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How do you write something to encapsulate what we just saw? There’s a lot of hyperbole about modern footy where everything that’s pretty good will be labelled “the best ever” but what we witnessed at Anfield on Sunday is a genuine once in a lifetime occurrence. It’s literally never happened before. I don’t know if it’s fully sunk in yet and I can’t really process how I’m feeling about it. Beating them 7-0 wouldn’t have been a massive shock a year ago when we were flying and they were pathetic. We could have beaten them by more than that at Old Trafford if we hadn’t stopped playing at 5-0. We could have done it in the Anfield fixture too if the ball had broken a bit more kindly at times. This time the breaks did go our way. We’ve have won the game regardless, but you don’t get seven goals without some things bouncing the right way for you and a couple of the goals were like that. The other goals though? Fucking hell, this was us back to our best. The recent signs have been promising but I don’t think anybody other than maybe Graeme Souness saw this coming. He wasn’t thinking 7-0 but to his credit he did say that he believed we’d win well and that Anfield would drive us on to a performance. Keane and (especially) Neville were laughing at him but he was right and at full time it was Souey, Carra and Kelly who were laughing at Neville as he tied himself in knots trying to say Liverpool weren’t even any good. Keane was laughing at him too in fairness. Whenever there’s a result like this there are two stories to be told and usually the bigger story is just how shit the battered team was. And that’s fair. I’m fine if the wider football world wants to focus on them being a disgrace more so than us being outstanding. I don’t really care. The story for me is how good we were, but I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to put the boot in on Bruno Fernandes and co. We should not be able to beat any ‘top’ team 7-0 if they play the way they should but equally we know that if we play at our best then the only teams who can potentially live with it are City and Real Madrid. Everyone else is going to get blown away, even if they play well. Not 7-0, but they’re going to lose. But what we didn’t know is whether we were capable of hitting that top form anymore. It’s not been there all season except in flashes. The first half against Madrid was as good as anything we’ve produced in a long time, so despite what happened afterwards there was something to take from that. And it looks like we have taken something from it because this was like rolling back the clock. There’s so much to get into here that it’s going to be tough to keep any structure to it so I’m going to say whatever comes into my head and let it flow. Make yourself a brew or something, or if you’re reading it after work this evening get yourself a nice cold beer and strap yourself in as this is going to be a long one.55 points -
I can’t really think of an intro for this. I don’t know where I’ll end up going in this report either as there’s so much to cover and my mind is racing off in all kinds of different directions. I’ll start with Klopp’s assertion that it’s his most special final. It’s not mine, that is always going to be Istanbul, but I think this might be second you know. Doesn’t matter that it’s the League Cup and not one of the bigger prizes. It’s all about context and when you factor in everything that ultimately led to this victory, and how it made us all feel, this is right up there when it comes to the level of achievement. So much was against us going into the game, and then so much went against us during the game. Yet not only did we grab the late winner to spare everyone the agony of penalties, we did it by completely out playing Chelsea in extra time despite arguably only having one of our first choice eleven on the field. It’s kind of fitting that he scored the goal I guess, as he put the team on his back and was not going to allow us to come away from Wembley without that cup. I may as well talk about Virgil now. There’s not going to be much structure to this, I’m just going to write down whatever comes into my head so it’s not going to be in much of an order. I’m just going to type and see what comes out. So I’ll deal with Virgil first. Usually I wait until the end to say who the star man is but I’ll say it now; it’s the captain. Others were equally as impressive, but what Van Dijk did here is what the greats in other sports do. He was Michael Jordan in the NBA Finals. Patrick Mahomes in a Superbowl. What makes this more impressive is that unlike Jordan and Mahomes, he’s not really supposed to be the one “winning” games. His job is more about stopping us from losing it. He did both though. Defensively imperious, but also went up the other end and settled the game. Twice. Only one of them counted, but we know what he did even if the record books won’t show it. We’ve had the Gerrard Final and the Owen Final, but now we’ve got the