

It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times

UPDATE:REEDITED SO THE COHEN SENTENCE MAKES SENSE!

Well, it certainly was a tale of two citys last night. Made to look ordinary by a resolute Bolton team, unless you read The Currant, they were a poor reflection of a side that cost £200million. And don't believe that they are on the up. From what we saw last night, and after their defeat to Hull at the weekend, they will have difficulty scraping into the Europa League.

But a bit of sublime skill from Viera and Adebyebye and a rash moment from Stefan Dennis cannot take away how well T'Trotters played. From front to back, barring two players, they were exemplary, chasing and harrying as if they were in the bottom three. (STOP PRESS: They are). There was some one touch passing the like of which Andy Gray seemed never to have seen before from a Bolton team. This is the way they have to play if we are to stay up.

And make no mistake, this is where the business end of the season starts. I'm not going to list the games again, Big Sam did it enough times last night on Sky Sports, repeating the joke at least three times that "as long as they can win six of them he'll be happy. Ah ha ha ha ha ha!" OK, maybe not in a Lord Flasheart kind of way, but he was admitting that they are winnable.

The only thing missing last night was the finish. The misfiring Swede lived up to my nickname for him but managed to put himself in better positions than he has done, SuperKev gave the Citeh defence a torrid time. At the back, bar the Adebayor goal, Knight and Not Mike were exeptional at keeping the forward line that I bigged up yesterday quiet and Steinsson flew down the wings enough times to keep the City defence busy when they weren't being worried by Chungy (Copyright Matt Taylor). Muamba managed to get a shot on target, but then blotted his copybook literally ten seconds later by ballooning a shot so high it came down where Maine Road used to be, where it was soon involved in a knife fight, only being taken down by a drive by shooting by some lads called Dwayne driving a stolen Prius that was later seen wrapped around one of the railings of Alexandra Park. But I digress.

Tamir, Tamir, Tamir. If you don't pull your socks up soon all you will be known as is Avi's son who used to play for Bolton. (New record for that one broken by Alan Parry last night at 4:25). Imagine Little Davies' face when he realised that Jack Wilshere was in the team only to find out seconds later that he was the one that had been dropped. Yes, a nice little passing sequence with Chungy and a last minute tackle were well done, but last night I thought you'd changed your name to "Cohen. Oh Dear" I heard it so much. You see those things around your ankles? Pull them up or you'll be back where the former manager found you.

Stefan Dennis. Where do I start? How about this quote:

I stuck my leg out and he ran into me, what else could I do? The ball wasn’t exactly going to stay on the pitch, and I think any normal referee would have just given a goal kick but when you come to these places you don’t get anything

Let me break it down. One, you left your leg hanging there as an invitation for Johnson to run over it. It was left there so long I had the time to get out of my chair, get the tube to Euston, the train the Manchester, connect at Oxford Road for the bus, run into the stadium and fall over it and it STILL would have been a penalty. What you could have done was not stick it out and use your considerable bulk to shepherd the ball out. Two, there was a normal referee on the pitch and he gave the right decision. Three, if you know you don't get anything, whydafookyoudoit?

Actually, maybe the referee isn't normal, seeing as how he saw your attempt to cut Shaun Wright-Phillips even more down to size as only a yellow. The devil on my left shoulder was telling me to call for a red, thereby making St Owen play either Jlloyd or Ricky in the next game. Actually, the angel on my right shoulder was telling me as well, but I was well onto my fifth glass of wine then so it may have affected his perception. And the ref did also miss Kolo Toure's early entry for the next Olympic's new event of "grass tobogganing without the toboggan". Not that the misfiring Swede would have got to the ball and put it in the net.

But, to equal all this out we had to debut of Jack Wilshere. Neat touches on the ball, holding it up well, better vision than the players he was playing with. If Mr Whinegear has any sense he will loan Jack to us for next season as well. St Owen knows a good thing when he sees it and we can only hope, pray and sacrifice our eldest that he plays him alongside Weiss and Little Davies in the next seven games. Because for one they are better than what is there at the moment and for two, it's going to take everyone else a couple of games to tune into his wavelength.

So we are now 19th and Stan Colllymore is probably laughing up his sleeve, while hiding in some bushes trying to avoid the police. Bastard. I really hope he gets his and not in a good way.

Until tomorrow, Towers out.

To the Council House

We have a lot to catch up on since the last post so let's get on with the public attack on Mark Clattenburg.

It will have escaped nobodys attention that Bolton should have had a goal on Saturday and this is now the fifth game this season where we have had Mr Clattenburg and haven't got three points from it. Now we at The Towers aren't ones for stats but the list of refs we have had in the league so far this season reads thus:

Mark Clattenburg 5
Chris Foy 3
Steve Bennett 3
Phil Dowd 3
Andre Marriner 2
Mike Jones 2
Alan Wiley 2
Peter Walton 1
Mike Dean 1
Martin Atkinson 1

Now, in an utterly unscientific way, this would pre suppose that we aren't going to get him again this season, and in no way are we going to blame him for the games that we have lost with him in charge this season, to Villa and Stretford, and the draws with Stoke and Citeh (he did send Craig Bellamy off for tripping over his laces), but his staggering decision on Saturday, when only he and everyone's favourite grandad Roy Hodgson saw the supposed push by SuperKev on Hangeland, could now hang over us like the Sword of Damocles (we're all still happy but at any moment a big sword could land on our head sending us down to The Championship if you don't know your Greek legend). SuperKev claimed that the referee hardly gives him anything and St Owen later backed the captain. Funnily enough it is now SuperKev that could be in trouble with the law after his comments. Maybe he could ring up Clattenburg and ask him how you go about circumnavigating the rules.

Otherwise the game was an unremarkable mish mash of Fulham defending and Bolton unable to break them down. The fact that we kept a clean sheet has to be applauded, especially as the defence had to make do without Gary Cahill. We certainly had enough shots on target but the lack of goals is now becoming a worry. The midfield has hardly changed since the days of the former manager and there is little possibility of it changing for tonight's game as it is envisioned here that St Owen will go for the same team and formation that he played at The Emirates. We have said it previously that Tamir Cohen appears to be resting on the laurels of his early season form and that Matty Taylor appears to be settling into the kind of playing attitude that called time on his period at Portsmouth, both of which are reflected by the ratings in the Tory report of the game.

So what of tonights game? Well, the first thing to note is the players that aren't available. The bad news is that Klasnic is still unavailable and Weiss cannot play under the terms of the loan agreement, but this is softened by the news that The Badger is out for a couple of months after suffering an injury in the game at The Emirates, so at least something good came out of the match. With Gary "Gaz" Cahill probably out for the season, against a forward line that can sometimes turn it on with bewildering speed and skill, our new central defensive partnership of Zat Knight and whoever he gets tonight will certainly have their work cut out. Cahill's problem is something that you just cannot guard against and is the first time in my life that I can remember a player being out with a blood clot. Being a clot yes, blood clot no. Some would ask why another central defender wasn't brought in during the window and the answer was because we didn't need one. We need one now, as our third choice central defender is now The Shitt, which should have any Bolton fan reaching for the smelling salts. Makes you wonder what the terms of Nicky Hunt's loan are.
City themselves are missing Craig Bellamy but with Tevez, Adebayor et al it is still akin to the 300 against the Persians, Bolton being the Spartans. Nobody is making out that Cahill is Leonidas, he himself has managed to make some mistakes this year (blame that on who you want) but I would rather have a defence with him in it than without him. The central midfield will have to be solid with a speedy midfielder to launch any counter attack up to our lone striker, and I don't mean the misfiring Swede. This is why I would advocate throwing Wilshere into the midfield from the off as the manager is thinking about. These are the kind of games that make men of young footballers and with Taylor about as fleet of foot as a box of nails he would be the one I would replace. If he doesn't get any game time soon it will seriously piss off Wenger and I can't believe that I am countenancing keeping that grumpy, myopic twat happy.

This weeks comedy moment comes courtesy of the crapwebsite not being able to spell "intention" and making it sound like St Owen was saying something else during his preview to tonight's game....

I've been frustrated for him because the intension was to play him against Liverpool

Tension in the ranks already, but at least it's not the same kind of tension we had during 2009. 75-1 on a 2-0 win tonight. Win that and I'm off to Vega$.

We return tomorrow.

Cahill out for season shocker.

No postings over the weekend due to Mrs X Snr being down from Manchester and no pun today due to the seriousness of the problem that Gary "Gaz" Cahill has. But we all know who to blame don't we?

Normal service resumes tomorrow.

Not Even Good Enough For Tranmere

Amidst all the kerfuffle surrounding Vaz Te not going to Hamilton (well I say kerfuffle, it's not like most people give a toss) we missed an update on....dum dum dum....Fat Mike Watch.

