After a week when, because of wokeness, the Manfred Mann tribute band had to change their name to Themfred Them! – Real Mallorca’s irreplaceable striker Vedat Muriqi is out of Sunday’s game against fourth-placed Real Sociedad in the Son Moix at 14:00 after he picked up his fifth yellow card in last Saturday’s 0-1 defeat to Elche. Mallorca had thought about appealing against the outcome but decided not to contest the suspension as an appeal can sometimes make the punishment more severe.
With his 10 goals this season, Muriqi’s absence is a huge blow for the club as we now have to decide on a replacement. Will it be Zimbabwean Tino Kadewere or local hero Abdon Prats who’ll lead the line? It looks likely coach Javier Aguirre will go back to his tried and tested double pivot combination made up of Baba and Galarreta with Dani Rodriguez being sacrificed.
Real Sociedad (Txuri-Urdin – White and Blue) may be suffering from a Europa League hangover after they played Roma on Thursday. Although they lie in fourth place, they’ve had a blip of late winning just one of their last six games. Local fans are expected to give a big welcome back to Take Kubo who’s now part of the Sociedad set-up after spending two seasons on the island.
The Palma side’s 107th year birthday party went down like a lead balloon when they failed to beat basement side Elche. In what was a dreadful game of football, the whole game suddenly changed into a contest in a final eight minutes of footballing madness. There’s no doubt Mallorca played their worst home game of the season and it wasn’t helped by indignation and rage after the referee Munuera Montero disallowed (with big help from the VAR referee) a Muriqi equaliser in the 100th minute of the game.
Once again Mallorca had the misfortune of losing a game at home to a team down and out at the bottom of the table. Beyond the first 10 minutes in which we showed some attitude and desire to make it six straight wins at home in a row, the game for Mallorca turned into a toothless performance with a succession of bad decisions in attack and insecurity in defence.
At least Kang In Lee turned in a respectable shift but once again he lacks the killer instinct when he has the opposition goal in his sights.
I can’t remember a game with such an exciting final few minutes in what was a roller coaster ride of emotions. These last eight minutes had everything and it was such a shame we couldn’t get a point. Once again Mallorca were on the receiving end of a VAR decision which left us Mallorquinistas in a state of disappointment, euphoria and frustration.
When Elche striker Boye hammered in from a corner in the 88th minute, everything pointed to the fact that our brilliant home run was all but over. However, Mallorca playing with more heart than head were looking like they’d got out of jail when Muriqi made it 1-1.
The referee saw nothing wrong with the goal but the Elche defenders were having none of it with their protestations. They reckoned Maffeo had committed a foul in the build up. VAR told Montero to go and look at the pitchside monitor and the goal was disallowed. After the game Maffeo, who had allegedly hit a defender across the face with a flailing arm said “I can’t run with my hands glued to my body !”
After Muriqi’s goal was disallowed by VAR, we became the most affected team in La Liga in percentage terms. Mallorca have now had 25 VAR decisions go against them and only 12 have been in our favour. So far this season we’ve lost two points due to a couple of VAR decisions not going our way. One was a goal scored at Real Sociedad by Amath and last Saturday against Elche. On the other hand, we’ve only benefited once from VAR at home when a Morata goal for At. Madrid was chalked off for clear offside earlier in the campaign.
For me VAR is too invasive. Football already suffers from “natural” interruptions for injuries and substitutions and games are regularly halted for many minutes as a VAR panel decide on an outcome that looked to be clear cut even for the human eye.
Having to wait to see if goals or penalties awarded are valid is robbing the game of much of the emotions that are the main reasons us fans watch it.
AND FINALLY, a young lady went to see Dr Smith about having her boobs enlarged. Dr Smith advised her “Every day after your shower, rub your chest with this cream I’m prescribing and say ‘Scooby dooby doobies, I want bigger boobies.’” She did this for several months and it worked a treat. She grew D cup boobs.
One morning she was running late, got on the bus and in a panic realised she had forgotten her morning ritual. Frightened she might lose her lovely boobs if she didn’t recite the little rhyme, she stood right in the middle aisle, closed her eyes and said “Scoobie dooby doobies, I want bigger boobies.”
A guy sitting nearby looked at her and asked “Excuse me, are you by any chance a patient of Dr Smith?”
“Why yes, I am, how did you know ?” she replied.
He leaned closer, winked and whispered “Hickory, dickory dock!!”