Well something is definitely not right. The first two games weren’t great but in isolation they could be explained away and it didn’t necessarily mean we had a major problem. This one though, fuck me. An absolute fucking shambles. Outworked, outfought and occasionally outplayed by the worst Manchester United side in living memory.
The Sky narrative may have been on how improved and cohesive United looked, but they just did exactly the same thing Fulham did. Nothing special about their performance, this was all on us being absolutely fucking shit.
They started faster than us and with much more intensity. Just like Fulham did. Then they sat in as we eventually settled and started keeping the ball a bit better. Just like Fulham. They were comfortable defending us, just like Fulham and they had joy picking us off on the break. You guessed it. Just like Fulham. They then shithoused and time wasted their way to a result. Just like Fulham. So let’s not make this out to be something its not. They won this game because we were fucking terrible.
I’m absolutely fucking steaming that we let this shower of shit beat us and gain some confidence after their embarrassing start to the season. We should have been piling on their misery, not giving them relief from it. They’re actually above us in the table now. I mean fucking hell. It’s only three games and I have no long term concerns about the team, but the short term is really looking bad and unless there’s a pretty big transformation we won’t be taking six points from the two home games we have coming up and if we don't then it's going to be an uphill slog.
This one really stings. Klopp said afterwards that we didn’t look ready for the start of the game. When was the last time we really did? We started quite well against Palace to be fair, but we’ve conceded first in seven league games on the bounce and we haven’t led at half time in any of the last fifteen games in all competitions. It might be thirteen actually, but either way it’s a really fucking alarming stat.
How can you not be ready for the start of this game? The world and its dog knew exactly what United were going to do. They couldn’t be passive because they’d just lost 4-0 at Brentford and they’ve been the butt of everyone’s jokes all week. They needed to get the crowd onside so they were always going to fly at us early. And we were like a rabbit caught in the headlights. It's inexplicable.
It’s not down to any specific individuals either. Other than Harvey and maybe Diaz, I thought everyone was fucking shocking early on. By the end of the game you could add Carvalho and maybe Mo to those two as players who didn’t disgrace themselves (Alisson as well, he made two great saves). Everyone else was varying degrees of terrible though.
Something isn’t right and for once I don’t think Klopp and the staff know what it is. If they did know they’d have fixed it already. We can’t score the first goal in games, we aren’t playing with any intensity and we seem to have reached a point where even dogshit teams like Fulham and United can come up with a plan to nullify us and then just wait for the easy chances that come their way.
It’s got to be a huge concern that we’re being kept at arm’s length by shit teams and that one pass in behind whenever we lose the ball is resulting on players running clear on goal. We aren’t even being helped out by offsides now. Last year we lived life on the edge with the high line knowing that most of the time we were catching teams narrowly offside with VAR and that Alisson saves at least half of the one v ones he faces. It was risk / reward and it paid off.
Alisson still does his thing but that’s Zaha and Rashford now who have both gotten in on the kind of marginal calls that would have been given offside under the old system. Now, with the extra tolerance level, we’ve had our fingers burned. Even allowing for that rule change though I still can’t see how Rashford is onside for that second goal but overall we were so fucking bad I can’t even get worked up about any possible injustice there.
The first goal is right up there with any of the worst we’ve conceded under Klopp. I don’t think I’ll ever get over what I saw from Van Dijk. It’s one of the most inexplicably shit things I’ve ever seen from a top player. I can’t explain it. Every time I look at it it gets worse. Milner was rightly fucking livid with him and let him know in no uncertain terms.
Milner is throwing himself in front of Sancho to make a block, no doubt expecting that he has back up in case Sancho doesn’t shoot and checks back. Had Milner not dived in then Sancho would have taken the shot, so there’s no blame attached to Milner for me. He’s trying to defend. What the fuck is the world’s best ‘defender’ doing. Not defending. No, he’s stood rooted to the spot for three or four seconds with his hands behind his back.
It’s genuinely one of the worse things I can remember. Right up there with Brad Jones playing dodgeball in this same fixture. That’s stayed with me ever since and I have no doubt whatsoever this will too. Brad Jones was shit though, so he has an excuse. Milner was angry at the time but I bet when he watches the replay he’s even more pissed off. “Calm as you like” though, eh? Maybe forget that laid back shit for a while and actually get your shorts dirty for a change and do some fucking defending.
