This has really hit me hard. We went there and played great, but somehow we've come away with the same scoreline that United did after their pitiful showing here a few weeks back. Football is a right bastard at times.
For two years I’ve been desperate to play these and despite the result, in a weird kind of way the game proved why. I was convinced we could get at them and we did. But if you don’t take your opportunities then you have absolutely no chance of beating anybody, let alone a team with Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez in it.
Klopp described it as “our best away performance in the Champions League” and I agree with him. We were much the better side for most of the game, yet the tie is all but over now and I’m just fucking gutted. Be careful what you wish for I guess.
Some people are asking “how did we lose that game at all, let alone 3-0?” but there’s no mystery here. It’s pretty simple. We missed too many chances (some of them sitters) and we were made to pay for that by the greatest player in the world. Lady Luck pulled down her knickers and shit all over us again too.
It’s really hard to take because they were there for the taking. We had them right where we wanted them but in the end it could have been much worse than 3-0 because the last 15 minutes were a complete, disorganised, desperate shambles.
It really shouldn’t have been that way though. Not given how we played. Did anyone expect us to go there and play as progressively as that? We treated that game like we were playing away at Bournemouth. We pushed high up, pressed them in their own half and actually had more possession than them. At times they were just hoofing it to clear the danger and they had everyone bar Messi and Suarez back behind the ball.
That’s not how I expected it to go. I knew we could hurt them but I thought it would be from quick counter attacks and exploiting the space behind their full backs. I expected us to play more defensively than usual but to use our speed and skill on the break. Instead, like I say, we just went out there and played like we were up against a mid-table Premier League side.
And that’s what the game looked like, barring one minor detail. Mid-table Premier League sides don’t have Messi. We were clearly the better team but it didn’t matter in the end because that one great player made all the difference. I’m still finding it hard to process it all. Nobody goes to the Nou Camp and plays like we did. It just doesn’t happen, it was commendable.
We went there and stood toe to toe with them. There was no thought about keeping it tight and getting a result to take back to Anfield. We just went out there and attacked them. We dominated that game and were the better side for most of it. Yet we lost by three and they could have scored another three on the break late on.
Klopp sprung a few surprises in his team selection with no Trent, Bobby or Hendo in the starting line up. I don’t think it was a great surprise that Gomez got the nod at right back, as Barca rampage forward down that side through Alba so it made sense to shore things up with the more defensive minded Gomez. In hindsight though, it was a weird one, and I’ll explain why.
Selecting Gomez makes perfect sense if you’re going to play a tight, counter attacking game with the emphasis on defending. I’m sure we all thought that’s how we’d approach the game, but that’s not what we did at all. We tried to win the tie in this leg, which isn’t how it’s usually done.
Now we can argue to and fro about whether that’s the approach we should be taking (personally I loved it), but one thing I’m sure we can all agree on is that if we are going to blitz them and play on the front foot for the entire game while sending the full backs on overlaps and generally looking to attack them at every opportunity, then Trent is far more suited to that than Joe is.
That was a mistake. Gomez offered nothing in the final third and I don’t even think what he gave us defensively was that significant an upgrade on what Trent would have.
Playing Gini as a false nine, in Bobby’s role, was a weird one too. That being said, if Salah and Mané had taken their chances we’d be hailing that move as a stroke of genius. Wijnaldum did a good job in terms of occupying space and helping to stop Barca dominating possession as they normally do. But he's not Bobby, so it weakened us considerably.
It’s hard to criticise the tactics and selection though when we’ve gone to the Nou Camp and dominated. We had them on the ropes for a lot of this game so the tactical set up clearly worked, even if it did look a little unorthodox. When it’s all said and done though, it comes down to putting the ball in the net and we didn’t do it.
I’m torn on how to feel about this. A long term view would be to say that this performance showed just how good this team is and what it can become. The short term view (which is dominating my feelings right now) is that we lost and we’re almost certainly going to win nothing again. It hurts like fuck because these lads have done so well and given us so much this season, and for what? Yet more heartbreak by the looks of it.
