Good old VAR eh? Slag it off all you like, and God knows I have, but without it we’d have dickheads like Anthony Taylor and Martin Atkinson shafting us without impunity. Put it this way, if we’d had VAR last season we’d have won the league.
Unfortunately there was no video to over-rule Taylor when he failed to send Vincent Kompany off at the Etihad, or to correct the errors of Atkinson when he didn’t send Harry Maguire off and later waived away a blatant penalty when Keita was upended against Leicester.
We’d have been screwed in this game too without the video cleaning up Taylor’s mess. Manchester’s finest did his best to screw us over again when he scandalously tried to disallow a perfectly good Sadio Mané goal. His whole performance was exactly what you'd expect if you put someone from Manchester in charge of a Liverpool game.
I'd be the same if you let me loose at Old Trafford or the Etihad, only I'm not a qualified referee and even if I were they wouldn't let me anywhere near those games, and rightly so. Taylor is allowed to have his fun with us a few times a year though, for some reason.
It was 40 minutes before he awarded us a free-kick. Is that a record? He only gave us three free kicks in the entire game. THREE!!! Again, that has to be a record, surely? A foul every half an hour of play in a game in which we dominated possession. Dodgy little baldy twat.
Most refs are shit and Taylor falls into that category for sure, but just like Atkinson there’s more to it than that. I’m not suggesting he’s been paid off, I’m just saying that consciously or subconsciously, he’s out to do us over.
Let’s look at the Mané goal for example. Firstly, even I could see from my seat on the other side of the ground there was no handball there. It was obvious it was Lallana’s chest with a little bit of shoulder to assist with the controlling of the lay off. If it had come off his arm the flight of the ball would have been vastly different.
So that was never a handball in a million years. That being said, if Taylor thought there might be a hint of an arm, that’s fine, let VAR check it. The one thing he should not be doing in that situation is making that call himself and blowing his whistle. Yet he did. Interesting.
The VAR check took ages, which made me believe that Taylor’s decision would be upheld because if there is doubt they are supposed to side with the on field decision. The delay suggested there was doubt but it turns out there wasn’t. They knew immediately there was no handball.
So why the delay? Because that cunt Taylor blew his whistle, that’s why. If he’d managed to get that whistle blown a split second earlier then VAR wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. Thankfully the ball was in the net before he blew.
So again, why is he getting involved in that situation when there is quite literally no need for him to do anything? If Lallana had handled VAR would pick it up and there’s no harm done by him not interfering. By him getting involved though the whole thing could have been fucked.
He’s a disgrace. Mind you, so were the Wolves players, led by Conor Coady (more on him later). Why exactly were they surrounding Taylor before and after the VAR decision? He fucking disallowed the goal you soft cunts. He’s on your side! Some fella in Stockley Park overturned him, but the Wolves players were giving Taylor grief. Gang of mings.
It seems part of their unhappiness stemmed from what they thought might have been a 'handball' by Van Dijk prior to the ‘handball’ by Lallana. Virgil didn’t handle it but even if he did VAR isn’t allowed to go back that far to check. The attacking handball rule change only applies to a player who scores or who provides the assist for the scorer.
Wolves can cry about that all they like, but that’s the rule so tough shit. Besides, there is no replay that shows the ball hitting Virgil’s hand anyway.
I’m annoyed that we were robbed of the chance to celebrate the goal but for once it wasn’t the fault of VAR. We couldn’t celebrate not because of the fear it would be ruled out, but because Taylor himself disallowed it. By the time the decision was reversed I was just relieved more than anything. The moment was ruined.
The Wolves fans were kicking off and giving it the “Fuck VAR” chants, but this is 100% on Taylor. He’s the reason they got their hopes up thinking it wasn’t going to be a goal and the whole ‘controversy’ is because of him, not VAR, the fucking gimp.
So that got the Wolves fans and players all riled up and a couple of minutes later that fury was magnified tenfold when they thought they’d equalised only for Stockley Park to intervene again.
Firstly I should say that I’m sick of goals being ruled out for these marginal offside calls. There have been at least half a dozen this season where you look at it and the immediate reaction is “there’s no way goals should be getting wiped out for THAT”. We’ve had two of them ourselves, but the worst I’ve seen was probably Sheffield United at Spurs or maybe Teemu Pukki, also against Spurs, this weekend.
This one was marginal too but I don’t see it as being anywhere near as contentious. Not because we benefitted from it, but because it was the lad’s foot that was offside and it wasn’t some egregious line being drawn to make his nipple look a centimetre ahead of the last defender.
His standing foot is a few inches offside so that goal can’t be allowed to stand. Wolves can bitch about it but it’s not like the officials in Stockley Park got it wrong. The fact is they could not allow that goal to stand based on the technology they used. His foot is ahead of Robertson’s so what are people wanting them to do here? They had NO CHOICE but to disallow that, it’s not like they did us a favour.
It doesn’t feel right though does it? Forget that we’re involved in this one and just imagine it’s two teams you don’t care about. Do you want to see goals disallowed for that? I don’t. Equally though, I don’t really have an ideal solution to it other than scrap the whole thing, which they aren’t going to do.
