Report by
Dave Usher
I know I shouldn’t be shocked by these kind of performances anymore, and yet I was. Of course it was entirely predictable and many of you will have seen it coming, but I didn’t. I expected us to beat Leicester and although Ranieri’s sacking did set some alarm bells off, after a 16 day “mini pre-season” coming off the back of the great performance against Spurs, I expected a performance. More fool me.
Forget the talk afterwards of how brilliant Leicester played and how fired up they were. They weren’t that good, they were just competent. Vardy was outstanding but their overall display didn’t do anything to justify how bad we were. This was maybe 20% about Leicester and the rest was completely on us. Klopp even said as much afterwards when he said it “wasn’t that intense.”
He’s right, it wasn’t. Leicester put in much more effort than they had been giving Ranieri, but they were still poor and there for the taking. So many times we got into good positions against them and they were wide open at the back. Not as wide open as us, but still. There were goals to be had against them but the front three were fucking abysmal, and when that happens don’t expect anyone else to ride to the rescue.
And then there’s the defence. Fuck me, it was as though they’d never seen Leicester - or Vardy - play before. eWe were just what the doctor ordered for a team that hadn’t even scored, let alone won, in 2017. That’s modern Liverpool though, a shit team’s wet dream.
These losers got themselves knocked out of two cups and were rewarded with a nice little warm weather training break in La Manga. I completely understand why Klopp did that and in theory it was a good idea. When they return and play like this in their first game back though it makes a mockery of the whole thing. Hopefully he’ll think twice before spoiling them like that again.
All this time some of us have been using the two games a week thing as an excuse and kidding ourselves that when the team is fresh they usually perform. Well what’s the excuse now? They were supposed to be fresh, hungry, revived and ready to go against Leicester. At least that’s what several of them had been telling us in the media this past fortnight. And this is what they fucking served up? THIS???
I’ve not been one for questioning their effort and most of the problems they’ve had have not been a result of a lack of trying. This was though. Leicester wanted it more and they worked harder. Our players strolled through this game. I get that it’s a completely different test than playing Spurs or one of the better teams. You can’t press high up the pitch against a team that only wants to twat it upfield to their greyhound striker. I get that. But still, there were times when they were fucking half arsing it around the pitch and that’s just not acceptable. 3-0 down and not one fucking player booked. That says it all.
Wijnaldum was fucking phenomenal in the first half against Spurs. In the first half of this game the only time I saw the cunt was when he passed the ball straight to Albrighton to cause the opening goal. Mané got kicked by Vardy in the firs minute and then did fuck all before he was eventually replaced by Moreno. El Magico did his regular disappearing act before grabbing a consolation goal when the game was over anyway, and don’t get me starter on fucking Firmino.
Lucas is taking a lot of heat too and there’s no getting away from the fact he was shite, but I can’t all in good conscience hammer him for not being fast enough to keep up with Vardy. We all knew that anyway, it’s hardly his fault. There are some games when he’s looked excellent at centre back, usually when he’s been up against a big man like Carroll or Crouch funnily enough, but you don’t want him having to go up against a speedster in a game when we’re defending so high up the pitch.
I laughed at Guardiola for wheeling out Kolorov against Vardy, but Klopp is no better. He was asking for trouble and Vardy running riot against Lucas is Klopp’s fault, not the player’s. Somehow Lucas is ahead of Klavan and Joe Gomez in the pecking order. How has that happened, what is Klopp seeing that nobody else is?
We may as well put Gomez in now and keep him there until May, because Lovren has morphed into Daniel Agger this season. We can’t rely on him because he’s never fucking fit anymore. It’s always something different too, it’s not like he’s had one bad injury that you can just put down to one of those things. He’s had six or seven different ailments this season.
Matip has been shite since he came back and basically there’s not one part of the team that’s functioning. I tweeted during the game that I couldn’t decide what was more infuriating; watching us attack or watching us defend. On reflection I’d say it’s the attack, because we know they can do better. The defence has been leaky for years so it’s pointless expecting any better. We’re on our way to conceding another fifty this year.
I’m not one of the Sakho fanboys and until now I’ve not really voiced any real dissent on the topic. But when I see what happened against the likes of Leicester and Hull, where Lucas was completely exposed, it’s hard not to think we wouldn’t be better off if Klopp hadn’t made an example of Sakho.
Sakho had some issues, but he’s not El Hadji fucking Diouf. He was made a pariah, forced to train with the kids (which he did without complaint and always gave his best in the under 23 games) and now he’s picking up man of the match awards at Palace while we’ve got Lucas towing caravans. When you’re top of the league and everything looks great, you don’t get any heat for decisions like that, but it’s hard to justify it in any way right now.
Produce countless shithouse performances against bottom dwellers and you’ll probably get a nice bumper new contract. Show up late to a meeting or two and you’ll find yourself persona non grata. It’s the new Liverpool Way.
This club rewards failure, and any time they win a game or two they’re lining up to tell us how great they are. All those shit signings the committee got hammered for? Klopp manages to coax a good couple of months out of them and suddenly it’s all “see, they were good players all along, it was all Brendan’s fault for not knowing how to use them” and that cunt Michael Edwards gets himself a nice promotion.
Coutinho has one of his little purple patches, then gets injured, and for some reason he gets given a new deal and massive pay rise even though he still had years left on his deal. Lallana too, to a lesser extent. Hell, even Klopp got a six year deal for finishing 8th even though he’d only been here a few months and had four years left on his current deal. Can’t wait until Emre fucking Can finally puts in a couple of good performances and they give in to his demands too.
Since the start of 2017 the only two players I can think of that I wouldn’t attach any blame to are Henderson and Clyne. You more or less know what you’ll get from the two regardless of the opposition. The rest have been mostly shite, except when they’ve come up against United, Chelsea or Spurs of course and they can go out and play like some plucky underdog giant killer. I now actually hate those two Brazilians we’ve got up front, they’re the ultimate fucking tease.
We’ll probably thump Arsenal on Saturday, but that’s just going to make me hate them even more, especially as afterwards we’ll be subjected to all sorts of club propaganda from players telling us how they managed to turn things around and how there’s still everything to play for, before they lose at home to Burnley a week later.
And as for announcing the appointment of some new fucking suit immediately after this loss, I don’t even know where to start with that. I mean who was it who thought that was a good idea? The whole culture at the club fucking stinks, and it starts from the very top.
I just want the season over so I don’t have to watch these wasters anymore. The good performances we’ve seen are not cause for optimism or a sign of what they are capable of, because they’ll never, ever, rid themselves of the shit performances that undermine everything.
This is who they are. Nothing that happens between now and May changes that. I suspect Klopp has finally seen that for himself now too. He’ll have been shocked to his core by this performance based on the great preparation he thought they’d had. No amount of preparation can prevent them from being shithouses though.
To be fair Klopp isn’t covering himself in glory either, but my view hasn’t changed in terms of him being our last chance at getting out of the mediocrity we’ve been mired in for over a quarter of a century. If he can’t do it, no-one can. It’s beginning to look more and more like he can’t do it. Not without a shitload of money that he’ll never be given, because we’ve got owners who don’t give a fuck about being successful.
Team: Mignolet; Clyne, Matip, Lucas and his caravan (Woodburn), Milner; Emre Can't, The Invisible Dutchman, Lallana and his new contract (Origi and his gloves); Mané (Albert the Moron), Bleached Teeth, Poundland Luis Garcia;
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