Leaving the emotion out of it and looking at it from a purely logical point of view, we’re in a really strong situation with this manager and group of players. They’re special and despite the result here they showed it. It’s very rare you see anyone go to Camp Nou and play like this. Sure, teams will go there and maybe pull off a smash and grab, but who goes there and has more possession and creates more chances (last few minutes of madness apart) than them? It’s almost unheard of, but we did it. Unfortunately we didn’t take any of them and they’ve got Messi.
That’s why we’re virtually out of the competition and hanging on only by the faintest of threads. You never know of course, and strange things happen at Anfield on European nights, but our goose was probably cooked the moment Mo missed that late sitter.
If we’d nicked that late away goal it would have changed everything. We would have only needed to win 2-0 next week, but just as importantly it would have completely changed the mood in both camps. We’d have had something to cling to and they’d be kicking themselves for leaving the door a little ajar.
We didn’t get that crucial goal though because Salah’s right foot is - and let me be brutally honest here because someone has to - fucking garbage. It’s been hindering him all season as loads of times he’s failed to take chances because he’s so desperate to get onto his left foot. This was the worst yet though. It’s an open goal. Net gaping. Six yards. And he hits the fucking post.
At the risk of going all ‘yer da’ here, how can a player as good as he is be so completely fucking rancid on his weaker foot? Does he even bother working to improve it or is he happy to just do everything with his left peg? Seriously, he should be embarrassed and ashamed at that miss. Whatsmore, he should be staying behind after training every day and shooting with his right peg until he’s as two footed as Mané is.
He’d played well prior to that too, but what does it matter when he’s missing a chance like that? I’d rather he played like dogshit and taken the one opportunity that came his way. It’s not just him, mind. Milner missed a sitter as well and Mané could have done better with a presentable chance he had in the first half.
It’s so frustrating because it’s the small details that have turned what would have been arguably our most impressive European performance ever into a fucking 3-0 defeat. 95% of this game was outstanding, but that 5% has fucked us. Big time.
We started the game brilliantly and were right in their faces. We were pushed right up into their box pressing them and we tried to play the game in their half. I doubt they were expecting that and they never looked comfortable at all other than when the ball was at Messi’s feet.
Every time he picks the ball up your heart is in your mouth. Even when he’s on the halfway line it’s still terrifying because he just turns and runs, and attracts three or four defenders to him. That leaves so much space for everyone else and he can usually find them. I said prior to the game that he’s the only thing that scares me about them and I stand by it.
Suarez scored and was a pain in the arse, while Alba is always a threat too, but Messi is the problem, not them. He's almost impossible to stop, certainly if you play as adventurously as we do. Chelsea had some success against him but that was with eleven men behind the ball. We don’t play like that so stopping him is really hard. All things considered, the lads did a pretty good job on him.
What can you do though when your luck is out? Messi’s first was a tap in after three or four lucky bounces went their way, and the second was a 35 yard free-kick into the top corner. It took the slightest of nicks of Gomez on the way through and that tiny deflection helped put it just out of the reach of Alisson into the top corner.
Of course no-one is mentioning that because it doesn’t fit in with the mass sucking of Messi’s little micro cock (I’m assuming it’s tiny, like Maradona’s. There has to be some trade off for being blessed with all that talent, surely?).
There was not really anything the likes of Alisson, Fabinho and the back four could do about it, especially when Messi won the free-kick by jumping in the air and landing a left hook to Fabinho’s head. I mean fucking hell, it’s hard enough playing against him but when the ref is allowing shit like that to go on, what hope do you have?
If that was some little nomark doing that and not Messi, UEFA would be looking at video evidence and suspending him. Can’t be banning the world’s greatest player from such a showpiece event though, can they?
I’d also like to know what the fuck went on with the Mané penalty incident in the first half. Was that not referred to VAR, or did the video ref look at it and think it was fine? Maybe Mané was a fraction offside and that’s why it wasn’t looked at? The whole thing is confusing to me, as in our game with Porto it felt like the video was involved in every decision.