Yes, Fat Mike is looking for his umpteenth club since showing the middle finger to T'Reebok in 2003 after Tranmere dumped his ass mutually terminated his contract. The Wirral Globe says that he "wasn’t able to fit into the hard-running demands placed on the attacking players",which more or less sums up his attitude after the 2001-02 season.

Good luck in finding a new club Mike. Yes, I am lying again.

Right that's it, answer the question. Ou est Ricardo Vaz Te?

In the desert that is the national news about Bolton that normally occurs on a Tuesday and Wednesday when we have no midweek game, except for the times when we are loaning other teams wonderkids or, you know, nicking other teams managers, the only Oasis (geddit), besides Tony Kelly's never entertaining column in the former BEN (this weeks highlight being Fabrice Muamba's inability to score, or as its known at X Towers "the bleeding obvious") was a late transfer story that managed to wriggle it's way from underneath the snorefest. No, it's not Mark Connolly's late loan move to St. Johnstone, as reported here by the BBC, whose lack of info was then ripped apart by our friends at Vital here, but the supposed move of Ricardo Vaz Te to Hamilton Academical. The former BEN reported it, as did The Mirror. But throughout the day cock all appeared about it on either the crap website, which could have been because it is, well, crap, or the Hamilton website. Which led us to ask the above question, as we did twice last year.

Yesterday we mentioned Bambi's name after no new strikers were rushed in due to Kidney's injury and remarked that he may be given a chance, so it seemed a bit strange for the manager to leave us with just two recognised strikers, even if sometimes Bambi doesn't actually appear to be one. And late today the reason became clear. Hamilton is to Bambi as Glasgow is to The Shitt. And in a sense you can see the reasoning behind it. Scotland may not be Anfield, an area that even a scabby rat would turn it's nose up at living in, but it's two redeeming features are the hills and the M74 out of the country. It may not do his career at the Reebok any good but you may just have to nod your head in agreement at his decision. I just hope he likes training with the youth team.

Elsewhere, St Owen unveiled his three signings. And as you will see from the picture of the three of them holding the team shirt up, little Jack has his sleeves pulled up over his hands. Aaaawwwww. Plus, the look on his face seems to suggest that he can wait until he puts the shirt on, although to be fair, that was the look that most of us had when it was unveiled last year.

Until tomorrow, let's all laugh at Wigan.

DEADline day.

No great surprises that nothing else happened in the few days before the transfer window SLAMMED shut, as they love to say on Sky Sports News, except Obadeyi moving to Rochdale on loan and Danny Ward extending his loan at Swindon to the end of the season. However, with the news that Kidneys is out for up to a month there was some musings by the manager early on in the day that he may move for another striker. However, by the evening he had resisted the temptation.

This is a blow for T'Wanderers, leaving us with only SuperKev and the misfiring Swede as options, unless you include Bambi Vaz Te. As we all know, Big Ivan has come through a lot in his career (current record of being reminded of this by a commentator being held by Martin Tyler in the home game against Arsenal at 3:32 into the game) and you would expect the only thing to take him down would be a cannon ball to the gut, a snipers shot to the cranium from the Lofthouse Upper or a punch in the back from the Dad of the Year. An ankle injury seems just a little tame to be the reason for his absence from the team and I fully expect that the story will soon surface that he has gone off to Vietnam to get the last prisoners out.

Is not bringing anyone else in a mistake? Well, it says that he is out "for up to a month" which could mean a couple of weeks or the month. In my opinion there is no need for a knee jerk reaction, especially if you bring someone in for the rest of the season and they find themselves fourth choice after two games. That would be a waste of money. (Speaking of which, it would appear that Scotland was too cold after Angola for The Shitt and he will see out the rest of the season in the reserves. Welcome back Danny. Yes, I am lying.) The last time we did something like that we brought in the god that is Grzegorz Rasiak, which turned out well. These are the decisions that managers stand and fall on and it is better bringing no one in than someone who could take three weeks to fit in.

In other news, we are still waiting for the crap website to put anything up about the fans forum on Thursday, for those of us who, y'know, don't live in the north west, although by all accounts it went very well. Nice to see the former manager getting roundly booed and confirmation, if any were needed, that he had been invited to a forum but had declined. Well, it's never nice to be pelted with tomatoes and rotten cabbage, which is what would have been coming out of his mouth.

So another day passes. I will see you tomorrow and leave you with this thought. Just what the hell is this doing on the Bolton Wanderers page of the former BEN even if the suspect looks suspiciously like Stuart Holden?