mike23

As soul destroying as the last week has been, at least we can console ourselves that we're not Everton fans. Pretty much every week seems to be like this for them. No wonder so many of them are mental.

Dave's talk of this all being part of the narrative is a lovely idea. If this was a Hollywood movie this would definitely be the part where everything looks bleak and hopeless for the protagonists. In the movie Klopp and the players would at about this point learn some important life lesson which would help them finish the movie triumphant.. There would be a joyful final scene in which they paraded the premier league trophy through the streets of Liverpool in front of millions of happy fans and then one final still of Klopp rising his fist in triumph to the crowd (with maybe a brief cut scene to chief antagonist Pep Guardiola miserably watching the scenes on TV at City's training ground and then turning his fury on Howard Webb who stands quivering in front of his desk, demanding to know how Webb's PGMOL gimps allowed this to happen). Unfortunately, as we've seen before, the Premier League doesn't seem to do happy Hollywood endings. The only lessons ever learned are bleak ones. The bad guys always win and never face any consequences for their actions. This all just seems to be shaping up to be another really shitty ending in which, even if we somehow sort ourselves out again and win all our remaining games, City just mechanically tick off win after win while friendly officials step in to help out if things are ever in danger of getting a bit dicey for them Football is really shit sometimes. Thanks for the pod. I feel pretty much the same. Not angry, just disappointed. This hasn't happened through lack of effort or desire, but the pressure has definitely got to most of the players. Sometimes strengths become weaknesses if not used wisely, and passion and desire just seem to have turned into desperation in the past week for this club.

This last week has just felt like the sort of week that happened at the business end of seasons under Roy Evans. Didn't we also have a 0-3 first leg defeat in Europe against PSG in the same season you're talking about? I seem to recall David James having a couple of screw ups in that game as well as multiple errors in important league games.

If we're not going to win it then it might as well be another tainted title for the cheats. I do feel for Arsenal though when you consider that this is the same Villa team who rested most of their starters less than 2 weeks ago when they faced City.

Imagine how great this would result would be if we hadn't fucked up 2 weeks in a row. Just makes me feel worse now.

I was actually defending our resilience on here for all the times we'd managed to come back last week. But at some point you've got to actually learn from the bad starts. It shouldn't need half time virtually every single game to sort ourselves out. It was an issue at the end of the season we challenged for the quadruple as well. It seemed like we conceded first in virtually every game during the run-in at the end of that season.

It turns out this team were never a serious title challenger after all. This last week was the sort of shit we would have seen at the business end of the season under Roy Evans. They want stringing up for starting another game the way they did. After all the other slow starts, how can they possibly not be focused on making absolutely certain that doesn't happen again? How can they come out slowly passing the ball about with no intensity whatsoever? But Jesus Christ, the absolute fucking state of our finishing in the past week. Six times in this game I was just waiting for the net to bulge. Endo miskicks in the first half and somehow hits the bar from a few yards out right in front of the goal. Nunez has the entire goal to aim at from a few yards out and somehow manages to smash it straight at the keeper - the only place where it wouldn't have gone in. Jones lets the ball slide right underneath his foot when he's completely unmarked in the box. Jota far too casual with a seeming open goal, allowing the defender to get a block in. Jones clean through and he somehow puts it wide (it felt like that was the miss that killed us off; the air just seemed to completely go out of the ground after that and there was a feeling that even if we created more chances that we'd just miss them). And then Mo, like Jota, far too casual when he just has to smash it in from a few yards out, allowing a defender to get a block in. If we'd have got 1 with any sort of time left on the clock then we'd have probably gone on to get 2. But we never should have been in that position again in the first place. There's only so many times you can get away with bad starts before it comes back to bite you. If we'd just come flying out of the traps right from the first whistle we'd have won. We can moan about the Palace players seeming to put in far more effort than they did in the Arsenal and City games, but the simple fact of the matter is that they played like that because we allowed them to build up belief and have something to cling to. Maybe our own defenders could start taking a leaf out of their book as well and actually start putting some proper effort in rather than letting teams slice through us without as much as a challenge at the start of games. Alisson was blameless today. Every other player needs to have a long hard look at themselves after the past week. And why the hell wasn't Elliot on much earlier? He's been one of the few attacking players in the past week who's actually at least not shit himself every single time he gets near the box. What a genuinely pathetic end to the Klopp era. If the new manager doesn't fancy any of these players next season then they can't really complain.

They've got a title to play for, they're coming off the back of an absolute embarrassment of a midweek performance, and they produce a first half like that?

I'm genuinely sick of our dreadful finishing and poor decision making in the final third. It's been an issue throughout the season despite all the goals we've scored, but it seems to have been ramped up to 11 ever since the first trip to Old Trafford. The Brighton game should have been so much more comfortable than it was. Sunday's league game at Old Trafford was an absolute joke. As bad as we were tonight, we had more than enough chances to end the game with a very different score line. It's infuriating that just as we hit the business end of the season and need players to step up, instead the forwards seem to be suffering a collective confidence crisis.

We looked like we approached the game thinking we just had to turn up to win and then couldn't get out of that mindset. Everything was way too slow. Constant misplaced passes. Second to every challenge. Our finishing and decision making in the final third was abysmal (what's new?) The defending was embarrassing and the number of goals we are conceding is becoming a problem. Not one player comes out of it with any credit tonight. The performance of every player who was on the pitch for any length of time varied between poor and absolutely abysmal. I don't know if it's worth even bothering trying to turn it around in the second leg. We might as well just play the kids and save the legs of the senior players for the league matches. I certainly had my doubts that we would get the fairytale ending we all want for Klopp with us celebrating winning the league at Anfield on the final day of the season, but I did think we would give him a happy send off of sorts by winning the Europa League in his final match, righting a wrong from his very first season when we lost the Europa league final in Sevilla. Maybe this team just isn't anything special after all. It's starting to look like Klopp's glorious reign here is going to end with the quietest of whimpers rather than the loudest of bangs.

Mcmanaman can go fuck himself as well. Embarrassing that a former player of ours always sounds so happy whenever we're losing.

Guess we didn't want to win the Europa League either. Genuinely pathetic from every single player.

I'm not feeling any better about it today either. I don't think I've found a game of ours as frustrating to watch since the home defeat to Chelsea that effectively blew our title chances under Rodgers. Two very different games - we looked like we could have played all week in that one and not created any chances let alone score - but both infuriating in their own ways. I've never really stopped being pissed off at how that Chelsea game unfolded. Time will tell whether that ends up being the case with this one. If we just lose out on the league because of the dropped points here then I can imagine it will be. Who knows, maybe we win out, Arsenal slip up, and the point we rescued late on here is the one that sees us finish just ahead of City in a close race for once, but right now it feels more like we'll be ruing the 2 points dropped here for the rest of this season and whenever we reflect back on it in years to come. It's weird isn't it? We've scored so many goals this season, but it's felt for a while as though this team is nowhere near clinical enough. And as you discussed on the Pod last night, the missed chances don't even tell the full story as in too many cases we don't even end up creating chances from great looking situations due to playing the wrong pass. I still can't believe we never even managed a shot on goal from the 5 on 2 break we had in the cup game a few weeks back. I genuinely don't know how it can be fixed either, as making the right decisions in those situations is surely something players either can or can't do and no amount of coaching can fix that. It feels like there's almost too many options at times and then the player on the ball just ends up panicking and picking the wrong option virtually every time.

Just win our games and see what happens. Sunday they're at home to Villa so I've not much hope things are going to turn back around next week. Unfortunately, 'never ever rely on Villa for anything' has always been a very sound mantra for life if you want to avoid disappointment. I'm not sure relying on Spurs is a much sounder prospect, but the North London derby really does look like the best hope for Arsenal dropping points. They're the best team they play and at least the one team and fanbase they'll face who won't actually prefer them winning the title over us.

4 goals conceded this calendar year is extremely impressive, particularly in a season in which just about everyone else has really struggled to keep clean sheets. It's even more impressive when you consider that 2 of those goals were the one we were gifted by a defensive mix up and another came from a silly individual error by Ramsdale against Brentford. As well as keeping clean sheets, they're not even allowing teams to create many chances against them. Brighton looked like they could have played all night against them on Saturday without scoring. I hope it doesn't end up being like the first time we just missed out to City. I remember hoping that just once in that run-in that City would concede first against someone half decent, and then the only game it ever happened in was on the final day against a Brighton team who weren't very good and didn't have anything at all to play for. We need to see Arsenal go behind in a game to see what they're made of. It remains to be seen whether or not that will happen at any point.