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What a difference a week makes. Six days ago our second eleven triumphed over a fresh and rested Leicester despite them fielding their best line up. Now we were the ones rested up and fielding our strongest side (minus Robbo and Thiago) and they were coming off an energy sapping 6-3 loss at the Etihad a couple of days earlier. And somehow we fucking lost. Honestly, I feel like this is the worst result we’ve had since Klopp arrived. I know how that sounds but I mean it. All things considered, this is the fucking worst defeat we’ve had under Klopp and it’s definitely the most inexcusable. We had some bad ones last season but there were no fans in stadiums and the whole thing was a charade that meant nothing. So I can easily shrug off anything that happened last season, including losing 7-1 (or was it 7-2?) at Villa and even losing to Everton at Anfield. We’ve had other bad defeats scattered throughout Klopp’s reign but we weren’t as accomplished a side as we are now so that was always something that could happen from time to time. This team is playing to win titles and the stakes are high in every game. You can't afford cheap losses and this team should NEVER be fucking losing this game. I’m struggling to keep a lid on how pissed off I am about it. I’d already decided prior to the game I wasn’t going to do the podcast on the final whistle and thank fuck for that as I’d have been doing the full Arsenal Fan TV mindless ranting. I know if I’d done it I’d have been embarrassed about it a couple of days later when I calmed down, and even this report will probably contain some things I might want to back away from a little when the dust settles. Right now though I’m definitely in a throwing the toys out of the pram frame of mind. And you know something else? I don’t ever want to hear Klopp fucking moaning about how “impossible” two games in three days is. He had me convinced and I was happy to fight his corner over it. But it’s absolute fucking bollocks. He was made to look like a tit by this defeat and even acknowledged it himself afterwards, saying “One of the guys who is constantly talking about how you should not play the 26th and 28th and only plays the 28th and loses against the team who plays the 26th and 28th - a funny story I know”. Yeah I’m not fucking laughing. You know who is though? Those Leicester cunts singing “feed the scousers” that’s who. Because we somehow lost to the fuckers. How did that happen? Because this “can’t play two games in three days” thing is completely overstated garbage. Is it ideal? No. Can it be done? Yeah it fucking can. Next time I buy into that shit someone please give me a slap. Leicester have given the Simon Jordans and Alan Brazils of this world all the ammunition now to rip into Klopp whenever he moans about it and he can thank his players for that because they well and truly shit the bed here. All the things Klopp said we should expect from players when they play twice in three days happened anyway, and that was with six days off! In fact, I say six days off but it’s actually more than that for most of them as loads didn’t even play last week. Apparently if we’d had to play the 26th and the 28th we would see attacking players making bad decisions and not being sharp. Fuck me, imagine how shit we’d have been if we’d played Boxing Day then. Or maybe we wouldn’t, maybe we’d have actually had more sharpness and focus as let’s face it, we couldn’t have had less. Honestly, I’m so fucking pissed off I just feel like lashing out in all directions. It’s because I didn’t even contemplate for one second that we wouldn’t win this game, and win it well. I was even ripping into a couple of lads in the group chat who were worried about the game beforehand. Usually Leicester away is a fixture I’d be wary about too, but I wasn’t this time and if I actually stop and think about why that is, it’s 100% because I bought into Jurgen’s shite about player fatigue. I mean, how can we possibly fail to beat a team who are trying to do the “impossible”? By Klopp's logic, Leicester should have been out on their feet, ripe for the picking. I bought into that, but guess what, they never really looked tired at all and in the second half they were quite comfortable. They had the two toughest fixtures imaginable too, it’s not like they played Norwich and Everton. Leicester were 4-0 down at Man City and fought tooth and nail to get back in that game before eventually losing 6-3. Then they had to face us two days later. And they fucking beat us, so no I don’t want to hear that shit about how important rest is anymore. Let’s be honest here, we’re usually fucking shite when we’re rested up. We always come out under cooked and lo and behold, we did it again. Alisson, Trent, Virgil, Matip, Fabinho, Salah and Mané had loads of time to rest up as they didn’t play last week and some didn’t play the games before either. Did that help? Did it fuck. No intensity, no sharpness. The finishing was a fucking disgrace. It started with Mo’s penalty but it wasn’t just him. It was everybody who had a sniff of goal. There wasn’t one decent effort all night. I wasn’t worried after Mo missed the pen as it was early and we were playing ok. It felt like we’d keep creating chances and eventually take one. After all, we’ve been doing that all season so there was no reason to not think that. When Sadio blazed that sitter over the bar in the second half though, that’s when my arse went. It just had that “they’ll get one chance and score” feel about it and so it proved. Their goal was shite. Obviously Lookman has done well, that’s not what I mean. It’s a good goal from him but it was shite and half arsed from us. Trent never even bothered chasing him back but that was typical of his second half performance. I’ve never seen him play worse, which is mad because he was good in the first half. He looked fucked after the break, he could hardly run. And what the fuck is Virgil doing? Just letting him shoot, presumably thinking “go on then, you’re not beating Alisson on the near post”. He can’t have been watching Alisson that closely this season then. He should save it. It was the only thing we needed him to do all night but sadly he wasn’t up to it. What makes it worse is the cunt at the other end saved everything. In the first half anyway. After the break I don’t remember him needing to do anything other than make one routine save with his foot from Van Dijk. Pretty much everything else missed the target. Just fucking shite. I don’t know if it was complacency or tiredness or we were ‘too rested’ or what, but that second half was truly pathetic. The first half was unlucky. We played quite well and should have been in front but the second half was disjointed shite, full of terrible decision making and erratic play, not helped by shit substitutions that hampered us further. Mané was the most glaring example but it’s too easy to single him out. It wasn’t just him, but that chance he put over the bar….. fucking hell. I’d have subbed him immediately. He had another chance a few minutes later and produced a little powder puff shot straight at Schmeichel. The only thing I can say in his defence is he never hid and continued looking for the ball. It wasn’t his night but he wasn’t alone in that. *Sigh* So fucking demoralising. Where does this leave us now? There’s an awful lot of football left but it’s hard to shake the feeling we’re probably playing for second after this. I fucking hate saying that because I’ve been confident all season and I know it’s knee jerk to throw the towel in after one loss. In fact, it’s defeatist and deplorable and thankfully Klopp and the players won’t be feeling like that, but the difference is they can actually do something about it. As fans we’re powerless really, all we have is faith and hope. I have faith in Klopp and the players but hope is in short supply because it isn’t in our hands anymore. The fact is that City’s years of unpunished financial rule breaking means you can no longer afford defeats like this if you want to win titles. It stinks, it’s not fair, but that’s the current situation. I mean fucking hell, we finished with 97 points one year and still came up short. When we eventually won it we had to win 23 on the spin to start the season or something mad like that. We ground City into the dirt that year until they gave up. They’re front runners, they don’t do well when chasing. But now they’re already well ahead and by the time we play next we’ll probably be 12 points behind them. So this loss was so, so, so fucking bad that it just feels like we’ve said to City “here you go lads, all yours”. If we’d won this and lost at Chelsea this weekend that wouldn’t have shaken me too much as that’s a game you can lose. It’s an occupational hazard, it can happen as Chelsea are a really good team. You can’t lose to a Leicester team who conceded six to City and according to Klopp were in an “impossible” situation of playing two games in three days. Going six points behind City means two things. We’ve got fuck all margin for error anymore and we also need to go to the Etihad and win. So yeah, I feel like this is a game we’re going to look at for the rest of the season and kick ourselves. I know that no matter what happens now until it’s over, every time I look at the table I’m going to think “if only we hadn’t lost that fucking stupid game at Leicester”. You can lose at West Ham. You can draw at Brentford. You can’t lose this game though under these circumstances. We were in great form going in, we had the benefit of plenty of rest and Leicester should have been out on their feet, at least according to Klopp’s rationale. You just can’t lose the game but we did and yeah, I’m not dealing with it very well. Under ordinary circumstances we should have been able to lose it and it not be catastrophic, but Abu Dhabi’s abomination have distorted the league so much now that if you’re not getting 90 plus points you’ve got no chance. They’ve ruined the competition and but for the incredible job Klopp has done with this team City would be going for their fifth title in a row. It baffles me how hardly anyone other than us seems arsed about their cheating. Even putting aside the potential title implications I’m struggling with this loss regardless. A draw would have been no good to us either really but I was still desperate for us to equalise late on. Not because of the point we’d have gained, I just wanted to stop those cunt fans from celebrating. I’m fucking fuming we allowed them to beat us. Star man is easy. Joel Matip was fucking immense all night. I can’t believe Carra picked Van Dijk over him in his team of the season so far, because Joel has been better than him all season and this game was further proof of that. What a man. What a player. Kostas was good too. Everyone else was varying degrees of shite, including the manager who made panic substitutions that fucked up our shite and made Leicester’s job a whole lot easier. I hate the four strikers thing. It doesn’t work. By all means bring Bobby on, but get Sadio off as it clearly wasn’t his night. You could even leave him on and sub Jota instead and I’d have been fine with that. Taking off all three midfielders though and leaving us with just Keita and Milner in there? What the fuck? We’re lucky Vardy did his hamstring and couldn’t run or they’d have probably done us on the break again. At least Keita contributed though. He was good in the last ten minutes and played several nice passes into the feet of Mané and Jota to allow them to roll their markers. Keita is one of the few who wasn’t just looking for the safe pass all the time so I have no complaints about him. Bobby was a fucking waste of time though. It would be played into him and his second touch would usually be a tackle. In fairness, he had his back to goal every time he received the ball and bringing him on to play in a four was pointless, as it so often is. This was just shit all around and it’s going to take me a while to shake this one off. So fucking needless. So fucking damaging. I wish we had played Leeds on Boxing Day now, because at least Klopp would have had an excuse for losing this one and the gap to City wouldn’t be as big as it’s about to get. And now we’ve got AFCON on the horizon. I’m not even arsed about Sadio going now as he blows hot and cold and right now he’s cold. Two goals in eleven games. Jota can take his spot on the left with Bobby coming into the centre and we shouldn’t really be too badly impacted. Losing Mo is obviously big though and we just need to hope that Minamino can contribute. And where the fuck is Origi? Another one of those where Klopp tells us it’s something minor and then the player is missing for six weeks. Just when we fucking need him most too. Fuck’s sake. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk, Tsimikas; Fabinho (Milner), Henderson (Firmino), Oxlade-Chamberlain (Keita); Salah, Jota, Mané:

Uh oh. We’re halfway there. Well, that’s the obligatory Bon Jovi reference done and dusted. Now on to the footy. First up, some facts. We’ve played 28 games this season. 19 in the League, hence the Greatest Band Ever reference. Six in Europe. And three in the League Cup. We’ve won 20, drawn six and lost TWO. We have lost two games out of 28. TWO! Not that you’d know it, given some of the reactions on- and off- line. To complete the ‘facts’ stats, in those 28 games, we have scored 75 and conceded 24! Out of 19 in the League, we have scored FIFTY (scoring in 18 games out of 19, in the process, our first blank coming against Leicester). So, where does this leave us at the halfway stage? Well, second on 41 points, as it happens, which puts us on course for 82. Just for perspective, in Klopp's five full seasons, after 19 games we have had the following records: 16-17 43 points 17-18 35 points 18-19 51 points 19-20 55 points!! 20-21 34 points We’ve done this while progressing in the League Cup and winning all six games in the group stages of the European Cup. So I’d say we are doing pretty well, all things considered. The reason for the ire is that we are a whole six points behind City… This is the same City who in recent seasons have finshed on 86, 81, 98, 100 and 78 points and are on course for 90+ this season. The same City who are managed by one of the game’s best coaches. The same City who could spent a fortune on Jack Grealish (while we brought in more (£42.8m) than we spent (£36m) on Konaté). The rejoinder will be, ‘Yeah, that doesn’t make any difference, we exist to win, etc, etc.’ Well, for a start, we still might win the Title. Look at the records; despite fighting City with one hand tied behind our back, we are barely behind them. They’ve lost two. So have we. They’ve scored 50. So have we. They’ve conceded 12. We’ve conceded just four more. The six-point difference comes from our five draws to their two. So the ire reserved for the team and Klopp on the back of one defeat is excessive and should be shouted down. How many times in the last few years have these players let us down? Even last season, which was a write-off in more ways than one, they came back from a near impossible situation – we were EIGHTH on the seventh of March and won eight of our last 10 – to finish in third in the end! Without that run, none of that European football we’ve seen this season would have happened. This season, we have been outstanding at times. We’ve scored three on five occasions, four on three occasions, five on two occasions in the League alone. We’ve huffed and puffed on other days but got over the line, a notable quality in our Title-winning campaign (Villa and Wolves come to mind). Those five pesky draws? Chelsea, down to ten men, gave a defensive masterclass. We threw away leads in the rest of them: twice against City; twice against Brentford; Brighton came back from two behind; Spurs came back from a goal down. The only times any criticism could have been justified this season were against West Ham and Leicester. And even then, things could have gone the other way. Things can turn quickly, we’ve seen that over the last few years. Sure, there’s no margin for error – but that’s because of the ‘new normal’ that City’s millions have created. If we won every game from now until the end of the season, we would finish up on 98 points. And remember that in 2018-2019, 97 was only good enough for second! But if there is one thing that we’ve learned with this team, it’s to never give up. We still have lots to play for, on four fronts. Living on a Prayer? Maybe. The next few weeks will tell us all. John Brennan