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Saturday Nov 7: You’ve got admire the Echo’s ability to somehow link events happening anywhere in the world to either Liverpool or Everton. They’ll drag a footy story out of literally any topical event. Whats everyone talking about today? The US election. Can the Echo get a footy story out of that? You betchya. “Donald Trump defeat may accelerate FSH merger plans for Liverpool”. Fair play, keep those clicks rolling in! Headline in the MEN today meanwhile. “Bernardo Silva identifies advantage Man City have over Liverpool”. Is it money? I bet it's money. It’s money, isn’t it? Defo has to be money. I’m not clicking because fuck the MEN and fuck Bernardo Silva, the little rat, so I’m just going to assume it’s money and leave it at that. Speaking of fucking terrible headlines though, how about this from the Daily Star; “Southgate phoned Pickford over Van Dijk torment but England will suffer the most”. WHAT. THE. FUCK!!!! Where do you even start with that? I’m sick of this ‘poor Jordan and how he’s suffering’ narrative we’ve been subjected to for weeks now. HE ISN’T THE VICTIM HERE YOU SILLY CUNTS. In fairness the Daily Star seem to understand that. Unfortunately they seem to believe the real victim is, erm, the England national team. All these fuckers seem to be forgetting that Virgil is looking at probably close to an entire year out of the game. Meanwhile, Elliott impressed again for Blackburn. He’s getting rave reviews so far which is great news. There’s a chance this kid could be one of those generational talents. An Owen, Gerrard or Rooney type prodigy. You can’t always be sure at that age as great 17 year olds are not always great 21 year olds, but Harvey seems as sure a thing as you’re likely to find. Another kid we have high hopes for - even though he’s older than Harvey I think and is still playing in the u18s - is Layton Stewart and he scored again today. He’s been in great form this season and it’s worth tuning into the u18 games on LFCTV just to watch him. Quality forward who isn’t just a goalscorer, he’s a good all around player. We might see him in the FA Cup this year if the draw is favourable. Sunday Nov 8: City 1 L 1 First half was a great advert for the Premier League, the second half was boring as fuck. Probably a few reasons for that, including tiredness and the amount of respect both teams have for each other. We went at it like a bull out of the gate to begin with and we caught City off guard with the 4-2-4 set up. We only scored once though and that was never going to be enough. City levelled and then eventually figured out what we were doing and adapted accordingly. After that it was just a big stalemate. The point is better for us than them though as they were the home side and they’re behind us in the table. It’s not a bad point for either side though really, especially as City must be looking at our growing injury list and fancying their chances of catching us. Trent became the latest casualty today and we won’t see him for at least a month and probably more. Guardiola had a rant about it afterwards and he was spot on really. Him and Klopp are still pissed off that the five subs rule wasn’t sanctioned by the rest of the league. That chat they had immediately after the whistle was about that apparently. They shook hands and then Klopp just went off on one about the five sub things and they seemed to be in lock step about it based on what Guardiola said afterwards. Guardiola’s rant kind of felt like he was talking about more than just that though. “The rest of the world all do it one way but this country knows better”. Feels like a bit of a brexit dig that, which I’m all in favour of too, so well played there Pep. In terms of the five sub thing, he was pointing out the amount of injuries that we’re seeing and he referenced what happened today as evidence of it, citing the loss of England’s right back as evidence as to how we aren’t protecting the players. He’s right, even if he did call him Alexander Trent-Arnold. I can forgive that as for years my Mum called him Terrence Trent-Alexander, while my Dad just calls him Arnold. So now the lads all go off to play internationals and we know someone is going to come back crocked. My money is on Gomez because he’s ripe for an injury right now. He’s played every game lately with no rest. If it’s not him, it’ll be Gini. But it’s most likely Joey G because that injury would hit us hardest and that’s just the way things have gone. Monday Nov 9: No news on Trent’s injury yet but early suggestion is 4 weeks. Given how we usually drip feed injury news and break it gently, don’t expect to see him for a couple of months. Calf injuries are bastards to overcome anyway as when you think it’s gone and you try and run, it can go ‘pop’ again. I remember it happened to me once. Not playing footy, I actually did it walking through Ormskirk pushing Adrianna in her pram. It was six weeks before I could play again. I actually thought I was over it after a couple of weeks and gave myself a late fitness test on the Thursday afternoon ahead of TLW footy that night. By fitness test I mean I tried a little sprint in the garden, and it just went again. So Trent needs to be careful with this is all I’m saying. Mind you, I didn’t have a whole team of sport science geeks helping with my recovery, so maybe Trent can get back a little quicker than I did. Meanwhile, Brazilian ‘wonderkid’ Tete who plays for Shakhtar, says he’d love to play for us. Well he can fuck off, and here’s why: “I always dream of playing for Liverpool, Manchester United, Barcelona, as I mentioned. But the special affection I have is for Barcelona. It’s a team that I’ve always followed since I was little, since I was a child. I used to get Barcelona shirts, Messi shirts. So that passion grew every day and the affection I really have is for Barcelona.” The days of us being a stepping stone for South Americans to get their ‘dream’ move to Barca are well and truly over. We’re the destination now, get with the programme kid. Besides, unless he wants to play for free he can forget Barca as they’re up shit creek and can’t afford a paddle because they’ve wasted so much money on flashy outboard motors that don’t work. Tuesday Nov 10: Lot of talk today about the end of Melwood and there were plenty of ex players sharing memories on social media. One caught my eye and it pissed me off. Fernando Torres. I don’t like how since he’s retired he’s really hammed it up with the whole ex player “I love the Reds, me” routine. It annoys me as he doesn’t have the right to do that. Luis Garcia does it and I’m like, ‘yeah you’ve earned that, knock yourself out’. Djimi Traore is another, and again, I’m like ‘good for you Djimi lad’. Torres though? He fucked us off to go to Chelsea, even though at the time we had major beef with them after facing them so many times in big games. Alonso, Mascherano, Suarez and Coutinho all left us to go to Spain’s big two. Not everyone is going to be ok with that, specifically the way some of them forced their way out, but none of them went to rival English clubs and all of them performed well right up until the point they left. So Torres can get to fuck. He downed tools, left for a team we hated and now that he’s retired he’s wanting on the LFC Fam gravy train. I don’t even blame him for that. He’s hardly going to be looking back on his time at Chelsea with much fondness and wanting to to feel their love. Retired players who’ve played for us want to be associated more with being a former Liverpool player than they do any other club they’ve played for, so Torres is no different in that regard. The difference is how so many fans seem willing to welcome him back in with open arms. When things get back to normal he’ll be playing in those legend tour matches with Paddy, Vladi, Garcia etc and fans will be kissing his ballsack. It doesn’t sit well with me and I absolutely resent how the club’s social media is up his arse while completely shunning Michael Owen. “Happy Birthday El Nino!!” “On this day in 2009 El Nino scored this goal” “Ooooh look at El Nino, isn’t he sexy with his blonde hair”. Get. To. Fuck. Owen is a Liverpool legend who won us trophies and then made a series of bad career choices, but who repeatedly tried to get back here only for circumstances to continually thwart him. Torres was a great player who won nothing, threw his toys out of the pram and fucked us off for a bitter rival and is now giving it the “oh I loved my time at Anfield”. Fuck off. Owen > Torres and that’s a hill I’m happy to die on. Come and fight me up there if you like, I’ll take the lot of you on and I’ll never back down on that. A youthful u21 side lost 4-2 at Port Vale. Liam Miller scored twice but the game was a dead rubber anyway after defeats to Tranmere and Wigan. It’s hard for the lads as those teams are playing most of their first choice line up and we’ve got a rag tag bunch of teens and lads (like Miller and Van den Berg) who missed out on loan deals. Van den Berg was fucking brutal tonight. Even with the centre half crisis we have he’s got about as much chance of starting a game as I have. Wednesday Nov 11: Carra was on Adrian Durham’s show yesterday and I thought this was quite interesting on Firmino. “I don’t think Firmino was in great form last season. Even though Liverpool won the league and when you win the league you are winning week after week and certain things get masked. “Firmino didn’t score a Premier League goal at home until the last home Premier League game against Chelsea. Now, Liverpool fans are educated enough to know that Firmino’s role in this team is to not be scoring goals. “But even the actual pressing stats when I looked at them. They weren’t at the numbers they normally are. It doesn’t mean if Firmino goes and Jota starts then that’s the end of Firmino. He’s not playing well. You have ups and downs in your career. Just sit on the bench for three or four games.” The reason I thought that was interesting is because we all know his goalscoring hasn’t been up to scratch for a while, but we generally overlook that because we know how important he’s been due to other things he does, such as pressing. I’ve seen with my own eyes that he’s giving the ball away a lot and some of his passing has been woeful, and I know he hasn’t been scoring. I did not know his pressing numbers were down too though. This might be a more serious problem than I thought. He’s in a proper slump and it doesn’t appear like he’s actually doing ANYTHING to the level we’ve become accustomed to. If he was playing at the level he was two years ago then he’s such a special player that he’s worth changing the system for. Right now? He isn’t, so let’s go back to 4-3-3 and stick him on the bench until he’s worth a place again. Meanwhile, Gomez is injured in England training and it might be serious. I hate being right all the time. It’s both a blessing and a curse. Be interesting to see who gets the call first though, me or Sepp Van den Berg. Thursday Nov 12: Gomez has had an op already and is expected to miss at least five months, which is good news according the press because…. wait for it…..he might still make the Euros. Honestly, talk about tone deaf. All those press reports mentioning how it’s good news for England, it’s just trolling us isn’t it? Fucking insensitive pricks. Fuck England, the important thing here is how it impacts us. And I’ll tell you how it impacts us. It fucks us. Big time. It “hasn’t been ruled out” that he might feature for us before the end of the season but I’ll tell you here and now, that’s not happening. He won’t play again this season because it’s a really bad injury. Five months is the best case, but that doesn’t take into account how difficult it is to come back from this at the level you were before. We won’t see Joe until next season, which means we will see a lot of Nat Phillips and Rhys Williams now, because there’s no way Matip is going injury free until January, Fabinho is already out and we don’t know when he’ll be back (hopefully Leicester but would you be shocked if it was another month?), so we’re down to the bare bones. I know a lot of people will say this injury was always going to happen and it’s just a co-incidence that it happened when he was with England, but I don’t buy it. Our players get injured too often on international duty for it to be a co-incidence. I think this is the third time it’s happened to Joe. It’s just negligence, they don’t look after our players as well as we do. England are the neighbour that borrows your lawn mower and returns it in a hundred pieces. They’re the Homer Simpson to our Ned Flanders. Scotland qualify for the Euros after a penalty shoot out win. I’m really happy for them and not just because Robbo is captain. I’ve always felt more affinity with Scotland than England, but then I have more affinity with Outer Mongolia than I do England so that’s not saying much. I like Scotland though and it’s about time they were involved in a major tournament. When was the last one? Euro 96 is the last one I remember. Kinell, that was over 24 years ago, or put another way, half of my life ago. So yeah, great for Scotland but I tell you what, my hatred for VAR just continues to grow by the week. It needs fucking off and tonight showed exactly why. Not even because of any decision that was made. No, even without VAR getting involved tonight showed just why it needs fucking off as we had the deflating sight of the Scottish keeper unable to celebrate saving a pen that sent his country to the Euros because he was having to wait for confirmation from the ref that VAR wasn’t going to say his foot had moved an inch off the line. Eventually he got confirmation and celebrated, but fuck me this is just shit isn’t it? You could argue that it’s the rule about keeper ‘encroachment’ that needs changing, but nah, its the video that needs fucking off because it’s encouraging this busy bastard, jobsworth approach to every decision, whether it’s keepers on penalties, scandalous ‘offside’ decisions or handballs, all of this nonsense can be traced to the introduction of the video evidence. Because they can be so precise now, they are being, and it’s proper shit. VAR is just killing the emotion in the game and I hate it more than anything I’ve ever hated in football. With the possible exception of Richarlison. Friday Nov 13: More talk about us signing Alaba in January. I saw that Boeteng is also out of contract in the summer. Would Bayern sell him? I’m not his biggest fan but I can make a good argument as to why he would be the best signing we could make in January. Boeteng has the physical attributes needed to play centre back in England and he has a wealth of experience playing at the highest level. He’s still got plenty in the tank and he’s used to playing in a team that plays a similar style to ours. In our current situation bringing in a player like him would be as good as we could hope for. My gut feeling is that Alaba has already been tapped up, and if it is him then sound. January feels like a long way off though as players continue to drop like flies. Today’s bad news is that Mo has Covid. Not really surprising considering how he was carrying on at his brother’s wedding the other day. No social distancing, sat on someone’s shoulders as a big load of them are bouncing around the dance floor. I’ve got mixed feelings on this because I feel as though all of the players will get it eventually and there’s an argument to be had that if we can stagger them out that’s the best way to do it. Sadio had it and missed a game, but Bobby, Jota and Mo were all available. So now Mo will miss Leicester but the other three are (so far) available and after this Mo is in the clear and won’t get it again. So it’s not necessarily a bad thing that he got it now, during an international break, rather than in the middle of a four games in ten day spell. However…. when you consider how careful the clubs are and how vigorous they are with testing and trying to avoid people getting it, it must be a bit galling for Klopp to know that as soon as they leave Melwood they’re likely to get it. Shaq tested positive on an international break. So did Naby from what I can remember. And now Mo. I wouldn’t say I’m pissed off with Mo and how reckless he was at his brother’s wedding, but it is a little disappointing. Put it this way, I can’t see Hendo or Milner doing that. and that was the week that was….