The goal had been coming too. They’d already hit the post and looked like they would get behind us any time they won the ball back off us, which was often. Lazy cunts like Fernandez and Rashford were now chasing down everything and snapping into challenges, and we were like passive little lambs, just giving the ball away and generally looking clueless. It was like Fulham in so many ways, not least that every time Mo or Diaz got the ball it was with their back to goal and with a man up their arse so they couldn’t do anything.
How about trying to fucking turn them around with balls in behind? Not easy when you’ve got Bobby fannying about next to Hendo giving us absolutely nothing. I’m not mad at him though, he’s just finished now as the player we knew and loved. I am, however, mad at Nunez for getting himself suspended and missing a game in which he could have filled his boots. We needed his running in behind and bustling presence to unsettle the United backline. Instead they had an easy night and the Argentinian Jay Spearing they had at the back was probably man of the match because we made the cunt look good.
In fact, this was a great night for all of their underperforming twats. Sancho has been a flop but we let him score and give himself a platform from which to build. Rashford has been even fucking worse. We let him score too. That little defender has been a laughing stock so far, but we let him bounce around kicking people, snarling, generally acting like a cunt and we did fuck all to unsettle him. I’m raging and its getting worse with every line I type.
Trent was all over the place defensively and looked likely to commit a foul any time Elanga ran at him. Elanga is shite by the way, but Trent made him look like prime Eden Hazard at times. Robbo didn’t look like himself either and considering how vital they’ve been to our success, that’s always going to be a big problem for us if they aren’t performing. And they aren’t performing. But they aren’t the only ones.
Fabinho was left out because he hasn’t looked right all season either. I’m assuming he’s dealing with an injury or something but Klopp hasn’t said anything about that, so maybe it’s just form related. Hendo has defo been dealing with something, which kind of makes Fabinho’s omission even more alarming. Not that I’m disagreeing with it, he looks leggy as fuck and I thought he was off the pace again when he came on in this game.
The midfield was bad. Hendo started the game badly, got better but then made a mistake that resulted in the second goal. Milner looked like an old man. In the first half especially he was laboured, second to everything and just looked like the game was too quick for him. Because he’s such a fucking pro he stuck with it and he was better in the second half, but his role should not be as a starter in games of this importance anymore. I like him coming off the bench, he adds something in those situations. Starting games though, that’s not ideal.
The reason he had to start was injuries. Our midfielders are always fucking injured. Harvey is the only one I don’t have a concern with because the one and only time he was injured was the result of a tackle. All of the others are susceptible to muscle injuries, some more than others. Without getting into it here as I’ve said my piece in other reports as well as on the pod, but if we’re bringing someone in then it really should be to replace Keita. He’s as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.
Enough is enough now. Either get rid now or if that’s not possible, take the financial hit and let him stay for the year but bring somebody in, because we can’t rely on this little waster. Him missing this game is the final straw for me. I know the plan was to not bring in a midfielder because we have eight for only three places and bringing in a ninth would give us too many and restrict minutes for the young players we need to bring through. I was - and still am - fine with that in theory and I always said that anyone who comes in should be to replace Keita, because that’s how the club operates. Had it been up to me I’d have signed someone and fucked Keita off in a heartbeat. If that wasn’t possible, I’d have signed someone and loaned Keita, or failing that just let him sit out the season. The club simply don't work that way though so it's not realistic to think they'd splash the cash on a big money midfielder without someone leaving.
Personally I would have washed my hands of Keita a long time ago. That was never going to happen though because Klopp just doesn’t treat people like that, so as long as Keita is still here the chances of us signing another midfielder were always slim. This latest injury (following on from whatever illness it was that he had) may finally tip Klopp over the edge and make him take action. You can argue Thiago is just as bad and I’d agree, but at least when he plays he’s fucking ace. The juice is worth the squeeze with Thiago. With Keita you’re squeezing and squeezing and squeezing and then you look in the glass and there’s a little dribble of juice and loads of pips.
But I said I wasn’t going to get into that here and I’ve already said more than I intended. When everyone is fit our midfield options are really good. They’re never all fit at the same time though and currently it is threadbare. I understand people are frustrated by that but to me it’s not as big a deal because everything else looks fucked too. I don’t think bringing in a new midfielder solves the problems we’ve been seeing, although it couldn’t hurt.
