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Shit. Just what the fuck happened there? I’ve never seen anything like this in all my years of watching football. We never defended that badly even when we were rubbish. By defending I don’t specifically just mean the defenders, I mean the whole team. It was a shambles. This team hardly ever loses games, so to see them spanked like this is actually incomprehensible. If I hadn’t seen it I wouldn’t have believed this was even possible. Sure, we could have lost the game. I could see that happening. I could even see another Watford type result being possible. But this??? Nah, I never thought even in my worst nightmares this could happen. I don’t really know what to say. It was only a few days ago the entire world was ready to just hand us the title. I felt like that too. I still do, despite this. The point is though literally everyone in the media had already decided that the title was staying here. Maybe that was the problem? The players have got fuck all to do these days other than train and then go home and watch telly. They can’t go anywhere, or do anything. So maybe they’ve just been sat around watching Sky Sports News all week having smoke blown up their arses, and this was the result of it. We didn't run away with the title last year just because we're better than everyone else. We ran away with it because we were focused and concentrated in every game we played (bar Watford) until the title was won. We didn't always play at our best, but we avoided the kind of bad results against inferior teams that had plagued us over the last 30 years. That's how you win titles. So with that in mind, and having seen how we've approached almost every game in recent seasons, I think I can safely say that they just weren’t mentally prepared for this game, which tells me they didn’t take it as seriously as they would have if they’d been playing an Arsenal or a Chelsea. It’s not something you can level at these lads very often, but I don’t see how you can draw any other conclusion after this. A fully switched on, fully motivated Liverpool does not concede seven goals against anybody, let alone Aston Villa. So therefore, clearly they weren’t switched on and motivated or this couldn’t have happened. It looked wrong right from the start. We've seen that before and usually we find a way to steady ourselves and get into the game. This time we never did. Before I get fully into the inquest though I feel it needs saying that Villa played incredibly well and fully deserved this. It wasn’t lucky and we can’t say it was a freak result because it wasn’t. They were outstanding and could easily have scored more. Yes three of their goals were spawny deflections but considering they also hit the woodwork and missed four or five other great chances I don’t think we can say the scoreline flattered them at all. Credit where it's due. We can have no complaints at all. We were fucking abysmal and deserved to be humiliated. How can this happen? I don’t think there’s any one simple answer. There are all sorts of factors that went into this and it just ended up being a perfect storm. First of all it had been a troubling week at Melwood. Thiago and Sadio coming down with Covid shouldn’t in itself be a problem as ordinarily we should be able to cope without them. How has it impacted the group though? How many of them have had it on their minds this week or thought that they themselves had it? We don’t know how this kind of thing might affect them. Shit, I’d have demanded all of them were tested right on full time, because if Corona Virus was a football performance this would be it. Defensively this display was me in March / April when I’d struggle to summon the energy to go for a piss and then I’d immediately fall asleep for an hour afterwards. Even then I was more alert than Joe Gomez in this game. My point is that players are humans and sometimes we overlook that. There could be any number of reasons for it but something just wasn’t right with their mental approach to this game. What caused it is something they need to figure out for themselves. Losing Alisson plays a part too, obviously, although even as shit as Adrian has been in 2020 I’m not pinning this on him. That’s too easy. We lost Allison at the beginning of last season too and we won every game with Adrian in goal. I have no hesitation in blaming him for the Atletico Madrid defeat as that was completely on him. The team were great that night but he gave the game away virtually on his own. He isn’t the reason for this one though. He was just one of many factors. Of course the first goal was shite but it doesn’t justify what happened afterwards. You have to respond when someone makes a mistake. We did it against Arsenal last week when Robbo fucked up. This time we didn't, but that's not on Adrian. He’s an easy target but scapegoating him would be falling into the same trap as those who blamed the Watford loss on Lovren. Far too simplistic. He is a problem though, obviously. A problem that I don't know we have a solution to. Other factors come into it too. The empty stadium thing is definitely playing a massive part in some of these wild, unpredictable results we’re seeing. As is the shortened pre-season. There are too many crazy results right across Europe for this to not be a thing. Pandemic footy isn’t the same as normal footy. All of the above plays a part but in addition to that Villa were well up for it and had clearly done their homework on how to get in behind us, because they were able to do it ALL THE FUCKING TIME. The easy thing to do is jump on the Sky bandwagon and talk about the “risky high line”, but that high line has helped us to 196 points in two seasons as well as a title and a European Cup. Nothing wrong with how we set up, but it doesn’t really matter how you set up when half the team are throwing in absolute fucking clunkers and we’re losing individual battles all over the park. You just can’t win when so many players play this badly and ignore the jobs they are supposed to be doing. I’m trying to be kind by putting forward reasons as to why they may have played like that, but nothing really justifies how bad this actually was. I’m so shellshocked by it that I’m not even angry yet. I might be in a day or two when it fully sinks in, but chances are it’s just something that I’ll want to forget about as quickly as possible. The international break doesn’t help with that. Couldn’t have come at a worse time. We got off to the worst possible start when Adrian misplaced a pass to Gomez in the box. He should be clearing that ball and not trying to play in that situation. Even if he’d played a decent pass Gomez would have been put under immediate pressure by Grealish. Yes we play out from the back when it’s safe to do so but there’s nothing wrong with kicking it long when needed, and in fairness we see both Alisson and Adrian do that plenty. We aren’t a play out at all costs team like City or Arsenal and kicking it long is something we do when the situation demands it. On this occasion Adrian chose not to and was punished. Bad decision and bad execution. It typified how the whole team had started though, Villa were sharper than us right from the first whistle. I had hoped the goal would wake us up but it didn’t. We didn’t start playing until we were 2-0 down. The second goal was good from Villa’s perspective. Grealish played a nice ball down the line to get Watkins away and he cut inside Gomez and lashed one in the top corner. Shite from Joe though. Keep him on his left foot. It's really not that difficult. We eventually settled down and had a good spell, created some chances that we didn’t take, probably should have had a penalty, and eventually made the breakthrough when Salah finished sharply. I felt good at that point. The goal got us back into it and we were playing quite well after that nightmare start in which we could easily have conceded more than the two (Barkley missed two great chances). Then we gave away another goal almost straight away and never recovered from it. The third was a fluke that we couldn’t do much about. We cleared the corner, McGinn volleyed it back in and it hit Van Dijk and went in the opposite corner. I think they’d won that corner from Barkley running through unopposed again and forcing a save from Adrian on his near post. Actually that might have been a different incident. They had so many attacks it’s hard for me to remember the sequence they came in. I know that the attack that led to the corner had initially looked offside and Klopp was going mad. Replays showed the linesman was right though as Gomez tried to step out and catch them offside but he was too late. Their fourth had a hint of offside about it too. It came from a free-kick that went to the far post and was knocked back into the centre for Watkins to complete his hat-trick. The lad who put the cross in was just onside and although there were a couple of them in the middle who were off when the free-kick came in, that’s not classed as offside anymore so again, nothing wrong with that goal. Predictably, much is being made of how high up the pitch we defended that free-kick but we’ve been doing that for years and nearly always catch the opposition offside. Mind you, Villa scored from a similar one last year I think, so unlike the rest of the league they seem to have figured out how to beat it. So 4-1 now. Fucking hell. The craziest thing is I rang my Dad at half time and I said I wouldn’t be surprised if we still came back and got something. Seems daft now but how can you ever completely write this team off? Robbo even said after the game that he thought we could come back and win it, but then we went out and played just as badly if not even worse. Minamino replaced Keita at the break, which made sense I suppose but I’d have probably put Milner or Hendo on to get more control. It wasn’t an extra attacker we needed as we looked dangerous enough going forward. We just had zero control of the game, the defence had no protection and it was like basketball at times. Clearly Hendo mustn’t have been fit enough as getting him out there was a no brainer otherwise. Minamino did nothing really, but he wasn’t alone in that and considering we were 4-1 down when he came on he’s not really on any list of culprits here. The next goal was always going to be vital and if Villa got it then that was us done and dusted. And they did. Fucking Barkley with a deflected shot that looped over Adrian. It was the only way that turd was going to score as he missed every other chance he had, the breeze block headed cunt. It was a flukey goal but it was self inflicted because it came about from Gomez passing it straight to a Villa player and putting us on the back foot. He was subbed soon after to put him out of his misery. We were just a completely disorganised mess at this point. We were losing the ball cheaply and were wide open to counters. Klopp always talks about protecting our attacks and how important that is. We didn’t do it at all. The defenders deserve all the stick that will come their way after this (not Robbo, he was sound) but they got no help whatsoever from those in front of them. None. Mo pulled one back with another fine finish after Bobby actually finally fucking did something and found a team-mate with a pass. He spent most of the game passing it to Villa players and his evening was summed up when he gave them the ball and they went up the pitch and scored again when Grealish’s shot deflected in off Fabinho. I couldn’t for the life of me even remember the seventh goal and I’ve just had to watch the 90 second highlight package on LFCTV to remind me. It was Grealish running free through the middle with no-one anywhere near him. That made me remember a similar one when Watkins ran through and Adrian had to make a good save to deny him. Due to having to watch that I also had to sit through the other goals again and ok yeah, now I’m getting angry about it. Some of those players gave up. Their heads went down and they allowed what would have been a bad loss to become a historically bad one. Probably doesn’t happen with fans in the ground as professional pride kicks in and you want to keep the score down. It just gives you that extra bit of motivation to not be humiliated. I didn’t see that here though. I just saw players not tracking runners, not putting pressure on the ball and generally just letting Villa do whatever they wanted. I feel as though I’m finally done with Keita now. He just doesn’t do enough. Even his good games aren’t THAT good and the fact is most of his performances are like this one. Not terrible, it’s not like he stands out for being crap, but too often he just doesn’t do anything. He’s a nothing player. A pisser and farter. He floats around being neat and tidy, but he’s meek as fuck and our midfield is nearly always far more open when he’s in it. He’s good at nicking it in the final third but if that doesn’t happen then once they’re behind him it’s goodnight. He’s our least effective midfielder and at this point I’d rather see any of the others (including Jones and Grujic) play ahead of him. He's in his third year and he's basically no better than he was when he first got here. Bobby needs dropping now too. I don’t know how many performances like this he’s going to be allowed to get away with before he’s finally benched. There’s no way I’d start him next game. Not a chance. Mo through the middle with Sadio and Jota wide for me. Minamino even, I could live with that but I’d prefer Jota as I think he’s done well. But Firmino will start. I'm under no illusions there and I’m not sure how bad he’d have to be to ever get dropped because Klopp is his number one fan. Dropping him might be what he needs though as this has been going on for 12 months now. He either needs a kick up the arse or he's low on confidence. Either way, benching him is the way to go. If he does play in the derby then he better fucking perform because we can't have any passengers in that game. Then there’s Gomez. What the fuck? I thought he was great against Arsenal last week but then he goes and plays like this. It was truly horrendous. It was Lovren on one of his meltdown days. That Watkins kid gave him the absolute runaround. In fairness, Virg was shite too but Gomez was a whole other level of bad. Fabinho was no better when he dropped into the backline and he was also shite in midfield. Barkley was running through uncontested time and time again. Given that it’s Fabinho’s job to protect the back four I think it’s fair to question just where the fuck he was when that kept happening. I actually thought Gini was ok. By ok I mean he wasn’t terrible like some of the others. He did the kind of job he usually does, but usually he’s doing it with two other midfielders also helping to boss the game. It felt like he was a one man midfield at times. Fuck me we don’t half miss Hendo sometimes don’t we? There is no way in a million years we concede seven with him on the pitch. Not a chance. It’s interesting when you hear the other players talk about how last season it was Hendo keeping everyone grounded and not letting them get carried away even when we were miles ahead. Robbo in particular has mentioned it loads, how Hendo refused to relax or get complacent right up until the moment the title was finally won. The way Robbo describes it you get the impression that some of the other lads were getting a bit too relaxed about it and it was Hendo who kept demanding more from everyone and making sure they kept their standards up. Hendo didn’t play at Watford and he didn’t play in this one. That isn’t a co-incidence for me. Yeah, he didn’t play at Chelsea or against Arsenal either, but that’s different because games like that are ones when everyone is always going to be fully up for it because it’s a big game against a top six rival. Watford away and Villa away? Different story. We’ve done an incredible job in recent years of being up for games like this and not letting standards slip, but the two times when we’ve let ourselves down have been when the skipper wasn’t out there. The only good thing about this I suppose is that Villa fans didn’t get to see it in person. I dread to think what Brummy wit we’d have had to endure. They’re the most unfunny, unoriginal cunts in the league at the best of times, but this would have been unbearable. Then again, if the stadium had been full this wouldn’t have gone down in this manner anyway. The stakes just aren’t as high when the stadium is empty. It just adds an extra layer of incentive that is almost impossible to recreate. Would Man City have conceded five at home if fans had been there? Would United have let in six? Would Wolves have been spanked 4-0 by West Ham? I doubt it. And there’s no part of me willing to accept we’d have let in seven against Villa in a full stadium. Football without fans is really shit and the results are just not realistic. Every week there’s completely mad scorelines and it isn’t a true reflection of the teams involved. But we’re stuck with this for the foreseeable future so these lads need to figure it out. You can’t play the way they did against Arsenal and then six days later serve up a shit burger like this. It’s incomprehensible. Maybe this is something they needed. Were they starting to believe the hype? The hype was completely justified as this team is the best in the land by some distance. However, they’re only that good when they do the things that made them the best. Against Villa I didn’t see ANY of that. There was no pressing, no closing down, no tracking of runners. I’d never accuse these lads of a lack of effort but they were definitely not switched on and focused for this game. I don’t like saying it because the attitude of this squad has been exemplary for years, but I suppose it’s only natural. It’s impossible to be completely focused week in week out. That’s why even the very best teams don’t win every single game they play. So yeah, whatever the reason it seems clear to me that that the players approached the game differently to the way they did the Chelsea and Arsenal games. Maybe you disagree and don’t think it was complacency, or you put it down to something else. Something less tangible like some of the things I mentioned earlier. Whatever the cause of it, I think we can all agree that Aston Villa would not be putting seven goals past us if we were mentally right. Too many players just weren’t at it, for whatever reason. So what now? We’ll see I guess. Before this game everyone had us running away with the league and one game shouldn’t change that, no matter how chastening an experience that game proved to be. I still think we’re by far the best team in the country but this empty stadium thing makes things far less predictable and we just don’t look the same as we did before lockdown. We can still play at full throttle when we’re really up for it. The Palace game just after lockdown ended was a good example, as was Arsenal last week. I’m now beginning to realise that we can’t do that week in week out in empty stadiums though. In theory it shouldn’t make that much of a difference, but in reality it does. It’s not even just the Anfield atmosphere we miss. Away games are more difficult too. It should be easier without a hostile away crowd but for a team like ours who play on emotion and need that intensity, it’s really difficult to do that every week when there are no crowds. We thrive on the emotion inside stadiums, whether its supportive or hostile. This one off loss doesn’t change how I view our chances of retaining the title. Losing Alisson for six weeks does a little though. We coped pretty well at the beginning of last season when he couldn’t play but that feels like an awful long time ago now because Adrian now looks like he’s going to fuck up every time he plays. We can overcome losing Alisson if everyone else is on it and last year that’s what happened. But it’s when we’re not playing great that we really need Alisson, and him not being there for any length of time is probably cost to cost us some points. Personally I wouldn’t play Adrian again. He’s a busted flush now. I doubt his team-mates have any confidence in him and he’s now looking like he has no confidence in himself. He will play though because Klopp isn’t going to throw Kelleher in for the derby and for CL games. The Villa away game last year was the day when a lot of Reds believed we would win the title. When you look back on it, it was definitely a pivotal moment. I wonder how we’ll look back on this one when the season is over? Maybe this is the first chink in the armour, or perhaps it is the wake up call that we needed. Right now I’m positive that it’s the latter, but it’s this shitty Covid footy that is really throwing everything up in the air. It’s levelled the playing field massively as it’s not like real footy. There’s just an artificialness about it all and it’s causing results to be all over the place. In closing, a result and performance like this shouldn’t ever happen but it might be a good thing that it has because now the players know that as great as they are, they aren’t invincible and if they don’t do the things that made them great in the first place they can be severely embarrassed. Use that embarrassment as motivation to ensure it never happens again, and for the love of all that is good and pure, get your fucking shit together before the derby. Star man is Robbo, which is mad because he plays in a defence that conceded seven goals. He was by far our best player though, along with Mo and Jota who were both alright. Team: Adrian; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez (Jones), Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Wijnaldum, Keita (Minamino); Salah, Firmino (Milner), Jota:

Saturday Sep 26: Ah fuck off. Alisson is injured AGAIN??? And Thiago too? Actually maybe they aren’t ‘injured’ as it’s all been very sketchy. Usually you’ll hear that there’s a muscle injury or a slight knee problem or whatever, but this has been much more vague than usual. They’re isolating, aren’t they? Meanwhile, there are STILL random reports linking us with Koulibaly. This does my head in as it’s just completely unrealistic. Even Stan Collymore is banging the drum for it and while I understand the argument that him and Van Dijk together would be invincible, if Man City can’t afford to prize him from Napoli then there’s no way we can considering we have no money whatsoever. Even the deals we’ve done have cost us virtually nothing. £5m a year for Thiago and only a £4m down payment this year for Jota. We’ve made that back with sales already. Koulibaly ain’t coming Stan, get over over it. Speaking of Collymore though, I read something about him today that I didn’t know. It was an interview with Tony Warner on some podcast a while back and I stumbled across it online while looking for something else. Warner had a scrap with Stan on a night out. He said Collymore swung a big heavy chair at his head and he had to block it with his arms or it might have killed him. He then starts swinging and the pair of them hit the floor. According to Warner, all the other players couldn’t stand Collymore so James and Ruddock pinned him down and held down his arms and legs allowing Warner to lay into him. Then Roy Evans arrived to break it up and caught an accidental smack in the mouth. Warner told another story about how Steve Harkness was obsessed with his own shit. This is absolutely fucking mad, and filthy. “He was always messing around with shit. His own shit. He put it on the door handles in the hotels, especially with the foreign lads.” “We used to stay at a hotel in Waltham Abbey. When you go in there, there’d always be sweets and three or four chocolates next to the bed. I’d always fly in and scoff all the chocolates dead quick. So, one day I’ve walked in and I’ve grabbed the chocolates. Bang! One goes in. Bang! Another goes in. Then there was another one. They usually come wrapped in paper like cupcakes, but this one looks like it had kind of been smeared in. “Do you know what gave him away? An arse hair. Just an arse hair hanging out the shite. At the same time, I’ve picked up on the smell. So, I’ve seen it and thought ‘imagine if that went in my mouth’. I’ve turned around, looked at the door and Harkness is there with his head poked around the corner. “He’s burst off laughing and I’ve legged it after him, shouting ‘I’d have fucking killed you had I have eaten that, I’d have fucking destroyed you’. “I was thinking to myself afterwards that if I’d eaten that shit, that story would’ve followed me around forever. I remember saying to him afterwards: ‘The fucking hiding I’d have had to give you to appease myself… I’d have been ruthless.” Hard to believe we never won anything with that group of players isn’t it? Fucking hell. Sunday Sep 27: City got whallopped at home by Leicester and it was glorious. It will be covered in extensive detail in this week’s round up so I’ll just focus on the reaction to it rather than the game itself. Because the reaction has been hilarious. Rodri’s quotes afterwards tell you all you need to know about that team. He sounds like the playground bully who has been unexpectedly punched on the nose: “It is very difficult to explain. When someone knocks you out you are confused and don’t know what happens. Football has not been fair with us. We deserve many things. We prosed many things in the game. We tried many things, they tried two or three things”. It’s called rope a dope you soft twat. Teams will let you come onto them because they know your defense is shite and that any counter attack is likely to end up in a goal. It isn’t ‘difficult to explain’ at all. It’s fucking obvious. “Maybe it is our fault, maybe it is their strength. I am young and try to learn every game but games like this where the opposition do nothing, you are a bit confused. You don’t know what to do.” He doesn’t know what to do. What does that tell you about Guardiola’s coaching? Imagine one of our lads saying something like that? There’s such a stench of entitlement about that club and ironically that’s the thing fucking them up now. “The opposition does nothing” even though they scored five goals. “For me they are lucky. It is not the way I like to play”. Hahahaha fucking hell, talk about arrogant. They beat you 5-2 you soft cunt. It wasn’t some 1-0 backs to the wall Mourinho-esque shithouse display. THEY SCORED FIVE GOALS!!! It’s the football snobbery of City that is killing them. They think everyone should try to play the way they do and beat them at their own game and they don’t like it when teams use City’s own strength against them. City want the ball so let them have it, let them think they’re in control and then as soon as they lose it, stick it straight up their arrogant tiki taki, FFP dodging cheating arses. Guardiola too, the bald fraud. “Even at 2-5 they settled back with 11 men behind the ball and it so difficult to create chances”. Mate, it only became 2-5 with 88 minutes gone! And of course they got men behind the ball. They were winning, What do you want them to do, all go up front because “Jamie Vardy’s ‘aving a party”. He’s so used to winning that he has no idea how to handle losing. Meanwhile, Suarez makes his debut for Atletico and scores twice after coming on as a sub. Diego Costa was asked afterwards about how he feels having Suarez as a team-mate and he said. “It’s great. One of us bites and the other kicks.” They’re going to be must watch this season. They’ll probably finish above Barca. Monday Sep 28: L 3 Arsenal 1 Boss that. Just completely dominant from start to finish. We still managed to gift wrap them a goal yet again, but this time we hit back straight away and continued to dominate. The score flattered Arsenal but I don’t think anyone is fooled by it. We’re being praised to the rooftops by most pundits. Shit, Roy Keane actually said we make him giddy. This was after Klopp had torn a strip off him after getting the wrong end of the stick. Keane was raving about us all night, even before the game he was talking about how great we are. Then he makes one little poorly worded remark about us being sloppy (which we were on a couple of occasions) just as Klopp comes into earshot! Keane had already said we’d win the title and he completely dismissed City as any kind of a threat to us. I understand why Jurgen saw his arse over it because he’ll have been thinking that his boys put in an incredible performance and will have been expecting everyone to be purring about it. Keane actually was, just not at the moment Kloppo arrived on the scene! It’s a back handed compliment that this team has set such high standards now that brilliance is almost taken for granted. When a team creates a chance against us, people read too much into it because they need to believe that maybe there’s a vulnerability there. Otherwise, everyone is just resigned to us running away with the title again and to a neutral that’s boring. The great United and Arsenal sides had to deal with the same thing. City too, although the cracks and vulnerabilities people saw with them were actually real and have been exposed for all to see over the last 12 months or so. Klopp has been making the same point for ages about how loads of chances we give up are actually offside and wouldn’t count anyway. He’s right. Every game there’s one or two incidents where the opposition go through on goal and everyone gets all excited, but you know if they’d scored and it went to VAR they’d have been offside. But because the flag didn’t go up and because they didn’t score so VAR wasn’t needed, the perception is it was a chance. Other than the goal we handed them, Arsenal had, what, two chances tonight? And all the other ‘moments’ they had wouldn’t have counted because they were offside. Like the one when Lacazette tried to lob Alisson and the big fella denied him. It wouldn’t have counted, but it was probably in his head when he went through again soon after. He shit himself and hit it straight at the keeper. Speaking of Alisson, he played so at least we know he isn’t sick. He wasn’t injured either, so his absence from training must have been covid related. The club say Thiago didn’t play because of a “slight problem”. If he was injured they’d just say, surely? Meanwhile, two keepers left today. Karius went on loan to Union Berlin while Kamil Grabara went back on loan to AGF, where he’s been before. We’ve got so many keepers on the books it’s impossible to keep track of them all. Every other week there’s a different one playing for the 23s or the 18s. Not sure what the point of it is but Edwards knows what he’s doing. He’ll probably sell half a dozen of them for £50m over the next couple of years. We’re not getting shit for Karius though. Tuesday Sep 29: Yep Thiago’s officially got the ‘rona. No surprise really as it was fairly obvious that’s what was going on with him and Alisson. Big Ali must have tested negative but now Thiago is isolating for 10 days so he won’t be able to play our next couple of games. I’m not sure how all this works though, as he’ll have been in contact with all of the other players and probably Klopp (who is still hugging the lads as much as ever). Do they not all need to isolate too? This whole thing is confusing as fuck. Meanwhile, Danny Murphy says Pogba wouldn’t get in our midfield. “Because Pogba’s got everything, he could defend better than he does. But he doesn’t, for some reason, and I don’t know whether that’s the lack of consequence for not defending. “Pogba wouldn’t get in Klopp’s midfield, I don’t think. He might if he was going to work as hard as he was supposed to but I don’t think the likes of Klopp would put up with midfielders defending like that.” In other news, the sky is blue and water is wet. Ok, that’s a little unfair on SuperDan as there are loads of deluded fools who think Pogba would get in ANY midfield so he's just setting them straight. They’re either United fans or people whose knowledge of football comes entirely from youtube clips and playing FIFA. Pogba is shite. Absolute turd. But as soon as he does one thing good (which he occasionally does because he’s incredibly talented) you get all the FIFA nonces posting clips and salivating over him. I wouldn’t swap any of our midfielders for him. Well, maybe Keita, but that’s not saying much. Wednesday Sep 30: Ljinders address the Neco Williams thing in his press conference. It was strong stuff but he could have stronger. He said something about you can’t be a supporter without supporting, but that’s kind of missing the point I think. I didn’t like it when Houllier went down that road as being a supporter doesn’t mean you can’t criticise when it’s justified. The Neto thing is completely different. It isn’t about being a supporter or not. It’s simply about not being a cunt. It’s that simple. Anyone who sends abuse (or even needless criticism) to a player from their own team is a cunt. Express your opinion all you like, but don’t force that opinion onto the person you’re talking about because that makes you a cunt. And when you’re doing it to a teenage lad playing for a team that is winning everything and had just won 7-2 then you probably just deserve the death penalty as the world would be a much better place without you. That’s what Pep should have said today. Meanwhile, Ross Barkley signs for Villa. Good move for all concerned. He’s a talented player but the lack of a functioning brain means he’s not cut out for life with a Champions League calibre team. He’ll be very good for Villa so they’ve done well to get him. Of course the move was greeted by lots of smugness from Evertonians who somehow see this as Barkley getting his comeuppance for thinking he’s too good for Everton. He left for Chelsea and he won trophies. He made a ton of money and now he’s joined Villa, which Evertonians seem to think it a step down from the Blues but really isn’t. Villa are a bigger club than Everton in every sense. The Blues are higher in the table, but that’s literally all they have over Villa, who have a bigger ground, more fans and a richer history. Thursday Oct 1: L 0 Arse 0. I hate losing penalty shoot outs and I have losing them even more when it’s against Arsenal. That’s the only real thing bothering me about this. Going out of the cup would be more of an issue if there wasn’t now a three month wait until the next round. By the time that comes around it’ll have been the last thing Klopp would have wanted. If the next round had been next week I’d probably feel worse about this, as it would have been nice for the kids and squaddies to get more gametime. As it is, we probably won’t see some of these lads again. Wilson & Grujic will probably go, maybe Div too, and Elliott and Rhys Williams are going to struggle to see the field given the nine subs proposal was shot down. There were things to be pleased with tonight though. The Williams kids were both ace and Grujic probably put another couple of mil on his value as he was the best player on the pitch. I’d like to keep him but it’s not fair to the lad as he’s too good to just sit around and wait for the odd cup game. We should have won the game as we were comfortably the better team. I like how sharp Jota is looking and it would be interesting to see how he did in a 4-2-3-1 with Mo playing central and Bobby a little deeper. I thought tonight was a big chance for Minamino to put pressure on Bobby for his starting spot but I don’t think he did anywhere enough to do that. He was alright and was unlucky not to score, but he needed a big performance and that’s not what we got. For now I think Bobby’s spot is safe but he is going to have to start scoring at some point. Friday Oct 2: Oh for fuck’s sake. Sadio has Covid now. There have been rumours for a day or two and this is going to happen a lot now I think. The club puts out videos and photos from training sessions and eagle eyed fans are looking to see who isn’t there. Sadio wasn’t on any of them in the last couple of days so we kind of knew what was going on and tonight the club confirmed it. More and more players seem to be testing positive now, which makes it all the more remarkable how successful operation restart was last season. I don’t think there were any positive tests right across the PL last season which is astonishing really. I think I remember reading a few weeks back that games won’t be postponed because players have Covid and that as long as you have enough players to complete the fixture then you can’t get it called off. So we’ve got to go to Villa without Thiago and Mané and possibly anyone else who might test positive in the next couple of days. Given the close proximity the lads are to each other I’d be surprised if it was only these two that have it to be honest. On the transfer front, Brewster completes his move to Sheffield United. £23.5m with a buy back clause that can be activated at any time in the next three years, and a 15% sell on clause. In general I don’t like the idea of selling our best youngsters, especially before they’ve had a chance to show what they can do, but that one deal has covered the Thiago transfer fee and if Brewster actually turns out to be boss then we can bring him back. Unless we change how we play I don’t see him ever being a good fit for us but the kid is going to score goals so good luck to him. I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the reason we were prepared to let him go is because of how highly they rate Layton Stewart and that he’s more of a natural fit for our set up. He’s started the season brilliantly for the 18s and might be the next one to be moved to Melwood to train with the big boys. Shaq is close to leaving too, which upsets me more than Brewster going. I can’t disagree with it really though. He’s been injured so much that it reached a point where he wasn’t worth the wages we were paying him. He’s quality though, I love him and I’ll be sad if he leaves. Wilson may be staying now though after Burnley supposedly dropped their interest. They offered £12m plus and extra £4m in add ons. As if you’re getting Michael Edwards to accept that. If we got £23.5m for Brewster then Wilson’s fee is more likely to be around £25m as he’s a proven Premier League player who scores goals. Under normal circumstances I don’t think we’d sell both Shaq and Wilson but if there’s a chance to get money in to recoup what we’ve lost through Covid then it’s probably wise to do it and then rely on Harvey Elliott to fill the hole that’s left. To be honest I’d rather sell Origi and keep Shaq or Wilson. Doesn’t look like that’s happening though. and that was the week that was….