Fulham 1 Liverpool 1 (Dec 13 2020)

This season is just horrible. It’s just a massive fucking grind and we never know from week to week which player is going to the next to be struck down with injury.

Combine that with us suddenly forgetting how to win away from home and if we do manage to retain the title it might well be our greatest ever achievement.

This was awful. In fact, for the opening half an hour it was worse than Villa. At least in that game we put some decent attacks together and we were trading punches with them. This was different. We were on the ropes getting battered.

At Villa we had Adrian in goal and no Henderson to keep everyone’s heads up and help us turn the tide. This time Alisson was between the sticks making save after save and the skipper was there to drag us back into the game. Other than that this felt a lot like Villa Park.

We started terribly. Fulham were bang at it and we just weren’t ready for them. I don’t know why. I doubt anyone really does. It’s probably not a co-incidence that nearly all of the teams that played in Europe this week were rubbish at the weekend though. That was the sixth European game and it would seem that it caught up with everybody.

Spurs were below par and dropped points. Chelsea were crap and lost. City and United served up a stinker in the Manc derby. Arsenal were… well, Arsenal. Leicester were the only ones to win I think.

Granted, not all of our starting eleven had featured in Denmark (none of them should have, but that’s another story) but they all travelled and trained and had their week disrupted by it. Maybe that’s why we were caught cold by Fulham or maybe it was something else. Who knows? 

Against Villa a lot of the problem for me was just not being up for it. We just weren’t there mentally and got punished. This won’t have been that. The Villa game showed everyone what can happen if you aren’t completely at it and if you don’t treat every game like it’s a big one. That’s been one of our great strengths these last few years. It’s a mantra within the camp, every game is huge. 

It was even referenced by Trent and Robbo on Wingmen when they were asked about big games and they were both like “they’re all huge games”. They weren’t saying it for the sake of it either, you could tell it’s something that has been drummed into them all. Hendo referenced it too when he was on.

So I don’t think there was any complacency against Fulham but for whatever reason the lads just weren’t ready for what they walked into. Maybe it was the lift that having fans back in gave the home side? We’ve seen that in a lot of other games this past week or so as well. It’s only really Arsenal that didn’t respond.

Fulham were just flying around, winning every second ball and throwing men forward with every attack. We struggled to cope with the onslaught. They also did a great job of stopping us playing when we had the ball. Not as good a job as we did of stopping ourselves, mind, but they did well ensuring there was no space for the full backs to advance into and because of that we just couldn’t build any attacks.

Basically they battered us for half an hour and could easily have scored three or four. Alisson made at least three saves and there was a long VAR stoppage while they checked for a possible penalty against Fabinho.

My first reaction when they checked that was “you can fuck right off if you’re giving that as a pen”. It was as though Lee Mason was desperately wanting that to be a foul the way he kept rewinding it and watching over and over, just trying to find a conclusive angle that showed contact on the Fulham player. 

Fabinho looked disgusted that it was even being checked as he knew he’d played the ball. I couldn’t see a foul at all and I was getting more and more annoyed with every replay.

After what seemed like an age, Mason was then going further back to see if there was a foul on Wijnaldum in the build up. As soon as he started checking that you knew he was telling Andre Marriner he needed to look at the Fabinho challenge.

For what it’s worth, it probably was a foul on Wijnaldum but it was one of those that could go either way, and virtually nothing like that has gone our way this season so we were never getting that.

When Marriner went to look at the screen I was convinced we’d see him do that fucking annoying charades gesture refs have to do where they draw a square with their hands and then point to the spot. Amazingly, he didn’t. 

On reflection, it was actually a penalty. At that moment I didn’t think so and I’d have been livid if Marriner had given it, but when they were showing it at half time I could see why Mason thought Marriner should look at it as Fabinho did catch man and then ball.

However, it was only a penalty if you watch in super slo mo and from a certain angle. Normal speed, all the other angles, that’s clearly a good tackle. And Fabinho will have absolutely thought he made a clean tackle because unless you’re slowing it right down to almost a standstill, he played the ball and man at the same time, and he barely even touched the man (although it was definitely enough to knock his standing foot out before he could plant it).

The question really is do we want decisions to be THAT precise? I mean, yeah he caught the lads foot a millisecond before he played the ball, but if you take the video out of the equation that has never been a penalty in the history of the sport. It’s just a good tackle, a corner and everyone gets on with it. 

Now, when you slow everything right down like that, it’s a penalty. I’m not sure I want decisions to be made that way though. It’s too thorough and too precise, and contact sports shouldn’t be judged that way. 

I’m actually stunned that Marriner stuck with his original decision after Mason told him to go take a look. I was obviously made up and full of praise for Marriner not being a sheep and for standing by his own judgement. At the time though I was still thinking it wasn’t a pen.

It was only from looking more closely at replays later on I saw that technically it was a foul. In some ways I suppose that vindicates Marriner anyway, as can it be ‘clear and obvious’ when you need to slow it down and zoom right in?

I don’t know. I suppose if the technology is in play and they’re supposed to use it, then Marriner should have given a penalty, but the game as a whole would be much better if refs took this approach and used common sense. 

They won’t though, and that’s the problem. You either need everyone judging it that way or everyone going by the absolute letter of the law and going with what the video shows them. Otherwise you get the inconsistencies we’ve seen this season and there’s nothing that infuriates fans, players and managers more than inconsistent officiating.

So Fabinho got away with one there, which you could say evens the score after the incorrect penalty decision he was on the wrong end of against Sheffield United. That backs up the inconsistency point though really. Mike Dean should not have given a foul for that but the video didn’t over-rule that decision. It only over-ruled his decision that it was outside the box.

The whole thing is just a giant fucking mess. Every game I’m talking about this shit. I’m boring myself so I can imagine how you all must be feeling. How can I not mention it though? It’s actually becoming the main story in most games now.

I mean just look at Fulham’s goal. Salah is clearly pushed in the back on the edge of the box before the ball is rolled to Bobby Reid to score (great finish by the way).

Now, Salah clearly makes a meal of that contact to ensure the referee saw there was a push. The ref ignored it and although there was a VAR check of it, that check amounted to watching it a couple of times at full speed and then dismissing it as nothing.

The Fabinho challenge was scrutinised over and over, from every conceivable angle, just so Mason could finally find one that showed it to be a foul. This one? You could see the lad put two hands in Salah’s back and shove him. It didn’t even need a load of replays as it was clear from the first one, but if you didn’t know better you’d think that Mason wanted one incident to be a foul and did everything he could to prove it was, and the other he wanted to just sweep under the carpet.

If you put two hands in the back of another player and shove, even if it’s not a particularly hard shove (which this defo wasn’t), it’s almost always given as a free kick. As I said though, when it comes to judgement calls rather than factual ones, this season we aren’t getting anything. Anything that comes down the discretion of VAR has basically fucked us in the arse with a giant cactus.

For example, Lookman later went right over the ball on Neco and it was a clear red card, but where was the scrutiny on that one? If one of our lads had done that Mason would have been like a dog with two dicks.

I’ll be honest though, I wasn’t even particularly angry about that goal being given because I felt as though we needed it to wake us up. We’d been fucking atrocious and deserved to be behind, and now that we were I expected a response.

It didn’t come immediately but it did come. It was around the half hour mark that we finally got a grip and took control. We kept that control for the rest of the game but we didn’t do anywhere near enough with it.

We could easily have gotten out of there with a win but we wouldn’t have deserved it. Fulham defended brilliantly and I never thought I’d say that about them. They’ve come a long way since they ditched the chuckle brothers Ream and LeMarchand.

I think Scott ‘ Scotty’ Parker might actually know what he’s doing you know, and it pains me to say that because I’d love to be mocking him for being a jumped up little bellend who doesn’t have a clue. The evidence so far this season suggests he has them well organised and it’s a lack of quality that is their problem rather than anything coaching related. Similar to Brighton really.

I had Fulham as absolute certainties to go down because I didn’t think they could defend and I thought Parker was more than likely a fraud in the Lampard / Arteta mould. I may have been wrong on both counts, but we’ll see.

I thought they were brilliant in this game. For half an hour they battered us and then for the next hour they dug in and generally kept us at arms length. We didn’t really create much did we?

Salah and Mané wasted great chances in the first half, Hendo and Jones were denied by the keeper in the second half and we had the fortunate penalty that allowed us to grab a point. Aside from that, not much really.

I say fortunate penalty more in terms of the way we won it rather than it being a lucky decision. It’s a definite penalty. If you turn your back like that and it hits an outstretched elbow, it has to be given. 

If I was making the rules I’m not 100% sure I’d have that as a penalty (although I probably would, for the cowardice aspect of it as much as anything) but everyone knows what the rule is and that is going to be a penalty every single time now, especially with VAR there to confirm if it hit an arm or not. 

It was so obvious that all our lads appealed and even Marriner saw it clearly and gave the pen himself immediately, so he didn’t even need the second opinion. I don’t worry about Mo’s penalties anymore but I wouldn’t say I was confident either.

Mo’s penalties have been sound these last couple of years but this one was fucking woeful. Somehow it went in though. I say somehow, but I know exactly how it went in and it’s something I’ve been complaining about for years.

