DID you read And What? yesterday – it was boss. If not, have a mooch. The thing with Gibbo is, he cracks on – just does it. Me, I’m worried. I’m here thinking you’re thinking, ‘What’s all this about then?’. 

So you’ve had a buzz with Gibbo, and he’s set a high bar. Well soz about me, but I’m catching that bar with my arse on the way back down. This – stay with me – is the functional, down to brass tacks post. The water carrier. The difficult second release. Whatever, you get the idea.

You don’t? The idea with And What? is one of us sneaks off to a corner in work for a bit and writes some stuff about what’s happening Liverpool-wise that day. Because, let’s be honest, there’s ALWAYS something happening now, isn’t there? Even if it’s just a ridiculous Twitter conspiracy theory about a journalist being in the club’s pocket, or something like that (alright lads?) there’s always SOMETHING.

Yesterday, Gibbo had a bit to get his teeth into, what with the players returning to Melwood and the club taking loads of pictures of them leaning on things. And he did it very well. Other days though, you might read And What? and think ‘And what?’

See?!

So that’s the explanation over. Now the season has started sort of (did it end?), so has the fuming. And it’s easy to see why, after all, we’re only NINTH in the league. LOOK. Kinell, Rodgers out. Now…look again. In fact, we’re joint TOP. Rodgers in!

Shelvey is out though and few are shedding a tear, particularly if the club pockets a generous-looking £6m, which is based on all kinds of performance-related things. Don’t get me wrong, he’s decent – if only for the fume at Ferguson. But he was also rash, raw and unlikely to be pushing for a regular first-team place anytime soon. Not sure if getting little JonJo out on Twitter helped. He’s good enough for the Premier League, but perhaps not for the part of it we’d like to be finishing up in. We know the club is trying to get the most out of the wage bill – and Shelvey for Alberto seems a fair swap. With the dough coming in from JS, Andy Carroll and the slice of the Ince deal, we’ve pretty much broken even so far in summer dealings, as Tony Barrett pointed out on Twitter.

According to my (poor) maths, if #LFC make £9m from Shelvey & Ince their net spend so far this summer will be zero. Wheeling & dealing.

— Tony Barrett (@TonyBarretTimes) July 3, 2013

Cue FUME!!! Or not. Loads of time yet, yes? Our man Kristian Walsh, with his ESPN hat on, discusses why Shelvey’s move makes sense for all in detail if you want more of this sort of thing.

Reaction online, as ever, was mixed. Some mentioned Shelvey and Gerrard in the same Tweet and seemed to actually be serious. Or perhaps they had been sniffing glue. Others mentioned bloody envelopes and brought up Being-fucking-Liverpool for the millionth time. Yes, it was shit – we get it. We know the manager said Shelvey was boss then – a year’s a long time in football – in anything – though, yes? And as many of us said at the time, filming a new manager was never going to do him any favours. So it proved, it’s still biting him on the arse now (ooh, can we have another David Brent ‘joke’? That would be DEAD original). Speaking of jokes though, quite liked this one:

This one though… come on, mate. That’s as old as the Gazza-fishing rod-cans-chicken, or John Terry at the Last Supper in his full kit.

In other ‘news’,The Express (I know) said Liverpool have agreed a £25m fee for Henrikh Mkhitaryan but Goal (I know) say Dortmund have also bid and are confident of beating the Reds to his signature. Who knows? Who’s arsed? Go for a walk, have a bevvy – it’s not worth giving people shit on Twitter about. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, well we’ll still have a club.

It might though, be a club full of attacking players. Talking about transfer targets, Rodgers said on the official: “Certainly another attacking player will really benefit us, and probably another defender. We’ll see how it develops over the course of the next few months.” So (bit of artistic license) Sturridge, Suarez, Mkhitaryan, Coutinho, Borini, Aspas, Henderson, Alberto, Atsu, Sterling, Suso, Ibe – that’s not enough? I mean, we should defo, not probably, be signing a defender shouldn’t we? Because Carra’s gone, Skrtel is seemingly out of favour and Coates doesn’t appear to be the answer. And what about a back-up fella for Lucas – because a) we still haven’t got one. And b) Lucas might not get back to that form that had us all (well, most of us) shouting from the rooftops about how good he was. Of course it could just be all part of the transfer poker bollocks that goes on. We’ll see.

Raheem Sterling’s hair gets ever more ridiculous. Maybe he should shave it, go dead Scouse and invest in a wardrobe of classic Adidas trabs. It works for me, I’d pick him every week then.

Away from Liverpool for a second, there was the news yesterday that Bournemouth had somehow secured a summer friendly with Real Madrid. Nice. But just as Cherries fans got that warm feeling inside, the knee to the bollocks swiftly followed in the shape of the price: 60-friggin’-QUID! For a friendly. It’s discussed in more detail by a Bournemouth fan on Stand AMF, but to put things into perspective from our end, four years ago we tonked Madrid 4-0 at Anfield to secure a quarter-final spot in the Champions League. A ticket in The Kop that night was…. £36.

Finally, it’s my bet that Matthew Syed might have to wait a while for his next invite on to Sky Sports. After some cringe-worthy rhetoric about Roman Abramovich’s impact on football – and Chelsea’s for that matter – from the ever-willing lap dog Jim White, Syed cut to the chase about Roman Abramovich and his millions. And it was great. Well said that man.

PS: The winner of our Love Follow Conquer competition was ANDY SMITH @ajsmith1979. We asked ‘What would you take to the other side of the world for a Love Follow Conquer polo?” And this was Andy’s reply. So well in mate, a smart Love Follow Conquer polo will be winging its way to you. And you get some boss badges as well. Our mate Ian Maloney is good like that.

Anne Watt.