Van Dijk Final. Not that it was a one man show by any means, but the big man captained a team that started without at least nine regular starting players and ended without several more, and he led them to an unlikely victory through sheer force of will. I very rarely go into games expecting anything other than a win. Even when the odds are against us I usually find a way to talk myself into it. At half time when we were 3-0 down to Milan I was having a piss and telling everyone in the bogs that we were still in it and just needed to get the next goal. I hadn’t given up hope when we needed to beat Barcelona by four goals. I usually always see a pathway to us winning. But fucking hell I had a massive dark cloud over me in the build up to this game. The uncertainty over Darwin and Mo was like a massive weight on my shoulders, it was all I could think about on Sunday morning. Prior to that I’d been ok because I assumed one or both would make it. Maybe Dom too. But when they ruled out it hit me hard. Suddenly little things started to become big things. Chelsea had lost five straight finals, which should actually be cause for optimism. But the air of misery I had over me just had me thinking “well that run is going to come to an end sooner or later, so probably today”. I was also stressing out because we’d played Luton in midweek with most of the line up that would be starting this, while Chelsea had a full week to prepare for us. Wembley is a notoriously draining pitch and now we’d been robbed of much of our pace. With Dom, Darwin and Mo we’d absolutely fucking destroy Chelsea like we did a few weeks ago. I haven’t mentioned Jota there purely because he’s out for a while and there was never any chance of him making this game, but we had hope that the others would make it. When they didn’t, it was just a massive blow. And because we spanked them a few weeks ago I was worried we were going to see a Crystal Palace situation when we beat them 9-0 and then lost to them in the cup later in the season. All of these negative thoughts were flooding my head. I was unloading all of it in the group chat, much to the annoyance of some of the lads who just aren’t used to me being like that. I couldn’t help it, I was dreading the game and was convinced we’d lose. I expected a great effort, I didn’t think we’d be shite, but I thought we probably wouldn’t have enough and we’d run out of gas. By the time kick off arrived I’d done an about face and felt confident that we’d win. Why? It sounds mad, but the thing that snapped me out of it was just watching Virgil in the tunnel and then when he was leading the lads out. He just had this look. A smirk, a look of complete and utter confidence like “I’ve got this lads”. Not just him either, the whole team seemed relaxed despite all of the absentees. On the flip side, I thought Chelsea’s players looked nervous as fuck.48 points -
Oh fucking hell, where do I even begin here? This is genuinely the biggest officiating scandal / catastrophe I can remember in this country. At this point, I don’t think there is anything I can say that is over the top or unreasonable, because everything is on the table here. When something this outlandish happens, you can’t rule anything out. But before I get to all of that I want to talk about the lads. Because that won’t get spoken about as much as it deserves to. I’m fine with that because the focus absolutely needs to be on what the officials did and that should be the main talking point in any football related show for some time to come. I’ll get to all of that in due course because you won’t be surprised to know I have a lot to say about it. But first, what a fucking heroic effort from our lads. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt prouder of my team than I did here. They were incredible and that is the most unjust defeat I’ve ever seen. The amount of shit they were having thrown at them, yet they kept fighting and fighting and refusing to yield. And they they lost to the cruelest of blows right at the death. Just heartbreaking, and yet it might just prove to be another thing that speeds up the development of this team as they become even stronger. You go through adversity and through it comes strength. We’ve seen it already this season and this is just more fuel they can use. We’ve seen it already. The defiance from the players as they thanked the travelling fans. Darwin giving it the beans, pounding his chest and getting the fans going. Then he goes on social media talking about how “its us against everyone”. You’re damn fucking right it is. I’ll call it now and I don’t give a fuck. We’ll win the league this season. We’re already fucking boss and we’ll get even better. If we don’t win the league it won’t be because we’re not the best team. It will be because of the kind of corruption some of us have always suspected was there and now is there in plain sight for all to see. If they keep fucking us then it’s going to be hard to overcome that. If somehow the heat from this means they have