Well they did their best to completely ruin Stevie’s last game didn’t they? By “they” I mean the club and his spineless team-mates. The fans turned it around and made it as memorable a send off for him as they could, but this day was depressing as shit for one reason or another. Events on the field were bad, those off it perhaps even worse.
I should probably get the performance out of the way first. It was thoroughly abject and the second half in particular was an absolute disgrace, completely unbefitting of the occasion. They should be ashamed of themselves, especially the manager who needs to stop fucking about with all these different systems because that’s been as big a part of our failings this season as anything. Three years he’s been in the job and he has no idea what formation he’s going to play from one half to another, let alone on a game by game basis.
Seriously, just what the hell is going on? It’s like watching me playing footy manager, spending a load of cash on shite and changing formations more often than I change my underwear just hoping to find some magic formula that stops my team being shit. He started this game by reverting back to the 3-4-2-1 that saved our season before teams eventually figured it out. We didn’t play particularly well but it didn’t look like the formation was the problem, just a lack of intensity and having nothing up front (yet again).
The first half wasn’t exactly convincing but we’ve definitely played worse in recent weeks. It wasn’t all bad as Ibe was doing ok at right wing back and Lallana was lively in that inside right position behind the striker. They linked well at times and both looked good as did Henderson who was involved in a lot of good things in the first half. The left side didn’t work anywhere near as efficiently because 1) Lovren isn’t Emre Can, 2) Moreno isn’t Jordon Ibe and 3) Coutinho only ever passes to Moreno as an absolute last resort and always looks to use him as a decoy and cut inside.
Lallana tried to set the tone with his energy and pressing and his excellently taken opening goal should have set us on the way to a routine victory. Instead it had the opposite effect. Palace upped their tempo and we dropped ours. Whereas the three at the back had looked comfortable early on, as soon as Palace began to put some pressure on them we were badly exposed. Lovren getting too tight to Bolasie and being turned was the start of it. He’d been doing quite well up to that moment but after that he was all over the place.
Palace had three really good chances to score before eventually equalising just before half time. Bolasie was running rings around Lovren and my boy Jason Puncheon was the best player on the pitch in the first half. Those two took the piss, it was like we were up against Henry and Messi but with all due respect to those lads, that says more about our performance than theirs. I’m still not having it that Bolasie is any good. The reason he caused us so many problems wasn’t talent, it was just his raw pace and hunger. He buzzed around and was a real pain in the arse, and we didn’t get to grips with him at all. If more of our players had his attitude it would have been a different game.
There’s no point singling individual players out. I could easily slaughter Lovren or point out how Moreno once again didn’t give us anything other than a whole lot of running about, or that Sterling was dogshit yet again, but hardly anyone any came out of it with any credit so there’s no point just picking on the easy targets. It was a collective failing rather than individual ones that proved our undoing. Palace were better than us on the day and they obviously wanted it a lot more. That’s unforgivable really, but we’ve seen it a lot this season.
Brendan’s half time system change to 4-2-3-1 didn’t help either. I don’t know why he did it, I’m sure he had his reasons and he’s got stuff like this right often enough to justify making the change, but this time it bombed spectacularly. That second half performance was as inept as anything we’ve seen in years, especially considering the occasion. All those players go on and on about how much they love and respect Stevie, yet THIS is how they let him go out? Where was the urgency? Where was the fight? Aside from Gerrard himself, did any of them even make a tackle in that second half?
A big part of it is on Rodgers though. That change in system turned a mediocre performance into a dreadful one. Lallana was a brightest spark in the first half but all season whenever he’s been shoved out wide he’s done nothing. Surprise surprise, he gets marooned out on the left wing and completely disappears before inevitably being substituted. That’s on Rodgers, not Lallana.
Palace looked like they’d score every time they attacked and the scoreline didn’t flatter them at all. Argue about the free-kick for the first if you like, the second may have been offside and the penalty was outside the box, but I don’t care about any of that. Palace had enough chances to make the scoreline really embarrassing for us. Mignolet made a couple of great saves, they hit the bar, they missed the target a couple of times when the goal was gaping and they were denied what looked a clear pen to me. They gave us an absolute chasing so I’m not going to complain about the referee.
In fact I don’t even want to say any more about the actual game. It was brutal, like so many that have gone before it this season. There’s not enough fight in the players, and the manager isn’t putting them in the best position to win games because he’s getting out-coached regularly now and it’s beginning to look like his style of play can only be effective when there’s a shit hot striker (or two) in the team.
Once Palace went 3-1 up and the game was gone, the crowd turned their full attention to paying tribute to Gerrard. His name was belted out and everyone was on their feet for him. Even the Palace fans were applauding him. It reeked of the last day of the Kop when the players again did their bit to ruin the occasion by not turning up and we lost to Norwich. The Palace fans were great though, they stayed behind afterwards and applauded Gerrard, and even chanted his name in respect. I don’t recall hearing the Demba Ba chant all afternoon either, which is a first this season I think. There are a handful of other teams I’d have expected to do similar but most would have just acted the twat.
By the end of the game I said to my arl fella, “they should all just stay back in the dressing room and let Stevie do the lap of honour on his own, I don’t even want to look at those fucking losers”. Of course that was never going to happen, we had to endure not only the players but also their kids, brothers, nephews, mates and whoever else they had tagging along. When did all that crap start anyway? It was far more palatable when the whistle would go and within a minute or two the the players were walking around the pitch, just as soon as their team-mates who hadn’t made the match day squad could join them on the field. It’d be over in about five minutes and we’d all be on our way home.
There’s too much bullshit these days, too much razzamatazz. We’ve got on pitch announcers, the players have to go off the field first to collect all of their offspring and the whole pantomime takes forever. It’s a joke. It was even worse this time because they had to go and change into next years kit and also had to wait for Gerrard to conduct two interviews before they could set off.
It all left a really bad taste in the mouth. For one thing I hate that the club used Stevie’s farewell as an opportunity to pimp the new kit. All his team-mates coming out with his name and number on their shirts, was that their way of honouring him or was it the club wanting more exposure for the new shirt? What better way of ensuring the cameras were on the new shirt than having all of the players wear number 8 with Gerrard on it? Some dicksplash in marketing probably got himself a nice little bonus for that bright idea. Shame they aren’t so on the money in the scouting department.
Far worse than that though was the interview they conducted with him on the pitch. No club likes to ram their propaganda down peoples throats like ours, but this was a new low even for them. “Hey Stevie, you’re leaving but tell everyone how great we all are and how the future is going to be bright”. Just fuck off will ya. That was neither the time nor the place for that shit and the disdain from the crowd was audible.
When that question was asked I couldn’t contain my contempt for what this club has become, and I clearly wasn’t alone judging by the audible mutterings of disapproval that went around the stadium. Some people laughed mockingly, others were livid. Count me in the latter group. The only thing that stopped me from yelling was respect for Gerrard as he tried manfully to put a positive spin on it. As my mates arrived one by one as we met outside the Kop afterwards, it was the first thing each and every one of them commented on. They all used the same word I had too - “Propaganda”.
Nothing sums up the current regime at Liverpool more than that one moment. We’ve just had an absolute fucking dog of a season and we’d been embarrassed at home by Palace in a game we all wanted to win as a fitting send off for Stevie and they’re force-feeding their “everything is great” propaganda down our throats and using Gerrard to do it. I love the club but I despise most of the idiots stealing a living from it.
We’re losing the one player we have left who has respect on the world stage and is a genuine star, there’s every chance we’ll lose our best young player too (either because he’s greedy or because he’s as pessimistic about the club’s future as I am), we’ve got owners who not only aren’t really interested in winning but who couldn’t even be arsed to turn up for Gerrard’s last game. We’ve got a bunch of stat loving virgins and bean counters in the scouting department who couldn’t spot a decent player if their lives depended on it. We’ve got Ian Ayre and his fucking Harley and we’ve got a manager who has developed this remarkable trait of discussing our failings as though he’s completely detached from them.
Seriously, Brendan talks about our problems like he’s a fucking Match of the Day analyst rather than the man in charge of putting it right. “There’s not enough goals in the team” “There’s a lack of experienced leaders as it’s a young team” “It looks like the occasion got to the players and they froze” “It’s hard to win games when the defence makes too mistakes.” It’s amazing really, he manages to talk about all the failings of the team as though he has no control over them and played no part in them.
I don’t think it’s being too melodramatic to say there is not actually one single thing to feel positive about with regards to the future, and yet they spring that bullshit question on Stevie at THAT moment? This is the culture of the club these days. They’re more interested in how many fucking twitter followers they have than how many points they’ve got. It’s infested (and owned) by a bunch of smug knobheads milking our glorious past to suit their own ends and I’m fucking sick of it. A lad on the forum summed it up best I thought: “The club is populated by self serving, self satisfied losers who can't believe their luck that they're here earning stupid money.” He’s dead right. It’s like that from top to bottom.
I watched Gerrard walk off towards the Kop to receive the well earned adulation of the fans and it was just fucking depressing. Not so much him going, but what we were being left with. I just stood there looking at the bunch of losers stood there, hanging around like spare ones at a wedding waiting for Gerrard to complete his interview with Sky, and I just thought “God help us”.
That’s harsh on some of them I know, but I just look at what we’ve got left now and I don’t see anything but more misery ahead. We need two top strikers but I have virtually no confidence in the manager & committee’s ability to identify and sign them, let alone that the owners will pay what it takes to get them. I’ve said a few times recently that we’ve become Spurs but I was wrong, we’re actually worse off than Spurs because at least they’ve got Harry Kane to rally around. Local hero, one of their own, prolific goalscorer. What I’d give for one of those right now. Comes to something when I’m feeling jealous of Tottenham.
I’d made my peace with Stevie leaving as it was the right time. He’s been an incredible player and a huge driving force for us, but all good things must come to an end and this day comes for every player. At least (as with Carra & Sami) all of his best days were with us. Far better that than what we had to go through with Alonso, Mascherano and Suarez, who all left before their prime and went on to bigger and better things elsewhere.
If anything I’m pleased for Gerrard because now he’s free from the burden he’s carried all these years. He’s no longer capable of carrying that burden and it’s pretty disgusting that he was still expected to. At almost 35 years of age he’s still our top scorer. How the hell has that been allowed to happen? There is no successor to him as the driving force of the team and the man others look to for inspiration. Look around, there’s NO-ONE.
They’ve had years to prepare for this and they’ve failed miserably. There are some within that committee who have been privately championing Can as the midfield heir apparent to Gerrard. I really hope he is, but it would have been nice to see the manager at least give him a few games there to assess it, wouldn’t it? Don’t kid yourselves that we’ll sign some shit hot midfielder to replace Gerrard. We’ll start next season with Henderson and James Milner in centre mid. Feel free to bookmark this and pull me up on it in August if I’m wrong though. No-one will be happier than me if someone like Pjanic is lining up for us in August.
I’ve never been so disillusioned or lacking in any kind of hope in all my years of following the Reds. It may seem as though we’ve been in worse spots than this, but I disagree. This feels different to anything that’s gone before, because there’s not one person in any kind of senior position at the club who is any good at their job and who I’d trust to get us back on the right path. They’re all bluffers and chancers. I’d still trust Brendan over anyone above him or on that fucking transfer committee mind, but even he doesn’t inspire much (any?) confidence anymore.
The owners, the chief exec, those nerd scouts, the manager, this group of players, do you honestly have any faith in any of them anymore? I’ve always been a glass half full sort, but my glass isn’t just empty, I feel like I’ve been smashed over the head with it. Any time we had problems in the past at least we always had Stevie and Carra to rebuild around, and we usually had a great striker too. Not this time.
We keep losing players and failing to adequately replace them. We lost Xabi. We lost Mascherano. We lost big Sami. We lost Carra. We lost Suarez. We lost Agger. Now we’ve lost Gerrard. Every single one of them would walk into this current team if they were in their prime, and most of them would walk into it even now. Bringing in Danny Ings, Divock Origi and Milner is simply not going to cut it, although that’s not to say they won’t offer more than some of those we currently have as they clearly will. We need an injection of star quality but what are the odds of it happening?
“Our job in the summer is to find players who can make a difference” said Rodgers. No, that was your fucking job last summer and you and the rest of the gobshites charged with that job completely fucked it up to the point it’s going to be nigh on impossible to recover from it now.
When Suarez left everyone pointed out the importance of getting it right and not “doing a Spurs”. We’d have one chance to be spending with the big boys, and if we got it right we’d be set up for years to come, with regular Champions League football and the occasional shot at the title.
Well we didn’t get it right, we went and “did a Spurs” and now we’re a million miles away from where we need to be and to get back there it will cost money that the club are either unable or unwilling to spend, and it will require expertise in the transfer market that has so far proved beyond any of them.
Carra said afterwards that “you’re never as far away as you may think”. I know what he means and in the past I’d have agreed. That was because fixing it was relatively straightforward, as it was usually just a case of a manager having ran his course and needing replacing or the team needing a player here or there to get it firing again.
This time it’s different. Of course one great player could transform everything, but who is signing that great player?Blaming Rodgers and calling for a change of manager is understandable, but for me our problems run much, much deeper than him and changing manager isn’t going to make a shred of difference. There isn’t one person in any kind of senior position at the club that has a clue how to make us challengers again. Sacking Rodgers won’t change that, not unless they get incredibly lucky with whoever they bring in to replace him, and that won’t be Klopp or Ancelotti that’s for sure as that will cost money.
I can’t wait for the season to end now, it’s been nine months of mostly abject misery and the hangover from last year still hasn’t cleared. We looked nailed on for 5th a week ago but who would bet on us winning at Stoke? If Southampton and Spurs win their final game we’re staring down the barrel of 7th place.
Still, they’ve made sure our season ticket renewals have to be in before then (and before we get to see who they fail to sign) so what do they care, eh?
Team: Mignolet; Can, Skrtel, Lovren; Ibe (Lucas), Gerrard, Henderson, Moreno (Sinclair); Lallana (Lambert), Coutinho; Sterling:
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