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Preview Percy almost has a complimentary word or two to say about the refereeing at last week’s match at Arsenal. His condition is being monitored and we’re sure he will get better soon. In the meantime here is his look at Thursday night’s visit of Leicester...

Next up we face Leicester City at the Olympic. Kick-off is at 8pm on Thursday, the midweek date coming as a consequence of yet more tinkering with the FA Cup.




Back in the day, they used to keep the third and fourth round dates clear of league fixtures and published a full set of fixtures for subsequent rounds with clubs postponing as and where necessary. Then they started sticking one round aside to happen in midweek.

That’s been scrapped, but all top flight league matches are still scrapped. Hence a full fixture list over the course of the week. TNT are the broadcasters if you’re watching on the box. The good news just in is that the planned strike on the Elizabeth Line has been called off for Thursday.

So Leicester then. Well they have to be favourites for the drop really. Since they somewhat fortuitously beat us in the first game of the Van Nistelrooy tenure back in December their results have gone DLLLLLLLWLLL. That one win, rather amusingly, came at Tottenham where second half goals from Jamie Vardy and Bilal El Khannouss were enough to overturn a 1-0 half time deficit.

That winner, on 26 January, was the last goal they scored and they have lost their subsequent three matches 4-0 at Everton, 2-0 at home to Arsenal and 4-0 at home to Brentford last Friday. This has left them in 19th place with 17 points from their 26 played so far.

Whilst that’s eight points above Southampton, they are all but down anyway. More importantly Leicester are level on points with Ipswich, having a four-goal deficit on the Tractor Boys. And both clubs have a five-point gap above them before they find Wolverhampton Wanderers, whose win at Bournemouth on Saturday only slightly dampened by their midweek home defeat to Fulham was a big step to safety. For what it’s worth, there’s a further eight-point gap to our good selves.

The butt of the supporters’ frustration at the current state of affairs has been Director Of Football Jon Rudkin, the general opinion being that Van Niestelroy can only play the cards dealt to him by the owners, and by Rudkin who is seen as the owner’s main man.

There has been dissatisfaction with the quality of player that has arrived under Rudkin’s stewardship, one supporter suggesting that the signing of Odsonne Edouard ought to have merited a dismissal all on his own.

Interestingly Rudkin is listed as also holding the same position with Belgian outfit Leuven, who are also owned by the same people behind Leicester. This has split the support – some are saying he ought to be concentrating on Leicester, whilst others are wishing that he’d simply hop it to Belgium.

Given the position they were in one might have expected them to spend a few bob during the window. However, and possibly as a result of their close shave with a points deduction after sailing close to the wind with the spending rules, Daisy tells me that the only player brought in over the winter was splendidly-named Woyo Coulibaly.

Coulibaly arrived from Parma for what is these days nearly a nominal fee of £3m, as the player’s contract was expiring at the end of the season. He was part of the Parma squad that got promotion to Serie A last season. Born in France of Malian descent, he has yet to be capped by either of the countries for which he is qualified to play.

Let us move on then to the wild and wacky world of Association Football. As if we needed any excuse to point derisively at Spurs and laugh, their media people have decided that Manchester United are in danger of taking over as the Premier League’s biggest laughing-stock.




Clearly this was a state of affairs that could not be allowed to continue under any circumstances. But what to do? Well, you’ve got to hand it to them, they did get creative issuing a press release castigating the media for calling them “Tottenham” instead of “Tottenham Hotspur” instead of “Spurs”. That's right up there with Donald Trump trying to tell the world that the Gulf of Mexico, well, isn’t.

I did have a few ideas as to what this website’s house-style should be when referring to them but, according to the editor, none of them are allowable on a family website with the exception of one my suggestions which he claimed was both in poor taste and libellous.

So henceforth the deluded club from Harringay will be known in this column simply as “Tottenham” on the grounds that it’s exactly what their media people don’t want. And if they don’t like it, they can go to Florida and take a running jump in the Gulf of Percy.

Back to last week’s car crash of an interview with the Baroness in which her commitment to “affordable football” was restated. Really? A number of clubs have already announced their intention to freeze season ticket prices for next season.

Having already announced that the club will be squeezing the pips out of the elderly and infirm, one wonders what they are going to do with the rest of us next term [we now know - Ed]. The whole interview lurched from one disastrous comment to another. One suspects that the Baroness is likely to believe that the whole interview was a success. Nobody is likely to have been brave enough to have told her otherwise.

If nobody has the minerals to tell her that going to the media is a bad idea – and there have been plenty examples of orally-inserted metatarsals from the Baroness’s column in that so-called “newspaper” aimed at people whose lips move when they read it – the very least they should do is to issue a list of phrases to be avoided at all cost.

