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At least we played better than we did last year. The 2-0 scoreline was ludicrous really. We should never have lost the game at all but to lose by two was just taking the piss. If we never have to go to play in Naples again it will still be too fucking soon. Whether we finish first or second in the group didn’t matter to me before, but it does now. I’m sick of Napoli. I’m sick of having to play them in pre-season. I’m sick of their rat fans stabbing people. I’m sick of their shitty fucking Kappa kit. I’m sick of their snide bastard players and I’m even sick of Carlo Ancelotti’s rogue eyebrow (and I’ve always quite liked ol’ Carlo). I want us to smash them at Anfield and then never have to play them ever again. I must admit, I struggle to get up for the Champions League group stages these days. Since we’ve become title contenders these games don’t do anything for me to be honest. They’re a necessary evil but my blood doesn't get pumping until the knock outs come around. So going into the game my feeling was that I’d like to win to keep the run going, but that if we were to come a cropper in any game we have coming up then this would be the one that would be the least damaging. Losing a Premier League game can have dire consequences, but basically, this game didn’t matter because whatever the result we should still go through anyway. That didn’t stop me from being fucking livid afterwards though. Livid at VAR, livid at Napoli, and livid at the amount of bollocks I heard on telly and read on social media about it. Yeah, I mean the penalty incident and some of the baffling takes on it. “He gave the ref a decision to make” “It’s not a clear and obvious error” “if that was at the other end I’d want it” and various other nonsense soundbites. I don’t often talk in absolutes and I generally have respect for the opposing point of view. I'm not an "I'm right and you're wrong" type of guy. On this though? Nah. All of the above is absolute horseshit. It wasn’t a penalty. 100% it wasn’t. No debate, no room for ambiguity, it was just a dive and should have been a booking for Callejon. I honestly can’t get my head around how anyone sees it differently. Are we that attuned to cheating now that an incident like this is somehow seen as contentious by people who ought to know better? Apparently so. This isn’t a 50-50 call. It’s not even a 90-10 call. In fact, it’s not even a 99-1 call. It’s a clear dive and the only ‘contact’ that is made (if you can even call it that) is Callejon ensuring that his leg brushes against Robbo’s on his way to the floor. We don't lose very often these days and I'd almost forgotten how it feels. If you take VAR out of the question then I wouldn’t be anywhere near as bitter and resentful as I am about this one. I don’t blame the ref for giving a penalty as in real time it looked like a clumsy foul from Robbo. As soon as it happened I said “oh shit that’s a pen”. So, even if replays had shown that the ref got it wrong I could have lived with that because it’s tough and mistakes happen. Refs will get some of these wrong as it’s impossible sometimes to get them right in real time. But isn’t that the whole reason they inflicted this video shit on us? I’m totally against VAR in all forms but at least when the on-pitch referee would go to the touchline to look at the video himself then more often than not the decision would be right, because if he fucked up he’d see it and over-rule himself. Since they stopped that and had some fucking trained monkey in a room looking at the video and doing absolutely fuck all, the whole thing has become a farce. The video is meant to help the ref, so let him look at it and then either stand by his decision or change it. This ref was good I thought. I liked how he let a lot of stuff go and wasn’t blowing up any time a Napoli player hit the turf looking for a cheap free-kick. A lot of the time in Europe refs are blowing up for nothing and it becomes really hard to play our normal pressing game. This ref wasn’t like that, so if he had the benefit of seeing that incident on a pitchside monitor I reckon he’d have reversed the decision and booked Callejon. Instead he’s been made to look foolish because he was hood winked by a player and because the video ref didn’t help him out. The four worst words in the English language right now are “clear and obvious error”. I’m sick of hearing it as it’s basically just a fucking cop out for not ensuring the right decision is made. By using this daft rationale you can pretty much justify never over-ruling anything. I mean come on, in our last two games alone we’ve seen two clearly incorrect decisions upheld on this bullshit ‘not clear and obvious’ thing. They’re basically saying that if it’s subjective they won’t overturn anything, but realistically 99% of decisions are subjective to some degree, as this has proved. The fact that there are people claiming that this, THIS, is not an obvious error shows that. I mean fucking hell people, he took a dive. It’s as clear as day. So I’m not angry that we lost to Napoli. I’m not even angry that the referee was conned by a well executed dive. I’m angry that this video bollocks that has been inflicted on us on the premise that it would stop this kind of shit has actually just made the situation even worse. We talk more about bad decisions now than we did before. “He gave the ref a decision to make”. I’m so sick of hearing that because it no longer applies. When it’s a referee making a decision without the help of replays, then yeah, that’s a valid argument. If a defender dived in and the ref mistakenly thought it was a foul, it was a legitimate thing to argue. The second they brought this fucking video shit in though it became null and void. Or at least it should have. It’s fucking shit. I hate it. It should be fucked off. I hate VAR and didn’t want it. I know some were in favour of it, but even they must surely see that this is not how it’s supposed to be. The way it’s being implemented is not how this shit was advertised. VAR is basically a big red brexit bus, promising shit that it had no intention of ever delivering. In terms of the game and the performance, I’m fine with it. Napoli are a good side and it’s a difficult place to go. I thought we played pretty well and should have won. The reason we didn’t was because of VAR being as much use as Phillip Degen and because we were just too wasteful in attack. Sadio was uncharacteristically sloppy and Bobby followed up his sensational display at the weekend with a bang average one this time. He got better in the second half, but overall he was a little bit off. I thought Mo was generally fine. He wasn’t great but he was the least culpable of the front three. He was really unlucky with a great shot that the keeper did superbly to tip around the post. The most frustrating moment of the night was the brilliant counter we had from a Napoli corner that saw Sadio and Mo running at the last defender. I’m absolutely positive that the shit at Burnley contributed to that whole thing going wrong as it caused Mané to second guess himself. In fairness the defender did well and made the pass difficult, and what should have happened really was Sadio should have just drove at him and had a shot. There were a couple of split seconds when the pass might have been on and even when he did play it there was a chance of making it, but I just think the whole situation was in his head and impacted his judgement. Overall we had some good chances and loads of situations that should have led to good chances if only we’d played the right pass. It was just one of those rare off nights for the attackers (for some weird reason they tend to usually happen away from home in Europe), but the performance was generally good and there were some top quality outings from the likes of Fabinho, Trent, Matip and Adrian. It’s Adrian I feel for the most actually. He was fucking brilliant and didn’t deserve to be on the losing side. He made a nice double save in the first half but the thing I liked best about that was how quickly and confidently he was up and appealing for offside when the striker finished the rebound from the second one. He just seemed in complete control of that whole situation. The save he made in the second half was incredible. I think it’s one of the greatest saves I’ve ever seen actually. The commentators kept saying that “he went early” but he didn’t at all. It wasn’t going early, it was recognising the situation and spreading himself to try and give the striker the least amount of space as possible. Schmeichel did that all the time. You can be reactive and wait until the forward takes his shot and then try to save it, or you can be proactive and make yourself as big as possible. Adrian did the latter, and although there was some fortune involved in that the ball hit his hand, he still had to keep it out and somehow he turned it over the bar. It was an incredible save. He was good in everything he did actually. His distribution was good, his handling was good and he looked supremely confident. He nearly saved the pen too. Top performance from him. He’s the star man just ahead of Fabinho. It's not nice losing a game but as I said, if we were going to lose one then this was the best time for it. Similarly, if Virg was going to make a costly error than let it be in this game when we're already 1-0 down. On that note, Steve McManaman said after that second goal that the penalty incident doesnt matter now because they scored again. Fucking hell. Look at how that goal came about. Mo plays a high risk pass because time is running out and we need to score. Virgil then tries to keep the ball alive by playing a risky ball for the same reason. But the penalty doesn't matter because it finished 2-0? Behave yerself. But yeah, far better to have a blip in this one that at Chelsea next weekend. At least it's a Sunday game, and having played on the Tuesday that gives us plenty of time to recover, which will be necessary given that Klopp went full strength (bar Gini being left on the bench). Stamford Bridge is always a tough place to go but the way we've been playing we should be fine. The only thing that could cause us a problem is if the forwards are wasteful again, because the way we play means that we'll almost always create good situations no matter who we play. Misfiring in Champions League away group games isn't the end of the world, as we saw last season when we lost all three of them. Team: Adrian; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Henderson (Shaqiri), Milner (Wijnaldum); Salah, Firmino, Mané: