Saturday Apr 10:
L 2 Villa 1 Fucking hell we’re making hard work of everything this season aren’t we? Even when we win it usually isn’t much fun. I enjoyed the late winner but there’s not too much about today that provides a great deal of encouragement for Wednesday night or indeed the rest of the season. We were alright today. It’s better than we’ve played in most home games over recent months but it was still a massive slog. Everything is just so fucking hard isn’t it?
That said, that winner from Trent just felt really sweet. It might be a turning point for us and help us kick on to sneak into the top four but I wouldn’t be putting any money on that. Not the way the forward line looks. Even when they don’t play bad individually it’s just not what we had when we were at our best. Mo has generally been fine, Jota has been a real bonus and Firmino didn’t play badly today. Sadio still looks shite though and wasted a great chance at the end. But you compare how it looked to a couple of years ago and it’s just nowhere near.
We’re pretty solid defensively though. The Villa goal only happened because of another blunder from Alisson. Aside from that, and a Trezeguet shot that hit the post, we defended well and that’s been a rare positive this season. The defensive collapse the was predicted when we kept losing all of our centre backs has never happened. It’s just a shame we’re showing shite at the other end now.
Still, I was on a little mini-high at full time due to the dramatic nature of the winner, and it actually gave me a little bit of interest in what was happening elsewhere. For months I’ve only paid attention to our game and often didn’t even know the other scores until it came to doing the Round Up on Thursday. Today though, after we won I thought “I might have a little look at Chelsea’s game at Palace. Could be a good result for us there”. So our game finished, I went to make my tea and missed the start of the Chelsea game. Ten minutes in and they were 2-0 up so I just put the golf on instead.
I’m going to stick with the policy of watching our games and avoiding everything else until I have to do the round ups.
Sunday Apr 11:
Had a few little bets on the Masters and one of them was a 110/1 shot who I did each way. He came 5th so I won £23 and I’ve re-invested two quid of it on Big Nat to get the first goal on Wednesday night. 50/1 it was. I know it won’t happen but there is logic to it. As long as it’s 0-0, any time we get a set-piece I’m going to have that little bit of excitement and anticipation, and that’s worth a couple of quid of anyone’s money, surely? If the game ends 0-0 then I’ll have had 90 minutes plus stoppage time of hoping that the bet might come in. *taps nose*
There’s a good reason for him being 50/1 though as even though he wins every single header anywhere else on the pitch, when he goes up for set-pieces he’s just like a blind bull in a china shop, just charging around bumping into everything and causing mayhem. I don’t think I’ve seen him get his head on a ball in the opposition box, which is mad really considering how good he is at attacking the ball.
It’s a completely different skill though. Look at someone like Craig Dawson who isn’t big at all and isn’t especially dominant in the air defensively. When it comes to set-pieces though he always seems to be on the end of things. Virgil is great in those situations too and we’ve probably missed that as much as anything he does defensively. We’ve coped at the back but we’re zero threat on set-pieces now, which has hurt us a lot as over the previous couple of seasons we were by far the best in the league on that front.
Hopefully Nat can make himself a hero and make me a hundred quid.
Monday Apr 12:
Just watched some highlights of the u18s 6-1 away win at Leeds from the weekend. The kid from Derby looked boss. He scored two, one of which was pure quality, but he was also winning the ball really high with his pressing. If he’s good at that then that will fast track him if the rest of his game is as good as the hype suggests.
He can’t play in the youth cup unfortunately though. A shame that as the kids have got a good chance of going all the way in that this year. They knocked the Mancs out in the last round and will take some stopping. Probably end up playing City again in the final. So many good players in this squad though.
Just having a look through news now to what’s being talked about, and Gini is now being linked with Bayern. I could see that happening actually. The Barca thing seems unlikely to me because they’ve got no money and Koeman’s future isn’t certain. He obviously doesn’t like the contract we’ve offered, but who is going to give him a really big salary in the current climate? He’s not going to sign for someone just for the money so if he goes it will need to be to a top club. Bayern would make sense.
I still say we should be giving what he wants or at least coming close enough to make him think about it. I don’t think he wants to go, he just wants to be rewarded for what he’s done since he’s been here. We already need to rebuild the midfield anyway because Keita needs fucking off and I don’t see much point in Ox hanging around any longer. Plus Milner doesn’t have long left now and Hendo is always injured.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, having to replace Wijnaldum in addition to all the other issues we have just seems like something we should be avoiding at virtually all costs.
Tuesday Apr 13:
I said after we lost last week that this tie was over and there was no way we were turning it around in an empty Anfield. I still feel that way but I’m not as completely sure about it as I was. I’m now thinking we’ve got a 10% shot at doing this, because we only have to win 2-0 and that’s definitely achievable if everyone plays well. We won’t be at our rampaging best because it’s basically impossible to do that without fans and in our current form, but if we’re at 80% and get a bit of luck then we could do it.
Meanwhile, while reading a piece about something else I stumbled across some quotes from Richarlison about what happened with him and Thiago. Just when I thought it was impossible that I could hate this cunt more than I already do, he comes out with this…
“The last game I made that challenge on Thiago and got sent off. My goodness. Then I went on Instagram to apologise and such. He only saw it. I said ‘I’m going to delete this message too, since he doesn’t want to reply’. Then I went there and deleted it. He didn’t answer, no.”
“Then there was the derby now, at their home, he didn’t look at my face, I didn’t look at him, either. The game goes on. He ignored the pigeon (Richarlison's nickname from Brazil).”
What a massive fucking twat he is. Honestly, I hate him more than anyone else in football. I’m with Thiago, I can’t look at the cunt’s face either. It’s the most punchable face I’ve ever seen. If he wanted a reply from Thiago he shouldn’t have apologised on social media, because like I said at the time that’s all about being ‘seen’ to be doing the right thing rather than a sincere gesture of actually just doing the right thing.
I’m not defending Pickford for what he did, but he apologised to Virgil at the time and then at the end of the game he asked Hendo to pass on his apologies again. He didn’t go straight to instagram to make himself look good. All Richarlison had to do was ask Firmino or Alisson for Thiago’s number and then send him a text. Maybe then he’d have got a reply. Fucking cunt.
Wednesday Apr 14:
L 0 Real 0 Ah well, that’s that then. We could have actually won this had we not continually wasted chances but it doesn’t really hurt as much as it usually would because we got what we deserved. There’s no sense of being hard done by or that we were unlucky. We were fucking crap last week and we were wasteful tonight. Didn’t deserve to go through.
What really stood out to me tonight was what a difference fans would have made. It’s easy to say “yeah Liverpool are missing the fans” but it’s the extent that the players are missing the fans that isn’t being given enough recognition. It was so glaring tonight. I’m talking about specific moments in games that would have been pivotal with a full house in attendance, but ended up being irrelevant due to fans not being present.
The obvious thing that people will point out is that players get more motivation and energy from a full stadium. That’s far more important to a high energy, ‘heavy metal football’ team like us than it is to a suffocating, possession based, death by a thousand passes Man City.
City aren’t missing crowds at all. In fact, they’re helped by it due to the impact an empty stadium has on the energy levels and motivation of their opponents. That’s not to make excuses for us surrendering the title to them so meekly. City would have won the league this year with or without fans in stadiums. We would have put up a hell of a better fight than this though and we wouldn’t be behind United either. They haven’t lost in twenty odd away league games which is the longest run in their club history. Sorry, that’s not happening in full stadiums.
We recently lost six home league games in a row. Not even the worst teams in our history had done that and this is most certainly not one of our worst teams. Not under normal circumstances anyway. We also lost at home to Everton which, again, is something that never happens. We even went 12 hours or something without scoring a goal from open play at Anfield (Salah scored a penalty).
None of the above happens with fans in the stadium. I can say that with 100% certainty because you only need to look at the history of the club to see what a complete outlier all of that is. Visiting teams don’t need to fear Anfield anymore. It isn’t Anfield. It’s A field. This team can’t function at 100% without the 12th man.
This game highlighted it perfectly. It isn’t just as simple as “they miss the energy the fans give them”. There’s way more to it than that.
Firstly, the streets would have been lined with thousands to greet the team coach. So the lads would already be on a massive high even before kick off. They didn’t have that. Well, there was a half arsed attempt at it and some tit smashed the window on Madrid’s coach, but it wasn’t the same as a normal European night.
So straight away, advantage Madrid. Then there’s the lack of atmosphere and anticipation when the players warm up, and then take the field for kick off. YNWA is utterly pointless in an empty stadium and is only being played because of tradition. It doesn’t lift the players when there’s no-one there to sing it and it doesn’t put any trepidation into the hearts of the opposition.
Many a team has crumbled even before kick off in a packed Anfield. I’m not saying Madrid would have as they are packed with experience and players who are used to big time games. But so were Barcelona. And Dortmund. And Juventus. And Chelsea. And plenty of others. Players who played in those games have all spoken about how difficult it was because of the crowd.
It isn’t always about the crowd intimidating the opposition, it’s more about how they inspire our lads to almost superhuman performances. But it is also about rattling the opposition. It’s human nature. Barcelona’s players have seen it all. They’ve been in every kind of situation you can imagine and the team was packed with experienced superstars. But when that second goal went in they still completely shit themselves and there was just a wave of momentum that everybody sensed was going to end up with our lads performing the seemingly impossible. Our players knew it, so did Barcelona’s.
But Real Madrid didn’t have to face any of that. When Mo missed that early sitter in an empty stadium two things happened. Our lads were disappointed and the Madrid players were lifted. If that happens in a packed Anfield it’s completely different. The fans wouldn’t have seen that miss as a setback, they would be hugely encouraged by the fact we carved them open and almost scored.
The roof would have come off and our players would have been lifted by it and would then have been flying around trying to win the ball back to go again. That in turn makes the opponent nervous. Madrid’s response to us creating - and missing - chances was to calm it down by keeping the ball for five minutes and feigning injury any time there was any sort of contact on one of their players.
You do that in a packed Anfield and the whistling and jeers are deafening. Barcelona keep the ball better than any team on the planet but they couldn’t take the sting out of the game because of the manic atmosphere.
We’ve seen it before. One chance gets the crowd right into it and the momentum just builds from that until the opponent just can’t cope with it and eventually breaks. In an empty Anfield there was no momentum because the players can’t generate those adrenaline levels themselves. That isn’t a criticism, it’s just physically impossible to do it. Let’s not forget that the Anfield atmosphere turned Divock Origi into Superman.
With each and every chance we created and squandered, our players became more dispirited and Madrid’s players became more comfortable and confident. You could visibly see it. The players really tried to raise their intensity and at times they were able to do it, but they couldn’t sustain it and for most of the second half you could see they had lost belief that they could turn it around.
The missed chances sapped their belief, but as I say, with a full house it does the opposite. Even with just a couple of minutes left and needing to score two goals you can’t rule it out at a packed Anfield. Just ask Dortmund.
We’ll never know for sure just how many points the lack of fans has cost us this season but I think it’s clear that we’d comfortably have a top four spot virtually sewn up by now just because we wouldn’t have lost those six home games on the spin. Win just three of those and we’re sitting pretty in third and thinking about catching United for second spot (actually you can probably knock ten points off their tally so we’d be well clear of them!).
Instead we’re below West Ham.
Thursday Apr 15:
Always a sad day but it feels even worse with lockdown. Like last night for instance, not being able to pay our respects inside the stadium and people not being able to gather today because of social distancing. Just fucking grim.
Friday Apr 16:
Big win for the kids in the Youth Cup tonight as they smashed Leicester 5-1. James Balagizi is one of the stars of the side and he bagged a hat-trick tonight. Max Woltman scored the other two. I should also point out that the infamous “H Davies” who has been appearing on CL team sheets recently played in goal, so Harvey is actually getting some games and isn’t just the mascot or one of the coaching staff’s kids making up the numbers.
Another Harvey had a good night too. Elliott scored the winner for Blackburn and took his shirt off to reveal a ’96 YNWA’ message. It’s impossible not to love this kid, I really hope he becomes what we all hope he might be. You know the lack of tolerance I have over silly haircuts and over the top fashion, but I like this kid so much that I’m not even going to pass any comment on this….
You be you, Harvey, son.
Meanwhile, this has passed me by until now as frankly I tend to just ignore all this “European Super League” stuff because it’s usually just nonsense. Now it looks like it’s about to happen though. They want to scrap the CL Groups Stage and have a 36 team league instead. That doesn’t mean you have to play 70 games though, they’ve cone up with some weird seeded format where you play 10 games and then the top eight go through and then loads have to go into playoffs or something.
I don’t know, I read through it once, found it confusing as fuck and didn’t want to spend any more time trying to figure it out. It sounds SHITE though doesn’t it? The people who run football just keep coming up with new and novel ways to make it worse and far less enjoyable.
This is a terrible idea but it’s obvious what it happening here. This so called “Swiss format” appeals to the organisers because it gives them scope to add more matches in future. In other words, that 70 game thing I mentioned could one day happen. Ok, maybe not 70, but 35 certainly. That’s clearly their goal here. A big fuck off European League.
There is a small part of me that thinks “Yeah, fuck it. Let’s do it and leave all these bent English refs and shitbag teams like Everton and Burnley behind”. Most of me though absolutely hates the thought of this. It’s not that I’m against change completely. I don’t pine for the days of the old European Cup because I think the change the CL format with more quality teams competing has been a really good thing.
The group stage works for everyone in that it allows teams to play enough games to make money, it still offers the possibility of unfenced teams going through and it just keeps things ticking over nicely until the real business of the knock outs starts. It doesn’t need changing. The cunts in charge need changing because they’re just going to turn people off football completely the way it’s going with this shit and VAR.
And that was the week that was…..
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