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Back on track then. Kind of. It wasn’t vintage by any means but perhaps it was unrealistic to just expect the lads to go from horrible to brilliant in the space of a few days. Maybe the return to peak form is going to be a more gradual process? This was miles better than Watford and considerably better than Chelsea too. Granted, that’s a low bar, but still, improvement is improvement and this was a step in the right direction. Not the giant leap we wanted, but it’s a start. We’ll need to step it up considerably if we’re to beat Atletico but you could see by Klopp’s reaction at full time just how important he felt this win was. He even brought back the triple fist pump. And he did it TWICE. So yeah, we can play much better than this but the three points are most welcome as it nips in the bud some of the absolute bollocks being spouted about us after a few bad results. We went from being “the greatest team ever” to “not being as good as everyone thinks” just because we lost to Watford. I’m not even exaggerating. That debate was taking place in the media. “Maybe they aren’t that special” just because we lost a game. So we weren’t able to emulate Arsenal’s “Invincibles” but this team already has more points and more wins than they managed, and we’re only at the start of March. This win set a new club (and top flight) record of 22 straight home wins. That’s incredible. Yet it would seem that the lads have become victims of their own high standards. Talk that just winning the league isn’t enough and they need to do it with a record points tally and by retaining the Champions League or the season would be ‘disappointing’. The world’s gone fucking mad. I sort of understand the sentiment a little bit, because if we were to lose every game between now and May but won the title because City also dropped points, then yeah I’d be disappointed to some degree. But the season would still be a roaring success because we’d have ended the 30 year wait. Being disappointed with ‘how’ we won the title is something I’m sure we’d get over pretty quickly! The players are obviously aware of the talk because Virgil commented on it this week. I imagine they’re pretty baffled by it really, and rightly so. We’ve lost three of four but to add context to that, one of the defeats is only half time and one of them was with an under strength line up in a competition that frankly, if we’re being honest, Klopp really doesn’t give a toss about. So the Watford defeat is the only one that really counts as a genuine loss. It was a bad one and it was humbling, but we’ve played 29 league games, won 27 of them, had one draw and only suffered one defeat. So you can take you “maybe they aren’t that special” talk and stick it right up your hoop. No team plays their best football for an entire season, which is why Arsenal are the ones to go through a season unbeaten (and even they had a million draws). Form comes and goes and recently it's deserted us, but Watford are the only opponent that has been able to take advantage of us being below par. We’ve got a 25 point lead over Man City in second. TWENTY FIVE FUCKING POINTS. Imagine if someone told you back in August that as we hit the beginning of March we’d be 25 points clear of City and would have won NINE more games than them. It’s beyond all of our wildest dreams. Once again we saw why the talk of a weak league is an absolute steaming fucking pile of Zlatan. I’ll say once more, it’s really fucking hard winning games in this league because the teams at the bottom are capable of beating anyone. Norwich have beaten some of the big boys, Watford beat us and some of the other sides down there like West Ham and now Bournemouth have given us really tough games as well. Brighton at Anfield was hard too. We’re dominating without being that dominant, if that makes sense. We’re running away with it points wise but it’s not as though we’re smashing everyone all over the place. If winning games in this league was so easy, then why isn’t anyone else other than us doing it? Bournemouth were incredibly defensive but when the opportunity to counter was there they did so and at times they caused us problems. They played quite well but there’s no doubt that we deserved to win. The only reason it was as close as it was is because the inept referee gave them a head start. I thought I’d have no voice today because I absolutely lost it with Tierney and spent a fair bit of that first half jumping up and screaming abuse at him. Usually when I’m screaming like that I can’t talk for the next day or two but surprisingly was ok this time. Maybe my throat is getting used to it, as I feel as though I’ve gotten worse for this as I’ve gotten older. Instead of becoming more calm I’m finding that it’s the opposite. Not even a 22 point lead has taken the edge of it. It’s happened a couple of times this season but this was something else entirely. I genuinely couldn’t control myself. The Kop was probably