The first thing that needs to be done, as I keep saying, is you judge it based on where the feet are. Forget everything else, just use the feet. Then, maybe there needs to be a 30cm buffer zone until they have technology that is exact. Currently it isn’t, so the Wolves ‘goal’ might actually have been onside for all we know as the technology can’t identify the exact moment the ball leaves the player’s foot. That’s where the 30cm variance comes in.
The Wolves player was offside based on the technology we currently have, but it isn’t exact to the exact millimetre so some of these marginal calls we’ve seen this season might actually have been onside. This kind of thing is not why offside was brought in and we’re all sick of seeing goals ruled out on such marginal calls.
But I don’t know why we’re getting so much grief for this. As I said, they HAD to disallow that goal. VAR did the job it’s supposed to do. Complain about whether we should have it or not all you like, and if it were up to me I’d drop it like a bad habit, but this “it’s been brought in to favour Liverpool” horseshit is just embarrassing.
The worst for that are Man City. The same Man City who only two days earlier were awarded a somewhat contentious penalty by VAR, missed it and were allowed a retake because of VAR spotting a marginal (at best) encroachment.
The same Man City who this very same day were spared going a goal down against Sheffield United by a VAR call that was every bit as close as the one that saw Wolves denied. But sure, ignore those and continue to cry conspiracy, you delusional, bitter fuckwits.
The decision was correct but Wolves were always going to feel hard done by, especially as they’ve been on the wrong end of more VAR decisions than anyone. They’re currently net -6 on VAR calls, which is the worst in the league. I didn’t think they handled this well at all but when you take that into account it’s easier to see why their toys came out of prams.
For the record, Brighton have had seven decisions go their way, Sheffield United have had seven against. Wolves are yet to have any go in their favour and have been on the receiving end six times, so yeah, that will have gone a long way towards what on the surface looked like over the top behaviour from them.
Part of the problem was that nobody even thought for a second that their goal may have been offside. None of our players appealed and everyone just went back to prepare for the restart. To have that called back completely unexpectedly tipped them over the edge.
I’ve said before that I’m usually shit hot with potential offsides but even I didn’t suspect there was anything untoward with this one at all. When the Wolves players were all celebrating right in front of where I sit, I lost my shit and was yelling all sorts of obscenities at them, and at Taylor for standing back and allowing them to incite the crowd like that.
It wasn’t my finest hour and if there was a camera on me I’d be mortified watching myself. I feel as though it was partly justified though as that little Neto cunt was bang out of order. Who the fuck does he think he is giving the Main Stand all that shite? I don’t even accept it when Jurgen does it so there’s no way I’m having it from this little fucking nomark!
Honestly, that celebration was so far out of line. He’s giving us loads and then he’s trying to get to the Kop to taunt them as well, only his team-mates were holding him back. Who the fuck are you, you little shitbag? And Taylor’s just stood there letting it happen. I’m only surprised he didn’t join in.
Then as the teams are ready for the restart, we get the news that there’s a VAR check. “Oh please let this be disallowed, just because of how the fuckers celebrated”. I’m looking at my phone to see what the lads watching on TV made of it and they were undecided as it was that close.
Then eventually Taylor starts walking back towards the box and we realise that it’s not been given. We didn’t exactly celebrate like we’d scored a goal, but there was a huge cheer and it was funny seeing the reaction of the Wolves players again. That Neto prick launched the ball into the stands and should have been booked.
Nuno Holy Spirit had been yellow carded before the verdict was even in. I don’t know what he said or who he said it to, but Taylor walked over and booked him while he was waiting for the VAR check to come in.
Wolves had lost their heads at that point, which was understandable given their history with VAR. Again though, why are they on Taylor’s case? He didn’t disallow the goal and was doing all he could to help them out. I’ll say again, it was 40 minutes before he gave us a foul, and we only got two more after that.
Hell, almost immediately after the disallowed goal he gave them a free-kick in a shooting position and booked Lallana. There was fuck all in that, it was just a foul nothing more, and it smacked of him wanting to put Lallana in his place after his protests about the ‘handball’. Thankfully the free kick from Neves hit the wall.
I haven’t mentioned anything else about the first half other than the two VAR incidents, but not a great deal else happened. I thought we played ok and had control of the game up until the Taylor brought by chaos unsettled everyone. We weren’t creating much but if anyone was going to score it always looked like it would be us.
Despite all their changes Wolves were dogged and well organised and we were finding it tough to create anything clear cut. There were one or two moments when we might have done better, but generally it was a bit of a slog.
And the second half was worse, as we clearly began to look goosed. Wolves have played more games than us and they went into this one on less rest, so I’m not making excuses here. It is a fact that we looked more tired than they did though, and the worry for me before the game was that if we didn’t put daylight between us and them in the first hour, they had Traore and Jimenez to bring on.
