So much for the Chelsea game being the turning point then. If anything it merely emphasised what we already knew; it’s not the big teams we need to worry about. Hull joined Swansea, Burnley, Bournemouth, Southampton (twice) and Wolves on a list of shite teams to have beaten us this season. We haven’t lost to anyone in the top eleven, but that’s probably about to change fairly quickly as we’re in complete and utter freefall now.
Worryingly, we’ve got no more straws left to clutch. Everything was meant to be ok when Coutinho came back, except it hasn’t made a difference as he’s been shite. Still, we’d be ok when Matip returned to shore up the defence, right? Wrong, he’s been shite too. It’s because Mané isn’t here, we’ll get back on track once he’s back. Yeah, guess we can cross that one off too. He was decent enough against Hull but that’s not enough to turn this sinking ship around.
Klopp had virtually a full strength squad to choose from against Hull, yet it made fuck all difference. Why he started Can over Wijnaldum is anyone’s guess, but if we’re using that as the reason for the defeat then we’re clutching at the thinnest of straws.
It goes way beyond all of that for me now, and I’m not buying that our sudden decline into shitness is because teams have ‘found us out’ either. It was the easy conclusion to jump to initially, but when you actually stop and think about it, it’s fucking bollocks. Yeah, every team we face now is doing a similar thing, but it’s not like they’ve reinvented the wheel. They’re doing the exact same thing shit teams have ALWAYS done. Men behind the ball, force us wide to prevent us getting through the middle, and wait for a mistake/set-piece/counter attack.
There’s nothing new here folks, and how can you explain that this very same group of players were demolishing teams who set up like that against us only a few months ago? The opposition haven’t changed, we have. I no longer believe it’s tactical either, at least not entirely anyway. The players know how to beat teams who play like that because they’ve done it easily enough before, and the idea that a manager as successful as Klopp doesn’t know how to break down the most basic of defensive approaches is ridiculous. He knows how to do it and you can be sure they’ve been working on it in training all season.
So what’s going wrong then?
If we’re talking just about the Hull game then what went wrong was Mignolet gifted them a goal they didn’t have to work for, Coutinho missed an absolute sitter that would not only have equalised but would probably have led to us going on to win the game, and then Lucas and Matip fell asleep to allow a man who had been laughed out of Goodison Park the chance to inflict the ultimate humiliation on us. That’s the short, simple version.
It’s not just the Hull game though is it? If it was, we could shrug it off, like we did the Burnley loss. A three month unbeaten run followed that one, but we’ll be doing well if we go one whole week without losing at the moment. One win in ten tells its own story. It’s not about this player or that player, or one system or another, or even about style of play. Those are symptoms of the problem, not the cause.
I’m now of the opinion that it’s not about what the opposition are doing and it’s not about who Klopp picks, doesn’t pick, what system he uses etc. None of that mattered a few months ago when we were swashbuckling our way to the top of the table and threatening to break every goalscoring record in club history. These are the same fucking players, although you’d never know by watching them now.
For me, this whole mess is the result of a lack of confidence that has come about because certain circumstances combined to put us in a bad run, and these players just don’t have the mental toughness and strength of character to deal with it. This group of players look great when things are going well. They play instinctive, exciting football, and look as good as anybody when they’ve got a fair wind behind them. When the water gets choppy though they’re either hiding below deck or heading for the lifeboats.
Signing a player or two at the beginning of January would have helped because it would have lifted everyone and perhaps prevented the start of what would go on to become a massive slump. Doing nothing was asking for trouble, and trouble is what we've got now. We have one win in ten games, and that was against a League Two side at the second time of asking. It’s fucking scandalous.
It’s not about effort though, there’s rarely - if ever - a problem in terms of their work rate. That’s probably why Klopp seems to like them so much. They want to do well, they listen to him and they’re a nice group of lads. They've got no balls though and as soon as they lost the confidence they were playing with in the Autumn, it was game over for us. They just don't handle adversity well.
Take the Hull game as an example. There were countless occasions when we got into promising situations only to completely fuck it up. Whether it’s poor decision making or poor technique, for me both are a direct result of the fragile mental state of the squad. It’s not that they lack ability, if it was they’d never have got into a position where they looked like genuine title contenders at the halfway point of the season, they just aren't winners.
They weren’t making those bad decisions when they were scoring four, five, six against teams like Hull, Leicester, Stoke and Watford earlier in the season. The technique wasn’t a problem then either as our front four looked unstoppable. Now you’ve got Lallana allowing the ball to run under his foot and go out for a throw in and Coutinho misplacing a simple 20 yard pass and putting it straight into touch. They’re completely devoid of confidence.
Klopp has put far too much faith in these players but it’s probably because he’s judged them on the good things they’ve done rather than the choke jobs they’ve subjected us to, like in the Europa League final for example. They probably look great in training too (there’s no pressure on them see) but this last month surely has to have told him now that the squad needs major work because he doesn’t have one world class player, let alone the two or there you need to drag everybody else along during the tough times.
Of course last week he was telling us Coutinho is world class, but is he fuck. Great on his day, but you can’t rely on him to do it often enough and when the chips are down he’s not the man who is going to drag you out of it. Who is though? Not Klopp, as there’s only so much he can do without actually being on the pitch with them.
He’s not helping with certain decisions, but honestly, it’s reached the point where I feel like any move he makes is just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. I mean, would starting Sturridge or Wijnaldum or (don’t laugh) Karius make any difference whatsoever? It hasn’t so far when he’s done it, so what else can he do to fix this mess?