to start calling our games down the middle, then God help everyone because these boys are going to run all over everyone. I kept saying last season how we’d lost the eye of the tiger. Well it’s back. This group of players are hungry and fuck, talented as anyone and now they’re motivated like nobody else. Brighton thought this weekend was bad. Wait and see what happens next week when we roll into town with a score to settle. Spurs were being talked up a lot prior to this game. If it had stayed 11 v 11 we’d have tatted them. Probably by three or four at least. The signs were there, we looked like we could slice through them at will. Had it stayed 11 v 10 we’d have beaten them too. I could see that coming a mile off. Even with ten men we looked the more dangerous side and the gaps were there to be exploited. Darwin was ready to come on and finish them off, and then suddenly we were down to nine men and the plan had two change. And even with NINE FUCKING MEN we weren’t in trouble. Alisson had virtually nothing to do after Jota’s dismissal and it needed a fluke own goal for him to be beaten. The way we defended was perfect right up into Joel got his feet into a mess. Spurs can take the points from the game but - and they may kid themselves and think differently - there’s nothing else they can take from this because clearly they’re nowhere near us. We don’t take any points from it, yet I take much more confidence and belief from it than I had going in. This team is going to be special. Klopp knows it. The players know it. The fans are beginning to know it too. So all of that needed saying first and foremost. Now to the rest of it.47 points -
This probably needs to be in two parts really. The match itself and then the post match stuff. I’ll start with the game, although I don’t remember a great deal about it. It was a weird atmosphere really as we were all just very distracted, understandably so. It was loud, really loud, although there were also long lulls where it felt like the crowd were just waiting to get near the closing minutes to go for it again. I was taking more of an interest in all of that than I was the actual game if I’m honest. The game itself was a typical end of season affair in the sunshine. We played pretty well without ever really hitting top gear, and Wolves offered very little even before being reduced to ten men. After that they offered nothing and just wanted to keep the score down, which they did in part due to our wastefulness again. It was much more of a 4-0 game than a 2-0 one, but somehow we ended up with just the two. Klopp had selected the same team we’ve seen in the last couple of games, which meant Quansah once gain keeping out Konate, Elliott retaining his place over Szoboszlai and Gakpo getting the nod up top over Nunez. I feel like all of this would have been quite significant if Klopp was staying, but actually means nothing whatsoever because he isn’t. Quansah ending the season as Virgil’s first choice partner is a development I don’t think any of us saw. Matip’s unfortunate injury contributed a lot to that but even so, for him to be in the side on merit ahead of Konate is something anyone could have anticipated. He’s made fucking massive strides this year and now has the distinction of scoring the last goal of the Klopp era. When that went in just before half time nobody would have put money on it being the last goal of the game, especially against ten men. But it was, and no-one really cared as this game was about much more than the result. Just win and that’s fine. We didn’t need six or seven goals, although it would have been nice! The players knew they needed to win and I thought they did a professional job under difficult, emotional circumstances. We started the game quite brightly but Wolves had somewhat surprisingly elected to just get everyone behind the ball and not really do much. Cunha looked like he was up for the fight though and might have caused us some problems if they’d had a go instead of just sitting deep behind the ball. I like him, good player. Ait-Nouri too, although I have no idea what position he actually plays as he seems to have licence to pop up everywhere except in the left back spot. Wolves had nothing to play for and I thought they’d come and give it a go, but they were ultra negative even with eleven men. That being said, they probably had the best of the chances up until the sending off, as Alisson needed to make a smart save to stop them scoring from a quick break following our set-piece. We’d had chances too. Pretty much everything we did was coming down the left where Diaz and Robbo were lively. Harvey was drifting over there regularly too to create overloads and that looked like our most likely source of a goal. So of course it came from the other side!42 points -
That performance exceeded anything I expected, but the result didn’t. I actually thought we’d win the game but I didn’t think we’d completely dominate them for the entire second half. That was something wasn’t it? Fucking hell. We should have won, we deserved to win, but we didn’t win. Partly because of our finishing and partly because earlier in the season City’s chairman paid a few refs to go over and do some side gigs in the U.A.E. and since they came back they’ve given some of the worst decisions imaginable to help City out. Oliver is the main culprit but don’t forget that Darren England was over there taking the oil money before he did what he did in the Spurs game. Oliver though, in his first game after his little jaunt to the Middle East he failed to send Kovacic off against Arsenal. A week or two later he was VAR in the Manchester derby and invented a penalty from nothing to give City the lead in a game that was close up to that point. We’ve not seen a penalty given like that before or since. Now we are continually told there’s a “high bar” and VAR won’t intervene on penalties. The bar wasn’t very high for Oliver at Old Trafford though eh? And then he ignores that one at the end of this game. Could be because he knows what side his bread is buttered or it might just be that he took the coward’s way out. A lot of refs would have bottled that decision, not necessarily because they’re “pro City” but because it’s the 98th minute of the biggest game in world football right now, and they don’t want to be the ones who decide the game so late. We might have got that in the 75th minute. Maybe. Probably not. But defo not with the last kick of the game. Alan Pardew was on the radio after the game and actually said “it’s probably a penalty but I’m glad it wasn’t given because a game like that shouldn’t end that way”. As ludicrous as it sounds, he’s not going to be alone in that fucked up view. Had we been 1-0 down the feeling would be different. Pardew for one would be singing a different tune, because a draw would have felt like the right outcome for neutrals and they'd have felt cheated by not getting the penalty. When it's us being cheated out of a win it's like "meh". That’s why I think both Oliver and the VAR (Attwell) bottled it. Had we been 1-0 down I bet that would have been given, if not by Oliver then by Attwell. At 1-1 though the easy thing to do it ignore it and blow for full time as soon as possible. So that’s what they did. I’ll say no more about that because there’s really nothing to say. It’s 100% a penalty. Not one of those subjective calls where you can argue it either way. I know there are people trying to argue it, but it’s a penalty. End of story. If people want to argue that it wasn’t given because it was so late in a tied game, I’ll agree. It doesn’t excuse the decision, but it explains it. If they try to argue that it’s not a foul then sorry, that’s utter bollocks. Everyone knows that’s a foul and if they’re trying to argue otherwise they need to stop and ask themselves why. They’re either biased, or they’re trying too hard to be impartial. It’s a pen. Right, with that out of the way let me get on with the game. Just wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Klopp happier or more excited after a game than he was doing his post match stuff here. The LFCTV interview in particular, he was absolutely beaming and was singling out loads of different players, looking straight into the camera and saying things like “wow” or “oh my god”. He was so thrilled with the performance it masked any disappointment he might have had with the result. He didn’t even get mad about the penalty and was very calm about it all, mainly because his over-riding emotion was pride in his team. I get that and I feel that way too. Except I am mad about the non-penalty and I am disappointed we didn’t win. Actually disappointment is way too strong a word, I don’t feel that. I just really wish we’d won because I think a performance like that deserved three points. If I was feeling disappointed I’d probably be picking players out and saying “he should have done this” and “he needed to do that”. That’s not how I feel though, I have no disappointment in any player and I’m not digging anyone out for missed chances. They gave us absolutely everything and produced one of the best halves of football you'll see. As great as we’ve been under Klopp, we’ve never been able to do that to City.38 points -
Putting aside the frustrations of us need a million chances to score one goal, there was so much to feel good about from this performance. It’s probably the best we’ve played all season and the only thing lacking was the bucketload of goals we should have had. The fact that this game was still somewhat in the balance until Mo’s late penalty is infuriating, particularly in light of other recent games in which we’ve had thirty odd shots and still struggled to convert them. Statistically there are probably quite a few similarities with the United game. Certainly we had a similar number of shots against the mancs, albeit nowhere near as many on target and the XG won’t be remotely comparable. The wider point though is that too often we need to create a lot of chances to score the goals that we should be