To me it’s a penalty (unless he was offside), but if the ref watches a replay and is happy with his initial take, then ok. But the technology is there, why are they not using it? Maybe the VAR called in sick, because for once there was no involvement from him at all.
Mané was tormenting them in the first half and clearly had the beating of his man (who often resorted to blatantly fouling him and getting away with it). Him and Robbo were terrorising them down that flank while Mo was frequently getting the better of Alba and that shite left sided centre half (who again, just resorted to shirt pulling). He’s a huge weak link, we should have exploited that more really, especially after he was finally given a yellow card.
It was all going so well. The only negative was the loss of Naby to a groin injury. Not sure what caused it, but the fucking awful challenge on him by Rakitic wouldn’t have helped. Scissor tackle from behind? In what world is that not a booking? Barca world, apparently. The same world where punching an opponent in the head gets you a free-kick and him a booking.
Naby was looking good too, but his replacement was Hendo who probably should have started anyway. Klopp wanted fresh legs, which is fair enough, but Hendo’s a fit lad and he’d had four days rest. Leaving the captain out of a game like this when he was in such great form was baffling to me, and I imagine he’ll have been seething.
He made a bright start when he came on and produced a peach of a ball to Mané who couldn’t keep his shot down. Barca were clearly worried as they kept surrounding the ref over every little decision. Messi was fouled by Milner and rolled and rolled and rolled like Neymar in the World Cup while his outraged team-mates (led by Suarez, of course) demanded a booking for Milner.
Even worse was Messi’s ludicrous reaction to the ball deflecting up off Matip’s foot and brushing his hand after he made a challenge in the box. There isn’t an official in the world who would have given a penalty for that yet Messi spent the next five minutes following the ref all over the field complaining about it.
All of this told me they were rattled. They knew how good we were and that they had their hands full. All good. Then we conceded out of nothing. Fucks sake.
It was bad defending all round. Gomez didn’t deal well with the switch of play, Henderson didn’t get close enough to Alba to prevent the cross, Van Dijk inexplicably didn’t go with the run of Suarez and Alisson gambled which way the ball was going and guessed wrong. If he’d stayed on his feet he’d have saved it. Really poor from several players.
Suarez predictably went nuts with his celebration and I’ll say my piece on this later.
The reaction to going behind was ok but it understandably unsettled us a little. More significantly, it lifted them and their crowd. I don’t get all the talk about the Nou Camp atmosphere. 98,000 people in there whistling when any decision doesn’t go their way doesn’t make it a good atmosphere. I’ve been there twice and it was awful. Shit fans full of a sense of entitlement.
They’re loud when they score but when the chips are down that crowd is shite. Coutinho was booed off when he was subbed too. Maybe he’s not enough of a snide cunt to fit in? Klopp was right. He could have been a legend here, but he’s just another player there, an afterthought even. A lot of you are thinking “He made his bed, let him lie in it”. I get it, but personally I’d go and drag him out of that bed and tuck him back into the one he left here. That’s a conversation for another time though.
We had them reeling but the goal woke the crowd up and the remainder of the first half was difficult. Suarez was acting the cunt and him and Robbo got into it and had to be kept apart in the tunnel. I didn’t think I could love Robbo more than I already do, but I was wrong. Messi apart, he was the best player on the pitch. Phenomenal performance at both ends.
So the second half starts and it’s almost complete Liverpool dominance. The only reaction from their crowd is to howl for free kicks and whistle if they don’t get them, or whistle their own players any time they gave away possession, which was a lot.
The first 20 minutes or so of that second half was surreal. We had them pinned back, they couldn’t get the ball and when they did they couldn’t keep it. We had chances and looked really threatening. Their coach even took the unusual step of removing one of their forwards (the ineffective Coutinho) and sent on a second full back to try and stop Robbo.
And then, just like that they got a fucking spawny second goal out of absolutely nothing. The only scant consolation I can take from that was at least it wasn’t Suarez who scored. Such a massive kick in the balls though.
The weird thing is I saw it coming. You’ll never guess what game I was thinking of about five minutes before we conceded. I swear, I was having flashbacks from Hull City away a couple of seasons back when we lost 2-0. Yes, that’s right, I was watching us playing Barcelona away and thinking “this is like when we played Hull, we’re gonna concede one out of absolutely nowhere here”.
I suppose that’s a sign of how far this team has come that we're in the Nou Camp and I'm thinking it was like playing Hull.
The second goal was just a killer because at this point we have a choice. Keep the 2-0 and make sure it doesn’t get worse, or go all out to try and get the away goal. Obviously we went with the latter option, which was definitely the best way to go as that’s our natural game. That’s what got us here, so why go away from that? Klopp wanted to score, and it made sense.
Bobby belatedly came on and we were still playing quite well. It wasn’t until they got the third goal that things really went south. After that it was a hot mess and Klopp lost his head as far as I’m concerned. We should have pulled one back immediately from the kick off when Mané caused confusion, Bobby had a shot cleared off the line and Mo hit the post with the goal gaping.
After that we were lucky not to concede a bagful. Origi was sent on and the message was clear; try and score at all costs. We were throwing everyone forward and in stoppage time Klopp was even telling Alisson to go up for a corner. Thankfully the keeper had more sense than that and stayed home, but what the fuck, Jurgen? It’s half time, that kind of shit is just stupid.
What made it even more insane was that every time we had a corner they managed to break on us. Why would you risk not having your keeper back there? On one occasion Robbo was back on his own against three of the cunts. They didn’t score, because Robbo is boss and some of the other lads raced back to help. We were living so dangerously though, and it’s lucky that Dembele’s finishing was as bad as ours. He missed two late sitters that would have completely taken the tie away from us.
Now? It’s going to be extremely tough and the odds are against us, but there’s still a slim chance. Had Dembele taken either of those there’d be no way back. If our finishing is sharp next week then who knows. We’ll create chances because their defence is shite and their midfield is massively over-rated too. Roma beat them 3-0 last season and we’re better than Roma. I’m not giving up completely but in all probability we’re fucked now.
Still, we needed three goals in twenty minutes against Dortmund and got them, so there is still a tiny chance we could turn it around, but to be honest I’m dreading next week now because they’re going to crank up the shithousery several notches. It’s going to be unbearable watching the cheating and play-acting and constant breaking up of play.
I still feel like we’re a better team than Barcelona but they’ve got Messi and I can’t see us keeping a clean sheet next week with him around. He’s a little twat like, and his playacting to try and get Milner in trouble was unbecoming of someone with his talent and reputation. I expect that shit from Neymar, Suarez or Ronaldo. Messi is usually above that because he rarely needs to do it. In a way it’s a compliment that he felt threatened enough by us to delve into his bag of dark arts.
It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise given the company he keeps. Which brings me to you know who. Let me first state that there are people within his own family that don’t love Luis Suarez as much as I did. Even now, I’d not completely been able to rid myself of it. I probably needed this game to finally sever that emotional tie. He's officially dead to me now.
He celebrated his goal like it was the winner in the final. Fair enough, I don’t have any real issue with that really, as it’s who he is. He also continually left his foot in on people, picked a fight with Robbo, picked another one with Alisson and generally just acted the twat all night, rolling around and trying to get our lads booked. Again, fair enough. That’s how he plays and we loved him for it when he was doing it for us.
He’s not doing it for us anymore though. He’s doing it against us. This is the point. He doesn’t owe us a thing and we knew this is exactly how he’d act. Shit, I’m willing to bet he pulls the same kind of shit when he’s having a kick around with Delfina in his back garden. It’s who he is. It’s what makes him great.
But it goes both ways. He's entitled to do all that, and we're entitled to think he's a twat for doing it. Usually with former players we're warm and welcoming (with one or two notable exceptions), but we don’t owe Luis Suarez a fucking thing. His loyalties are 100% with Barcelona now and no amount of patronising little soundbites about how he loved his time here changes any of that. I hope he doesn’t come out with any of that fucking nonsense next week.
He played for us. He was great. We loved him. He fucked off. We were just a stepping stone for him to get where he wanted to. He loves us about as much as Lukaku loves Everton.
When he comes here next week, I want our lads to boot fuck out of him and I want Anfield to be like a fucking bear pit. No room for sentiment, fuck him. And don’t ever fucking bring him back for any of those charity matches either. Fuck that shit. Let him play for Barca’s legends side, not ours.
Don’t applaud him next week, don’t sing his name, give him absolute fucking hell, because what he did for us counts for nothing anymore. He’s just a rival player pulling any little trick he can to give himself an edge over our team, and he should be treated as such.
I only hope that Klopp is telling the lads to do everything they can to rile him up and get him sent off. Stand on his foot at set-plays, pinch him, insult his mother, just do whatever it takes to get him to react and then hit the deck like a sack of shit.
You have to play these cunts at their own game. Along with Madrid, there are no bigger shithouses in European football. They have it down to a fine art and because of who they are, referees are to scared to do anything about it. Next week, do whatever it fucking takes to get at them, legal or not. Especially Suarez. And Busquets. And Alba.
Fuck Messi too. He’ll probably be applauded off after he’s knocked us out as people will want to show how ‘sporting’ they are and to recognise his greatness. To quote the great Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs: “Fuck all that”.
He rolled for about 20 yards to try and get Milner and booking and then laughed about it. He went mad wanting a penalty for the clearest ball to hand incident you’ll ever see. He punched Fabinho in the head before falling over to win the free-kick he scored from, and the little cunt was in the ref’s ear from minute one complaining about everything.
Fuck him, the tax dodging, choking in World Cups, Chelsea enabling little shithouse. No wonder Ronaldo hates him. He pulls all the same shit Ronaldo does (ok, maybe not the rape) but gets none of the heat for it because he’s St Lionel of Catalunya. Well fuck him, I hope Fabinho snaps him in half next week.
As you can tell, I’m not handling all this at all well. I’m now pretty much resigned to this team ending the season with nothing and it’s really hard to take. It feels as though we’re destined to never fucking win anything again. There’s always something gets in the way, and often it seems to be things that aren’t in our control.
I have no blame or recriminations, and people looking to certain individual players or dissecting every decision Klopp has made really ought to stop. Klopp and the lads have been incredible this season. Hell, they were incredible in this game. Like I said at the beginning, you just don’t see teams play like this in the Nou Camp. It doesn’t happen. The result was a complete anomaly that didn’t reflect the game itself, but it’s typical of the kind of shit that happens to us when we get within touching distance of a trophy.
If I have one criticism it would relate to the failure to bring in another high quality front three option last summer. I’m not talking about signing cover, I think we needed to sign competition for them. We have competition everywhere else, but we have three forwards and whenever any of them are missing it’s been Origi, Sturridge and now Wijnaldum. In Kiev, when Mo went off, it was Lallana.
That’s a problem and it needs to be addressed this summer, because the drop off from any of the front three to their replacements is just too big. We’re well set everywhere else, so I’d be all in favour of spending basically the whole budget on someone on the same level as Salah and Mané. It concerns me that the reports coming out from journalists closest to the club are that the plan is to bring Brewster into the squad and give Origi a new contract. No no no no no no.
We’ve seen what happens whenever one of the front three is missing. We can cope against Watford or Brighton or whoever, but against the very best teams we need quality. Having to play Wijnaldum in Bobby’s place because none of the back up forwards can be trusted says it all. We’ve been fortunate that the front three have stayed fit for almost the entire season. We can’t always rely on that though, and hopefully if Klopp didn’t know that already, he does now.
The biggest problem we have though, and one which I’m not sure how we can solve, is that in the decisive moments when trophies are on the line we just don’t have any fucking luck whatsoever. We just can’t catch a break when it really matters. I’m just fucking sick of being bridesmaids all the time.
Star man is Robbo with an honourable mention to ol’ Big Bird who was terrific too.
Team: Alisson; Gomez, Matip, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Milner (Origi), Keita (Henderson), Wijnaldum (Firmino); Salah, Mané:
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