Leaderboard

Talk about a bittersweet result. Jesus. A 3-0 win at Leeds is always cause to feel happy, but seeing what happened to poor Harvey just really took the shine off it. Football is so cruel at times. The kid was about to be subbed and then that happens. Just horrible. At least it was his ankle and not a broken leg as many first feared when they saw the replay. I didn’t see it and have absolutely no desire to either. I’m just relieved the injury was more Andre Gomes than Jim Beglin. I had a front row seat to the Beglin one (not literally, it was standing in those days but I was right by where it happened) and I still feel squeamish whenever I think about it even all these years later. An injury like that puts a career at risk. Thank God that isn’t what happened. The incident saw the Leeds player given a red card and while I agree with the decision, I don’t think it was a ‘bad’ tackle and there was absolutely no intent to do anything but win the ball. The problem was because he’s jumped in from behind, his trailing knee landed on the back of Harvey’s calf and therefore it was endangering an opponent and a justified red card. Granted, I wouldn’t be saying it’s a red if Harvey hadn’t been injured, but he was injured, and you just can’t let the offending player stay on in that situation. There was a very similar one not long after on Sadio which wasn’t even given as a free kick, but Sadio wasn’t hurt and so I wouldn’t be calling for a red card there, even if the tackles themselves were similar. One seriously injured an opponent, the other didn’t. So they aren’t ‘the same’ even if they were similar. Going down to ten men actually helped Leeds. For one thing, it meant they couldn’t be quite as kamikaze as they had been prior that. Also though, we stopped playing for a while as clearly the players were affected by what had happened and they just stopped attacking and played keep ball for a while until eventually they played themselves back into the game. It was just horrible and you could tell the players by shaken by it. It’s bad enough when any team-mate gets a bad injury, but when it’s a kid like Harvey who has been making such massive strides, it’s just upsetting for everyone. We were 2-0 up at that point and the game was over anyway, but the feeling was always there that we could score five or six if we just sharpened up a bit in the final third. I say ‘we’ but I basically mean Sadio. At one point a graphic came up that showed Leeds having had nine shots, and Mané had ten! Astonishing really. Eventually he got his goal late on but he was getting increasingly pissed off at his own inability to put the ball in the onion bag. We battered Leeds. To only score three after creating all those chances is actually pretty poor. The performance was outstanding but we didn’t reap the rewards we should have for the football that was played. It doesn’t matter much as it was a comfortable win and three points, but Leeds could have been seriously embarrassed here if we’d been clinical. Mind you, it’s been like this for a while. Remember last season when we demolished Palace by scoring with virtually every shot we had? I remember that just because it was such an outlier in a season when often we couldn’t hit Luke Shaw’s arse with a cricket bat. Our all around game is so consistently good that any time we have a day when both Salah and Mané are firing at the same time somebody is going to get one hell of a spanking. Mo was really good in this one and put us ahead with a sharp finish from a Trent cross. No more than we deserved, although the first ten minutes had been fairly even and Leeds were going toe to toe with us. I’ll take that all day. Anyone who thinks they can take us on like that are more than welcome to try as it’s not going to end well for them. We had a bit of discussion about that on the podcast, which I’ll attach below, but my view is that I can see why people think Leeds should be a bit more circumspect wen they face the better sides, but equally I understand why they aren’t. It’s ‘he who dares’ isn’t it? They could try and play more defensively but they’d almost certainly still lose anyway and they’d have betrayed their own principles. Better to go down swinging and doing the things you’re good at. What it tells me though is that Leeds are going to be a guaranteed three points for us whenever we play them now. It wasn’t easy last season but there were no fans in the stadium so none of that has any relevance to me. I’ve seen United murder them twice and we should have done the same. Leeds’ style of play will get them points against a lot of sides, but the top teams will batter them unless they’re having a real off day. And contrary to what I keep hearing from the ‘experts’ we are one of the top teams. In fact, I’ll say it again. We are THE top team. Many people seem to have forgotten how good we are but that’s fine, let them keep raving about the sides who’ve spent money and dismiss us because we didn’t. For all the money spent by those other clubs we still have the best keeper, the two best full backs, the two best centre backs, the best holding midfielder and arguably the best forward. That’s without even mentioning the likes of Hendo, Thiago, Jota and Mané. Before the game the narrative on Sky was “how will Thiago cope with the Leeds crowd and midfielders who will run around a lot”. Honestly, it’s fucking mental. This lad has won everything. He’s one of the world’s best midfield players and for his entire career he’s played in the biggest games against the world’s best players, yet Jamie Redknapp and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink were questioning if he could deal with thirty thousand people chanting “YORKSHIRE” and if he could cope with Stuart Dallas running about. And then when Thiago completely bossed the game, as he was always going to do, Redknapp is like “fair play, we questioned him before the game but he came through really well and was brilliant”. Who knew? Everyone except Jamie and Jimmy really. Pathetic. They get paid for that shit. Thiago thought he’d scored with a smart back post header but it was correctly ruled out for an offside against Mo. Bit sloppy that, he could have got back onside but was too slow. Shame for Thiago as he deserved a goal for that performance. So did Fabinho, and he did get one. The fact it took so long for us to get the second goal was incredibly frustrating. It was a cracking game but 1-0 at half time was pretty scandalous considering how wide open Leeds were. It felt like we created a chance every 90 seconds or so. It was so fucking easy, every time we won the ball back off them we were left with three v three counter attacks. Too often the pass wasn’t right, and even when it was the finish was usually shit. We weren’t helped by Craig Pawson giving the Leeds defenders free reign to just grab hold of Mo any time he tried to run in behind them. To make matters worse, he booked Fabinho for his first foul, which wasn’t even bad. Just a normal foul. What happened to “let them play”? Horrendous booking that was. I didn’t think Pawson had a terrible game overall, but the Fabinho booking really wound me up. It didn’t affect Fab’s performance though. He was just monstrous all day. He just ambles around the field getting in the way of everything, winning the ball back and sucking the life out of the opposition. His positioning and anticipation is incredible as he’s always where the ball is, getting foot in and starting attacks for us. His goal was a bit shit though. He missed the initial chance when Leeds didn’t deal with a corner, and then he seemed to have an age to just seize on the loose ball and poke it home. Leeds’ defending of corners was pitiful all day. Their defending of everything was actually. So 2-0 and I’m thinking we’ll go on to get a good few more. Then the Harvey thing happens. Just awful. To make it worse, the Leeds fans start singing “Always the victim”. Not all them, there were loads of them applauding as Harvey went past on a stretcher. Incredibly, Harvey was applauding them back, and within minutes was posting reassuring messages to us on social media. That kid is incredible, because I know for a fact if I’d looked down and seen my foot pointing the wrong way, the only thing on my mind would be how much gas and air I could have and if it was possible for them to just put me to sleep for a bit so I didn’t have to deal with it. Those Leeds fans though. I said in the round up right at the start of the season that all it took to undo all the good will Bielsa and his team have built up since promotion was for fans to come back in and remind us all why everyone fucking hates Leeds. I wanted us to really put them to the sword but it because clear that wasn’t going to happen when Sadio kept missing chance after chance. He was doing my head in, but he was doing his own head in more I think. He reminded me a bit of Mo at times. You know those games when you know the result is in the bag, but Mo hasn’t scored and he just goes into that mode where every time he got the ball he’d be going for goal and every time anyone else got it they’d try to set him up. It was like that for Sadio. They were all trying to get him a goal, even Mo, who has been Mr Creative all season really. He’s playing other people in all the time now, as well as being an absolute fucking menace himself. Sadio just kept missing, but eventually Thiago cleverly picked him out and he swivelled and rifled in a low shot to put the seal on a good win. It should have been better but it’s three points and a clean sheet which isn’t to be sniffed at. The only goal we’ve conceded so far was one that really couldn’t have been prevented from a corner. Leeds did have a few good opportunities and caused us the occasional problem, most notably when my boy Bamford took advantage of a mix up between Thiago and Hendo and tried to lob Alisson from the centre circle. That goes in against some other keepers *cough* Pickford *cough* but Ali did well to get back and tip it over the bar. So all in all, an impressive performance, good win, but just a fucking depressing day because of what happened to poor Harvey. We can only hope that it isn’t a season ender and he’s back better than ever sooner rather than later. Star man is Fabinho who bossed the game and got himself a goal. There were a number of top performances though, with a special mention to Matip who kept us entertained with those mazy forward runs. A Big Bird mazy one is second only to a ‘Red Arrows’ counter attack for me. Love it. We saw a couple of late subs with Ox and then Keita coming on. Ox had a nightmare start and couldn’t do a thing right. He was playing the number nine role in the absence of Bobby to bring on. Not something we want to see too often but in games like this I feel as though he could make something happen in that role. If the game had lasted another ten minutes I reckon he’d have scored. He was just getting into his stride in stoppage time. I’d start him in midfield against Milan as with Harvey out we’re now going to need either him or Keita to step up as the fourth midfielder. There’s still Milner and Curtis too, but I just have a feeling Klopp wants to get Ox and Keita firing early in the season because they need that confidence boost. I could be wrong though and we’ll see when he names the starting line up on Wednesday night. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Elliott (Henderson), Thiago (Keita); Salah, Jota (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Mané: