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Really hard to sit through this. As if our own performance wasn’t infuriating enough, we had to endure the full shithouse repertoire of Neymar & co. It was a horrible game of football. The Champions League brought so much joy for us last season but it’s been mostly miserable this year, away from home anyway. We’ve been good at Anfield so that give us hope of still progressing to the knockouts, but there’s major cause for concern now as we’ve had three defeats on our travels and not one of them was undeserved. Not good enough, simple as that. I don’t know why we’ve been so shit, but it isn’t bad luck. We’ve just not been good enough. This loss in isolation is fine as there’s no shame in being beaten by PSG in Paris. The real damage was done in Belgrade, and to a slightly lesser extent in Naples, but because of that we needed a better effort in this game and we didn’t get it. It was fucking tame. We didn’t start well and PSG had more intensity about them. They did to us what we were doing to everyone in last year’s run to the final. Intense pressing, snapping into tackles and breaking with pace. We used to be like that. Now we’re just plodding and pedestrian and really easy to play against. Where's the spark? The energy? The speed? I mentioned in the Watford report that there seems to have been a deliberate shift in our play. Basically we’ve slowed down. We’re more methodical and patient and it’s paid off in the sense that we don’t let goals in anymore (at least not domestically), but now I’m worried that we might not be able to just flick the switch and go back to the other style when we need it. We’re no longer in those mental end to end basketball type games but we’ve lost something because of that. When we needed to step it up in this game and play like we did last year, we couldn’t do it. It was plodding, pass pass pass, sideways and backwards. How many chances did we create? I don’t remember Buffon having to make a save of any note. It was depressing to see and let’s not sugarcoat it just because we love them, the front three are a problem right now. Bobby was fucking woeful, Mo wasn’t much better and Sadio wasn’t great either, although he was easily the pick of the three. It’s happened too many times this season. A lot of us have been focussing on the 4-2-3-1 as possibly being part of the problem. Clearly it isn't, as this was the 4-3-3 set up that has served us so well, and it still didn't look right. Mo was back on the right and he was garbage. Bobby was back up top and was even worse than he's been when playing as the ten. As ineffective as the forwards were (bit harsh on Mané perhaps), the midfield was the bigger issue. Gini got booked early on (some classic Neymar playacting) and he never really recovered. He couldn’t play with the aggression we needed and there was too much time and space for their creative players. Milner had plenty of aggression and was tackling as though his life depended on it. Di Maria and Neymar were on the receiving end of some typically hefty ‘hard but fair’ Milner challenges, but he was fighting a lone battle as PSG were just slicing through our midfield with one touch passing. Henderson was like a training cone in the first half. They were just passing around him with ease. It’s hard when Neymar and Mbappe are playing one touch and turning the corner, but there was too much space for them and Hendo was really exposed time and again. They kept getting turned and running at us and when that happens it’s always dangerous because of the speed and quality they have. That’s how both of their goals came and they had other situations that could also have ended up in the net. I thought Van Dijk could have done better on the first and several players could have done better on the second. We don’t get cut open like that often and although you could argue that's because we don’t face the likes of Mbappe and Neymar very often, it’s more than that. We’ve faced Silva, Sane, De Bruyne and Aguero plenty of times and they didn’t do it (except in that lopsided game when Sadio was sent off), so I’d say it’s more about what we did than what they did. The shape didn’t look right in the first half. There was no deep lying midfielder and to me it often looked like we just had three lines. The back four, the midfield three and the forwards. Often when we play, you’d struggle to identify the formation as the movement is so fluid all around the pitch. The amount of times I saw the midfield three in a straight line really stood out to me though, as its not something I’ve ever really noticed before. When that happens it’s easy to find space ‘between the lines’ as managers always say. Neymar would come deep, pop the ball off and get the return pass and leave our midfield for dead. If it wasn’t Neymar doing it, it was Mbappe or Verratti. We were chasing shadows. That never happens. We’ve played loads of boss teams in the last year or so and we’ve been an absolute fucking nightmare for them. We make good teams look average. Now we’re making average teams look good. Ok PSG are above average but I won’t have it that they are a top team because they’re not. Last season we'd have fucking smashed them. They played well in this game because they were clearly massively up for it. At Anfield they were lazy, ill disciplined and played as individuals. They obviously learned from that because there was more unity about them and you could see how fired up they all were. It looked like they wanted it more than we did, but a big part of the problem was the shithousery and how we were unable to handle it. “Negative aggression” was how Klopp referred to it. I assume he meant that we grew frustrated by their antics and ended up giving away silly fouls because of it. PSG are just the absolute fucking worst though. Real Madrid on fucking steroids. They represent everything that’s wrong with football, on and off the pitch. As much as I have a beef with Man City and their antics, at least on the pitch there’s not much to criticise them for. They play the game the right way and other than Sterling’s penchant for diving there’s really not much to criticise them for. PSG though, fucking hell. What a bunch of horrible, cheating, arrogant, playacting bellends. The ref was in over his head and had no idea how to deal with it. In fairness to him, there were a number of occasions when they tried to buy a cheap foul and he waved it away, much to the fury of the crowd, so I don’t think he was biased, he was just