I’d have preferred them to start because the thought of Traore running at us when we’re tired worried me. He was a threat from the moment he came on but generally we did a good job on him. One of the best moments of the game was when he picked it up for his first run and Lallana sprinted across and tackled him. Hell of an effort, and he was doing that all day. He was fucked by the time he went off and it’s fitting that his last involvement was a long chase back followed by a flying block.
It was interesting how we handled Traore I thought. Sadio dropped in really deep to help out Robbo, which made sense considering he’s our fastest player. He made life so difficult for Traore that he switched over the opposite flank to try and get at Trent. When that happened, Klopp made a change to get Origi on and Sadio then moved over to the right to continue to help with Traore.
I like Traore, so much so that he’s even been granted ‘my boy’ status in the round ups. He’s been brilliant this season and has completely transformed his game. He’s not just fast now, he can play as well.
When he had the ball we surrounded him with to or three players to block off his running lanes, but I thought it was really impressive the way he was able to shift the ball quickly in tight spaces to pop it off to team-mates and then look for the return pass. If he’s added guile and skill to his game (and it looks like he has) then he could become virtually unstoppable. Klopp seems to love him, so who knows what the future might hold there.
Wolves piled on the pressure in the last ten minutes but thankfully they kept putting their shots into the top tier of the Anny Road. It looked like we’d weathered the storm but then Traore picked the ball up out wide and began cutting inside across the box trying to find room for a shot. He seemed to go past three or four challenges until it opened up and he struck it, but thankfully Van Dijk was in the way. I think Alisson had it covered anyway but Virg didn’t know that.
That should have been the last action of the game as the four minutes of stoppage time were up, but obviously Taylor was always going to let them take the corner to see if they could equalise. The ball came in, and Virgil’s massive beautiful head rose highest to power it away. Now the whistle went and we had three more huge points.
This was a sweet victory on many levels, but after the way Wolves fans carried on here last season on the final day it was especially nice to stick it to them. And even more so given the nature of it. “It’s not football anymore” they chanted. I agree, but if those decisions had gone in their favour I’d bet everything I own that the dopey cunts would have been ‘bantering’ us by singing about VAR.
I had sympathy with Nuno afterwards. Clearly he doesn’t like VAR and who can blame him? He was dignified about it though. Which is more than can be said for his captain, who “couldn’t get his head around” the decisions. Listen soft lad, if those decisions were wrong then you have every right to kick off about it. But they weren’t wrong.
Interviewer: “Why were unhappy about the goal?”
Cody: “Apparently Van Dijk might have handled it but Anthony Taylor said he’s too far back to check. He played the pass that led to the goal.”
Firstly, he didn’t handball it. Secondly, even if he did VAR can’t get involved in that because of THE LAWS OF THE GAME. if you don’t understand the laws, Conor, then that’s on you mate. And again, Virgil didn’t handle it. Neither did Lallana. So what exactly is the problem again?
Not sure if I’ve ever gone on the record with this or not, but I don’t care much for Conor Coady. I’ve felt that way for a long time but didn’t say anything because I don’t like criticising one of our own and I really wanted to like him. I watched him come through our Academy and always thought he was a good player (albeit a right fucking big head) and he’s a Red, so yeah I wanted to like him.
I don’t like him though. Any time I see him interviewed I just think “fucking hell he’s so full of himself”. He’s too cocky and I just can’t take to him, never have been able to. It’s fine though, Conor loves himself more than enough to make up for those of us who don’t have much time for him.
There’s a lot to not like about Wolves, not least their fans. Gobshites. I like the manager a lot though (seems a top bloke) and they’re clearly a good side. They might even grab that fourth spot because they look every bit as good as anyone else outside of the top three. They made a load of changes and still gave us a tough game and with my boy Traore in the form he’s in they’ll be tough for anybody to face. That kid who played left wing back was good too.
We had an extra day to prepare but that was negated by Wolves making so many changes. That weakened them to a degree as some of their best players were left out, but it also freshened the legs and made them very difficult to break down. We couldn’t really do that because we were down to 13 fit senior outfield players plus the kids.
It won’t be much different against Sheffield United on Thursday but there’s a reasonable enough amount of time between this game and that one and I expect a strong team before a lot of changes for the Everton game.
You could make a reasonable argument for resting everyone on Thursday and going full strength against the Blues, but personally I don’t think that will happen. It’s a tough one though. Ordinarily I’d be in favour of just prioritising the league games, but we’ve got such a massive lead that we could rest people for Sheff Utd and go all out to beat Everton. I’m glad I don’t have to make that decision.
Star man is Joe Gomez. He was brilliant again and over the last few weeks he’s recaptured his very best form, which is great to see.
I thought Hendo was terrific again (the way he’s filled in for Fabinho is a credit to what a great footballer and leader he is), while the work rate of Lallana and Wijnaldum was commendable. Sadio was dangerous as well, but everyone else seemed a bit off key. Even Robbo wasn’t at his sharpest (and Virgil looked human for once), but they all battled and ensured we got the win.
2019 was a hell of a year, here’s hoping for even better in 2020.
Happy New Year, Reds!
Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson; Henderson, Wijnaldum (Milner); Lallana (Keita), Firmino (Origi), Mané; Salah:
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