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Here we go...
What is typical Yakubu fashion? Typical Yakubu fashion is: playing football like he is a blue whale and goals are krill and he is just unhinging his jaw and completely fuckingthem whole, one after another, bicycle kicks and penalties and shinned tap ins and scuffed low drives into the corners from both feet, all in-and-around the six-yard box, as he circles it, does laps of it, just looking for more and more krill because he is hungry and he is always hungry and he will never, ever, have enough krill.
Game of Thrones Season 2 was this, a show finding and establishing its rhythm through the development of a whole host of brilliant characters, who were all slowly beginning to form into their true selves: Daenerys, Jon Snow, Tywin Lannister, Rob Stark, The aforementioned little blonde shithead, Tyrion, The Hound, Arya. Season 2 also gave us the fiery, explosive The Battle of Blackwater. Yakubu Ayegbeni gave us four lethargic goals against Swansea City. Which was better? That's not for me to say. Like the children I don't yet have, I love them both equally.Game of Thrones Season 3 was truly when it made the jump into the mainstream and achieved 'must watch' status as a pop culture phenomenon. The same season, a completely unknown Spanish attacking midfielder by the name of Michu was signed by Swansea for £2 million from Rayo Vallecano. It was hard to know which was more shocking in the grand scheme of things: The Red Wedding that came and bludgeoned us over the head like a Victorian policeman or this 6 foot 1 lad who ran like he didn't have knees turning up in South Wales and doing his best AC Milan years-Kaká impression to the tune of 22 goals in all competitions and a League Cup trophy. Both were incredible to witness and genuine, visceral shocks; the heavy gut-punch of Rob Stark crumbling to his knees and arrows flying into his chest was the exact same feeling you got whenever Michu jogged around the pitch for 80 minutes before suddenly deciding to finesse a left foot curler into the top corner and sprint at all the other team's fans waving his hand by his ear. You were shocked, then maybe you were angry, then maybe you realised you had just witnessed something really fucking cool, even if it did come from the mind of a book author who actively chooses to dress like a train conductor or a gangly, hair-band wearing Spanish lad called Miguel.The single best season of Game of Thrones deserves the single best season we have seen from a striker in the Barclays in recent years. In 2013, GoT was a completely different animal and gave us everything: The Hound and Arya together, Joffrey being poisoned, Tyrion crossbow-ing his father whilst he was scrolling through Reddit on the toilet and the infamous The Mountain/Oberyn Martell mutual destruction during a trial by combat. Luis Suarez was pretty much the same animal, a kind of hyperactive rodent obsessed with nutmegging defenders and pelting the ball in from every conceivable angle and distance. He gave us four goals against Norwich City, an over 100-year-old professional football club that he repeatedly turned into his own personal chew toy over the course of his time in England, scoring 11 goals in five games. He won Player of the Year, the first non-European to do so, and finished the season with a staggering 31 goals in 33 games. Liverpool still didn't win the league. And then he went to the World Cup with Uruguay, bit Juve hardman Giorgio Chiellini on the shoulder, the third major biting incident of his career, and said to the FIFA disciplinary committee:"I lost my balance ... falling on top of my opponent ... I hit my face against Chiellini, leaving a small bruise on my cheek and a strong pain in my teeth." Truly, this was a shithouse of a show and a shithouse of a player at their absolute peak, giving you non-stop entertainment in the form of grisly violence and bangers week in, week out.Season 5 was the beginning of the end for Game of Thrones as it gradually began its descent into a bloated, underwhelming mess of a television show. Which brings us very neatly onto the tragic tale of Saido Berahino. Berahino had his only good season of football to date in 14/15, scoring 14 times in the league and winning England u-21 player of the year ahead of Harry Kane. Unfortunately, that was as good as it ever got for the now-Burundi international, who finished the season with two drink driving offences to his name and a very public spat with Tony Pulis after the dementor-in-a-baseball-cap rejected successive transfer bids from Tottenham Hotspur and refused to accept a formal transfer request from the player himself. Ever since Berahino has been a shell of his former self and has scored only seven leagues goals in the four seasons since his breakout - a time period that included within it a run of 913 days and 48 games without scoring a goal. Season 5 had 'Hardhome', Berahino had a telepathic strike partnership Solomon Rondon. And that was the last time each of them were truly great, whatever glimpses they'd give from then on.Harry Kane, you might remember, scored 29 goals in the 16/17 Premier League season and comfortably won the Golden Boot. The problem was, seven of those goals came in the final two games: four in a 6-1 rout away at Leicester and then another three on top of that a few days later at Hull City. Add in the fact that he notched another hattrick in a 4-0 demolition of West Bromwich Albion and you're faced with the cold, hard conclusion that over 33% of Harry Kane's goals that season came in those three fixtures.good, in fact it was mostly quite bad, and that all of the exciting, thrilling moments you remember came were crammed into just three episodes that blew the rest of the series out of the water: 'The Door', 'The Battle of the Bastards' and 'The Winds of Winter'. Deep down you know it's true, in the same way that, deep down, Harry Kane owes this particular Golden Boot to playing against Yohan Benalouane and Michael Dawson in consecutive games to end the season.Expensive, clunky, issues with pacing and occasional extreme heavy-handedness make Game of Thrones' seventh season a lot like Romelu Lukaku's debut campaign with Manchester United after a £75 million move in the summer of 2017. Big Rom had his moments during a season in which United finished second in the league and won the Europa League, including scoring 10 goals in his first nine appearances to break a historic record held by Bobby Charlton, but he was still frequently picked apart by fans for his sloppy first touch and a brutally direct style of play. The same thing happened with Thrones, when, after so much hype and expectation, audiences started to feel underwhelmed by the rushed story arcs and whatever big budget set pieces David Benioff and D. B. Weiss would throw into the mix.So this is it. They don't love you anymore and can't wait to see you gone. You're just not the same. Something has changed. Something is different. Maybe it was all the money and the adoration, and now you've simply stopped trying. Maybe it was the sheer weight of expectation when you knew the end was in sight. Maybe you shouldn't have left behind the steadying hand that was guiding you, whether it was Arsene Wenger or George R. R. Martin. Whatever it was, Alexis Sanchez and Game of Thrones Season 8, you've absolutely fucked it. You've just well and truly fucked it. And don't worry, we don't hate you. It's nothing like that. But it is something worse.Whether it's the stray coffee cup in a scene or the scoring of a single goal during an entire Premier League season, it's just getting embarrassing now.Hit PLAY! Game of Thrones podcast The North Awaits: Michael Fry and Carl Kinsella are joined by Rory 'Master of Coin' Cashin for a therapy session over Game of Thrones' fiery, ferocious and fucked up Episode 5.
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