These should include “affordable football” and “world class” when referring to the stadium. And why not address supporters’ concerns rather than simply dismiss them as the rantings of people who “don’t like change”. Maybe the owners would care to sell-up to test that theory out – I’d be willing to bet a few of the 25,000 founder season ticket holders no longer attending matches might think about coming back if that happened.

On the pitch it was a highly amusing couple of hours at the Haemorrhoid Stadium. The walk back to the tube was superb entertainment. The main complaint was that we had “parked the bus”.

Well, the bus had been parked out in the car park. What in fact we had done was set up a few rows of deckchairs, had waiters deliver a cocktail to each chair, sat back and completed the crossword whilst Arsenal played the ball from touchline to touchline and back again.

Once in a while, presumably when someone got stuck on a particularly cryptic clue, one of our players would look up, put the paper down and wander out to take the ball from an Arsenal player and set up a chance.

There were fine performances all over the pitch though I think I’d be a bit miffed if I were one of the outfield players ignored by Troy Deeney for his “team of the week” on the BBC website.

Alphonse Areola was, somewhat laughably, given the goalkeeper slot. Now don’t get me wrong, Areola had a decent game no doubt. However, it was a game in which he had a mere two saves to make – and one of those was driven straight at him.




I suspect that Deeney hadn’t actually watched the match and just assumed that it was like the Alamo in our penalty box for 90 minutes. Deeny is the sort of person we used to refer to as “not exactly bursting with O-Levels” (go ask granddad) and the suspicion that he is stealing a living as a pundit would seem to be borne out.

A quick word about referee Craig Pawson who had not a bad game, particularly when compared with the game changers we have had to endure of late. I have seen some criticism of Pawson’s failure to deliver the red card to Lewis-Skelly without the intervention from VAR. However, I can see Pawson’s original point.

For “Denial Of Goalscoring Opportunity” (Dogso) there is amental checklist of four 'Ds' that referees are supposed to consider: Distance to goal, distance to the ball, direction of play and the number of covering defenders.

Now on the face of it, the distance to goal was significant and one assumes that Pawson’s focus was fixed on the incident itself. However, the distance to goal becomes less relevant if your goalkeeper has gone walkabout and is wandering about only a few yards in his own half.

A quick check on VAR gave him that extra angle and the deserved red card came out. The decision was a bit of a surprise because it was correct, something that will probably get Pawson suspended or something. Meanwhile it just goes to show how much easier it is to beat Arsenal when they are without a fully fit Anthony Taylor on their side.

On the injury front, whilst Michail Antonio is still a long way off I understand that he’s back from his warm weather rehab spell and is likely to make an appearance on Thursday night. Hopefully he will be getting a lift from someone.

Niclas Fullkrug is still a while off though his rehab is progressing well. Vladimir Coufal and Lucas Paqueta are both eyeing the Newcastle match for a return to the squad whilst Crysensio Summerville is still looking to return in April.

So to the prediction, then. Now I realise that consistency has been a problem of late, with a good away performance on the road being followed up with a clunker at home. However, the more I look at this one the more I can see three points coming our way.

We murdered them at their place with (another) shocker from the officials coupled with poor finishing papering over numerous cracks for the home side. I will be looking for more of the same with, hopefully, a more appropriate result.

So the £2.50 I was going to send to the Arsenal supporter with the mullet so he can get himself a better haircut will instead be going on a home win. Please Mr Winstone could I place the lot on a 3-1 win to us.

Enjoy the game!




When Last We met At The Olympic : Lost 0-2 Premier League November 2022
Madison and Barnes were on target with Fabianski saving a penalty in between. We dominated everything in between but poor finishing cost us.

Odds on?
West Ham are priced by Betway at 7/10 to take all three points, with Leicester 7/2. The draw would net you 3/1 with the same bookies.

Referee: Stuart Atwell
Come on this has to be some sort of joke surely. Does Atwell have photos of Howard Webb in some form of compromising position? It would certainly explain how someone so utterly devoid of the knowledge and skills required to referee a football match continues to be in a job. I would honestly prefer someone to be grabbed at random from those walking their dogs along the Green Way and asked to referee our matches ahead of Atwell. Hell I’d even consider the dog.

Danger Man: Jamie Vardy
Looking for a goal bonus to pay the missus’ legal bills.

Percy and Daisy’s Leicester Fact Of The Week Type Thing
Apart from laying claim to being the birthplace of the package tour (Thomas Cook’s Temperance Day Trip to Loughborough), they also boast that the concept of Afternoon Tea was invented there. In the mid 19th century the Duchess of Bedford, whilst on a visit to the Duke of Rutland, came over all peckish so ordered some cakes, tiny sandwiches and a cuppa. It seems all the cool things to boast of had already been taken by the time Leicester got around to it.

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