full of people doing likewise, but where I sat, in the Main Stand, it felt like I was the only one reacting like that. This must be how Hendo feels when he's out on the pitch in the ref's face while his team-mates say nothing! Klopp often loses his shit and then says afterwards how he’s embarrassed and doesn’t like how he acts. I think if there was a camera on me and I saw how I was acting during this game that I’d be mortified, as I was up and down like a fucking jack in a box, frothing at the mouth and just yelling expletives as loud as I could. I guess this is what being an Evertonian must be like, only without the winning. I think it says more about how bad Paul Tierney was than it does about me though, as I'm generally a mild mannered, easy going fella. It’s not like I do this every week so it must be his fault, right? My anger with him actually started about 5 seconds into the game (although I didn’t jump up and swear at that point). A long ball played forward, Gomez went to clear it and was barged over by Wilson. Tierney gave nothing. Virgil looked incredulous and shouted something at him. I sat there thinking “who’s this tit?”. I hadn’t given it any thought until that point, so then I’m straining my eyes trying to figure out who it was. When I saw it was Tierney I knew it would be a long day as he’s fucking hopeless. I don’t have any particular memory of anything he’s done against us previously (although I’m sure there will be plenty) but I know from doing the PL Round Ups and watching MOTD every week that this fella is an absolute disaster zone. If he isn’t the worst ref in the league he’s defo in the bottom three. We’d actually started the game well and looked quite sharp, but then out of nowhere we fell behind thanks to the incompetence of Tierney. It went to VAR but I knew it would stand because it wasn’t offside (although it was much closer than I initially thought) and I knew they wouldn’t go back far enough to over rule Tierney on the foul that started the whole thing, because they never do, do they? Origi at Old Trafford for example, although this was far more clear than that one. It was just a staggeringly shit decision by Tierney. The shove in the back was obvious to everyone in the ground except him. The Main Stand lino defo saw it as he had the same viewpoint as me, but he gave nothing either. Not surprising really. I’m sick of the ‘assistants’ not ‘assisting’ because they’ve been told not to by the refs. They should be working as a team but they rarely do. Linesmen don't even give throw ins these days. It was as clear as anything that Wilson nudged Gomez in the back as he was about to play the ball. Not a huge shove, but it was forceful enough to put Joe off and cause him to miss the ball. It’s as obvious a foul as you’ll see, but Tierney wasn’t giving anything like that at all in the first half. I counted that Wilson fouled Gomez four times in that half and only the fourth one was given. I don’t know if Tierney didn’t give it because he wasn’t sure and he knew there was the safety of VAR to fall back on, or if he just didn’t think it was a foul. If it’s the latter then the fault lies with him. If it’s the former then I actually have a shred of sympathy with him as it shows a major flaw in the current system. It’s human nature that refs and linesmen might give less decisions now because they don’t want to get it wrong when they know VAR is there to sort it out of they miss something. The problem is that VAR isn’t always clearing up their mess. It’s this whole ‘clear and obvious’ bullshit. Refs don’t give a decision because they’re not sure, and then VAR doesn’t make the right call because they hide behind the ‘clear and obvious’ and won’t over-rule the on field decision. It’s a farce and this is why the referee himself needs to go to the screen. I’d like to think if Tierney went and looked at that he’d see the shove and disallow the goal. There’s no way of knowing of course, but the bottom line here is that goal should not have stood. What annoyed me almost as much as the non-decision was how easily our lads accepted it. Gomez should have been right up in the ref’s face demanding VAR go back and sort that out, and Milner and Virgil should have been there too. Hendo defo would have been. We just seemed to accept that terrible call far too easily. In a way it’s a good thing because Klopp has drilled it into them to not let decisions get to them and put them off their game. Sometimes though, when a ref is taking the piss like this, you really need to stand up for yourselves. Milner must have said something not long after because after awarding us a free-kick Tierney then called him over and lectured him over something he’d said. If I remember rightly it was for a foul on Gomez by Wilson (the fourth one he did but the first one to be punished). Maybe Milner said “about fucking time you useless turd”. The only consolation was that the goal was so early in the game that we had plenty of time to recover. And recover we did. Going into half time with the lead was huge really, as coming off the back of two straight defeats there was a danger the crowd might get edgy and it could get to the players as well. Thankfully we didn’t have that situation and for that we can thank the injury to Steve Cook. We might have come back anyway, but there’s no doubt that Cook going off completely fucked Bournemouth up. The lad who came on was useless, particularly as he’s one of the most one footed players I’ve ever seen. He was all left foot but was playing on the right of the two centre backs. I don’t think he touched the ball with his right foot once all day. I noticed it early in the second half and pointed it out to my Dad, and I watched him closely after that just waiting to see if he touched the ball with his right foot. I didn’t see him do it even once. This is why you never see two left footed centre backs partnering each other. Having two right footers is fine, but two lefties just doesn’t work. In theory it shouldn’t be any different to having two right footers, but it is and our equaliser came as a direct result of it. Simpson wouldn’t use his right foot and he got himself into trouble and was dispossessed by Sadio. Salah and Firmino were both up in support but Sadio's pass was horrible. It looked like the chance had gone but Mo shifted it onto his left foot and squeezed a shot into the bottom corner, no doubt much to the relief of Mané. Soon after we had the lead. Bournemouth gave it away cheaply on halfway and Virgil took one touch before immediately releasing Mané into a big gap between the young right sided centre back and the young right back. Again, if Cook is on the field it might have been different. But he wasn’t, and Sadio ran clear to finish confidently. How good was that from Van Dijk though? Imperious. Having come back from being behind I felt as though the second half was a really good opportunity for us to build up our confidence ahead of Wednesday. To do that though I felt that we needed to score early just to get everyone relaxed and loose. Bournemouth’s spirits will have been flagging after losing their lead so a quick goal might have opened the floodgates. If it stayed 2-1 for any length of time though then the worry was that we’d get edgy and end up hanging on. That kind of happened, but to say we were hanging on would be pushing it as it always felt quite comfortable to me and it would have been a major shock had Bournemouth scored, especially as in the last ten minutes or so it looked like they weren’t even trying. I think they lost heart when Milner denied them with that amazing goal-line clearance. That was the only real chance they had, but it was a great one and they should have scored. It was Fabinho’s fault. He made two mistakes in the space of a few seconds and before you knew it Fraser was clean through. He lobbed Adrian but Milner dashed back and volleyed it away from under the bar. What a man. He can’t provide the same attacking threat Robbo does but he’s worth his weight in gold that fella. How lucky are we to have Milner to bring in to fill whatever gap we need him to? He was great and really set the tone for us with his attitude, physicality and professionalism. I didn’t think we did enough in the second half really. We had a few chances but given the amount of the ball we had in their half I’d say we didn’t create anywhere near enough. Mané was a bit casual for me, but he did produce one stunning 30 yard curler that would have been goal of the season if it had gone in. Sadly it came back off the angle of post and bar. Firmino tried his best but it’s just not happening for him. There wasn’t much space for him to operate in and he found it difficult to make any real impact. A lot of what Salah tried didn’t work either, but he was a constant problem for the Bournemouth defence and tormented Adam Smith throughout. The only frustration with Mo is he keeps trying that thing where he cuts inside and tries the give and go. It hardly ever works anymore as there are just too many bodies in there and they’re waiting for him to do it now. Maybe if Bobby was in better form the chances on it working would be better. I don’t know what to make of Ox’s performance though. Most people seem to think he was terrible. Maybe he was, I don't know. During the game I wasn’t really thinking that. I didn’t think he was having a stinker but it was obvious that he wasn’t making much of an impression either. It was weird because I thought he looked sharp and he had some nice little touches and runs, and at times he was the only one who seemed to be trying to inject some pace and urgency into the game. But he just didn’t really do anything, did he? The midfield has looked shit without Henderson. It might not just be as simple as that and there are probably others factors contributing to it, but it’s a fact that since he went out the midfield has looked worse both with and without the ball. His case for Player of the Year was strong while he was playing and when he picked up that injury I thought it might hurt his chances. It’s probably strengthened them. The closing minutes of this game was strange. We were knocking it around just playing out time, nd Bournemouth seemed content to let us. At one point there was a stoppage in play for a free-kick or something, and they were in no hurry to get the ball back and restart the game. Like I said, I think the Milner clearance sucked away any belief they may have still had. The win was huge but ideally we’d have produced a more convincing display than this ahead of the Atletico game. The performance was patchy but I saw signs of improvement, both individually and collectively. I’m concerned about Fabinho and to a slightly lesser against Firmino too. Fabinho just hasn’t regained top form yet since his injury. He seems slower than before and I feel like he loses the ball in dangerous areas at least once a game these days. Hendo is back in full training now but whether that means he can start this week or not we’ll see on Wednesday I suppose. If he can start, there’s a good argument to be had that it should be at Fabinho’s expense, although I doubt that will happen. Not least because Ox hasn’t seized his opportunity and we can’t trust Keita either. Maybe we’ll see Milner moved into the middle with Hendo and Gini? I’d lean that way if I was picking the team but it’s a big call leaving out Fabinho. As for Bobby, I think you have to pick him regardless of form because he’s someone who can just click back into top gear at any moment. He’s a big game player and he’s so important to how we play that I doubt there’s even the tiniest shred of doubt in Klopp’s mind about selecting him. He hasn’t scored at Anfield all season and it’s probably playing on his mind. That pitiful late miss just reeked of a lack of belief. Away from home he’d have buried that without even looking. Literally. I just have a gut feeling he’s going to be the key for us on Wednesday. If he plays well we’ll win. I expect him to play well and to score. Let’s hope I’m right. Star man is Milner, by some distance. I liked what Mo gave us too and Virgil was also very good. It’s Milner though, the big fucking hero. Final word concerning the atmosphere. Once again I keep seeing loads of comment about how quiet and flat it was, whereas the players and Klopp are once more praising the fans and saying how much it helped. I’m with Klopp and the players. I thought the atmosphere was good and I’m baffled at the criticism. Ok, so it wasn’t the manic, intense, European night type of atmosphere, but you never get that for a league game anyway, especially one that kicks off at 12.30. I’m not sure what people are expecting to be honest. The Kop looked great prior to kick off, flags everywhere. There was a fucking huge roar when the players were waiting for the game to start and when we went behind the fans didn’t panic. It was a bit quiet at times in the second half, but you’re not going to have everyone on their feet roaring while Virg and Joe are knocking it around on the halfway line, which is what happened for a lot of the second half. All in all, the atmosphere was fine, but obviously it’s going to be cranked up several levels for Wednesday night. Team: Adrian; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Milner; Fabinho, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Wijnaldum; Salah, Firmino, Mané:

Saturday Feb 29: Watford 3 L 0. Wow. If you’re going to lose an unbeaten record, may as well do it in stye I suppose, with an absolutely fucking brutal performance and a 3-0 spanking to a team in the relegation zone. I wasn’t shocked we lost because this was a tricky looking fixture given our current form. I never dreamed we’d lose like THIS though. Every single player was shite. That’s really hard to do as even in the worst performances there’s usually one or two who you can say were alright. Not this time though. They were all shit. Even Virgil. Even Robbo. Pure shit. So what does that mean? There has to be an explanation why everyone is out of form as that just doesn’t happen without a good reason. It’s no co-incidence that any time we have time off we come back looking like shite. Usually we get knocked out of the cup and go for warm weather training, and when we come back we start dropping points all over the gaff. This time is wasn’t warm weather training, it was the winter break. It’s the same result though, we come back looking completely undercooked. Watford smashed us everywhere today. They were faster, stronger, hungrier. That hardly ever happens to this team but we were shit against Norwich, Atletico, West Ham and now today. What I can’t really process is that we’re getting worse. If we’d put a performance like this is as soon as we got back it would be easier to understand, but we’ve had four games to sharpen up and instead we’re getting worse. Thankfully we’ve built up such a huge lead that it doesn’t matter, but the Atletico game is next week so that’s a worry. The unbeaten record going is a bit of a bummer like, but on the bright side it will make the rest of the season far less stressful now that we’ve got that defeat out of the way. And far better it be Watford beating us than City or Everton. They’d have loved to be the ones to ruin the record, but tough shit. Sunday Mar 1: What’s this shit with Besiktas’ twitter account taking little swipes at us? The other day they were taking the piss about the time they knocked us out of the Europa League and today they’re going on about how they (and Arsenal) are the only 'invincibles', and they’re tagging LFC into their tweets. These are the same cunts we beat 8-0. Get back in your box your fucking nobodies, trying to make a name for yourself at the expense of the Mighty Reds. Meanwhile, we’re being linked with “Eton Educated Jack Grealish” again today. Lallana is attracting interest from a few clubs and it seems to have all but been confirmed that he’s off at the end of the season, so the press are putting two and two together and coming up with Cantwell. I’ll say it again. Fuck that. In other news today, City won the League Cup again. Surprisingly Villa put up a fight and made a game of it, but it wasn’t to be as the football Gods are still paying them back for this…. Monday Mar 2: Neil Critchley leaves to take the Blackpool job. Good for him, he deserves a crack at it. That club seems a bit of a shambles though. They change managers all the time. I expect Critch will be back within six months like Ljinders and Michael Beale (who came back after a spell in Brazil only to leave and join Stevie at Ibrox), but hopefully not as it would be nice to see him make a real go of it as he’s widely regarded as being a lovely fella. Best of luck to him. In other news today Sturridge cancels his contract in Turkey after his ban for betting was increased to four months. Unless there are details we aren’t privy to, that’s a fucking scandal as there was nothing wrong with what he did. It makes no odds to us as he’s not our player anymore, but I don’t like injustice and this appears to fucking stink of it. Also today, Ancelotti is charged by the FA over his conduct at the end of their draw with the Mancs yesterday. From watching the video it doesn’t look that bad and he’s certainly not someone with a reputation for that kind of thing. The condescending way the ref was talking to him probably tipped him over the edge. We’ve all been there, whether it’s with a parent, a teacher, a bouncer, a copper, a traffic warned or a spouse. Sometimes people talk down to you and it’s fucking infuriating. I lost it with a traffic warden a while back. Not because he was going to unfairly give me a ticket (well not JUST because of that) but because of the way he was speaking to me. I saw Carlo with that ref and I could relate to it entirely. No-one likes being talked down to, especially by some little jobsworth fucker. My Dad is the worst for shit like that though, he just won’t tolerate it at all. One time he got pulled over by a copper for what was a relatively minor and completely unintentional traffic offence. He tried explaining but the copper was being a complete arse about it. My Dad knew he was getting done regardless, so he says “Everyone makes mistakes officer. Your Mum and Dad made a massive one when they had you”. Be ace if that’s what Ancelotti said to Swarbrick. Tuesday Mar 3: Chelsea 2 L 0. A game of two halves. We were alright in the first half and didn’t deserve to be behind. Then it all just went to shit and we looked desperate and clueless. It’s weird seeing some of these players who have looked completely imperious for two years suddenly look vulnerable. I don’t think Klopp is helping himself either though. Why the fuck does he insist on playing Origi wide left? How much evidence does he need before accepting that he’s a centre forward? Play him in the middle and he scores goals. Stick him on the left and he just pisses everyone off. It’s reached a point now where it isn’t Origi who pisses me off when he’s shit. He is what he is and can’t really help it. Klopp can though. He can do something about it by playing him in his best position. Fair enough when he’s being kept out by Firmino, but tonight we had Minamino through the middle. He was alright for a bit and then vanished. It’s going to take him a while before he’s ready to make a significant contribution because he just looks like a kid playing in a grown ups game. That’s natural, as it takes most new signings a while to get up to the physical levels of the rest of the squad. He’s also a good example of why signing players in January isn’t really Klopp’s style as 99% of players couldn’t just come in and go straight into this side. Van Dijk is the 1%, but everyone else (other than Salah) has taken time, even those signed in the summer and who had a pre-season to adapt. It’s not going out of the cup that bothers me. I’ve said all along I don’t really care much about it. I’d have continued to pick some of the young lads like Hoever and Chirivella if it were up to me, but the waters were muddied by us losing two of our previous three games. Going with a strong line up and trying to ‘stop the rot’ so to speak made sense, but only if it actually worked. It didn’t, and now we’ve lost three of four. Had we picked the kids tonight we could have dismissed this defeat as ‘not counting’, like the Villa one. We can’t do that now though, it’s a legitimate defeat and it doesn’t feel good. This is how fans of everyone else must feel. Wednesday Mar 4: Rafa is talking about how hard he had it here again. Some bollocks about what his transfer budget was when he was trying to win the title. “We had no money. Our transfer budget, in my last year, was €17m. So, with that you could not compete. We had to try to sell to buy and when you sell Javier Mascherano, Xabi Alonso, Fernando Torres. It was the only way to try to get closer to the rivals. This Liverpool team has two or three years of very good investment and a lot of success in signing. And then, a coach whose opinion is valued by the owners.” Turn it in man for fucks sake. You did good, you got close, but you couldn’t get over the line (and you didn’t “have to sell” Torres or Mascherano, that was Hodgson. You did CHOOSE to sell Alonso though because you wanted to buy Robbie Keane and Gareth Barry). Klopp has done what you couldn’t and he didn’t do it by outspending everyone else. Honestly, this does my head in. He doesn’t need to be so fucking insecure about his legacy here. He won a European Cup. His legendary status is secure. For the love of all that’s good and pure, just stop it Rafa. Thursday Mar 5: “After tonight I can get back to supporting United” said Rooney. You know what they say, once Everton has touched you…. Rooney’s Derby side lost 3-0 to United tonight but that wasn’t enough for some United fans who decided to yell all manner of foul abuse at Jesse Lingard as he boarded the coach. Even before they dropped the “N bomb” on him it was fucking sickening, but when I heard that I genuinely couldn’t believe it. It’s bad enough they felt empowered enough to be yelling that with so many other people around, but it looks as though nobody did anything. Now in fairness I don’t know what happened after the video stopped and maybe someone took the vile cunts to task over it. I suspect not though. It’s easy to use something like that to score points and say “look at the state of these United fans” but it’s not about United fans. The overwhelming majority of them will have been as sickened by it as the rest of us, more so in fact as it reflects badly on them all, even though it shouldn’t. Cunts will be cunts and they follow all manner of different clubs. Even if you take the outrageous racism element away from it, those fuckers deserve a massive hiding. Yelling “Fuck off Jesse, you’re shit” and then quoting stats at him “No goals and no assists in 27 games” or whatever it was. Honestly, I’d happily see the cunts publicly flogged. How did we reach this point where people think it’s ok to act like that? It’s fine for United fans to think Lingard is shit, because he is. It’s fine for them to voice that opinion too. We’re football fans, it’s what we do. Voicing it directly to him though? When did that become ok? It’s bad enough when it’s some faceless fuck doing it from behind a keyboard, but yelling at him as he’s getting on the coach (after a 3-0 win!!) is just incomprehensible to me. Lingard is dealing with some serious family issues and he has to listen to this? I never thought I’d see the day that I felt sorry for Jesse Lingard, but I do. This is fucking appalling and I just hope it doesn’t affect him too much. Friday Mar 6: Alisson injured? Of course, oui. It wouldn’t be a big European week without some kind of fucking drama. It’s a setback but I can’t say it’s shaken my faith too much. Why? Because last year we lost Salah and Firmino immediately before Barca when we needed to score four fucking goals. We did that, so forgive me for not pissing my pants in fear about us not having Alisson. If Origi can make himself a legend then there’s no reason why Adrian can’t. Meanwhile, some mad quotes from the deluded Dusan Tadic who is convinced Ajax should be European Champions. "If Ajax had gotten what it deserved against Tottenham, we would have defeated Liverpool in the final. We would not play as badly as Tottenham and be much more inspired than Liverpool. The confidence of the Ajax players was so powerful that Liverpool would not have been able to cope, period." Mate, you couldn’t beat Spurs so shut up. Not just that, but Tadic couldn’t even beat Nathan Redmond out of the Southampton team, and he’s talking about handling the Mighty Reds. They shit the bed against Spurs and it was entirely they’re own fault. When you flop like that, you don’t get to talk smack about what you WOULD have done. Stay in your line, knobhead. and that was the week that was….