not very good. The ref is an easy target but it’s really difficult when players are carrying on like this. Some of them are fouls, some aren’t, but being able to tell the difference all the time is a fucking job and a half, and this fella just wasn't up to it. While it’s easy to slag refs off for not being able to deal with it, the real issue here is that they shouldn’t have to. Players are acting like cunts. That’s the problem. And because of this ‘superstar’ culture we live in, Neymar is allowed to act the way he does without any kind of negative impact on his career. He’ll be on the cover of FIFA, the endorsements will keep rolling in, he gets the ridiculous salary and swans around like he’s God’s gift to footy. Why should he stop acting like a twat, he's been handsomely rewarded for it. The truly great players don't need to do that, but then he's not a great player. He’s got the same arrogance and self indulgence as Ronaldo yet he’s done fuck all to earn it. Ronaldo is as vain as any man on the planet, but you know something, given everything he’s achieved he can pretty much act how he likes as he’s earned the right. And he doesn't act anywhere near as much of a twat as Neymar does. The fuck has he ever done? Over-rated preening little cunt. Any worthwhile success he's had has come from riding the coat tails of Messi and Suarez. It’s so frustrating when he’s rolling around trying to get players booked and sent off and the refs are obliging him, but all the criticism of the official misses the point. The issue here is Neymar and some of his team-mates acting like cunts and people blaming the ref for it. Yeah he was shite and in over his head, but if someone bludgeons your mate over the head with a hammer and the doctor isn't skilled enough to save him, would you blame the doctor? If players play the game the right way and the ref is still fucking things up, that’s on him. When they’re doing what Neymar and co are doing it makes the referees job that much harder. That being said, I’ve always been of the mindset that if I were a ref and I saw the shit Neymar was pulling, I’d never give him any decision no matter what defenders did to him. Its easy to say that of course but when refs are being assessed on their performance they can’t just say “fuck this clown, I’m giving him nothing”. So there are some mitigating circumstances for a lot of things the ref got wrong. However, he was right on the spot and had a perfect view of Verratti’s lunge on Gomez. He had the yellow card out before Joe had even hit the floor, which tells me that he already knew beforehand he wasn’t going to be red carding anyone unless he really had to. Verratti figured it out pretty quickly too as he was just running around fouling people for the rest of the night. Staggering really, the ref could not have had a better view of what was a horrible tackle and yet he dished out the same punishment as he was giving our lads for little trips and shirt pulls. It doesn’t help either when PSG players are surrounding him bitching about every fucking decision he makes. That comes from that fucking wrong un on the touchline though. I don’t care much for Thomas Tuchel. There’s a nonce vibe about him and I’m surprised that him and Klopp didn’t come to blows given the way he was acting all game, berating the ref over clear cut decisions. Klopp was kicking off too, but he had a legitimate gripe and was arguing over clear cut decisions the official got wrong. Tuchel was going to war over fucking throw ins and shit, the fucking bellend. I mean look at their reaction to the penalty. Stonewall pen, absolutely no doubt about it whatsoever, yet it was about five minutes between the foul and the spot kick. Tuchel was acting the cunt and his players were harassing the ref and doing all they could to delay the taking of the kick and put pressure on Milner. Big Games James held his nerve admirably though, and the lifeline ought to have been enough to spark a second half onslaught. It never did though. PSG seemed content to settle for what they had and they allowed us to have a lot of the ball, but we did fuck all with it. I thought it got a little better when Naby came on and then a little worse when Sturridge and Shaqiri came on. The only hope we had was that Mane and Robertson might carve something out down the left, because no other area of the side were offering any threat whatsoever. And how shit were our set-pieces? That's not acceptable at all. If you're not playing well then set plays are a great opportunity to steal a cheap goal, but ours were brutal all night. The loss itself doesn’t bother me much at all. It was always going to the final game anyway, we know that. It wouldn’t be Liverpool if we qualified with plenty to spare and were able to rest people for a dead rubber. We couldn’t even manage that last year when we were in a shite group, so defeat in Paris was almost a foregone conclusion. The way we lost was massively disheartening though. I’d have been ok with us losing a shoot out. Had it ended 3-2 or 4-3 with chances at both ends and us just being edged out, that would have been sound. I could have taken a lot from that because it would have suggested we were getting our mojo back and that it just wasn't our night. As it is, there is quite literally nothing positive to take from this at all, other than the fact at least we didn’t allow that fraud Cavani to get on the scoresheet. Our form over the three away games in Europe has been risible. We’ve barely even been able to muster a fucking shot on target. These are the same players who broke the record for the most goals in a Champions League campaign last season and now they can barely do a thing right in attack. I still think we’ll go through because when we need a result at Anfield we tend to get it. It’d be nice to do it the easy way just once though wouldn’t it? The only thing I can cling to is maybe we need one of "those European nights" to get us going again and to start playing like we can. Star man is Andy Robbo, who was great. His defending was brilliant, he got forward loads and he even made his way over to the opposite flank just so he could boot Neymar in stoppage time. Probably not the smartest move as it allowed them to waste more time, but I can’t have a go at him for that given that I know I’d be doing a hell of a lot worse to the preening little fucking show pony if I’d been out there. Team: Alisson; Gomez, Lovren, Van Dijk, Robertson; Henderson, Wijnaldum (Keita), Milner (Shaqiri); Salah, Firmino (Sturridge), Mané: