Saturday Dec 8:
Bournemouth 0 L 4 That’s more like it. We’ve had too many of those scrappy, narrow wins for comfort, so it was nice to see some of the old ruthlessness return. Salah was devastating and on this form he’s pretty much unstoppable. He completely terrorised poor old Steve Cook, who couldn’t even stop him by raking his studs down Mo’s achilles. The own goal he scored soon after was karma for that bad shithouse lunge he made.
Dunno what Mo’s problem was, but if looks could kill then our bench would resemble the killing fields based on the glares Salah was sending their way after every goal. It might be nothing, but I didn’t like it. It made me uneasy. Not to the point that it took the shine off the win, but it’s there, festering in the back of my mind. His general mood was fine, as we saw when he refused the MOTM award because he wanted Milner to have it instead. Someone on that bench had pissed him off though.
Speaking of Mo, apparently he’s not on the level of Lionel Messi. That’s according to Dimitar Berbatov. Well thanks for that, Captain Obvious. Messi might be the greatest player in the history of the game (I say ‘might’ because it’s almost impossible to compare Messi and Maradona due to the vastly different era they played in) whereas Salah has had one brilliant season and looks like he might be about to make it two. Good to see Berbatov’s punditry is as lazy as his playing style though.
Some more reports today linking us with a Bosman move for Rabiot this summer. He’s on 55k a week at PSG, so with no fee involved we could easily treble that without breaking our wage structure. I’m all in on Bosman’s because it frees up cash to spend elsewhere. Bring this cat in on a free and if need be pay a bit extra to get Pulisic or Brandt.
Sunday Dec 9:
Grujic scores for Hertha Berlin and is described by their coach as ‘our best midfielder for 20 years’. Good to see him doing well. I’m a big Grujic fan and I’m positive he’s going to be an absolute monster one day. He’s got everything except durability. He gets injured a fair bit and he’s hardly played for Hertha. He’s injured again now apparently. One day Grujic will be a top player, but my gut feeling is that it won’t be for us unfortunately.
Moreno is on Marseille’s radar. He’s defo on his segway at the end of the season like. The interesting thing will be whether we choose to replace him or bring my boy Adam Lewis through. That lad has as good a delivery from out wide as I’ve ever seen. When it comes to that first time low ball whipped across the face of goal, he’s unreal. I’d like to see him play in the FA Cup instead of Moreno, but I doubt that will happen.
Personally I wouldn’t play any senior squad member in the FA Cup tie with Wolves as it’s not worth the risk of anyone getting hurt. Of course I’d like to win the FA Cup, but not at the expense of it even costing us a single point in the league. Every point is huge this season and we’ve got our best chance of winning the title in years. Give me a choice now of winning the FA Cup or winning one extra point in the league, and I’m taking the point. If that makes me a ‘Sky generation’ fan then so be it.
Monday Dec 11:
New contract for Gomez. Good news as this lad is going to be a superstar. He already is actually, it’s just that not many people realise it yet as he’s only been playing at ’superstar’ level for a couple of months. This injury has taken him out at a time when his form was as good as anybody in the league, including Van Dijk. We’ve got good alter natives in Lovren and Matip but the sooner he’s back the better, as that recovery pace he has is a real asset against certain types of opponents.
I’ve always felt Gomez was going to be a genuinely top class centre back in the future, you could just see that he had something special, but I didn’t think it could happen this quickly. In fact, I was against the sale of Klavan because I wasn’t sure Gomez was ready for a run in the side in the centre. How wrong was I? young defenders make mistakes, that’s why they hardly ever establish themselves at centre back until they’re a bit older.
Gomez has bucked that trend though and has been virtually flawless this year. I mean, he was deservedly keeping out one of the best centre backs in the world. I’m not being flippant either, I agree with Big Dejan that he is one of the best. Unfortunately for him he’s no longer in the top two at his own club because Joe Gomez is our Rafa Varane.
Tuesday Dec 12:
L 1 Napoli 0. This was the last scoreline I would have predicted, but in typical Liverpool style it wasn’t straightforward and there was late drama. Well it was never going to be a nice relaxing evening for us was it? That’s not how we roll. Usually it’s a late goal for us at the Kop end, but this time we’d already got our goal early and the drama was at the other end. Alisson eh? Fucking hell.
First of all, we deserved to go through. We played really well and carved Napoli open time and again. This was last season’s form. It should have been 5-1 but we squandered chance after chance. That let Napoli hang around and they knew all they needed was one goal and we were fucked.
They thought they had it too when Fabinho misjudged the flight of a cross and Malik seemed certain to score. That save was top drawer. “It was straight at him” I keep hearing people say. It wasn’t. Not at all. He flew off his line and made himself big. That’s why the ball hit him, not because it was ‘straight at him’. With most keepers, that’s a goal and we’re saying ‘keeper had no chance’.
That right there is the difference a great keeper makes. They turn those ‘keeper had no chance’ moments into saves. Not always spectacular saves, just normal looking saves because they put themselves into position to make them. Alisson’s a big handsome imposing bastard, and saves like this will help to create that aura that puts doubt into the minds of opponents when faced with him.
For decades we’ve been searching in vein for that elusive ‘final piece of the jigsaw’. A centre back. A left back. A ball winning midfielder. A top quality wideman. On so many occasions we thought we were almost there and just needed that one piece. We might just have found it in this fella.
Going through was huge. We can win this thing but at this point that’s not the primary reason to be happy about this win. Not being in the Europa was the main thing to come from this. That would have been a season killer. Now we’ve dodged that bullet and we can put all thoughts of Europe on hold now until the spring.
The most significant thing to come from this game though was that we looked right back to our devastating best. The finishing was shite, but the play to lead to all those chances was blistering at times. I’m glad we only scored one tonight, because we’ve saved some for Sunday. If we’d filled our boots tonight then there is nothing more certain than we’d draw a blank against Mourinho.
Also today, the u19s absolutely spanked Napoli in the kids Champions League. Curtis Jones ran the show while Paul Glatzel and Bobby Duncan both scored screamers. Those lads have 17 goals each so far and both look special. We’ll win this competition as we’ve got so much quality in the side.
Wednesday Dec 13:
Oh no! Matip will be out for six weeks. Fucks sake. Desperately bad luck as he’d waited for his chance and he’d taken it with both hands. He was boss last night and he was good at the weekend too. I saw him get taken out in the last second of the Napoli game and it was a fucking bad shithouse challenge by Koulibaly. You can’t jump into someone when they’re in the air like that as it’s proper fucking dangerous. Matip had a terrible fall and broke his collar bone when he landed.
I feel really bad for him, his chances of establishing himself in the team were always going to be slim but with Gomez and Lovren both out he got his opportunity and he took it. By the time he comes back he’ll have Gomez and Lovren to get past again. He’s a really good player who gets a bit of a bad rep from some of our fans for some reason. I don’t get it. It’s as though we’ve always got to have a few players who are deemed not good enough. Usually that’s been true, but the lads who are getting stick currently are all good players. Show me a fourth choice centre back better than Matip? You can’t. Because there aren’t any.
In other news today, Wayne Rooney was invited by Trump to a party in the White House, and he’s going. People are surprised by this. Not sure why. Why would you expect anything better from a scouser who serialised his autobiography in the S*n? The Boston Red Sox have also taken up an invitation to meet the President at the White House. Cunts. Go Cubs.
Got in the car tonight, switched the radio on and within seconds I heard Phil Jones put through his own net. The first thing I thought was “can’t wait to hear Goldbridge’s take on this” and sure enough, he delivered…
‘PHIL JONES AGAIN!!! LIKE A CAT TRYING TO BURY A SHIT IN A MARBLE FLOOR!!’
— Goldbridge World™ (@GoldbridgeWorld) December 12, 2018
Absolutely THE BEST Goldbridge Phil Jones quote fest EVER pic.twitter.com/rlxf5mlwB1
Thursday Dec 14:
Mourinho is talking bollocks about us again. Apparently the media aren’t putting enough pressure on us to win trophies and Klopp gets an easy ride. His ‘logic’ is that because we spent big in January and in the summer that we should now be expected to win the title. Fucking hell, if only someone in that room had the balls to actually set the little cunt straight.
We made a £70m profit in January for one thing, but how does spending in two transfers windows put a club on the same level as Man City who have spent a gajillion quid over the last few years? Mourinho has spent more than Klopp yet can’t do a press conference without talking about how shite his squad is and that he needs more players. Fucking bellend. He’s had loads to spend but he’s wasted it on shite.
We should twat them on Sunday. They’ve managed to stifle us the last few times but eventually we’re going to blitz them, surely? Hopefully it’s this week. Fucking batter them and then rip him afterwards for the shite he’s been coming out with, and ramp up the pressure on him by talking about how it’s incredible how poor they considering the money they’ve spent. Twat.
Speaking of twats, Fat Sam was on Talksport this morning. Well it’s that time of year isn’t it? He has a few months sunning himself in warmer climes, then when the January window nears he’ll start getting his name out there again. He’ll be on Keys and Gray next week too I bet, laying down chum hoping to get a bite in January.
He was talking about Phil Jones today. He was his manager at Blackburn and sold him to United. He reckons Jones snubbed us to go to Old Trafford. That’s the mother of all dodged bullets that. It's mad though because Jones WAS a huge prospect. Ferguson's departure fucked him almost as much as it fucked United.
Meanwhile, Michael Owen says Pogba would be world class if he played for us or City. Missing the point there Mikey lad. He wouldn’t get a game for either us or City, because more often than not he’s shit. When he’s not shit he looks very good, but even when he’s very good he never looks anything like the player he’s hyped up to be. The World Cup being a prime example. Good performances were hyped as incredible performances. It's hard not to look decent playing alongside the phenomenal Ngolo Kante. Just ask Danny Drinkwater.
Mourinho is being blamed for Pogba not delivering while Mourinho talks as though it’s all Pogba’s fault. The thing is though, he fucking bought him. It’s not like he inherited Pogba. He watched him, and thought ‘yeah he can play for me, I’ll break the world record to get him’. So whatever Pogba is or isn’t, Mourinho has no-one to blame but himself as he knew what he was getting.
Friday Dec 15:
Saw this amazing stat today. Alisson has conceded more goals to Liverpool in 2018 then he has to the rest of the Premier League combined. We put seven past him in the CL semi, and he’s only conceded six league goals since joining us. Unbelievable that, both in terms of showing how great we were in that semi, and also how impressive he’s been since joining us.
Ovie Ejaria is heading back here after Rangers ended his loan early. Why can’t Derby do that with Harry Wilson? We could actually use him, whereas Ejaria is utterly pointless. I don’t know what he is or what he does.
He’s got terrific skill on the ball and he’s hard to dispossess, but he’s not dynamic enough to play in midfield and he’s not quick enough to play up front. He’s never played a first time pass in his life and wants to have too many touches on the ball. He should have torn it up in Scotland but for Stevie to be sending him back early says it all.
and that was the week that was…
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