"A favour? From them? Dream on!" by John Brennan

 

I’m queasy at the worst of times about run-ins…at these – the best times that many of us have seen for several years – I’m an incontinent (well, I do live in France) mess. So, when fellow Reds started writing stuff like ‘we’ll win it at Palace’, ‘we should put three or four past them’ and other manifest poppycock early on in the week, I had a bad feeling about this. This, despite all at LFC staying admirably above the media-driven ‘mind games’ of Mourinho. We’ve been served a staple diet of hope over the years and when things are in our hands, we have an unfortunate habit of letting them slip (James against Coventry).

 

And slip they did again. Literally and metaphorically. But it’s Ste so we can’t really maul him, like we would have had it been Kolo. At West Brom. Or Fulham. Anyway, this team is capable, as it has shown us all season long, of scoring three or four times in 45 minutes. So, we could have got back into it. But yesterday we huffed and puffed, looked narrow and played with no great fluency, inhibited by nervousness which seemed to consume the crowd and was no doubt picked up on by the team.

 

It’s impossible to be angry with this Team. They’ve given us a lot to shout about in this craziest of seasons. 96 times we’ve cheered. OT. City. Sturridge at The Pit. Ste at Fulham. Those 20 minutes against Arsenal. The derby. We’ve even deemed out football ‘poetic’. It’s got us to April the 28th and we’re part of the discussion. And it could go to the last day. But now that we’re here, we need to win it. 11 wins in a row? Cricket scores on a weekly basis? Footballer of the year? But City champions? Sorry, but in L4, that doesn’t cut the mustard.

 

Thus, we can be angry about the management of this team. And especially of its defence. This thing could well go down to goal difference. Except with Rodgers, it’s goal indifference. A refusal to acknowledge this as a serious problem area. And one that could ultimately cost us the greatest prize of all. Ten clean sheets! That means that in the 26 other games, at least two goals were (or would have been) needed to win. We’ve had to score three or more on four occasions this season to take points (Everton to take a point, Swansea, Stoke, Cardiff to take three points none against Hull…even Hull put three past us!).

 

We could equally analyse our results against the Top Four (10 points out of 24 against Everton, Arsenal, Chelsea and City). We’ve dropped 28 points all season: 14 against the Top Four and 14 against the other 15 teams. Our eternal bête noire, the teams in the bottom half, seems to have been dealt with. To take it to the next level, we need to be capable of going to City and Chelsea in expectation rather than hope.

 

At the risk of giving up your principles just for one day Brendan, you could be leading a Title-winning team. It’s never bothered us before, notably in Europe. How exactly do you think the whole European Cup experience is going to go? Defend like we do now and our ‘remarkable achievement’ of finishing in the Top Four will seem distinctly unremarkable.

 

Still, it’s in our hands. We’ve proved we can score 5 or six in a game. We just need to keep a clean sheet at the other e…verton, Everton, Everton…