This wasn’t about one or two players, it was virtually the whole team. Clyne was alright, Hendo couldn’t have done much more than he did and Mané was ok, but the rest were fucking dire. Coutinho’s been shite since he came back. Blame it on the injury if you like, but he was out for six weeks, not six months. His performance at Hull was pitiful.
I feel like it’s Groundhog Day because I remember writing this exact same thing a year ago. The comparison I made then was that he’s Luis Garcia and not Luis Suarez. The point still stands, although I expect he’ll hit a little run of great form soon and we’ll have all the “world class” stuff thrown at us again until he reverts back to type.
It’s not his fault though. It’s not like he’s running around telling people he’s world class. He’s a nice lad, very low key, humble and a quality player. He typifies what’s wrong with us as a club right now, but he’s not to blame for that. The blame lies with those who have failed to add the quality around him and have instead pushed him front and centre as the face of the club and our star player.
And so much for “we’ll be ok when we get Firmino back at centre forward and Lallana in midfield”. They were both fucking shocking against Hull. Not as bad as Coutinho but not far off it. Players who did so well to get us to the top of the league now can’t beat anybody. Where once they dazzled, now they look frazzled, in some cases physically (Milner I’m looking at you) but in most cases mentally.
Mignolet’s feebleness cost us the first goal and if he hadn’t gift wrapped that goal maybe we’d have won this game, who knows? It’s not goalkeeping that is responsible for the ‘one in ten though’. Yes, neither of our keepers are good enough, but we could have De Gea and Courtois both playing at the same time and we still wouldn’t be winning games at the moment.
We pass ourselves to sleep, rarely threaten the opposition goal, concede regularly from set-pieces and invariably leave the back door open for counter attacks. Sometimes it will only be one or two of those that are on show, but we got the triple whammy against Hull. All our worst fears realised in one sorry, brutal 90 minutes against a team we’d have swatted aside a couple of months ago.
When that bum Niasse came on, there was nothing more certain than him being the fly on top of the turd. That said, the way it happened was utterly unforgivable and that probably angered me more than anything else about the game. We’d already lost at that point as we were never going to score, but even so, giving away a goal like that tipped me over the edge. I don’t know how Klopp kept his cool with them as I wouldn’t have let most of them back on the coach home.
That might be one of the worst goals I’ve ever seen us concede. You always run the risk of getting done on the counter when you’re chasing a game (like Shane Long’s winner at Anfield last week), but that’s not what this was. We hadn’t over committed and the situation should have been in hand. This wasn’t a counter attack as Hull still had ten men behind the ball and we had two players back to cover the one they had up. Mané lost it on the edge of their box and then one straight ball up the middle caught out both of our centre backs. It was schoolboy level shit and it should never happen at this level. Both Lucas and Matip need their arse kicking for it, the pair of dickheads.
It was the ultimate insult, a player who is regarded by many Blues as the worst player they’ve ever signed, and here he is twisting the knife on us. I’m sick of this fucking team now, making us a fucking laughing stock. We’re like a worse version of Arsenal. Of all the false dawns and letdowns we’ve suffered in 27 years, this season might just be the worst of them all.
I had resisted the urge to get on board with them for longer than most, mainly because the scars from the Sevilla loss never really healed, but eventually they won me over and got me dreaming again. More fool me and everyone else who allowed themselves to be suckered in yet again. Next time I start to believe in them, someone please knock some sense into me.
I’m sick of hearing Klopp taking about how we need to be positive and believe and ‘hold our nerve’ and all that other shit. He needs to do it and he needs to find a way to get those fucking players to do it, but the fans have had almost three decades of this shit and you just can’t expect us to keep showing blind faith, because that's what it is right now. He wants us to believe, but what is there to believe in? Shitting the bed in cup finals and semifinals, and continually losing to teams in the bottom half?
We’ve lost our spot in the top four now and there’s every chance we’ll be overtaken by United next week and we’ve even got fucking Everton breathing down our necks now. Hold our nerve? Please, spare me. There’s nothing but misery to look forward to now until the summer, and even then it’s difficult to have any faith that we’ll do anything in the transfer market to fix things, because that would involve, y'know, spending money, and no-one at the club seems remotely interested in doing that.
Best case scenario is we somehow stop the slide and finish in the top four, but all that does is pretty much guarantee we’ll be shite next season and the players will be fucked by the time they get to December. Hell, they couldn’t cope with the fixture load this year and that was without any Europe.
We’d be better off finishing out of the European qualifying positions, but that means finishing sixth or worse, and none of us want that either, especially if it means finishing below Mourinho’s Mancs. There’s no happy ending for us this year whatever happens now. They’ve completely shit all over our hopes and dreams once again.
I expect (although I’m far from certain now) that we’ll eventually snap out of this and might even go on another good run, but if we do I just hope that Klopp doesn’t allow himself to be fooled by it. Whatever happens between now and May, nothing can disguise that this team blew it when the pressure was on them. Again.
It’s who they are, so do us a favour Jurgen, stop trying to convince us otherwise, and more importantly, please don’t convince yourself of it either, otherwise nothing will change.
Star man is Hendo, for what it’s worth.
Team: Mignolet; Clyne, Matip, Lucas, Milner (Moreno); Henderson, Can (Sturridge), Lallana (Origi); Mané, Firmino, Coutinho:
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