Why do some goalkeepers think they need to use their hands to save everything? I see it so often. A ball is right next to a keeper’s foot but instead of just sticking out a boot and kicking it away, he tries to get down quickly and save with his hand.   It winds me up. 

I was always beyond useless in goal but I’d 100% have saved Salah’s penalty because I’d have just stuck my right leg out and booted it away. David De Gea would have saved it too, because shit as he is these days, he’s never been arsed how he kept the ball out of the net just as long as he did. Too many keepers want to look good rather than be effective.

The Fulham keeper did us a massive favour there and we should have gone on to win the game from that point. The truth is we never looked like we would because it was all such a fucking slog. We had loads of the ball but did nothing with it.

Sadio did absolutely fuck all other than one really good run past three players that I think ended in a corner. Mo wasn’t good and he kept doing that infuriating thing where he’d cut inside and then chip a high ball into the box looking for a tightly marked Bobby.

As for Bobby, in the first half an hour he was utter shite. I’ve been bigging him up lately as it felt like he was getting back into form, but this was terrible. In that period he was rivalling Lookman as Fulham’s best player. He did improve after that and he had some good moments (such as the pass that played Hendo in) but he was so deep for most of the game because he had to drop off that much just to get the ball.

It’s worth mentioning that his form only picked up when Jota went on a tear and his place in the team was no longer assured. Now Jota is out for two months it’s going to be interesting to see what we get from Bobby. This wasn’t a promising start but I don’t want to single him out here, especially when he wasn’t our worst performer.

Fulham did a number on us and we just couldn’t find space. We just ended up slinging in crosses that we were never going to score from. It was so frustrating and it got worse when Trent was replaced by Neco. I don’t blame the kid at all as he was just trying to make things happen, but every time he went to put a cross in I was thinking ‘don’t do it, no-one is getting on the end of it so why bother’.

I don’t want to dwell too much on the midweek selection but it’s hard not to look back on that and be pissed off. Firstly, we lost Jota for two months. To me it was just reckless sending any important first teamers over to play a game that simply didn’t matter. We lost Jota when it was completely avoidable.

It’s not just that though. In this game we were chasing a winner but had to take off Trent and Mo because they’d played 90 minutes in midweek. I get that there are all sorts of reasons why players are picked or not picked and in Trent’s case I get it. He’d been out for a month and needed 90 minutes. We can second guess that and say why not play him an hour in midweek and then 90 at the weekend but there’s a whole load of science goes into this stuff so I can accept that.

Salah playing 90 in Denmark though is baffling. Fabinho playing 45 was also irresponsible because what if he’d picked up an injury? Imagine the fucking state we’d be in now if he had, especially with Big Bird having to come off at half time in this one. 

I don’t know why Salah played, or why Jota played. I have no doubt Klopp and the staff had their reasons for it, but you know what, sometimes you can overthink things and ignore simple common sense. That’s what happened there and now we’re going to have to watch Origi fucking lumbering around aimlessly because of a needless risk.

Div needs to turn it around sharpish because, and I hate saying this because I really like the lad, he’s been dogshit for 12 months and we can’t afford that anymore. Jota isn’t there, someone needs to step up and unfortunately that person really needs to be Origi now. He has it in him but he’s shown nothing in over a year to suggest he’ll be much use.

I don’t have any great faith in Minamino either, although I thought he did ok when he came on. He wasn’t anything special but he did alright. I think I’d prefer him on the field to Origi but the really irritating thing is that fucking Shaq has disappeared again. With him and Thiago out there games like this would be so much easier.

I’m not counting on either of them being back soon, or staying fit when they eventually do come back. This whole season is just going to be a massive war of attrition for us and the way it’s going by the time we reach May Klopp will be having to select Gini, Robbo, Mo and the under 18 squad.

Star man is Jones. Could have been Hendo (who slotted into centre back nicely) but I’ll go with Curtis as he was by far our liveliest attacking player and he went closest to winning it late on with a brilliant run from inside his own half that took him all the way to the edge of the Fulham box. Just a shame he couldn’t have directed that shot more into the corner, as what a goal that would have been.

So next up it’s Spurs. It’s at Anfield so I expect a performance from us but the one thing we can’t do is start slow against these fuckers. And the last thing we need is to fall behind against them as they’ll park that bus and then break with Kane and Son. Start well, get on top of them, get in front and then build on it.

It’s too early in the season for any game to be must win, especially as this isn’t a normal season and everyone is going to drop a load of points between now and May. So we don’t need to win this, but I really, REALLY fucking want to win it. Especially as we can’t win away from home anymore so we’re leaning even more on our brilliant home record.

Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold (Williams), Matip (Minamino), Fabinho, Robertson; Henderson, Wijnaldum, Jones; Salah (Origi), Firmino, Mané: