Leaderboard

Three Watford players were filmed at a gathering of over 20 people last Friday, according to Match of the Day. I googled it and the ‘gathering’ was a birthday party for Andre Gray, organised by Gray himself. All three players were left out of the squad for the Southampton game for ‘health and safety reasons’. Translation: They were told to stay the fuck away because Nigel Pearson was going to kill them with his bare hands. Seriously, how fucking irresponsible is that? Watford aren’t mid-table with nothing to play for. They’re still in a relegation fight, but their players can’t social distance for the next few weeks? No shock that Andre Gray was involved. If I had to pick one Watford player who’d do something like this he’d have been top of my list. I daresay my boy Troy won’t be happy. He didn’t want to come back and play at all because his little lad is in an at risk group. Now three of his team-mates are putting him at risk by… well I’ll let Gray himself tell you what happened. "It was not a late-night party like what is being portrayed. It was only a gathering of friends which turned into a sort of football tournament on my birthday.” A ‘sort of football tournament’. In other words, a kick about with a load of his non-footy player mates, who unlike his actual team-mates are not being tested twice a week. If I was Deeney I’d want to smash their faces in. They probably wouldn’t have made any difference to the result against Southampton as the Saints were just too good for them, but it’s not really the point is it? Ings fired Southampton ahead with a terrific goal and then doubled their lead with another sharp strike. 21 goals for the season, 18 of which have come in the league. I referred to Timo Werner recently as a “Harrods Danny Ings”. A massively more expensive but only slightly superior version of the actual Danny Ings who you can pick up at Asda. I’m quite pleased with that analogy but it might actually be flattering Werner. I was thinking about this the other day though. It would have been difficult for Klopp to justify (to himself as well as Michael Edwards) spending so much on Werner when he’d sold virtually the same player for less than half that price. How do you rationalise that? Ings is one goal shy of being the leading scorer in the league this season. If Werner matches that next year then he’s done well. If Mo can’t win the Golden Boot this year (and he still might, he’s only two back of Vardy) I’d love Ingsy to win it. Anyway, Bednarek put through his own net to give Watford hope but a stunning free-kick from Ward-Prowse wrapped it up. Great technique that, as his entire body shape suggested the ball was going around the wall into the far corner but he whipped it right back across and over the wall into the opposite corner. Final note on this. Bednarek is a dead ringer for short haired Milan Baros. The other game at the weekend saw Wolves put another nail in Villa’s relegation coffin with a narrow 1-0 win at Villa Park. My boy Adama was back on the bench for Wolves as they took on Villa. Is there a fitness issue with him as he seems to be left out quite a bit doesn’t he? Maybe Nuno Holy Spirit likes the option of bringing him off the bench against tired legs. To be fair it is a great weapon to have. Imagine being a little bit leggy and then having this cunt come on and just fly past like the Road Runner. Getting deja vu there as I’ve defo used that line before but can’t remember who I was referring to. No wait, it was Gabby Agbonlahor! Remember how fast that fucker was before he developed that little ale gut? Even then he was still like shit off a stick. He was always boss against us and he’d just fly past people. Meep Meep! Just had a little look to see where he is now, and he retired at 32 because he didn’t want to play for anyone other than Villa and couldn’t face the thought of playing against them. He said he planned to spend his retirement watching Villa. Fucking hell lad, get yourself a hobby or that shit will drive you to an early grave. Back to the game though. Villa did alright really and a sharp finish by Dendoncker from the edge of the box was the only difference between the two sides. Villa can’t score but they are defending well and not conceding many. Dean Smith had a bit of a moan afterwards but he had a point. Villa’s schedule has been hectic as fuck since the return, partly because they had a game in hand and he wondered why this game couldn’t have been played a day or two later. Fair point. There is no real reason it couldn’t have been played later and another game been arranged for the weekend to satisfy TV. Another thing he said was that these games are basically shit without fans anyway but they’re even worse when players are knackered. We might see that ourselves over the next couple of weeks when we’re playing every two or three days too. It’s a necessary evil because we missed three months so it needs to be condensed, but it does seem like Villa have been given the shitty end of the stick. Still, never mind, eh? Moving on, and Arsenal beat Norwich 4-0 so no doubt those players are now swaggering about, dicks swinging, feeling pretty good about themselves again. Beating up on a team that’s already down and has given up is pure Arsenal. Fair weather cunts. Tim Krul handed them the opener when he dwelled on the ball too long and was robbed by Aubamayeng who was left with a simple tap in. He’s a decent keeper him and he’s been great for Norwich, but if I was his manager he’d be watching the rest of the season from home after that. You know how I feel about those kind of goals. They’re inexcusable as it shows a lack of homework. It’s not quite as bad as a keeper fannying about when Jamie Vardy is in the vicinity, but Aubamayeng is very similar. Quick as a hiccup and always looking to pick people’s pockets. You just don’t take chances around certain forwards, and he’s one of them. Krul needs his arse kicking for that. It didn’t get any better for him either. Arsenal’s second was a strike from Xhaka that went right through his legs. The third was a joke too, although Krul could do nothing about that one. A defender played the ball across his own box straight to Aubamayeng who gleefully accepted the gift. Goal number four was a long range shot by Cedric Soares that deflected into the bottom corner. The first I knew that Soares was even at Arsenal was last week when he was given a new contract. I didn’t know he even had an old contract! It’s games like this that probably make it so difficult for some Arsenal fans to accept just how far away they are. Because when they’re on, they play some lovely stuff. They always have. They can’t do it against anyone decent though. I reckon every Arsenal fan’s day begins with the radio switching on and Sonny and Cher singing “I got you babe”. Because it’s the same shit on a continuous loop. Terrible, spineless defeats that have the fans on the brink of despair, then a few spanking wins over shite that make them think things maybe aren’t so bad, before another spineless defeat sends them spiralling again. Saka signed a new deal though. It was always on the cards that even though us and United were supposedly trying to land him. An Academy kid who has just broken through into the first team at a ‘big six’ club is unlikely to want to move somewhere else where he probably won’t get the same playing time. If Saka develops as expected then he’ll move in two or three years when he gets fed up of the spineless mediocrity around him. Unless Arteta can completely purge the entire club of that Arsenal stink, and seeing as how he handed Luiz a new contract I wouldn’t hold out too much hope of that happening. So I said last week that with the title now wrapped up the only thing I was rooting for now was for West Ham to get relegated. That’s not looking likely after the events of this week. Not only did they somehow beat Chelsea, but Bournemouth are just lurching from bad result to even worse result. They got smoked at home to Newcastle. Dwight Gayle got the opener, Sean Longstaff added a second after great play by the lively Saint-Maximin, Almiron added a brilliant third and Lazaro (who’s he?) lashed in a fourth. That Dan Gosling jabroni managed a consolation but this was a proper spanking. Nice Guy Eddie’s side don’t look like they are capable of winning another game. I don’t know what’s happened to them as the one thing they’ve always had is a goal threat, but right now they just look toothless. Mind you, they’re like Burnley in that they can be right streaky bastards. Every season they seem to lose ten on the bounce but then go ten unbeaten and finish somewhere between 11th and 15th. They’re leaving it a bit late this season though and West Ham are benefitting more than anyone. They recorded a surprise victory over Chelsea, the bastards. Willian scored from the spot after Pulisic had been fouled, but Soucek levelled with a header from a corner. Kevin Abraham was on the line and should have cleared it, but he seemed to misjudge the speed of the ball and whiffed at it. Antonio then fired West Ham into the lead but a brilliant free-kick from Willian made it 2-2 and that’s how it looked like finishing until Yarmolenko broke clear on the counter attack in stoppage time and won it for the Hammers. You know what’s one of the worst images in football? Moyes being happy after a win. I’m so used to seeing him looking miserable as fuck that anything else is a real shock to the system and turns my stomach. Such is my desperation for him and the West Ham board to be relegated that I had to check myself from laying into Chelsea after this. They did, after all, beat City last week to clinch the title for us, so any criticism of this would seem a little bit churlish. Still, West Ham?? Really Chelsea? West fucking Ham? Take a long hard look at yourselves, knobheads. Klopp has been telling the press that we won’t be spending any money this summer because of the financial situation. Fair enough, if the club say that the money isn’t there then that’s just how it is. With that in mind though, surely Willian on a free is a no brainer, especially if we offload a few fringe players to cover his wages? United had a comfortable 3-0 win over Brighton to keep the hype train rolling. They’re not as shit as they were but they’re still a million miles away from where they think they are. Still, as long as they think they’re on the right track they’ll keep Solskjaer, which is good. I’m sick of all this fawning about that Fernandez fella though. Even loads of our fans have bought into the hype about him. I keep seeing people going on about how great he is but I’m not buying into it. Just because he’s better than their other midfielders doesn’t make him special. Being an upgrade on Jesse Lingard and Anreas Perreira isn’t difficult. Look, he’s good, I get it. I’m not going to say he’s shit when he clearly isn’t, but let’s not go overboard here. United’s fans will do enough of that themselves, the deluded fucks (the one player they are entitled to go overboard about is Mason Greenwood, who looks like he’s the player people thought Rashford was). Here’s my scouting report on Bruno Fernandez: Shoot on sight merchant. He’s Gylfi Sigurdsson when he was at Swansea. Gets it, shoots. Rinse and repeat. Yeah he looks good now, but so did Sigurdsson for a while. Stop him shooting from outside the box and then let’s see what else “Portuguese Gylfi” has. Speaking of Gylfi, the “Icelandic Bruno Fernandez” scored from the spot as the Blues added to Leicester’s recent woes with a 2-1 win at Goodison. Richarlison *spits on floor* fired Everton ahead and then they were awarded a pen when Ndidi handled in the box. That Iheanacho fuck pulled one back and Leicester piled on the pressure, but despite the best efforts of the comical Pickford to gift them an equaliser the Foxes couldn’t manage it. Since the restart Leicester have been fucking abysmal and the top four spot that once looked nailed on is now under serious threat. That’s pissing me right off to be honest, because if they miss out then either United or Wolves will get in, and I’d much rather Leicester were in there as they’re the lesser of those three evils. In an ideal world they’d regroup and secure a Champions League place and then Wolves would pip Chelsea and United for the other spot, but that ain’t happening is it? Burnley won 1-0 at Palace thanks to a diving header from Ben Mee. Incredibly, they’re level with Spurs, one point behind Arsenal and only two points behind Sheffield United, who up until a week ago were in Champions League contention. This league is mad. I’d like Burnley to finish above Arsenal though. There’d be something quite fitting about that as they’re complete polar opposites. Burnley’s players have to fight and scrape for everything they get. They survive each year on hard work, honesty and effort. They’re the absolute antithesis of Arsenal. Finally, Sheffield United produced arguably the biggest upset of the week by beating Spurs 3-0. They’ve looked terrible since the restart and have lost some key men through injury. Lockdown footy is mad though, results are just too unpredictable and you never know what’s going to happen. Of course it helps when Harry Kane has three goals disallowed! That Sander Berge looked good. He opened the scoring with a nice little turn and finish. Then we had the absolute abortion of a decision to disallow Kane’s equaliser. I’ll expand on it in a sec though. Mousset made it 2-0 from close range and McBurnie added a third following more good work by Berge. I’m not sure I can remember seeing anyone ever being happier about scoring a goal than McBurnie was, especially in an empty stadium. He was giving it fucking loads. Kane did grab a late consolation but Spurs were well beaten in the end. Mourinho didn’t use the disallowed goal as an excuse and said the team weren’t mentally strong enough to recover from it. That may or may not be the case but they shouldn’t have had to recover from it. Look, I don’t give a fuck about Spurs and I’m glad they lost, but I’m genuinely angry about that decision because it just demonstrates that the game is run by complete morons. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, what happened was Moura was running with the ball and was fouled by two defenders. He fell to the ground next to the ball and another defender came in and booted the ball against his arm from about an inch away. The rebound fell to Kane who scored. Not only did they disallow the goal for ‘handball’ but they even forgot to give Spurs the free-kick. It’s not even funny, it’s just an absolute fucking disgrace as this shit could be happening to any of us. The VAR ref was Michael Oliver and he had no choice but to disallow the goal. Common sense isn’t allowed and by the ‘letter of the law’ (hate that expression as it’s just licence for jobsworths to be jobsworths) the goal couldn’t stand. Not giving Spurs the free-kick was just rubbing salt in the open wound and either Oliver or Chris Kavanagh fucked up badly on that aspect of it. This genuinely might be the most ridiculous ‘correct’ decision I’ve ever seen though. The rule is so fucking stupid that technically it was the right call. This wasn’t a mistake. Imagine coming up with a rule that legitimately rules out a goal like that. Whichever smug cunt in a suit came up with that needs to be fired out of a massive cannon and launched into orbit. Or better yet, stick him in a locked room with Moyes and force him to listen to Moyesy discuss all of his ‘achievements’ and why he’s such a winner. That’ll learn him. Twat. Other than Corona virus that attacking handball nonsense has been the worst thing about this season. Worse than VAR even. It’s so bad it actually had me siding with Mourinho and Kane. I wouldn’t have though there was anything on this planet that could do that, but there you go.

After the Lord Mayor’s Show as they say, and as far as results go this was a dung cart and a half. The performance didn’t really reflect the scoreline but against City you only have to be a little bit off and this is what can happen. I’m just glad our Etihad nemesis Aguero was missing otherwise this could have been really embarrassing. Ordinarily 4-0 would be embarrassing enough but with the title already won and this result cutting our lead to a mere 20 points, embarrassment isn’t really the right word. Neither is humbling, or chastening or whatever. We’re the Champions and we’re 20 points ahead of City regardless of what happened in this game, so I don’t actually know how to best describe this loss. I know I hated it though. I had a proper cob on for the rest of the night and I’m still irked about it this morning. Maybe that’s unreasonable and if you’re not arsed about what happened at the Etihad then more power to you. I just hated seeing us lose like THAT. And to lose like that to THEM. Judging by how tetchy Klopp was afterwards on Sky you could be forgiven for thinking he felt the same. It’s only when you watch the interview he did with LFCTV straight afterwards that you understand how he really felt about it. He was more philosophical than angry, but that’s almost certainly because of the line of questioning. When assessing Klopp’s post match mood you have to take into account just what a monumental dick bag Geoff Shreeves is. He’s probably the worst one out there as his questions are just fucking moronic half of the time. Lowest common denominator, basic, shitty redtop style questions. He’s the Jim White of TV. Usually Klopp shows more patience with him but I completely understood why he got so arsey this time. There’s a reason every top manager has had run ins with this tool. After a bad result the last thing you need is Shreeves pushing his own little narrative and trying to get you to take a stroll down “Whopper Avenue” with him. He asks a stupid question based on his own agenda and when he doesn’t get the answer he wants he asks the same stupid question in a slightly different way hoping he’ll get what he’s looking for. Instead of asking Klopp “so, how did that happen?” and just letting him talk (Jurgen is great analysing how the game went) he wanted to peddle the story he’d tried to get going pre-match about our players not being prepared or focused because they’ve been celebrating all week. Like I say, it’s lowest common denominator, redtop shite and it clearly got Klopp's back up. The players had one night on the ale, a week ago, and have been training hard ever since. There was no lack of effort from them and they took the game seriously. They didn’t lose because some of them got bevvied a week ago. They lost because they were wasteful with the countless opportunities they created and they made far too many stupid mistakes in defence. The effort was there in spades, it’s insulting to infer that it wasn’t. If you want to put the result down to partying or them not being arsed about the rest of the season then that just tells me that you haven’t been paying attention. It’s not who these players are and it’s definitely not who Klopp is. That was why he was pissed off in his Sky interview, not because we lost. The LFCTV interview was much more informative simply because Peter McDowall basically just says “disappointing result there, Jurgen. What went wrong?” Klopp then tells him what went wrong. Not clinical enough, too many mistakes, can’t do that against such a strong opponent etc. And that’s exactly what it was. The easiest and laziest thing in the world is to put this down to the players not being up for it, but it’s nonsense. They were still running and trying to score even in stoppage time at 4-0 down. Effort wasn’t the problem. Intensity wasn’t the problem. Sloppiness at both ends of the pitch was the problem and yes maybe that’s in some tiny part due to them not playing for the highest stakes possible, and therefore not quite being fully switched on mentally. Rather than it being a lack of effort, I think it was more a lack of fear. By that I mean usually when we play City everyone has to be completely focused on not making any mistakes because the stakes are so high. You have to play almost the perfect game because if you don’t the consequences can be catastrophic. That wasn’t the case this time though as we already had the title sewn up. Maybe players were taking too many risks? Being a little too casual? Some of the decision making was terrible so I'm just saying, maybe the ‘nothing to lose’ thing comes into it, even at a subconscious level. We might have gotten away with it against most opponents but Sterling and De Bruyne were bang up for this game and they made us pay. It hurts. I don’t like it. I’m still sore about it but it can happen. If anything, it highlights even more just how incredible it is that we’re 20 points ahead of these fuckers. This game really came down to who scored first. We started the game well and I felt we were well on top for the most part until we gave away the penalty. That changed the momentum of the game but it was the second goal that really killed us I think. After that I thought we looked wide open and ripe for City’s counter attacks. We never really got close enough to De Bruyne (even though funnily enough I thought Fabinho actually had a good first half) and Trent and Joe had too many problems with Sterling. I can sort of understand that. You come up against De Bruyne and Sterling when they’re at their best and it’s tough. The most disappointing thing for me was how Robbo made that little fucking manc ballbag Phil Foden look like Messi. That was hard to take as I just hate Foden. I have no rational explanation for it other than it’s just his fucking face. He’s right up there with the most annoying faces out there. He’s my new Jon Dahl Tomasson I think. I see his face and just want to slap it. This was such a strange game. The score makes it look like we got battered, especially as City could easily have scored more, but it didn’t really feel like a battering and it definitely didn’t start out that way. We began the game really brightly. Mo should have done better when Van Dijk’s ball over the top sent him clear. He brought it down on his chest and then went for power with his shot, forcing Ederson into a decent save. Thing is, Ederson was stood 14 yards out and the ball was bouncing so Mo should have lobbed him. It would have been more difficult to miss than score in that situation. All you have to do is get it over his head and you’ve got the whole goal to aim for. To make it even more frustrating, Bobby completely fluffed the rebound, which summed up his night really. Mo then went through again and struck the post with a well placed shot. That was just unlucky. To make it even more frustrating, Sadio completely fluffed the rebound, which summed up his night really. It felt like the goal was coming but then City went ahead completely against the run of play. I don’t have any complaints about the penalty. Yes, Sterling grabs Gomez first, but that’s just two players grappling and it’s fine. It’s also fine when Joe has a grab back at him too. The problem is he keeps hold of him and then has two bites at trying to tackle him while doing so. Sterling went down easily in the end but when a defender has been pulling you for two or three seconds, preventing you from getting away, at that point you’re entitled to go down. Clear penalty for me. Not great from Gomez, but Henderson and Wijnaldum are both just stood there looking at him and neither moved to help him out. I do wonder if Joe defends that way against another City player though? Was he trying to outmuscle Sterling rather than just defend him properly, or am I overthinking that? Anyway, absolutely no complaints for me on that decision by Anthony Taylor other than why exactly was Gomez booked? If that’s outside the box there’s no way that’s given as a yellow card. A penalty is more than sufficient punishment and I thought Taylor was completely out of order putting Gomez into the book too. Maybe that’s the law now, it’s hard to keep track of the bullshit changes that they’re making every year. Joe was actually hooked at half time and the booking was probably a big factor in that. Fabinho moved to centre back for the second half and did ok. At this point it feels like it makes more sense using him if needed than bringing in Lovren, but we’ll see what happens whenever Gomez is rested. I feel like we haven’t seen the last of Big Dejan yet. I wasn’t overly concerned at going a goal down but the second one really was a killer. Suddenly it felt like we had a mountain to climb. Just a really shitty goal to give away too. When we’ve played City in recent years the thing we’ve done really well is not give the ball away cheaply. Because when you give it away cheaply and De Bruyne picks it up in space, you’re fucked really. They get runners going wide to spread you out and De Bruyne always picks the right ball. This time Gini gave it away needlessly and before you know it they’ve bypassed our midfield and are running at our back-pedalling defenders. It was happening all night. De Bruyne found Foden and he picked out Sterling. Gomez has no chance at this point as he’s caught on his heels when Sterling immediately cuts back inside with this first touch. 2-0 and it’s the player we’d least want to make an impact who’s done all the damage. Turns out he can play well against us after all, but only when there’s no fans in the stadium. The third goal was probably the worst. Oh Robbo, just what the fuck was that? Actually I forgot to mention that on the second goal when Gini gave it away, Robbo inexplicably went chasing a ball he had no business going for and he ended up taking himself out of the play completely. Well he did it again on the third goal. It was embarrassing actually. So rash it was worthy of a Sunday League player. He just charged at Foden, completely out of control, and he made it easy for the City youngster to just pop the ball off and then spin off him into space. I don’t think Alisson covered himself in glory either as Foden was on his right foot and had Alisson dropped back and made him beat him with a well placed shot then you could accept that. Instead he just charged out and was beaten by a shot that ended up in the middle of the goal. Not good. Sterling almost bagged a second when he ran half the length of the field before his shot was deflected inches wide by Fabinho. Look at Robbo on that one again though. Chasing the ball like a dog in the park. The fourth goal was self inflicted too. Trent was just so fucking casual and weak there. He presented the ball to City and once again they had us turned around and De Bruyne was running at our retreating defence. Again, look at Robbo though. He’s with Sterling but leaves him to track another runner who is already being picked up by Ox. The ball goes to Sterling in space, he turns inside a desperately trying to recover Robbo, and although his shot was going wide Ox didn’t know that and put it in his own net as he tried to block it. It summed up the whole night. Just a comedy of errors. In between all those goals we had loads of opportunities but wasted them all. The high press worked well at times and we won the ball back frequently only to do nothing with it. If there was one moment that summed up the attacking performance it was when Sadio found himself in front of goal with only Ederson to beat and he literally did nothing. Didn’t even touch the ball. Just allowed it to roll past him. In the end City could have scored more than four. Actually they did but they had one laughably ruled out for ‘handball’ in stoppage time when Mahrez beat Alisson on his near post. Alisson had also gotten away with murder earlier when he came out for a cross he had no chance of getting and had to watch gratefully as De Bruyne put his header wide of an open goal. I’m not actually sure this was Alisson you know. Are we sure it wasn’t Adrian in an Alisson mask? For all the calamities at the back though, on another day we’d have scored four or more too. You need to be clinical against City and we weren’t. It feels like this happens quite a lot in general and games are often a lot closer than they should be because of it. It’s funny really because De Bruyne said before the game that we played better last season when we finished second. In some respects I think he’s right but I’d go one step further and say that in attacking terms we played even better the year before. Of course we’re a vastly superior all around team now and we know how to get results in different ways, but as a unit I thought the front three dropped off a level last season from the year before, and I think they’ve dropped off even more this year. Not to the extent that it’s hurt us, obviously, but can you honestly tell me that Firmino or Salah are playing as well as they did two years ago? Mané has actually gotten progressively better every year, but the front three as a whole have dropped off this year in terms of their goal output. It seems daft pointing that out when we’re twenty points clear at the top and don’t get me wrong, I’m not making too big a thing of it. It’s just interesting I think. The amount of games they’ve played over three years might even be the explanation for it. Bobby in particular has looked goosed for much of this season and seems to get subbed a lot. Could the lack of quality cover / competition for the front three be causing the drop off? Not only does it mean they don’t have to fight for their place but it also means they are hardly ever rested. Over the last three seasons they've gone from being unstoppable to brilliant to very good. Bobby was really poor against City and it was no surprise when he was replaced by Origi, who unfortunately was equally ineffective. He's not the answer, although in fairness it's really difficult for bit part players who hardly play to ever show their best level. Look at Danny Ings now, for example. He wouldn't be playing like that if he was getting 15 minutes from our bench every other week. You know what, I’m going to crunch some numbers here just to see how much of a drop off there has been. I’ll disregard the domestic cups and just go with Europe and the Premier League…. hold on. Ok, so two years ago, the season when we reached the CL final and finished fourth. We scored 131 goals. An incredible 89 came from the three main forwards (we also got 12 in half a season from Coutinho). Last year when we won the CL and got 97 points, we scored 113 in total and got 69 from the front three, twenty less than the previous year. This year, we’ve romped away with the league and so far have 87 goals. The front three are on just 51 though (which includes the World Club Cup when Bobby scored a couple). At best it looks like they’ll finish on mid 60s, which continues the downward trend. My eyes tell me the same thing. When they’re on it the front lads are sensational (last week against Palace for example) but whereas the team as a whole is much better now, the front line has dropped off two years in a row now. Maybe it’s nothing to worry about and next year they’ll bounce back and score shitloads. But maybe they won’t? And if they don’t, what viable alternatives do we have to mix it up? The answer to that is none, unless you think Minamino is going to be able to provide the same kind of impact we’ve had from Mo, Sadio or Bobby over the last few years?. Don’t mistake this for moaning. I love all three of those lads and they’ll all be remembered as legends when they eventually move on. This is a great team that has achieved great things and hopefully this is just the start. I’m not actually even criticising them as individuals and I’m certainly not calling for any of them to be replaced. If anything I’d like us to get them some help as I fear we might be asking too much of them. A fourth player who can share the load and help to keep everyone fresh and fighting for their place would be just lovely, but I won't hold my breath. I just think it has to be at least a little bit of a concern to Klopp that the goal output from the forwards is decreasing year on year. It’s not like they don’t get enough chances. It feels like we get loads of great situations in almost every game, yet so often we’ve been winning 1-0 or 2-1. It just makes life more difficult when you aren’t clinical. That’s what this came down to in the end. City were just much sharper in the final third and they were marginally less error prone at the back. I say marginally because they made shitloads of errors too. How many times did we catch them playing out from the back, nick the ball from them and then waste the opportunity? Half a dozen at least. Do you remember who it was who gave the ball away though? I don’t but that’s only because we didn’t score from any of them. If we had made them pay for those mistakes then I expect people’s view of the performances of Laporte, Garcia, Rodri, Ederson or whoever would be entirely different. City would be discussing them the way we’re talking about Trent and Robbo today. Games like this are often decided on little things. Yeah, in the end it got away from us and if you make the mistakes we did then you deserve whatever punishment you get. For a while though this game was in the balance. If Mo’s shot goes in instead of hitting the post then we’re talking about a different game. If Anthony Taylor and VAR did their job and gave handball against Ederson and sent the cunt off, then we’re talking about a different game. If the title had still been in the balance then I’d probably be talking about that decision forever, much like I still obsess about the same manc ref not sending off Kompany in this same fixture last season. This time VAR also comes into it, but it still falls on Taylor because if he’d given handball it wouldn’t have been overturned. And it was handball. And it prevented a certain goal. That reckless, ugly, neck tattooed cunt came flying out of his goal as he tends to do, and he completely fucked up his clearance. The ball hits his foot but then goes underneath him and if it doesn’t hit his elbow then Salah is clean through on goal. With the title already wrapped up it’s not a big deal and will soon be forgotten but decisions like that change games. I don’t want that twat anywhere near our games with the Manchester clubs in future, but then I said that last year and here we are talking about him again. I’m not blaming him for the result but equally there’s no denying that we’re talking about a completely different game if he sends Ederson off. He didn’t though and we lost 4-0. It’s not nice but it was self inflicted and it might be a lesson that the lads can learn from. The margin for error you have in most games is just hugely smaller when Kevin De Bruyne is on the pitch. What happens next is the most important thing. The points record is still on but we need to play much more like we did against Palace and a lot less like we did at Goodison and the Etihad. I expect to see some changes for the weekend. Trent needs a kick up the arse and Neco is pushing hard for a spot so let him play against Villa. You could also make a case for starting Minamino in Bobby’s spot to see if he’s a viable option there. Keita will probably come back too. I thought he was fairly lively when he came on in this game, whereas Ox didn’t really do anything to justify getting a start. I honestly have no idea what to expect over the next few weeks now because football without fans is fucking weird and we’re seeing all kinds of mad results. With the title sewn up and so many games in a short space of time there’s naturally going to be a lot of rotation and we don’t know what that will mean for results. One thing I’m not expecting is for us to win all six games as that almost seems impossible now under the circumstances. I know it doesn’t ultimately mean anything as winning the league was all that mattered, but I don’t want the season to fizzle out with a spattering of draws or even defeats. Let’s finish strong and lay down a marker for next season too, and yeah, that points record would be great while we're at it. Chances to make history don't come along that often so let's not waste it. Star man isn’t easy as hardly anyone played well. Fabinho was fine, Hendo did alright and Salah looked lively (especially in the first half). I’ll probably go with Van Dijk as he did his job well enough and couldn’t really be held responsible for the clown show going on around him. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Van Dijk, Roberton; Fabinho, Henderson, Wijnaldum (Keita); Salah, Firmino (Origi), Mané (Minamino):