Arsenal 3 Liverpool 2 (Oct 9 2022)

Sickening. We lost this through sheer stupidity. For all the clear issues we have at the moment, chalk this loss down to terrible game management. Partly from Klopp and the way we approached the game, which caused us to concede after just one fucking minute, and partly from the players who showed absolutely no awareness of the situation they were in and committed the cardinal sin of conceding a goal from their own set-piece seconds before the half time whistle.

It’s easy to overlook that there were a lot of good elements in this performance, especially in the first half when we overcame that self inflicted early setback only to then shoot ourselves in the foot in the most ridiculous manner at the end of it. In between it was pretty impressive for spells. We actually came back again but Michael Oliver then handed the points to Arsenal with a ludicrous penalty. We were shite for much of the second half though and the penalty would never have happened if we’d actually cleared the ball with one of the several chances we had. 

I’m just fucking gutted after this. I honestly thought we’d win because Arsenal are overhyped and I really expected us to put in a performance. Arsenal are who I thought they were. Sadly we were nothing like what I thought we’d be. We were in spells but it wasn’t enough, especially when you can’t fucking defend. And make no mistake, we can’t defend. We’re a fucking mess now when we lose the ball. This is what happens when you’re a pressing team that can no longer press. When you push up the field and you don’t have the speed (or desire?) to get back.

We can all see it. Klopp can see it too. He’s spoken about it often enough, how the press hasn’t worked and how that’s leaving us (and specifically Trent) exposed too much. That’s what makes this even harder to take. To go there, against a team smelling themselves and riding high at the top of the table, while we’re such a shadow of what we thought we’d be, and start with the attitude we did?? It’s bordering on fucking stupid.

I’m not asking for us to abandon our identity and completely scrap how we play. Although that said, our identity is intensity and that abandoned us a couple of months back. That isn’t my point here though. My point is that there’s no fucking shame in going to a tough away venue and being cagey for 10-15 minutes to calm the crowd and stop the opponent getting off to a flyer. I don;’t want us to abandon our attacking principles, I just want us to temper them occasionally when the situation demands it.

For us to concede in the way we did, inside the first fucking minute? It’s naive as fuck I’m afraid. Just look at how that goal comes about and how easy it is for them. In the first fucking minute. Honestly, that’s as angry as I’ve been in a long time. You just can’t do that. Sit in for a bit, ease your way into the game. Keep the full backs in with the centre backs and stay in a four. 

“That’s not how we play” I hear some cry. Well maybe it should be. Not all the time, I’m not calling for us to go the full Sean Dyche here. I’m just saying that maybe we shouldn’t have Kostas so high up the pitch that Saka is left all alone with less than one minute gone?

Look at this screenshot of the goal. Six v five. In their favour. In the first fucking minute of a difficult away game against a team 11 points ahead of us (now 14). Sorry, but there’s just absolutely no way we should be getting counter attacked (and outnumbered!!!) inside the first minute away from home. It’s sheer stupidity or arrogance or both. 

I laughed at Arsenal last season because they came to Anfield and kept passing it around in their own box even though it wasn’t working and it was exactly what we wanted them to do. It was stupid and arrogant from Arteta, especially as it had failed spectacularly the season before. Guess what though, eventually he swallowed his pride and stopped doing it. He became more pragmatic against better teams. Did you see Arsenal doing much of that in this game? No, because it would be stupid.

Yet here we are, swaggering in there, dicks swinging, Arsenal style if you like, with some completely unjustified delusion of grandeur. Just because we’ve owned Arsenal for years that doesn’t mean we could just go in there and “be Liverpool”. We’re not Liverpool right now. Not even close. What we did last year and the years before isn’t working now and therefore means nothing. 

So we need to adapt to certain situations and be more pragmatic than we would be when we’re swatting everyone aside. I’m not seeing that at all, we’re just walking out there and getting punched in the fucking face over and over. At some point, maybe put your guard up? It isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s just common fucking sense. We clearly learned fuck all from Naples.

Was the goal offside though? I don’t know. We should know, because we should have seen the conclusive proof that VAR apparently did. We don’t know because they didn’t show us it. We saw nothing with any lines on, which seems rather unusual to say the least on such a close call. It might have been on, I can’t tell from the still picture but it looks incredibly close. For us to not be shown the lines isn’t acceptable. My bigger gripe is with us getting caught like that though.

What probably frustrates me even more is that after 10 or 15 minutes we did settle into the game and completely bossed it. Could we not have done that from a solid 0-0 platform? Again, as I say, I’m not saying we should abandon what we do altogether, just maybe not try to impose it on the opponents from the opening whistle when we’re walking into the lion’s den. No-one loves our "he who dares" approach more than me, but what we're doing is suicide right now.

The character is still there and we fight back well from setbacks, but we just keep suffering too many of them and it becomes hugely draining. We were good for the rest of the half. Very good. Darwin looked sharp, hungry, confident even. He was causing them a lot of problems, as was Diaz.

We had a strong handball shout waved away when Gabriel blocked Jota’s cross with a raised hand. It’s a clear pen for me simply because initially he’s doing that arms by the side thing and then he inexplicably decides to put his left arm up in the air and the ball hits him. Had his arm been up the entire time in a natural running motion, I wouldn’t say that’s a pen because it’s point blank range. This isn’t that though. It’s a fucking pen.

Oliver probably can’t see from where he is, but I’m fairly sure the lino is on that side. He saw it. Maybe it’s not his call to give those decisions when they have VAR, so the real villain here is Darren England who should have told Oliver to look at the screen. I said this on the pod, but has anyone ever seen this Darren England cunt? Does he actually ref games or does he get paid to sit on his arse making bad calls in Stockley Park? I can’t ever remember seeing him in the flesh. He’s stealing a fucking living, whoever he is. Imagine being paid to just do VAR. Any one of us could do that, and do it better than this fraud.

We bossed that first half and Thiago and Henderson were excellent. The second half was a different story as they faded badly and we lost the grip we had in there, but in that opening half those two dominated the midfield and we were lively up front. It was good, and we fully deserved the equaliser when Diaz crossed for Darwin to finish nicely. 

We had a big injury scare when Trent was caught on the ankle by Martinelli’s follow through after he crossed the ball. If you hadn’t seen the video and only went off the still image that looks a clear red card, but it obviously isn’t. I’m just saying, still images and freeze frames can make any incident look how you want it to look. People trying to claim the Arsenal penalty was legit could probably find an image to back that up too. Doesn’t make it so though.

Trent was in a lot of pain and I was surprised he was able to continue. In hindsight, we should have just subbed him there and then, because his role in the second goal debacle was pitiful. A lot of the criticism of his defensive play this season has been harsh and over stated. Whatever ridicule he is subjected to for this awful bit of schoolboy defending is fully justified. Embarrassing that.

However, the bigger issue here isn’t Trent selling himself and making it easy for Martinelli. No, the problem is game management again. Why the fuck are we sending everyone forward for a free-kick in that position, at that stage of the game. If the free kick had been 20 yards higher up the pitch in a proper crossing position then that’s a different matter. 

This was too deep though. It wasn’t going to be a cross that could be attacked, it was a hopeful diagonal punt to the far side of the box. The likelihood of scoring from that situation was minimal, but if we were chasing the game then of course you try it. With seconds to go in the half and the game at 1-1 against a team that specialises in counter attacks, that’s just not smart. I’m not being wise after the event either. When I saw Joel and Virgil piling up there I thought it was daft and judging by what he said afterwards, so did Klopp.

Considering we’re virtually the oldest team in the league we’re far from being the wisest. Naive, stupid, schoolboy shit again. It’s such a low percentage play. That ball towards Joel on the far side is only ever going to lead to him knocking the ball back into an area where players from both teams are. So there’s a 50-50 chance Arsenal will pick it up, and if they do they can counter. We know this, we’ve done it to other teams for years. We don’t do it any more mind. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know. I just know that it doesn’t happen and it makes me sad. Like a lot of things when I watch us now.

It just does my head in. Things are difficult enough for us right now without making things needlessly worse with a complete lack of common football sense. Conceding in the first and last minutes of the half in the way we did is staggeringly incompetent. This is exactly the kind of shit we did before we got good. You just can’t be doing that shit though. Not now. In this situation. And not against a team on the up. 

We fucking had them. We bossed that first half and the crowd had gone quiet. They stopped smelling themselves because we were doing to them what we’ve been doing for years and it was a bit of a reality check for them. And then we just fucking handed them the lead again and sent them in at the half all buoyant. Criminal.

To make matters worse we lost Diaz not long before the break and it might be a bad one. Even if it’s not, it’s probably going to be a few weeks at the very least. He’s been our best player this season and we can’t afford to lose him. But the season is a fucking nightmare so this should come as no surprise. Trent went off too, with Gomez replacing him. Apparently it was the ankle, but I’d have hooked him regardless as he looked shot to pieces. 

Arsenal came out with a spring in their step for the second half. That’s what happens when you’ve been gifted a lead with the last kick of the first period. The dominance we’d shown was now gone, but we still carried a threat and scored against the run of play with a beautiful finish by Bobby. Such a good goal that, he only had maybe a foot of space to put that ball in and he found it.

I don’t think we built on that goal at all though and it was Arsenal that were pushing hardest for a winner. The way they got it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth but they deserved it. The penalty came at the end of a period of sustained pressure where they pinned us back and it felt like the ball was in our box for five minutes before Oliver eventually put us out of our misery by pointing to the spot.

It’s just not a pen in a million years but that cunt couldn’t wait to give it. I think he blew the whistle before Jesus even hit the deck. Pathetic. Almost as pathetic as the VAR check that took all of 10 seconds and seemed to comprise of one replay. Usually on contentious ones like that you get a dozen slow motion replays from every conceivable angle. Why not this time? The officiating was a farce all day. We even had Gomez booked for time wasting on a throw. We don’t time waste and we didn’t even have the lead. Teams do this shit to us constantly and it goes unpunished. To have one of our lads booked for that is an insult.

We were never getting back into a third time and to be honest I can’t remember hardly anything about the last 15 minutes plus stoppage time. Nothing happened. The ball was hardly in play and there was just a lot of Arsenal running down the clock and us not really doing anything. 

Klopp made subs but each one weakened us further. Mo got hooked and that was no surprise as he was invisible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him less involved in a match than this. He’s had worse games, but probably never a quieter one. If we’re playing 4-4-2 then we need him up front with Darwin. That leaves a big hole on the right and we don’t have anyone who fits there naturally, but I’d probably look at Carvalho there. Maybe Trent actually, depending on how the injury is. We probably won’t play 4-4-2 though, Klopp will give up on this now and go back to the 4-3-3 that wasn’t working either.

Elliott came on to play left wing instead of Jota. Yeah that's no solution. Konate being back was a bonus. He replaced the below par Matip and looked strong. Maybe three at the back is an option? At least it means we'd have three defenders for a change when teams run through us.

A bad day got even worse with the news that there is going to be an investigation over something that was said by one of the players. All the indication is that it was Hendo, possibly to Gabriel who seemed very upset over something and was crying about it to our Brazilian lads. No idea what did happen, but I have no reservations whatsoever in saying that Hendo has not racially abused anyone. That’s what twitter is suggesting but there’s just not a fucking chance that has happened.

I could defo see him calling Partey a rapist, or coming out with a mouthful to Gabriel or whoever else got him riled up, but he’s quite literally the last person in our squad who would racially abuse someone. Hopefully this gets cleared up swiftly and we don’t have weeks of his name being tarnished. Arteta said something along the lines of 'what is said on the pitch should stay on the pitch' which would definitely point towards something non-racial. We'll see I guess.

So all in all another shit day in a season that has so far been full of them. The only crumb of comfort from this was that Nunez looked good and seems like he’s ready to kick on now. Unfortunately our problems run way deeper than that. He can’t fix the defensive issues we’re having, and that’s the real crux of it right now. We can’t defend, and if you can’t defend you can’t do anything.

Next week against City could be a fucking humiliation. Our weaknesses are in the areas where they are strongest. Finding gaps, threading passes through, exploiting space, they could have a fucking field day next week because I don’t see anything we can do to fix it. If we try to sit back that’s not our game and they’ll pass us to death. If we try to attack them they’ll pass through us at will because we don’t have the intense press that allowed us to have success against before.

I genuinely don’t see any way we can avoid defeat in that game and I’m more concerned about how many than I am about losing. In my mind we’ve already lost, I just don’t want it to be an embarrassment. How the fuck did it get this bad so quickly?

Roll on the winter World Cup so I can escape this fucking nightmare for a while.

Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold (Gomez), Matip (Konate), Van Dijk, Tsimikas; Salah (Fabinho), Henderson, Thiago, Diaz (Firmino); Jota (Elliott), Nunez: