Liverpool 0 Burnley 1 (Jan 22 2021)

Initially I wasn’t going to write this as 1) I didn’t feel like I could face it, and 2) I didn’t think anyone would want to read it. The latter may still be true but having had time to sleep on it I actually wanted to get this done and getting my thoughts out there instead of having them rattling around my head will probably help me process all this.

I feel differently today to how I felt last night and indeed how I’ve felt for weeks. I’d even go as far as to say I feel better. Not because I’m more encouraged about anything (if anything it’s the opposite) but because the emotions have changed.

I still feel sad but I’m not distraught about it in the way I have been of late. Every result has been a hammer blow because all I can think of is how damaging it’s going to be to our title defence. As of now, I’ve written the title off and that acceptance and resignation is almost cathartic in a way.

What’s left is just sadness and a sense of resentment about how this shit we’re going through is completely unfair. I’m no longer angry at anyone (other than the constant stream of officials screwing us over) and the main thing I’m feeling today is sympathy for Klopp and the players. I just feel bad for them. Even the front three who I’ve been hammering lately. 

I was angry but what’s the point being angry at them? They’re trying their best. It’s not working, but you can see they’re doing all they can and they just can’t catch a break. Not just the front three either, it seems like everyone is suffering.

Everything is going against them. From little things to big things, literally nothing is falling for them at the moment. I could mention yet more decisions going against us and I will do, but for now I’ll leave that and concentrate on football stuff.

It really is the finest of margins right now. Sure, you can say we weren’t good enough but in this particular game I don’t think that’s true. We’ve been shite in a lot of games this season but this wasn’t that. It wasn’t great by any means but we’ve won games playing far, far worse than this. We just needed one chance to go in, one ball to fall kindly for us in the box, the keeper to let one through his legs. Something. Anything.

The problem is that when you’re in a run like this you need some luck and we’re getting none. “You make your own luck” they say. Nah, not really. You get luck when things are running for you and you get none when they aren’t. On another day Origi’s shot is an inch lower and we go on to win comfortably. Or the rebound from Pope doesn’t land perfectly by his own foot so he can hack it away from Sadio on the line. I could go on, because it’s just fine margins.

Everything we hit against Palace went in and since then it’s done everything but. Sure, we’ve not played well, but it’s also true that fuck all has gone our way. Not one thing. Nothing. 

I don’t tend to put much stock in those XG numbers but those who do would tell you that statistically what has happened in the last five games is a complete freak occurrence. To have come away with only one goal from the chances created is a huge anomaly, but that’s what happens when things conspire against you.

I looked at the players in the second half of this game and you could visibly see they were almost broken. The lack of goals and the bad run of results and everything else around it looks to have destroyed their confidence. To then lose this game to a late, soft penalty, they must feel like the whole world is against them right now. Because it is.

Of course there are a lot of things they could be doing better and need to be doing better. The performance wasn’t great but it was mostly alright. It’s not right in the final third, that much is clear, but we still did enough and forced enough openings to have won this game nine times out of ten. But it was clear that the one game out of ten would come now, because it never rains but it fucking pours.

Klopp’s team selection was interesting to say the least. I don’t know why he left out Bobby and Mo. It might have been a kick up the arse because they’ve been shite. It might have been a case of just doing something different to throw Burnley a curveball. It could have been a pre-planned thing based on the sports science info they have. Maybe it’s all of the above.

I had no problem with it though. Well, I didn’t when I thought it would be Shaq in the front three and Ox in midfield. When I saw it was the other way around my heart sank. I don’t know how many times I’ve said this, and I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but OX IS FUCKING SHITE IN A FRONT THREE.

How many times do we need to see this exact performance from him before Klopp finally accepts that it doesn’t work? Never has and never will. He’s absolutely useless on the wing. It’s like having ten men. He’s not been great in midfield of late either but at least he has prior form for doing well there. He’s never been any good on the wing though.

If I’m Minamino I’m wondering what the fucking point of being here is now. Playing second fiddle to Salah, Firmino and Mané is one thing (add Jota in there too), and I could even accept being overlooked for Origi in certain situations, but if I’m Taki sat there watching Ox being the invisible man then I’m onto my agent this morning and saying “I made a terrible mistake, get me out of here”.

Not that I’m saying he’s good enough. He’s shown nothing to suggest he is. What he has shown is that he’s a better option up front than Ox, which is admittedly not saying much.

So yeah, I didn’t like that tactical choice but in terms of dropping Bobby and Mo, I was on board with that as I think it was necessary. And this might be an unpopular opinion but I thought Origi played quite well and shouldn’t have been brought off.

I know he missed that great chance but I’ll get to that in a sec. He looked lively and he wanted to get shots in whenever he could. He had two efforts that went straight at Pope but at least they were efforts and he was positive. 

It’s just such a shame that he didn’t take the gift that was presented to him by Ben Mee just before half time. Burnley don’t make mistakes like that usually. You have to work for everything you get against them but this was the bit of luck we needed. At least it looked like it was.

But what Lady Luck giveth, she can also taketh away. And she did. The cunt. You can say that Origi has to score and I agree. That’s a chance you have to take, especially in our current predicament. He didn’t take it, but fuck me he couldn’t have gone any closer than that.

He was literally one inch away from the most emphatic finish you’ll see all season. He didn’t bottle it - that was the finish of someone who absolutely believed he was going to score. Maybe if he’d been more hesitant he’d have got lucky and seen it squirm through the keepers legs or something, but he wasn’t hesitant and he approached it like a man thinking “fucking pick this one out”. Problem was he just struck it too hard and too high. 

It hit the bar and bounced on the wrong side of the line from our point of view. As I say, an inch lower and it’s a spectacular one that rattles in off the underside of the bar. Instead it was just another kick in the balls and further added to the weight already on everyone’s shoulders.

Be honest, when that didn’t go in you thought “we’re not scoring here tonight yet again” didn’t you? I know I did. And it probably went through the minds of some of the players too.

Two years ago everything Divock touched turned to gold. Now it just turns to shit. This was his liveliest performance in ages though and like I say, I wouldn’t have taken him off, certainly not for Firmino anyway. 

If Divock buries that chance everything is different. We needed that to go in but it didn’t. We got a bit tetchy after that and it all kicked off at half time with Klopp chasing Dyche down the tunnel screaming at him. It was all caused by a nothing incident right on the half time whistle.

Fabinho went to challenge for a goal-kick but the whistle went so he was pulling out when Barnes barged into him. Fabinho had a little kick out as did Barnes at the exact same time. It was nothing really, but it ended up sparking a flare up that a few other players got involved in. Matip had one of his weird flappy arms meltdowns and Robbo got involved with Brady, while Klopp ran down the tunnel screaming at Dyche and then came back out to see what was going on.

Mike Dean booked Fabinho, which was utterly bewildering because if he’d seen Fabinho kick out then he had to see Barnes do likewise, as it was a simultaneous thing. VAR checked it for violent conduct and a possible red card. I don’t know the protocol here and from what I understand they can’t overturn yellow cards, but surely they could have said to Dean to take a look because it’s either a yellow for both or it’s no action on either.

Of course, a yellow for Barnes would have meant an early bath as he’d already been cautioned. Can't be doing anything that might help Liverpool out, eh?

So we ended up with Fabinho being booked for fuck all. That might be costly when he picks up a fifth yellow and ends up with a ban. But this is how it is this season. There is unquestionably something going on, although at least Mo was finally given a free-kick after he came on. Dean obviously didn’t get the memo there. Expect a slap on the wrists for that, although he might have redeemed himself with the penalty decision.

We did plenty of things right in this game but the finishing wasn’t as sharp as it needed to be and we had no luck whatsoever. Of course I’m not blind to the fact that a lot of it was fucking garbage too.

Klopp continues to bemoan the decision making and he’s not wrong. It might not be the decisions that are obvious to us though. By that I mean what if it’s not always the player on the ball making the wrong decision? What if it’s the runner who isn’t going where he’s supposed to be? A lot of what is going wrong won’t be apparent to us as we’re not privy to the patterns of play they work on in training.

What I’m thinking here though is that Trent hasn’t suddenly forgot how to cross a ball. Neither has Robbo. But so many of their crosses are being cut out by defenders. Some of that will be poor delivery into a packed box, but what if it’s the forwards not being where they are supposed to? Combine that with midfielders who rarely if ever get into the penalty area (why isn't Gini doing it? He's great at it), and you’re basically looking at scenarios where Trent and Robbo are trying to find three forwards in a box containing at least eight opposition players.

I have a big problem with the aimless floated crosses into the box we keep seeing. Robbo doesn’t do this much but Trent is guilty of it and so are the likes of Shaq and Hendo. They’re always looking for that diagonal to Robbo or Sadio but it’s an almost impossible ball when the opposition is waiting on it.

Then you have Sadio and Mo often doing similar, dinking the ball in when there’s no space to drop it over anybody’s heads. All of this is shit and not what we should be doing, but it comes from desperation that the things we are supposed to be doing just isn’t working.

Trent was poor in this game but he wasn’t anywhere near as bad as is being made out to be. As I say, some of those crosses were shite, but there were loads when he put it in low into a good area but the forwards were all either stood still or just not in positions to create space for themselves.

Klopp seemed to hint at this himself afterwards and says it’s on him to make sure they understand what they’re supposed to do, because currently they aren’t doing it.

We still had plenty of openings though, particularly in the second half. Trent had a low shot saved, Bobby had one cleared off the line and Mo was denied by Pope at the near post when everyone thought he'd go to the far. Sadio put one over the bar as well. We just needed one of them to go in and although it's partly our own fault as the finishing needs to be sharper, as I keep saying we just need a break. 

As sterile as we've been in attack lately I do think one win will change things around. Not to the extent that we'll start scoring four and five every game, but it just gets the monkey off everyone's back and things might start to feel a bit more normal again. Right now nothing is normal, the tension is there for all to see and it's effecting everybody when they get to the final third. 

We're battling everything at the moment. Ourselves, the opposition and the officials. Mike Dean annoyed me but it’s not specifically because of the penalty. It’s the old ‘death by a thousand cuts’ thing that we’re seeing more and more of. The little decisions that stop the flow of the game and allow the opponent to regroup and get a breather. The phantom free-kicks we keep conceding. Allowing the opposition to time waste as much as they like.

Ashley Barnes backs into defenders and knocks them off balance when they’re in the air. Everyone knows this. I’m not knocking him for it, I actually have a lot of respect for how he’s maximised his talent and made a good career for himself. Ashley Barnes isn’t the problem.

The problem is that despite everyone knowing how he plays and that referees usually punish him for this (hence him being second only to Hoijberg in the foul count), when he comes up against Liverpool suddenly it’s different and Matip and Fabinho find themselves conceding free-kicks even though they’re the ones being fouled. There were two or three absolutely clear ones where Barnes just backed in and wasn’t even looking at the ball. Dean knew what Barnes was up to but gave him the free-kick anyway.

Then there’s the penalty. I have mixed views on this because Fabinho clearly fouled Barnes before he got into the box. Maybe without that foul he gets there a split second earlier and scores?

The ‘foul’ that the penalty was awarded for though, hmmm, that’s contentious. Yeah you can give a penalty for that without there being a huge uproar, but was that really a foul? And given that Barnes had got his shot away and missed, any contact with Alisson that came after is incidental, surely?

When there’s a penalty appeal against us it’s given almost every time. When it’s at the other end, it isn’t. There’s nothing ‘subjective’ about this. I mean fucking hell, Burnley are known for NEVER getting penalties. It was nailed on that the one time they'd get one it would be against us.

Bottom line is Burnley got a penalty because Barnes had a shot off target and then collided with a Liverpool player. The collision was instigated by Barnes, who left the leg in to ensure contact, but that part is subjective. The rest of it is black and white. He had a shot, missed the target and then he ended up on the floor. The ball was virtually in the stands behind the goal by the time he ran into Alisson.

This wasn't like the pen we conceded at Brighton when Gross lifted it over Kelleher and went down. That ball was still in play and Gross can argue that he would have got there and scored if he didn't collide with the keeper. Barnes can't say that. He missed his chance.

So why is that a pen when the exact same thing happened to Mané at the other end and wasn’t given? Sadio met a cutback from Mo and shot over the bar before he was clattered by a defender. How is that any different? It’s only different because when it’s a goalkeeper for some reason it’s not judged in the same way as when a defender does it, and because when it’s Liverpool it isn’t judged the same way.

Funny thing though, I seem to remember Rashford being given one for pretty much the same thing that happened to Sadio. We play by a different set of rules though. 

VAR isn’t going to overturn the pen because they’ll hide behind the ‘clear and obvious’. I’m nowhere near as enraged by this as I have been with other decisions though because if Dean hadn’t given the penalty then it was a free-kick on the edge of the box and a red card for Fabinho. I haven’t checked, but Fabinho may still have had hold of him in the box so that may have been a penalty anyway. So yeah this decision doesn’t rankle in the same way others do.

It was a sledge hammer to the balls though. Conceding wasn’t even an after thought at that stage as Burnley had done virtually nothing. We went from wondering if we could snatch a late winner to get us back in the race to all of a sudden facing a defeat and the end of the record unbeaten home run. 

I don’t think anyone expected us to equalise, least of all the players who clearly had no belief whatsoever now. The way they played the final few minutes and stoppage time was pitiful really. As the clock ticked past 90 minutes we had the ball with Alisson. Then Fabinho and Matip started passing sideways to each other as they advanced up to halfway.  It took about 30-45 seconds for them to do that. 

Continuing to play your football is one thing, but not when time is ticking away and 'your' football hasn’t yielded a goal in four fucking games! I’m not saying they should have launched it into the box, but you can’t be taking that much time to reach the halfway line. 

After Burnley scored there was no urgency, no belief, no confidence, they were just feeling sorry for themselves. I don’t even blame them. It’s completely understandable at this point. Trent passing the ball straight out of play when Robbo was only ten yards away from him summed it up.

I know not everyone does, but I care that that the unbeaten home run has gone because we are living through history with this. It’s the best home run we’ve ever had and we may never see it again. So I’m sad that the record is gone and I’m irked that it went to someone as shit as Burnley. In the grand scheme of things though we’ve got more important worries right now.

It’s hard to process how things could have gone this bad this quick. The signs have been there in fairness as for 12 months our form has been patchy. No-one could have seen this five game run of results coming though. It’s just a shit time for us now, which stinks because we didn’t even get to properly enjoy the great time.

I’ll tell you what it feels like. It feels like we defied the football gods by winning the league and ever since they’ve been like “think you can go against us do you? Well have some of this, yer bastards”.

We won 26 of 27 games last year to basically wrap up the title by February. A big fuck you to the football gods who had taken great pleasure in fucking us over in title races. Then what happened? A global pandemic hits that initially threatened to stop us winning the title at all. But footy resumed and we got to finally end the 30 year wait. But the football gods were like “well you might have won it, but you’re not going to enjoy it”.

No celebrations and no parade was bad enough but that was the tip of the iceberg. After decades of having opposing fans take the piss and revel in our title drought we’ve been denied the chance to stick it to them and enjoy our achievement because we still aren’t allowed in stadiums, It's almost a year now. And even when a small amount of us were allowed back - briefly - there were no away fans in there anyway.

But the football gods weren’t finished there. No. It’s been open season on us. Not a week seems to go by without us getting shafted by refereeing decisions, both big and small, while we’ve also lost our two centre halves and had to do without both of our summer signings for large chunks of the season too (admittedly the Jota one was self inflicted, but even so).

Empty stadiums has been a massive leveller. For some teams it hasn’t hampered them at all, it may have even helped. Us though? It’s killed us. Our game is all about energy and emotion and feeding off the buzz generated by an atmosphere. 

That’s hurt us but it’s even more apparent now because this is exactly the kind of scenario when Klopp would be calling for the crowd to help the team through this bad spell. I can picture him on the touchline whipping everyone up because Robbo won a tackle or a throw in. I can hear the roar of the crowd in response to it. It’s incredibly frustrating. Football without fans is fucking shit. 

The team desperately needs the fans right now but we can’t help them. There’s nothing we can do and they have to play themselves out of this funk on their own. I feel for them right now. They’ve given us so much but they appear to have hit a wall. I’ve been getting angry and frustrated with them but I’m over that now. They deserve better than me being pissed off with them (even though I put most of that down to the frustration and helplessness of lockdown).

There’s no magic formula to fix this. You can talk of system changes or tactical switches all you like but this is now purely a mental thing. Nothing more. Everything is normal until we reach the box and then the mental block kicks in and the lack of confidence comes to the fore.

Taking extra touches, not making the right runs, playing passes too late or too early, reluctance to shoot, shooting when it’s not the best options, it’s all of that and virtually all of it is in the heads of the players. It’s not physical and it’s not about ability. It’s poor form that in most cases can be attributed to a lack of confidence and general stress about the recent results and lack of goals.

The pressure of being Champions and wanting to defend it so we can have a proper celebration when fans are allowed back in has been suffocating. It’s sucked the fun out of it all, for us as fans and for them as players. We’re miserable watching and players look like they’re thoroughly fucking depressed by it all. Last night they looked completely defeated, not just by the result but by the overall situation.

The title has gone. We’ve blown it with this five game spell. Yeah the gap isn’t that big and if we were playing well now after recovering from a bad start you’d still think we could catch those above us. That’s not the case. The gap is more likely to increase rather than decrease. We’re in free fall and the title should really be the last thing we’re thinking of now.

Forgetting about the title might actually relieve a lot of the pressure. At the moment every game we fail to win feels like a catastrophe and it seems to be weighing everyone down. If I’m Klopp I’m telling the lads to forget everything that has happened these last few weeks and to not worry about where we are and what it means for our season. Just forget all of it, relax and play without the pressure. Have some fun again.

Maybe we go on a winning run and get back into the race, but if we don’t then so be it. Let’s just get back to playing our football again and see where it takes us. The Champions League is still there to be won if we can regain our mojo but don’t try and sell me on the FA Cup as some kind of consolation prize. It isn’t. 

It’s like spending three years with Pamela Anderson and then she runs off with the fella up the road who you can’t stand. Then Rebel Wilson shows up at your house wearing nothing but a cheeky smile and your mates are like “I know she’s not Pam but beggars can’t be choosers”. 

I want to beat United on Sunday but not because I see the FA Cup as a chance to ‘save the season’. Fuck that. I want to win because we need to get back on track and because it’s THEM. Don’t expect me to embrace Rebel Wilson when I’m pining for Pam.

I don’t see us winning on Sunday though. As deflating as this defeat was I worry that we haven’t hit rock bottom yet. Not when I look at the games we have coming up. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

Star man is Matip, for the floppy armed strop as much as anything else.

Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Fabinho, Robertson; Thiago, Wijnaldum, Shaqiri (Minamino); Oxlade-Chamberlain (Salah), Origi (Firmino), Mané: