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Burnley away is supposed to be one of the tricky games. For most teams it is. Hell, for us it usually is. This time though we made it look routine. At no point did this ever look like it was going to be anything other than a comfortable win for us. Even when it was 0-0 it felt like only a matter of time before we scored. Burnley tried to do what they do. They had the two physical lads up front and they hit it long long to them at every opportunity, but they got nothing out of Virgil and Joel. Those of you who have been reading the Premier League Round Ups over the last 12 months with know I’m a big Ashley Barnes fan. He’s a handful and will cause problems for most defenders, but he never had a sniff in this game and was eventually subbed having done nothing. The easy thing is to give Van Dijk the credit for that but for most of the game Matip was the one dealing with Barnes, while Virg took care of Chris Wood. The two centre backs, ably supported by Fabinho, were the bedrock on which this win was based. They were so dominant they basically just removed Burnley’s teeth. The Clarets were yapping but they had no bite. This was just such an impressive performance, but we’re so good these days that wins like this are almost taken for granted now. They shouldn’t be. It’s not easy to do what we did here. There are some opponents that are tailor made for us and I just expect us to swat them aside. Teams that try to play football against us, especially in their own half, we’ll murder them every time. Burnley though, they present a fairly unique set of problems and we’ve often had trouble dealing with them. This shows just how strong we are now, and I’m not specifically just talking about the players either. A lot goes into wins like this that we fans don’t really see. The untrained eye just sees a good performance and an impressive win, but without the right gameplan we wouldn’t be seeing that, regardless of how much better our players are than theirs. I feel as though we’re just incredibly well prepared for games these days. We know what the opponent wants to do, and we know how to stop them doing it. It’s rare that we get outmanoeuvred by anyone nowadays. That’s because Klopp and his team of analysts have a plan for each opponent. Obviously I don’t know the specifics of what the plan was here, but you could tell from watching the game and also by what Klopp said afterwards that one of the keys was to make sure we had players around Van Dijk and Matip when they were dealing with the long balls. If you don’t have that you’re going to have all sorts of problems against Burnley, because even if the defenders win the header, Barnes and Wood are generally backing in and making it difficult for them to get a clean contact. Their midfielders then pick up the bits and they build from there and get plenty of crosses in. It’s simple but effective, and they’re very good at it. Usually. Not this time though. Virgil just completely dominated Wood all day, and although Matip had the tougher assignment in Barnes, he dealt with him very well too. That was a good battle between those two, with a little bit of needle there too. That’s how Barnes likes it, but Matip was up to the challenge. Fabinho constantly being around his centre backs any time there was a loose ball helped massively too, and between the three of them they just dominated. That being said, Burnley did still manage to force Adrian into a few saves, even though most of them were moot as they were offside anyway. Adrian didn’t know that anyway, as in the first instance the flag didn’t even go up. I had a moan about that last week in the Arsenal report and the same thing happened again. I mistakenly thought last week that the lino didn’t flag because they’ve been instructed not to do so and to just let VAR deal with close calls. Apparently that’s only in the CL though (thanks to @RobbieOR for that). So last week when Aubamayeng went through, the lino didn’t flag not because he’s been told not to, but because he either thought he was onside or he took the shithouse approach and decided he’d leave it to VAR rather than risk getting it wrong. And the exact same thing happened in this game. Wood was offside when he went through but the linesman kept his flag down. Adrian made a good save and the ball was smuggled behind for a corner. Had they scored, it wouldn’t have counted because VAR would have ruled it out, but because they didn’t score it couldn’t bemused and Burnley got a corner (just as Arsenal did last week). What if they’d scored from the corner? How is that fair? It’s bullshit. VAR is giving the linos a safety net that only encourages them not to make decisions in case they are wrong. I don’t blame them as it’s a sensible approach, but it’s asking for trouble and I feel it’s going to creep in more and more. Anyway, Burnley didn’t score from the corner so no harm done, but there is going to come a time when a team does score in these circumstances and all hell will break loose, especially if it’s a decisive goal in an important game. That was the only real moment of concern in a one sided first half though. We almost took the lead when Mané picked out Salah in the box and he struck a first time shot onto the post. Looked in all the way that. It was a really good effort. We had other chances too, most notably when Salah ran through but was beaten to the ball by Pope, only for the ricochet to go inches wide. Both of those were unfortunate, but lady luck smiled on us eventually when Trent’s cross flicked off the back of Wood and looped over Pope into the top corner. Complete fluke but who cares. Trent wasn’t arsed that they took the goal off him because he got the assist anyway, and assists are the new goals now for him and Robbo. Mané made it 2-0 when Mee passed the ball straight to Bobby on halfway, and he drove forward and then rolled the ball into Sadio’s path for him to stroke it first time into the corner. There was never any doubt he was going to score that was there? He’s just in sensational form. All credit to Bobby there though, because he slowed down his run enough to allow Sadio to get ahead of him, and the pass was timed and weighted perfectly. It was pretty much game over at 2-0 but you always want to get the third just to be sure. We had loads of opportunities to do so but didn’t make the most of them and had to wait until 80 minutes to finally wrap it up through Firmino. Some of our football had been sensational at times but the final pass rarely matched the build up. That’s when the final pass was actually even played of course. *looks accusingly at Salah*. Salah could have put one on a plate for Firmino but instead checked onto his right foot and attempted an off balance shot from 18 yards. It barely even reached the keeper. Appalling that was. Bobby said nothing though, he just looked at the floor and probably muttered “greedy fucker”. Soon after there was a similar situation when Salah should have rolled it to Mané but once again checked back and into trouble. That had been a sensational team move and would have been one of the goals of the season if Salah had fed Sadio. Both of those incidents annoyed the shit out of me at the time, but as annoyed as I was it was clearly nothing to how furious Mané was. I didn’t see it at the time and only found out what happened after I checked my phone at full time on the way out. I saw a few of the lads talking about it on whatsapp but I had no idea what had really gone on until I saw the videos on social media when I got home. My first thought was “fucking hell, that’s mad” as it was so out of character. My second thought was that it was hilarious seeing Mané just yelling and gesticulating at everyone! What makes it even funnier is seeing Bobby’s reaction walking down the tunnel. He’s a fucking case isn’t he? So funny. He just loves life doesn’t he? He works hard and he plays hard. Does anybody in football have more fun doing what they do than Bobby Firmino? The way he leaned over and patted Sadio on the head sympathetically spoke volumes too I reckon. It smacked of “I know lad, fucking greedy bastard didn’t pass to me either”. Sadio was on one though, he was letting everyone have it! Klopp, the Kloppelganger and Hendo all got an earful. Luckily Milner was on hand to sit down next to him and calm the situation. It’s not what you want to see but these things happen and it’s not a big deal. In a perfect world Salah would have passed the ball. In a slightly less than perfect world he might not pass it but Mané keeps his cool. In the real world though, sometimes people let emotions get the better of them, and Sadio was massively pissed off! It’s funny watching how angry he is, because that’s not him. The only player less likely to show a reaction like that is probably Gini, who’s just the nicest guy on the planet and has probably never lost his temper with anyone. Really though, who can blame Mané in this instance? The last time I saw a reaction like that to someone not passing was when Suarez looked like he wanted to kill Sturridge during a derby game at Anfield. My memory is shit these days, but from what I recall we were destroying Everton and could have put seven or eight past them the way the game was going. We got a pen and Sturridge took it off Gerrard because he was on a hat-trick. He missed, and then spent the rest of the game desperately trying to make up for it and to get his hat-trick, much to the annoyance of Suarez who just wanted to batter Everton and didn’t care who scored. After one particularly bad selfish moment from Sturridge, Suarez went apeshit and turned to the bench and was screaming at Rodgers to get Sturridge off. Soon after he got his way. Klopp went a different route. He probably ought to have taken Salah off and had a quiet word to tell him to stop being such a greedy twat, but instead he took off Sadio and Bobby to give them a rest. That’s probably what tipped Mané over the edge because if that was me I’d have been saying “I’m out there playing for the team while he’s playing for himself, but you take ME off? And fucking Bobby too??” He let rip at Hendo as well, and again I can understand where he is coming from on that too. Apparently Hendo bollocked him last week for something he did wrong against Arsenal, so Mané is probably thinking that the captain should be pulling Salah into line too. Only problem with that was Hendo had already been subbed by the time Salah didn’t pass to Mané. He was on when he ignored Bobby though, and that one was actually much worse, so yeah, have a fuckin’ word Jordan lad. This isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things and I’m sure it’s all been straightened out now. It is something that everyone is going to be looking at now though, so ideally in the next game they’ll both put a goal or two on a plate for the other and we can all move on. I’d like to think that this might have shaken Mo a bit (seeing the normally mild mannered Mané going postal ought to give him pause) and make him realise that it’s fine to back himself when the odds are in his favour, but he needs to knock this other shit off where he’s trying to dribble past five players or taking low percentage shots (and ANY shot on his fucking right foot is low percentage). The two incidents in this game were inexcusable, and I only reckon he did it because he figured the game was won so he was entitled to try and get himself a goal. Even the ‘assist’ for Bobby wasn’t pass. He just over ran his dribble and Bobby ran up and smacked it in. Still, the stat nerds will use that as proof he isn’t greedy when the eyes tell a completely different tale. It’s not acceptable really. This happened quite a bit last season too. He needs to play the game as though it’s 0-0 and if a team-mate is in a better position and he doesn’t have a clear sight of goal, then pass the fucking ball. You know that Bobby sure as hell would, and although Sadio has had his greedy moments too, he never really looks like someone who is just on a one man crusade to get a goal, as we’ve seen sometimes with Mo. Ultimately though, if this was going to happen then better it happen now in a routine 3-0 than in a game when it could cost us. The win maintains the 100% start and keeps us top. We couldn’t have asked for more at this stage. The thing with this team now though is it doesn’t really seem to matter who they’re playing and where. Barring two or three exceptions I see pretty much every game now as an almost certain three points. When was the last time we were able to think like that? The late 80s probably. The standards currently being set by us and City are unprecedented. Both teams seem to win every week now. It’s unrelenting. This win gave us a club record for consecutive wins and also equalled a club record for consecutive away wins. We’ll lose or draw eventually and it might be in a game where we least expect it. I doubt it though, this team is just too good and too well prepared. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve won every game by the time we play City in November, and I’d be even less surprised if they’ve won every game between now and then too. The Champions League will be well under why by that point though, and playing twice a week might make things trickier. That’s when the likes of Origi, Gomez, Milner, Shaqiri, Ox and co are going to be needed. Star man is Bobby. Could easily have been Virgil or Fabinho, or even Matip for that matter. I thought Adrian had a good game too, even though he wasn’t called into action too often. He made some good saves and I’m made up for him that he got his clean sheet. I reckon he might be the happiest footballer on the planet right now. He probably can’t believe his luck. He’s loving it though, you only have to look at his instagram to see how much he’s buzzing off being a Liverpool player. He’s replying to every post by any of his team-mates or the club, it’s funny as fuck actually. He doesn’t look like losing his place any time soon either based on how Alisson looked last week at the UEFA awards. A mate saw him hobbling down the steps and described it as “like a fella going to the social to put an invalidity claim in”. He didn’t look like someone on the verge of a comeback, put it that way. Team: Adrian; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Henderson (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Wijnaldum; Salah, Firmino (Origi), Mané (Shaqiri):

Saturday August 24: L 3 Arsenal 1 Did any of you expect anything else today? Seriously, did any of you think we might not win this game? I couldn’t have been any less worried. I knew we’d beat them and I knew if we played anywhere near our best level it wouldn’t even be close. It wasn’t that long ago that Arsenal were better than us. Now the gap is as big as it’s been since… I don’t know, maybe since they were ‘the Invincibles’. Arsenal should be made up to com away with just a 3-1 defeat as they were utterly dominated. These are special times. The football we play is sensational and Anfield is an impregnable fortress now. Arsenal didn’t help themselves with how they approached the game, but it didn’t really matter what they did, they were always going to get smashed because we’re miles better than them. All over the pitch we’re great. The midfield still has it’s doubters and some of the concerns are legit, but in games like this they’re great. They swarmed all over Arsenal and the energy and relentless pressure was just too much. The front three were right on it and the defence was superb too. They deserved a clean sheet, although Arsenal did miss two sitters in the first half so we can’t feel too hard done by. What’s all the shite about Virgil being dribbled past by Pepe though? It’s not really important, but it’s still irrationally annoyed me. If someone dribbles past him then good luck to them, the statistic doesn’t really mean much other than it’s a funny little thing to throw at rivals fans, but I’m to having that his record went today because it fucking didn’t. Pepe didn’t dribble past him. He knocked the ball past him and legged it. Virgil went back with him, stayed goal side at all times and then nicked the ball off him. In what world is that classed as a successful dribble? Load of old bollocks that. Sunday August 25: Bobby Duncan is being linked with Fiorentina now. Something is amiss here. Last week he was the subject of a failed bid by a Scandinavian club. When players keep being linked with other clubs it’s either because the club wants rid and is trying to generate interest, or because the agent is hawking them around. Pretty sure LFC don’t want shut of him, so that leaves the agent. It’s weird though because if you look at Bobby’s twitter he’s the biggest ‘dream come true’ ‘I love the Reds I do’ fanboy since Adam Morgan. Why on earth would he want to leave, especially when the deals being mooted are not just season long loans, they’re permanent. Meanwhile, Lovren is now being linked with a move to Germany. Sick of this now. The sooner this window is closed the better. As much as I like the idea of the window closing before the season starts, it’s been rendered completely pointless by the fact that it’s open for everyone else. It needs to be the same for everyone in future. Monday August 26: The u23s got their first win of the season, beating Southampton 4-2 away. Brewster, Jones, Chirivella and Longstaff got the goals, but the goals against tally is something they need to be concerned about. I hope Chirivella gets himself a decent move before the window shuts, as he's such a good player. Not good enough to make it here, but he's a lovely player to watch. Great technician as Brendan would say. No Bobby Duncan in the squad tonight though. Hmmm. Well would you look at that, Roma are supposed to be back in for Lovren now. What are they going to offer this time? A free tour of the Coliseum, a slice of cold pizza and some ice cream? Stop wasting our time, you mingebags. Tuesday August 27: Roma sign Chris Smalling on loan. See, that’s why they didn’t go for Big Dejan, because they didn’t want to pay any money. He’s not the only United player off to Serie A on loan, as Sanchez is going to Inter. This is hilarious really. Sanchez is swapping the Europa League for the Champions League, while United are still paying him £6m a year for him to take a step up. Be dead funny if him and Lukaku tear it up over there. I don’t think the Mancs realise it yet, but they're where we’ve been for most of the last 30 years. Miles away, floundering, kidding themselves that with the right couple of signings they’d be right back up there. It’s a long way back for them. A long way. Meanwhile, Harry Kane says it’s still early days and Spurs can keep pace with us and City. Nope, not a hope in hell. We’ll both be at least 20 points ahead of Spurs and the rest, just like last year. The standard being set by the top two is just unrelentingly high. Any dropped point feels like it’s the end of the world. Spurs lost at home to Newcastle last week. If that happens to us in a couple of weeks, it will almost feel like the season is over. It doesn’t really matter much to Spurs because when you’re just competing for top four you can lose ten games and still achieve your goals. The levels reached by Klopp and Guardiola has changed football as we know it. All the old conventional wisdom no longer applies. Also today, some talk that we’re trying to get Matip tied down to a new deal. Well deserved, he’s been fucking terrific since he got back in the team. Joe Gomez is brilliant, but Matip is in the team ahead of him on merit. There aren’t many players out there that could keep Gomez on the sidelines. Matip is top class and the partnership with Virg is as good as there is anywhere. This talk about Klopp leaving at the end of his deal just won’t go away, and today Dudek has come out and said that if and when Klopp leaves, there’s only one man for the job - Steven Gerrard. I really hope not. I love Stevie and I hope he has a great managerial career. Whoever replaces Klopp though will be on a hiding to nothing. Gerrard might be the absolute last person I’d want to take over, even if he proves himself as a manager (which he hasn’t yet). Wednesday August 28: Jesus Christ, this Bobby Duncan thing is mad. It was obvious that something was going on, but no-one could have envisaged what happened today. The agent is clearly a massive twat but what people need to remember here is that agents work for players, not the other way around. All this ‘poor Bobby being given bad advice’ is a load of old Zlatan. Make excuses for him all you like, but I don’t care how ‘young’ he is, he has to know that putting out a statement accusing Inglethorpe and Edwards of bullying is not going to end well for him. Apparently he’s not been in training all week and refused to play for the 23s on Monday. Just who the fuck does this kid think he is? Seriously? We’ve had so many better players come through the system than him, and not one of them has ever carried on like this. I suppose it’s possible he didn’t see the statement before it was put out there, but it’s highly unlikely. And even if he hadn’t, he retweeted the fucking thing before removing it soon after (no doubt when the club got onto him about it). Few things in football shock me these days, but this has. The agent played the mental health card, which is a fucking disgrace really and an insult to those who genuinely suffer from it. Don’t tell me Duncan is suffering from it, because I’m not having it. If he’s ‘not left his house in four days’ and is depressed it’s because the agent has filled his head with all sorts of bollocks about the direction his career needs to be going. The truth is it’s going at exactly the rate of progression it should. If he wanted to be playing first team football by 18, I fully respect that but he should have signed for someone else when he walked out on City. He came here to play in the 18s and he had a great season, winning the Youth Cup. He was then moved up to the 23s, and he’s had a taste of the first team in pre-season. Apparently that’s not good enough. What a self entitled tit. I’m more annoyed with him than I am the agent to be totally honest. Agents tend to be cunts so I expect it. The agent has now links to Liverpool and all he’s interested in is lining his own pockets. If Duncan was an overseas youngster I’d still be pissed off, but I’d be a little more understanding. He’s not though, he’s always giving it the “boyhood red living the dream” stuff, while behind the scenes he’s been trying to get a move since the end of last season? And now he’s allowing his agent to accuse Inglethorpe (by all accounts a top fella) and Edwards (no idea what he’s like, to be honest) of bullying. He hired that agent and the agent speaks for him. The same agent who encouraged Saido Berahino to completely sabotage his own once promising career. No-one forced Bobby to hire this guy, and in fact he got rid of the agent he had previously so he could hire this cunt. Why would you do that? Especially when your cousin is Steven Gerrard and there’s no way on earth he’d have advised that. In fact, why do Academy kids even need agents? The answer is they don’t. They could just use the PFA agents and then when they’ve made it, and actually need an agent to negotiate endorsements and stuff, then they can hire one. Bottom line here, Duncan is way too big for his boots and has been indulged far too much. Agents often do more harm than good with young players. You know who Duncan should be looking at as a warning for what could be in store for him? Jerome Sinclair. Look at him now. His career went down the toilet because he wanted more money than we were willing to pay him. And he was better at 18 than Duncan. Personally I’d have torn up Duncan’s contract the second he removed all the LFC references from his social media today. I’d have written the £1.5m he’s currently worth and told him to go wherever the fuck he wants. It won’t happen because the club see these players as assets and they won’t just give him away. Maybe they think they can rehabilitate him but as far as I’m concerned what we’ve seen today tells me all I need to know about his mentality. He won’t make it here, you can quote me on that. Speaking of dickhead strikers with LFC connections, Dean Saunders has been jailed for refusing to take a breath test. Was this before or after he advocated us signing Wayne Rooney the other week? Was probably the same day. The copper was probably listening to the show and hung around outside the studio to see if he got into his car. What a dickhead though. Thursday August 29: Decent draw that. Getting Napoli again is shit though, especially for the fans who travel to these games, but Salzburg and Genk are sound on that front, and also for the footy side of things. We should get through that without even breaking sweat. Virgil and Alisson were both over there for the draw and to pick up awards. Alison got UEFA keeper of the year, while the big man was Defender of the Year and also Player of the Year. Well deserved too. How satisfying was it seeing one of our lads sat next to Messi and Ronaldo, and beating both of them to an award? I keep saying it in the match reports, but we’ve got it so good right now that we need to take time out to smell the flowers. In the voting for UEFA Player of the Year, we had four of the top six, as Salah and Mane were in there too. Just think about that for a second. Think about where we were when Klopp arrived, and look at it now. Fuck me, it’s incredible. Also today, Duncan tweeted "I just want to play football!" before later deleting the tweet. Presumably that doesn't apply to u23 games? At least he only had to delete a tweet. His agent deleted his entire account after the LFC family went for him. Don’t these dickheads ever learn? You don’t take on Liverpool fans as it always ends in tears. This clown was doomed from the moment Carragher attacked him and brought what he’d said to everyone’s attention. Within a few hours what was left of his reputation lay in tatters after old tweets of his had been dug up showing him to be a racist, homophobic, nonce supporting sleaze who had sent creepy audio messages to Babestation girls. It’s hilarious, this prick thought he could take on LFC and win, and he’s been completely ruined. Instead, his name is now mud and if Duncan hasn’t sacked him already then it’s only a matter of time. At least he’s still got Berahino. Friday August 30: Allison isn’t close to a comeback yet says Klopp. It’s going to be interesting to see when he actually does return given the way Jurgen downplayed it initially. Adrian has been a bit wobbly of late but the good thing about him is he doesn’t seem the type to lose any confidence because of a mistake or two. He’s quite cocky, which isn’t a bad thing in a ‘keeper I guess. Meanwhile, Duncan re-instates his social media profile pictures and pins a tweet showing Klopp patting him on the head in pre-season. Presumably the message is that he’s a Red again now. Well I still say “fuck him”. No doubt what we’ll see now is a lot of finger pointing at the agent for corrupting poor little Bobby, but he’s a big boy, he knew what he was doing. The only way he gets a pass on this is if it turns out that the agent did all of this on his own and Bobby knew nothing about it. That’s not going to be the case though, because he not only knew about it, he endorsed it by RT’ing and then throwing a strop and removing all the LFC stuff from his profiles. Yes, he’s only 18 and that has to be taken into account, but 18 is not 8. Footballers need to grow up quicker than normal kids because they’re in the public eye and they get media training from the club. He’s old enough to know better and what in the holy fuck were his family doing allowing this situation to develop like that? It’s mad. I’d still be looking to get rid of him asap, regardless of how many goals he might score this year. Not because I don’t believe in second chances (generally I do) but because a second chance isn’t going to change anything. Why? Because to make it at the top level you need much more than talent. You need to have a strong mentality and a team first attitude. This week has shown he has neither. If he makes it here I’ll be genuinely staggered. You know who I really feel sorry for in all this? Paul Glatzel, a fantastic lad who matched Duncan goal for goal and assist for assist, but didn’t feel the need to post weekly updates on social media about how many he had. Glatzel won’t play this season because he blew his knee out in pre-season. I’d love to know what he thinks about all this. ….and that was the week that was