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Featured: That was the week that was (Feb 9-12 2021)


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Tuesday Feb 9:

 

I wasn’t going to do the diary this week. After the weekend I just wanted to forget all about footy until the next game, which thankfully is a week away. The window is shut so there’s not really much going on anyway, so I figured it was best to skip it this week rather than dwell on the misery.

 

But I accidentally stumbled across something on youtube today and I can’t let it pass without comment. I watch a lot of golf stuff on youtube so my plan was to just dive into that this week and forget all about the footy. The problem is, I also watch stuff on the Reds quite a bit and as I’ve mentioned before I also watch a LOT of Roy Keane.

 

So I’m watching a golf video but I leave the room. The video finishes and youtube’s algorithm understandably thinks “oh here’s a clip of Keano talking about the Reds. I’ll play this for him as he loves this shit”. I come back in the room and Keane is talking about what “bad champions” we’ve been. I should have turned it off but it piqued my interest.

 

He’s right, we have been bad champions if you remove all context from the season. Conceding seven at Villa, dropping points to pretty much all of the bottom six clubs, shitting the bed against City… none of it befitting of the defending Champions. But fuck me, you can’t disregard all of the factors that have contributed to this. 

 

Other teams have made a worse fist of defending the title than we have, and you don't have to go back far to find them. City last season. They lost nine games and were a million points behind us by this stage of the season. But they lost Laporte so they had no chance, right?

 

Funny how the likes of Keane don't seem to be arsed about all the things we've had to contend with.

 

Firstly, we’re in a fucking global pandemic. Secondly there are no fans in stadiums which has dramatically reduced the adrenaline of the players which leads to less intense games. Thirdly, there was no pre-season so players (right across the whole league) are not performing to their normal level of fitness. Fourthly we’ve got half a team either missing or playing out of position. We’ve been playing with no centre halves and a back up midfield.

 

I could go on but you all know this. Everyone knows it. Keane knows it too, but for whatever reason he decided to “go into character” and played the angry, disgusted old pro who would never have let this happen “in my day”. Some of the shite he was coming out with was just embarrassing and insulting.

 

“I never heard any of these players talking about wanting to win the title again” he says. Apparently they were happy with what they’d won and started “believing their own hype”. What hype would that be Roy? Maybe the hype from you, when only a couple of months ago you were eulogising about the drive and hunger those very same players were showing when they went top of the league despite the loss of Van Dijk.

 

All the talk about how it’s harder to retain the title than win it carries some weight, but it’s a lot fucking harder to retain it when you’re dealing with everything that we’ve had to deal with this season. I’m not happy about what’s happened and some degree of criticism is warranted. But “believing their own hype” is not the reason for what we’ve seen. It isn’t even a contributing factor. Not now, maybe it was when we went to Villa and had our pants pulled down, but every team has that kind of an off day occasionally.

 

Even Keane’s Manchester United, who he seems to view with this glossy eyed nostalgia that causes him to ignore the facts. Facts that he himself admitted to in his own autobiography. What facts am I talking about? How about the way they went from top spot in January to finishing miles behind Arsenal just because they lost Rio Ferdinand to a drug ban.

 

Keane himself cited that as the reason their season fell apart, yet he’s not prepared to cut the Reds some slack for losing not only Van Dijk, but also Matip and Gomez. They lost Ferdinand, they still had the rest of their defenders. But they couldn’t cope. Gary Neville also said the same thing. Losing Ferdinand had a massive impact on them both on the field and in terms of the morale of the players. Keane said it too. In his fucking book!!

 

Yet this tit is ripping on our lads, questioning their attitude and telling them they need to just get on with it despite losing Van Dijk. I like watching Keane, he’s entertaining and a lot of what he says is actually spot on, but it’s when you see him sounding off like this with nothing to back it up and leaving himself wide open to calls of hypocrisy that you know why he can never be any good as a manager.

 

Also today, the u18s had a game live on LFCTV. They won 2-1 at Stoke. I thought about watching it but when I saw the team and there was no Layton Stewart and none of the new signings were playing (we’ve signed four in this window, believe it or not) I swerved it. One of the goals was scored by Oakley Cannonier, the ball boy from the Barca game. He’s a good little player him. I’d love him to make it as it’d be a great story.

 

 

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  • dave u pinned this topic

Juergen - what a guy. Great to hear his responses in today's presser about the suggestion of him leaving.

Roy Keane - he's actually a bit dim, really.

The u18s and u23s is about the only footy I'm watching at the moment - disappointingly they're only shown live once every few games. Those teams have been hit by the injury crisis and lots of players are being promoted right through the ranks a bit faster than they ought to be. U23s are really struggling, not just because the likes of Neco, Rhys, Cain, Clarkson etc are warming the bench for the first team, but they've also had long term injuries to Glatzel and Hardy. THis has led to Stewart and Morton moving up a level..... althouugh I think Stewart also has a knock now! The (depleted) u18s did really well against a typical Stoke side - a load of 18 year orld grocks who mosty looked about thirty! The quality football won out over the physicality.

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1 hour ago, DaveT said:

Juergen - what a guy. Great to hear his responses in today's presser about the suggestion of him leaving.

Roy Keane - he's actually a bit dim, really.

The u18s and u23s is about the only footy I'm watching at the moment - disappointingly they're only shown live once every few games. Those teams have been hit by the injury crisis and lots of players are being promoted right through the ranks a bit faster than they ought to be. U23s are really struggling, not just because the likes of Neco, Rhys, Cain, Clarkson etc are warming the bench for the first team, but they've also had long term injuries to Glatzel and Hardy. THis has led to Stewart and Morton moving up a level..... althouugh I think Stewart also has a knock now! The (depleted) u18s did really well against a typical Stoke side - a load of 18 year orld grocks who mosty looked about thirty! The quality football won out over the physicality.

Ha ha , bet Stoke have three full beards in their under -13's 

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  • 1 month later...
53 minutes ago, Arnaud said:

I guess Dave doesn’t really want to write it and we may not want to read it.

 

Best stuff on here thought that diary, best stuff on the Internet.

But we do want to read it. And there is a historic obligation of a chronicler. Anne Frank wouldn't let a couple of Ajax losses put her off writing.

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16 hours ago, SasaS said:

But we do want to read it. And there is a historic obligation of a chronicler. Anne Frank wouldn't let a couple of Ajax losses put her off writing.

Do like me, read the old fanzines, the diary ruled then as well.

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17 hours ago, Captain Turdseye said:

@dave u

 

Come on, man!

 

Funnily enough, I was bringing this back last week. Had Monday and Tuesday done and then ended up in A&E on Wednesday with abdominal pains. They gave me anti biotics for a bladder infection (I'm calling it that as UTI sounds like too much of a woman's problem!) which completely wiped me out for the next three days.

 

So basically, I scrapped it and I'm not doing it this week because there's nothing happening.

 

The diary will officially be back from next week though.

 

And if you don't believe me, here's what I had last week before I was so cruelly struck down with illness....

 

Monday Mar 22:

 

So, not done this for a few weeks but with the Reds no in action for a while things are less depressing. And besides, with no LFC games to write about and limited matches to do the Round Ups, there’s not really any excuse for me not to bringing the diary back.

 

I’ll start with something from last week. The CL draw. That was as good as we probably could have hoped for. Porto might seem to be the weakest of the sides left in but they just beat Juve so they might be dangerous. Dortmund are no great shakes but would you want to see Nat and Ozan up against Haaland? I wouldn’t.

 

So Madrid is a favourable draw because they are nowhere near the force they were and they look vulnerable. Thing is, they’ll be saying all of this about us too. We’ve gone from being the team that literally nobody wanted to face in Europe to being one that everyone will fancy their chances against. An empty Anfield will do that.

 

Imagine the crowd for this one. Anfield is always right up for these big games anyway but the sight of Ramos would have everyone frothing at the mouth. We’d absolutely fucking dismantle them. Now? With no fans? It’s a toss of a coin really.

 

I’d like to think that the lads will remember what happened last timer and be going balls out to gain revenge, but they just aren’t made up like that. The recent derby at Anfield showed us that. That should have been circled in their calendar ever since that day at Goodison that fucking wrecked our season. If there was one game we needed a big performance with everyone ultra fucking motivated it was that return game at Anfield. 

 

What did we get? One of the most timid, half arsed performances we’ve seen from this group. So yeah, we may or may not beat Real Madrid, but if we do it will have nothing to do with the players being extra motivated and wanting revenge for what Ramos did. Maybe it would be different if Big Dejan was still here, as I reckon he’d have been whipping everyone up into a frenzy about it. 

 

The others just aren’t wired like that. They’ll see it as just another opponent. Even Mo. In fact, he’s probably more arsed about putting on a performance to impress them than he is about doing it to stick it to Ramos.

 

Speaking of Everton though, they were knocked out of the cup by their favourite team at the weekend. It’s not the winning though, it’s the taking part that counts, right? Fucking losers. 26 years and counting.

 

Tuesday Mar 23: 

 

Stevie says Trent can call him any hour of any day if he ever wants to talk about anything or seek advice. He’s saying this because Trent has been dropped by England and criticised by Southgate. You could tell that Stevie thinks it was a twattish move by Southgate. He didn’t say it in so many words but you could tell by what he did say that he isn’t impressed.

 

A similar thing happened to him when he was the same age as Trent. Remember when GH dropped him and made some comments about “I hope he hasn’t been believing everything that is being written about how great he is” or something to that effect? I didn’t like that at the time but GH was like a second father to Stevie so maybe that was necessary?

 

Peanut head Southgate criticising Trent though, that’s not the same thing. Trent’s poor season can be easily explained and in fact has been by Klopp. Covid, no pre-season, an injury that set his fitness back even further and then the struggles of the team as a whole. 

 

The irony is, Trent has been playing well recently and is well over that dip that he had. It was exactly how Klopp said it would be a month or two back when he explained the problems and said that over the next few weeks he’d get back to form. He did, but Southgate mustn’t have been paying attention. 

 

I’m made up Trent wasn’t picked though. I wish all the other countries would drop our players too, just to spare us the inevitable major injury that we’ll end up with. Knowing our luck, it’ll probably be one of the indestructibles, Gini or Robbo. 

 

 

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Also, if I had continued it last week I'd have referenced the LFC TV video they put out with the heads and volleys tennis match.

 

I have thoughts on this. It was Sadio, Thiago and Gini on one team and Mo, Robbo and Billy the Kid on the other.

 

Firstly, it's blatantly obvious Sadio and Mo were on different teams because they wouldn't have passed to eachother and we'd have all picked up on any friction between them when one of them fucked up.

 

Secondly, they really weren't as good at this as I'd have expected. Gini was pretty much perfect and completely owned the game. The rest though? Meh. And Sadio was shite.

 

Thirdly, I was getting irrationally pissed off at Thiago constantly chesting the ball up in the air to tee people up, instead of just heading it like anyone else would. Flash cunt.

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I'd also have to comment on Alisson's muzzy, which I hate. I think he looks a tit. 

 

And I haven't asked him, but fairly sure my Dad's reaction if I do will be "I trust Adrian to grow a better muzzy" as he trusts Adrian more than Alisson in everything else. Yes, even goalkeeping.

 

Right, I'm done until next week.

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