That was the week that was (Nov 14-20 2020)

Saturday Nov 14:

Robbo has a tight hammy and won't play for the Scots this weekend. Why is he still even there? Get him back here to rest up for the weekend as he’s the only regular back four player we still have available. Scotland have qualified and these games they have left are meaningless. Fucking get back home, son.

Also today, Man City have complained to Sky about Keane’s criticism of Kyle Walker. I have a few thoughts on this. Firstly, City are the worst bunch of cry babies in world football. It comes from the ownership and filters right the way down. They don’t deal with any kind of criticism very well at all. There’s a massive whiff of “how dare you, don’t you know how rich we are” about them when it comes to things like this.

That said, I’m putting myself in their situation and wondering how I’d want us to react if, say an ex Everton player, had made similar comments about our right back. Would I want us to complain to Sky? Maybe, I’m not sure. It’s not really an apples to apples comparison because no Everton player has the kind of gravitas and CV that Keane has. The reason I mentioned Everton and not Man United (or Keane in particular) is because Keane is to City what Everton would be to us.

If an ex Everton player was as scathing about one of our lads as Keane was about Walker, I like to think we wouldn’t complain to Sky but it would just be a collective “you played for Everton and won nothing, pipe down knobhead”. City can’t really throw that one at Keane so they’ve gone running to his bosses, the fucking grasses.

For what it’s worth, as I said at the time I thought Keane was harsh on Walker because although he is indeed an idiot and a car crash, those are just isolated, albeit fairly regular, incidents and in between those incidents he’s City’s best defender by a mile. Kyle Walker is a really good player who is semi-regularly prone to really shit moments, but Keane was talking about him as though he’s some kind of Phil Jones tribute act.

The one thing that is indisputable though is it was fucking hilarious. Come on, even those of you that hate Keane must have laughed when he was asked about how well Sadio had done and he replied “yeah but he’s up against an idiot”. That was funny. If you didn’t laugh at that then you probably have no sense of humour and enjoy Mrs Brown’s Boys.

Meanwhile, Evertonians are talking about Bramley Moore again. I’ve said it before, but there is not even the tiniest part of me that thinks Everton are getting a new ground. From day one I’ve thought it was never going to happen and I still feel like that now. I don’t think it’s possible to condition my brain to accept the idea. They’ll be playing their first game in their new stadium and I’ll still be thinking it’s some kind of hoax. Except they won’t, because it’s not happening. 

Sunday Nov 15:

Oh no, Ray Clemence. That’s incredibly sad. I remember reading a while back that he was ill but then we didn’t hear any more about it so you tend to just assume things must have been going better. Sadly not this time.

I’m fairly sure I saw him play live but it will have been right near the end of his time here and I was just a kid so I don’t remember anything about him really. My first memories of watching us are with Grobbelaar in goal, and it’s quite funny whenever I look back at season highlights from that time because, let’s be honest here, he was fucking shit. An absolute liability. 

At the time I bought into the whole ‘look at Brucie, isn’t he eccentric’ narrative, but it’s only when I watch the videos now I see how bad he was. Sure, he made some incredible saves and was astonishingly agile, but he cost us so many goals that I’d say we won all those trophies in spite of him, not because of him. With Clemence, it was the opposite. Reliable, dependable, brilliant.

Absolute fucking joke he had to split England time with that stupid curly headed fuck Shilton. I always thought Shilton was shite but in fairness that’s skewed by me not really seeing him when he was in his Nottingham Forest prime (apparently he was brilliant back then) and therefore I’m judging him on his England career. I always thought he was fucking useless and in recent years he’s really shown himself to be a bad knobhead, but I’ll always be grateful to Shilton because of the part he played in one of my favourite childhood memories. 

The Hand of God would never have happened without him having concrete in his boots and it warms my heart that his repugnant little Boris loving, Brexit obsessed heart is still broken by it and it will haunt him until his last breath. God bless you, Diego.

Back to Clemence though, he walks into any all time Liverpool XI and although eventually Alisson might take that spot (he just needs the longevity really) for some older Reds no-one will ever eclipse Clem. Rest in Peace, Ray.

Monday Nov 16:

So now Hendo has a problem. This is a fucking farce now. I’m not even blaming Southgate. It’s easy to have a go at him (and God knows I have plenty of times) but he’s got a job to do and has to worry about that. If he leaves out our players then he has to do the same for the other clubs who are in Europe too, and before you know it he’s picking a team full of bums from Everton, Sheffield United and Burnley and he’s on the managerial scrapheap.

And when I think about it, I don’t even blame England specifically for Gomez getting hurt. I blame international football in general. Organising all of these international matches in the current situation we’re in is negligence of the highest order. I know others may disagree and that Joe’s knee was ready to go and it could have happened at any time, but I’m convinced that Gomez wouldn’t have been injured if he’d been at Melwood, I mean Kirkby. I don’t even know what to call it so I’ll go with New Melwood I think. 

I can’t prove it, I just think the disparity in players getting injured while with their countries compared to when they’re with us is pretty fucking big in relation to the time they spend there. So yeah, I say Gomez was injured because he was with England but I can’t blame Southgate personally for it as what’s he supposed to do? 

He’s got games he needs to try and win. It’s not his fault, it’s the soft cunts who insist on these games being played even though we’re in the middle of a global pandemic and players are being run into the ground with the amount of games they’re playing in a shortened schedule.

I don’t know how bad Hendo’s injury is but there’s defo going to be some risk if we play him against Leicester. Not only that, but we have to look at the rest of the season too. If we keep playing these lads twice a week now it’s going to hurt us in the long run. The sports science nerds know far more about it than I do and I’m sure they know what they’re doing, but it must be really tough for Klopp even picking a team right now because he’s got to be concerned about putting too much strain on the players.

Wait, David Coote is on VAR this weekend??? Fuck. That. It can’t go unchallenged. I’d even go as far as refusing to play the game until he’s removed. Officials have a duty of care to players, and that cunt failed in his duty when he allowed Pickford to stay on after one of the worst tackles we’ve seen in many a year. Forget the other times he’s screwed us, that one alone is enough reason for us to say ‘never again’ and demand that the cunt is not allowed anywhere near our games.

Tuesday Nov 17:

And Robbo is going to play for Scotland tomorrow night. Great. He couldn’t play at the weekend because of stiffness in his hamstring after playing 120 minutes in midweek. And now he’s going to play another 90 tomorrow night when we’ve got Leicester at the weekend. It’s a fucking joke. Again, I don’t blame Steve Clarke for it and I don’t even blame Robbo for taking the decision to play. He’s the captain, he probably feels he needs to set an example. The fact is that international football should have been fuckied off completely during this pandemic.

Moving on, and is it just me who doesn’t give a fuck about all these behind the scenes features on the new training ground. I couldn’t possibly care less about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with the move and I’m not shitting on it, I just don’t really have any need to see training pitches and beach volleyball courts and the canteen. I’m glad they’re all there and training centre is the best it could be, but I don’t have any interest in seeing it. 

Maybe others feel differently and want to see all that shit, fair play if so. I just think it’s pretty dull. I do like that there’s a “James Milner Door” in there though, that’s class and also very fitting. You wouldn’t name a suite or a lounge after Milner. He’s functional not flashy. He does the job but a lot of the time you don’t notice. Naming a door after him is perfect.

Wednesday Nov 18:

Watched the inside training video on LFCTV today and it was pretty alarming. Basically it was Milner, Matip, Div and a shitload of kids. Now I know most of the lads are on international duty but it’s disturbing that Thiago and Fabinho still aren’t back out there. Ox is still doing gym work inside too. I thought he’d be back by now but I should have known better as they’re always out longer than we’re told.

Fucking Thiago still not being out there is really demoralising though. How long is he going to be out? If he doesn’t play this weekend (and if he’s not training by now then he’s got no chance) it’s going to be getting on for 7-8 weeks since that Richarlison tackle. Why aren’t they telling us anything about it? All we’ve heard is that he didn’t need an op and they’ll wait and see when he can come back.

Honestly, I don’t think I’m ever going to get over that fucking derby game. No matter what we go on to achieve this season or in the future, the anger and resentment of that game is never going away. Fucking dirty Everton cunts. I think I hate them more currently than I have in my entire lifetime.

I also watched another video on LFCTV today. Don’t judge me, but it was a tour of the new training ground! Now calm down, I still stand by everything I said yesterday and I still have no interest in any of it. I only watched the video because it was Ox doing the tour and he’s a natural in front of the camera and he's fun to watch. He somehow made a tour of the training facilities almost interesting.

He’s defo working on TV when he finishes, and not necessarily in football either. He’s better than most of the presenters you see on TV now. If Dion Dublin can do it then Ox defo can. Him and Robbo could replace Ant & Dec. That's if Robbo ever leaves Trent. Wingmen is class, we knew Robbo was hilarious but it's really brought Trent out of his shell more too.

Thursday Nov 19:

Well whaddaya know, there was a Thiago sighting today. A photo of him inside Melw… ok this is gonna take some getting used to… New Melwood was published by the club’s social media and the implication was “look who’s back” and they showed one of Fabinho as well. They weren’t on the training pitch though, so until I see them doing Rondos or standing in a big circle and singing Happy Birthday to one of their team-mates in Portuguese (or maybe Spanish, in Thiago’s case - although weirdly in my head he’s always been Brazilian and I don’t associate him with Spain at all), then I’m not getting excited.

I tell you something weird. For some reason I just can’t imagine us ever losing a game when we have Thiago, Hendo and Fabinho all on the pitch at the same time. Even without Virg and Joe at the back, I really believe with those three in the middle of the park we aren’t losing to anyone. I have nothing whatsoever to base that on, but it’s how I feel.

I can’t wait to get Thiago back especially. We’ve only seen little teasers from him so far but he’s going to help us dominate games even more so than we have been doing. He just brings an added dimension that could completely change the way opponents have to prepare for us. And with the weakened defence that’s going to be important.

Coote has been removed from VAR this weekend. Presumably we kicked off. I hope so anyway.

Friday Nov 20:

Klopp seemed really subdued in his press conference today. Usually he’s all laughing and joking and giving off hugely positive vibes, but he wasn’t like that today. He actually looked sad. Maybe it was a result of being asked about Mo’s antics at his brother’s wedding as his first question. It was a fair question and one Vinny O’Connor probably had to ask, but it’s not something Klopp was ever going to want to discuss. 

He didn’t say much and he rightly said that anything he said to Mo is not for public consumption, but you can tell he was proper pissed off about it. He mentioned that last summer a friend of his re-organised a birthday party just to co-incide with when Klopp was going to be in Germany, but at the last minute he decided he wasn’t going to go because of the risk. Why even bring that up if he didn’t feel let down by Mo?

It’s blatantly obvious from today that Salah didn’t have permission to go to that wedding and that Klopp feels let down by it. The rest of the presser was basically him having to talk about injuries, so that wouldn’t have helped his mood either. Hendo and Trent are defo out tomorrow but Fabinho and Thiago “we will see”. So they’re out too then, because he’s been saying “we will see” about Thiago for six fucking weeks now. Even Rhys Williams has had a knock this week, apparently. 

It’s gonna be like this all season, I just hope it isn’t just us who get hit so hard by it. Leicester have been in a similar position to be fair. They’ve had as many injuries as we have but they’ve won six on the spin so it’s not really being talked about, which is credit to them really.

The only time Klopp had his usual sparkle was when he was asked what makes Jamie Vardy so good. Klopp fucking loves Vardy. He probably loves him even more than I do, and he’s easily my favourite non-LFC player. He’s criminally under-rated I think. I mean I know everyone thinks he’s really good but he’s way better than that. He’s a genuinely great striker but because he plays for Leicester, hasn’t had much of an international career and was playing non-league until his mid-twenties, I reckon it’s overlooked just how great he is. Klopp knows though. 

Hopefully we can keep him quiet on Sunday but it’s going to be tough with whatever makeshift back four we are able to throw out there. It might be a case of us just trying to score more than we concede rather then trying to concede less than we score, if that makes sense. I’m not saying we should be thinking of winning 5-4 or 4-3, but there might be times when that’s what we need to do.

On the bright side, Fabinho is back in full training and all the international lads were back out there too so it didn’t look as threadbare as it did the other day. 

I’m worried about Sunday though. Leicester are great on the counter attack which can be problematic for us, and I think we’re one game away from the Anfield record aren’t we? Imagine Brendan being the one to fuck that up on us. Would be worse if it was Hodgson I suppose, but smug condescending Brendan is the worst Brendan. No-one needs to be seeing that. He’s unique in the sense that he’s much worse to watch when he’s won than when he’s lost. He’s probably the least cuntish manager out there after a defeat as he handles it brilliantly. When he’s doing well though my skin crawls watching him.

If he beats us this weekend the telly is going off immediately at full time and not going back on until our next game. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, but I got a baaaad feeling about this.

and that was the week that was…..