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One of the things I love about my job is the opportunity to pop in and watch games around the world, sometimes to scout a player, sometimes to check up on a team and sometimes because it’s just nice to see someone else suffer.

Manchester City are at home to Aston Villa and they are in a spot of bother. Pep Guardiola has only won a single match this season and his City side look oddly out of sorts. I want to find out why.

It quickly becomes clear. Villa’s trebuchet-armed Callum Paterson tosses a long throw into the box, hapless goalkeeper Claudio Bravo misses it completely and Jordon Ayew tucks it into an empty net. Pep signed Antoine Griezmann this summer and yet he’s found himself in a relegation battle.

But I have my own problems. I’m trying to juggle players in a congested winter schedule and come out in 2018 still in the Europa League, still pushing for a Europa League place and ideally still in the League Cup too.

So Jonathan Biabiany will start away at Mike Phelan’s Hull as Aaron Lennon takes a rest. We’ll also save Andrea Poli for Europe and give Tom Davies a go in the middle. He’ll play further forward because James McCarthy is suspended for the next European game, so we may as well drain his batteries here.

It’s a drab game of few highlights and the first half passes without incident. Romelu Lukaku barely touches the ball, we struggle on the flanks and we don’t complete a single cross. It’s wretched stuff, but at least Hull can’t get anything going either.

But just as I’m preparing a speech about ‘a valuable point away from home,’ Seamus Coleman, already on a yellow card, clips the heels of Nabil Dirar and gets himself sent off. Hull suddenly find some confidence and begin to create chances. But it’s one of our attacks that makes the difference. Bryan Oviedo, covering on the left wing, artlessly thuds a cross into the box, Ryan Mason punts it out from within his own penalty area, it soars above everyone into our half and suddenly it’s a foot race between Jordan Rhodes and DemiGod Vida. But the Croatian has been off colour since I rejected his move to Roma and Rhodes easily brushes him aside. We lose 0-1.

There’s another round of changes ahead of our trip to Rosenberg, Brendan Galloway comes in, Poli comes back and young Tom drops into defensive midfield. We won our first game in this competition, so there’s not too much pressure on us, but equally I’d like to get us qualified for the knockout round as quickly as possible.

It’s another quiet start, but it’s a reassuringly quiet start. We have all of the ball and slowly we start to create chances. We hit the woodwork twice in the first half and Lukaku is denied by a tremendous save from veteran Ghanaian stopper Adam Kwarasey, but we break the deadlock just before the break when fun-sized Aaron Lennon rises at the back stick to nod the ball home.

The second half brings more of the same, the vague sense of a job well done mixed with the lingering fear that the job hasn’t been quite done well enough, a fear that is realised with ten minutes to go when Rosenberg score with their second effort, a header from Vajebah Sakor.

There are two ways to respond to this. One is to accept the capriciousness of fate and take the point. The other to send on Oumar Niasse to partner Lukaku in a 4-4-2 gambit that has never actually delivered yet. I take the risk and send the big lad on. With three minutes left, he clumsily sets himself for a shot and is unceremoniously knocked to the ground. Lukaku snatches the ball up before Niasse can get any ideas, places it on the spot and converts for a deserved win.

To my dismay, Vida has just discovered that being in the Europa League means that my Don’t-Go-To-Roma promise to him that we would win the Champions League this season is, unless I’ve missed something, quite unkeepable. I really thought we’d get away with this for a little longer.

It’s all very awkward. His morale has collapsed and it’s going to be hard to play him now. In fact, I think I’d be better off just sticking him on the list and trying to sell him. He cost £11m and I’m confident of at least doubling my money, but it’s such a shame. It’s not ideal timing either. We’re still three months from January and my only options are either to over-promote Matthew Pennington or Mason Holgate, or to go with two lefties in Ramiro Funes Mori and Brendan Galloway.

That’s what I’ll try for the Norwich game, the last match before a merciful two-week break ahead of the Merseyside derby.

We are sloppy from the very start of the match. We’re not winning tackles, we’re not breaking quickly enough and it’s absolutely no surprise when Joe Campbell dances past a drowsy Funes Mori and slips the ball past Alfie Areola. My fury is abated only by James McClean’s smart pass that allows Romelu Lukaku to quickly level the score. The Galloway-Mori axis does not look good.

But there’s nothing even Vida could have done about Robbie Brady’s winner. It’s a perfectly struck free-kick that whistles into the top corner. And we do get better, especially after I melt the grouting in the dressing room tiles with my half time team talk. But not even the deployment of a Lukaku-Niasse double strikeforce can break down the Canaries. We’ve lost. Again. And it’s the Merseyside Derby next.

I want everyone to be quite clear about their roles here. Liverpool are the flash bastards, we’re the dogs of war. James McCarthy isn’t quite fit, but he’s a pitbull and he plays. Idrissa Gueye will be in there to smash things up as well. Biabiany will bring all the pace to the flanks so that we can hit them on the break. We are played two, lost two and we cannot afford to lose a third just because we’ve caught delusions of grandeur. Lets remember what we are.

The boys follow their instructions to the letter and get stuck right into Roberto Mancini’s inconsistent superstars. James McCarthy picks up a booking in the 25th minute, but I’m not too concerned because he’s a veteran, he knows what’s expected of him and I was going to sub him off after an hour anyway.

But I’m very much mistaken. McCarthy follows his yellow card with another three minutes later, the great big twat. We’re down to 10 men and we’ve got over an hour to play. I do not need this right now.

But even as Liverpool’s fans are rubbing their hands together, Biabiany finds a bit of space and whips in a cross for Lukaku to tuck home. That’s a cushion. If we can come out of this with a point, I’ll be more than happy. And I tell the players as much at half time too. But just after the hour, Ross Barkley smashes home a free kick that’s every bit as impressive as the one Norwich scored against us.

We hit them with every trick in the book, draw-out substitutions, time-wasting, playing for set pieces, whatever we can do to run that clock down. It’s the ugliest, dirtiest, nastiest win in my time at the club. Somehow that just makes it taste all the sweeter.

The day after the game I head over to Old Trafford where poor old Pep has got to turn his team’s form around against a United side that has won all eight of its game so far. I’m expecting a massacre and a picture of a corner flag to be tweeted by the City press officer by teatime, but somehow Pep comes out of it with a win. This is a brutal division and it seems like we’re all just one bad run away from getting the sack. Pep has ended his run, I’ve ended mine. But could Liverpool be a couple of results away from another managerial change?

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