Would Jude Bellingham or whoever suddenly stop Trent being sloppy as fuck with and without the ball? Would he make Virgil actually defend instead of pouncing about like the biggest prima donna in the league? Would he allow Bobby to remember how to play football again? No, we’ve got bigger issues than a midfield signing will solve.
How have we come to this though? It was only three or four weeks ago we looked electric in beating City in the Community Shield. I think we can partly attribute that to the lack of fitness City had at that point. They’d not long started their pre-season and hadn’t bothered with warm up games. We caught them cold, and then ever since it’s been us that has looked under cooked.
You can see something is not right with the entire team. It isn’t just a couple of players out of form, everything looks fucked right now and no area of the pitch is functioning as it should. We’re not matching the intensity of opponents whereas previously nobody could live with ours. Maybe the players are so fucking sick of hearing Pep Ljinders bang on about it that they’ve tuned out. More likely it’s to do with whatever we did in pre-season. Either too much or too little, I have no idea. But we do not look like a team that is prepared to play.
Getting beasted by this group of United players is as damning as it gets. When that happens, you really need to take stock and say “Ok we’re in trouble here, what the fuck is going on”. I bet that’s exactly what is happening too. Klopp and the staff don’t know what the problem is because if they did they’d have fixed it. I don’t want to hear about injuries either as we still have enough of the first eleven (or close to it) available to not be this shit.
The first 25-30 minutes of this are as bad as we’ve played in a long time. After that it got better to some extent. It looked like we’d settled and were getting a grip of the game but that was as much down to them dropping off after getting the lead as it was us waking up. They were never going to be able to maintain the pace they started with, and the longer the first half went the more it looked like we had them on the back foot.
We had a a lot of the ball but it was only really a five minute spell where I thought we did well. We needed to score in that spell and we didn’t. The bench was never going to offer us a solution to get back into the game so Klopp stuck with what he started with even though Milner and Firmino especially really needed hooking.
We started the second half quite well but we didn’t score and then we got caught with the second goal. That was game over. I wasn’t confident we’d even score one but I knew we wouldn’t get two, let alone the three that we needed. Klopp made a change by sending on Fabinho for Henderson. Yeah that’s really going to make a difference. I can only assume Hendo was being protected from whatever fitness issue he has.
Carvalho replaced Milner too. I agreed with that one because at that stage there was no point hooking Bobby when we needed two goals. He’s basically a midfielder these days anyway so get an actual forward on so we have three up there and see what happens. What happened was a significant improvement and Carvalho was really bright. We had threatening moments and pulled one back with ten minutes to go when Mo headed in a rebound after Carvalho’s shot was saved. Usually, with us, that’s enough time to go and find a winner. This isn’t us though right now and we didn’t look close to scoring.
One thing I really need to mention though is that completely unacceptable cowardice from Michael Oliver after our goal. Allowing Fernandes to hold onto the ball for as long as he did, while Mo and Bobby were peacefully trying to get it off him, I say this in all seriousness, the cunt should be suspended for that. You can’t let that happen just because the little rat is already on a yellow card for a blatant dive.
You have to send him off for a second yellow, it’s not even a discussion. It’s as clear as anything, if a player does what Fernandes did there it’s a yellow card. He held onto the ball long enough for two or three yellows, and then he topped it off by throwing himself to the floor holding his face to try and get Mo in trouble. Refs make mistakes and get things wrong, but this wasn’t that. He was watching it, knew exactly what was happening and he fucking froze and bottled it. Michael Oliver should not be officiating anywhere for the next couple of weeks.
Overall it was just a horrible experience. Seeing the team play as badly as that and allowing United to pick themselves up off the floor was bad enough. For it to happen to a backdrop of constant nasal drowning chants about unemployment, poverty and Hillsborough just magnifies it even more. One of the worst experiences we’ve had under Klopp and a result and performance that’s going to take a lot of getting over.
We’ve got Bournemouth at Anfield next and if you were to hand pick a fixture in which you needed three points that would be it. We can’t ask for a better opportunity to get our first win on the board and if we don’t win that then just cancel the fucking season.
Star man is Harvey, by an absolute mile.
Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson (Tsimikas); Henderson (Fabinho), Elliott, Milner (Carvalho); Salah, Firmino, Diaz:
Recommended Comments