Blue chews-daze: Just for a laugh – a brief word about ‘them’…

A lot of fanzines and footy Blogs wherever they may be often spend some time (some more than others) having a poke at their neighbouring team & fans. That’s fine; it’s all good fun but I try to limit mine to a VERY minimum.

Why?

Well it’s mostly because I’ve spent the majority of my life having all things ‘M16’ shoved rather robustly in front of my eyes and into my poisoned ears and, therefore, I’m just not interested in whatever they do or say any more…and haven’t done for a long, long time now.

And, I will add, it’s also because I find a large percentage of Manyoo fans a distasteful lot and FAR more embittered than any other set of footy fans I know (and they’ve had the nerve over the years to call us “Bitter Blues”) and, so, I find it very easy not to lower myself to their level.

But I just HAD to…

I’m struggling with something. I’m trying to decide whether Louis van Gaal irritates the hell out of me more than he amuses me.

In the early days, not long after he took over The Talking Skull, he definitely…DEFINITELY irritated me. Forgetting his increasingly-morphing physical features where he’s getting more ‘Butt-head’ and generally strange-looking by the week; what IS that voice all about?! Yeah…Dutch people sound, well…Dutch. No issue there whatsoever. But to me Louis sounds like a broken robot programmed to do a poor impression of Sean Connery.

For Christ sake man - string a flippin’ sentence together for once without those hugely-annoying, cavernous gaps in-between your words, never mind your painfully long sentences!

I can barely take it any more and like that annoying, cheesy advert that you just can’t stomach any longer…

…I find that I’m literally diving for the volume control or off switch on either the television or radio whenever he catches me unaware.

However…

…his irritating tones are slowly making way for considerable amusement of late. The guy is rapidly turning into a one big joke.

Perhaps there were some previously amusing LVG moments before this one – I did say in the early days I just couldn’t and WOULDN’T listen to the man – but for me it started with the now-rather-famous Queens Park Raisins moment in his post-match interview.

Here, if you’ve been living in a box, inside a cupboard…

Hilarious! Love it. And, in fact, he similarly struggles with the word “Rangers”; this time, rather less publicised, calling them “Queens Park Razors” (on 15 seconds in this video embedded in the BBC’s, post Cambridge United game interview).

Not long after that we had him, presumably, trying to be funny by copying Sir Bacon Face’s “squeaky bum time” line…but rather got it strangely skewed by saying, “…it was always twitching your arse” (on 4:27 in this embedded clip from the Mail Online).

Incidentally, in this same clip, for me this was also the beginning of his ‘high-voice’ / ‘how dare you question me’ tendencies; where he clearly began to get irritated at being questioned by members of the press an’ the like about his formation & personnel choices etc. He doesn’t like to be challenged does Mr van Gaal…

Then he described his very own Marouane Fellaini as a “long player”, which to me sounds like a reference to the old vinyl method of listing to music.

That last interview, as I say, was the start of the ‘increasingly strange one’ becoming far too easily riled; often appearing either very guarded or slightly aggressive in either pre or post-match interviews where his team recently either didn’t win or, perhaps, won but played awful for the most part.

And this, enjoyably, culminated in last weeks melt-down lecture in response to Sam Allardyce’s assertions that Manyoo had turned into a bunch of ‘Long Ball Larrys’. Sam’s actual words following their last-minute-conceding 1-1 home draw was, “We couldn’t cope with 'long-ball United', it was 'thump it forward and see what they could get'. In the end it paid off”.

For the record, it pains me to say, I thought a change of tactics from the Dutch manager was a good thing – isn’t the idea of football to win but, at the VERY least, not to get beat if you can help it? Similarly, and to his credit, ‘Big Sam’ has since come out and said that, indeed, he wasn’t being critical of Louis / Manyoo but was, in fact, simply stating a fact about facing a Manyoo team for the first time in his experience who DID change to long-ball tactics. And it worked; they snatched a point from the jaws of defeat.

However…and what a MASSIVE HOWEVER!

Sam’s comments managed, by some miracle, to get right up Louis nose in the most hilarious fashion. Sit back and with the aid of this copy of his stat sheet...

…enjoy this rant.

The guy is just so easily provoked and although I can’t say I knew much about the fella before he moved to England - other that he’d managed and had been very successful at some top clubs around Europe - I just didn’t have him down as a ‘stress head’ who reacts so badly to scrutiny. Brilliant Mr Allardyce – more of the same please!

And for any other wind-up merchant managers out there – Jose Mourinho springs immediately to mind for some strange reason – then have fun chaps; Louis has exposed himself for what he is of late and so go an’ enjoy yourselves!

The guy has 'got history' though. Have a look at this old footage when a television network DARED to replace him for next week’s show!

Clearly a massive egomaniac!

I’m sure, given more time and whole-load-more cash in the summer, Louis will do some good things at Manyoo and, for those reasons, he’ll become increasingly annoying again as well as (hopefully) continually amusing.

And despite the fact that he’ll probably pee me off in the summer by capturing Mats Hummels along with several other coverted stars; I’m so glad he’s not our manager…and so very glad that he’s theirs.

At the moment he's got their home fans booing against Burnley when resorting, once again, to lumping it up front, has a red at work utterly seething about the style of football in general and on Radio Manchester's 'Red Wednesday' programme that I happened to tune in to early before listening to City v Stoke; you had their fans calling for LVG's head and [regarding his long-ball rant] had one Manyoo fan calling the incident nothing but an embarrassment. You wouldn't think they were just 5-points behind us after a season in the wilderness, would you?

Be grateful for what you have…

Forgetting, for a moment, his little irritations in sticking with 4-4-2 at times where it doesn’t suit and for persisting with certain players that just don’t work…

With ol’ ‘arry and his retiring knees…

With Jose Mourinho recently refusing to talk to any press

With Nigel Pearson sitting on and then grabbing an opposing player in a bizarre and angry-looking fashion, for which he was allegedly sacked and then reinstated within hours…