scoring, but this felt different to me. I don’t think the finishing was too bad for the most part. We didn’t do much wrong and a lot of the time the keeper was making terrific saves. He had the game of his life and he’s the reason we didn’t get double figures. It’s partly down to below par finishing, but mostly it’s just one of those nights when too many shots are within the keeper’s reach and he gets to show off by making a load of saves. We were great though. In fairness, I think Newcastle showed in limited opportunities that they were in decent shape themselves. I thought they played quite well when they were allowed to. They weren’t really allowed to very often though, because we absolutely smothered them. The tempo, intensity and pressing was great for pretty much the entire game, aside from a 10 minute lull before half time which I blame entirely on that twat Anthony Taylor. I’ll get to him in due course. You can tell when we’ve played really well by how animated and excited Klopp is in his post match interviews, and he was fucking beaming after this. He said afterwards something along the lines of “some people say I’m not a good example for grass roots football but maybe they can show the video of this game to grass roots to show them how to counter-press”. I didn’t get onto it immediately, but it was that snivelling little Saudi shill Howe who said Klopp wasn’t setting a good example. He’s defo having a little jibe at Beheddie there. Love that. When we counter press like that we’re a nightmare to play against. That was our identity, it’s why everyone hated playing against us. We lost it for various reasons but it’s back now. Not every game, we’re still a work in progress and besides, it’s impossible to play with that kind of maniacal intensity in every match. What we need is for it to be there when we need it. I’ll tell you something. If we’d played like this against the mancs the other week then another 7-0 wouldn’t have been out of the question. Newcastle are in a terrible run and they’ve got a lot of problems currently, but this performance was way better than what we saw from Ten Jarg and his band of fucking losers. It’s just a shame we didn’t perform like this against them. Right from the start we were on top of Newcastle. That first half was brilliant, the only thing missing was a goal but it wasn’t for the lack of trying.36 points -
Monday Oct 30: In one of the more unlikely bits of news I thought I’d ever read, Torres and Arbeloa have a continuing feud that seems to boil over every time their teams meet. One coaches Real Madrid youth, the coaches Atletico’s youth, and whenever they meet there’s murder. Torres refused to shake Arbeloa’s hand at the end of the game and then the players had a mass brawl this weekend. This comes off the back of a confrontation they had in their last meeting when Torres yelled at Arbeloa “I’ll blow your head off!”. This is amazing stuff, I hope they both make it at senior level so we can see this play out. Meanwhile, Vincent Kompany a few weeks ago after the Spurs debacle: “Mistakes are human. I like the fact there’s transparency and that people come forward, own their mistakes, that we get access to the footage. For him personally, we all make mistakes.” Vincent Kompany this weekend after HE was on the receiving end….. Basically four minutes of wah wah wah. Bulb headed, baseball cap with a suit wearing Man City twat. Still no word on Diaz’s dad. This is getting concerning now as the longer it goes the less likely it’s going to have a happy ending. I blame Everton for this. Remember when they signed “Hammez” and were telling anyone who’d listen how they now had "millions of new fans in Colombia"? And now our player’s parents are being kidnapped?? Don’t tell me that’s a co-incidence. They’ll probably post the ransom demands on Grand Old Team.36 points -
Massive win this in terms of how the fans can start to see this team. We’re still in that new stage with this group of players which means it’s difficult to know what we’re going to get. Throughout all the Klopp glory years there was a level of trust and confidence in what the players were going to serve up and generally we knew what to expect. We’re not there yet with “Liverpool rebooted”. How could we be, we’re only four games in. The start of this season has been mad. Really up and down with some strange circumstances that have made it almost impossible to know who we are and where we’re at. A Jeckyll and Hyde display at Chelsea, a terrible start at Bournemouth followed by a decent enough recovery but then having to play with ten men for half an hour just when it looked like we were about to really click into gear. And then last week. A rough start followed by a show of great resilience, character and tactical acumen against Newcastle, but we did it with ten men for an hour so that told us nothing about how we’d fare in a game like this one. It was hard to take anything from any of those games in terms of where we’re at and how we’re playing. This one though, this is the first game of the season we can actually judge based on what we saw. And it was really fucking impressive. There’s a lot to take from this game and we saw why Klopp was so bullish with his pre-match declaration that “I love this team. You will love this team too if you give it time”. I don’t know if this team will reach the heights that Klopp’s first Liverpool side did, but I do know they’ll be fun to watch and we’ll enjoy watching them. The rebuild isn’t complete yet as there are still gaps that need filling, but Mac Allister and Szoboszlai are top class and we can see that immediately. There’s no bedding in period for them, they’re just ready made quality. Mind you, they did have a full pre-season here which massively helps. The way we handled our business after that left us short handed and Endo and Gravenberch will need time to acclimatise. The good thing is we’re not desperate for them to come in and immediately hit top form. We can be patient because we’ve got other options. One of those, Curtis Jones, returned to the side for this game and while he didn’t do anything that made him stand out, he’s going to be a big player for us in this new set up, as he was at the end of last season. He presses superbly and never loses the ball. Ever. Considering how we want to play now, that’s a big deal. Most of our vulnerable moments come when someone (so far usually Trent) loses the ball cheaply and puts us on the back foot. Jones being on the pitch really helps us control the game, which then allows others to do their thing. Others like Szoboszlai and the strikers. My boy got a start after his match winning cameo at Newcastle and he needs to stay in the side now. He’s such a massive threat and he’s got a really good understanding with Mo. They have had that from day one, but the opportunity to build on it hasn’t really been there because Darwin has been on the bench so often. They enjoy playing together though, you can see it. For so long we had the false nine and the two wide men making diagonal runs in behind, but we’re a different team now. We don’t need to replicate that because Diaz isn’t Mané and Gakpo isn’t Firmino. Cody does share a lot of Bobby traits, but we have a new midfield now with different skill profiles and a different set up behind the forwards. We don’t need a locksmith to carefully open the door for others, we’re fine with a battering ram who can smash it in by himself. To put it another way, we have two midfielders in advanced positions now, whereas previously we had none, so Bobby (and then Cody) would drop into that space to play between the lines. We don’t need that now, we need to stretch teams with runners in behind. Nunez does that brilliantly and I reckon opponents must hate facing him. Nobody likes facing pace and someone who runs in behind all the time. Him and Mo ran Villa’s high line ragged.36 points -
Thats a great result. My dad passed away on kick off so hopefully hes beaming now.35 points
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You’ve got to hand it to Everton. Only they could suffer a completely routine defeat in which they managed only one effort on goal and somehow make out it was controversial. It’s crazy to me that all the talk after this game was about a referee who was for the most part fine. This is the most Everton thing you’ll ever see. Essentially they’re attempting to stir up a massive controversy and crying about conspiracies and unfairness based on…. well one minor foul that may or may not have been a yellow card. That’s it. One fucking decision that a referee made a judgement call on. Imagine if these fuckers had to deal with what happened to us at Spurs. They aren’t complaining about Ashley Old getting two clear yellows. They aren’t complaining about the stonewall penalty. The sane and rational ones aren’t anyway. But they are crying conspiracy because the referee chose to award a free-kick and no yellow card for what was just a pretty standard foul. And for some reason that’s become the story of the game that everyone is leading. Shit, I’m even doing it here. So many games this season have been ruined by refereeing decisions and we’ve been on the receiving end of those fuck ups more than anybody. This isn’t that. And trying to lump this in with the other shit we’ve seen undermines the genuine debacles we’ve seen. Craig Pawson’s performance wasn’t bad. Other than that one Konate decision which could have gone either way, what’s the problem here? There isn’t one. It’s a fucking joke. There’s nothing here that you won’t see in literally every other game of football this weekend. I guarantee you can find a foul in any game where you can argue a yellow should have been given but wasn’t, or vice versa. That’s all this is. Everton will argue that all the decisions went against them. They’d be wrong. Pawson didn’t give us a penalty when Patterson brought down Diaz and let’s not forget that he didn’t give the penalty for handball either until VAR told him he’d missed it. So one decision went against them and it’s sparked all of this. It’s pathetic. This reaction and behaviour from them is embarrassing even by Everton standards. Manager, p[layers and fans. All of them are making fools of themselves. You’re really going to make a massive song and dance over that Konate foul? Jesus Christ. Even if the ref had sent him off we’d have still beat them as Everton can’t handle it when there’s any sort of expectation on them to do something. You know when Everton are in their absolute derby game element? When they’re down to ten men, crying about referees and putting up a ‘brave, backs to wall’ effort in a valiant defeat. If that game went ten v ten they couldn’t have just sat there on the edge of their own box, pumping alehouse balls up to whichever big donkey they have up top. They’d have had to try and play a bit, and they’d have got royally fucked because that would have left space for my boy Darwin to run them ragged.35 points -
As that brutal car crash of a first half unfolded I was trying to make myself feel better by concentrating on the excuses. We couldn’t take anything from this performance because it’s a massively changed line up from that impressive win over Villa, some of the squad had barely trained, it was an early kick off after an international break and so on. It wouldn’t have made the result any easier to take but it would allow me to dismiss it to a large extent and not allow it to cloud my judgement on the team and where we are headed. Similar to how having to play with ten men in two of our opening three fixtures made it hard to get a handle on what kind of form we’re in and how far along the road we are with the ‘new team’. What we saw in that first half was no real indicator of anything in terms of how the rest of the season would go. That’s the angle I was going for if it continued to go wrong. Thankfully it didn’t. Klopp was largely culpable for what went wrong in the first half, but he recognised what needed to be done and he fixed it emphatically. He started the game with the wrong line up and the wrong system and we didn’t really have any chance. We’re lucky it was only a one goal deficit at the break, although had it been more I still feel that we’d have come back given just how massively things improved after Klopp righted the wrongs from the first half. There were two massive errors made by Klopp to start this game. The first was starting Alexis Mac Allister, the second was asking Joe Gomez to be Trent Alexander-Arnold. This isn’t hindsight talking either as I don’t think any one of us would have asked Joe to be moving inside into that inverted role, and given what we knew about Macca’s exploits in midweek I’d say most were a little surprised he wasn’t on the bench along with his South American compatriots Luis Diaz and my boy Darwin. Mac Allister played a full game at altitude three days ago. He needed oxygen before and during the game and he didn’t get back to Merseyside until 24 hours before the game. You could tell within a couple of minutes he was miles off the pace and at no point did he ever get to grips with it. He was like Fabinho's dad and in a half when most of his team-mates were also shit, there was no way we could hide him so he got badly exposed. Not his fault, I don’t think any less of him whatsoever as I don’t think he had any chance of putting in a performance. Klopp said as much afterwards which makes it all the more baffling that he started him. What’s the fucking point in Endo if we can’t put him in a game like this? If I was him I’d be well pissed off. Gomez was done no favours either with what he was asked to do. This system was designed for Trent, so if he’s not there then fuck it off and don’t over complicate things. Look at how Gomez performed in the second half compared to the first. Night and day. It’s mind blowing that we saw him moving into those midfield areas. Not all the time, but it was happening occasionally. I felt sorry for him as he’s not familiar with it and he’s not suited to it. I like him as a right back, I think he’s improved massively in that role over the last couple of years but he was put in a bad spot there. He had a torrid first half, not helped at all by how bad Matip was alongside him. It sounds daft, but alarm bells went off for me seconds into the game when Jota attempted a simple enough pass and put it miles up in the air. That set the tone for what followed. Sloppy, slow, totally lacking in any kind of intensity. Klopp said afterwards that the players just couldn’t physically do what they needed to do to make the system work, and he couldn’t change the whole team so he changed the system. Better late than never.35 points -
And we thought last week was dramatic. This team, fucking hell. It wasn’t a good performance, the lads just didn’t have it but they dug deep and found a way. That’s what Champions do. It’s hard not to draw parallels with the Villa game in the title winning season, but it’s too early to know if it will have the same significance. Teams who win titles usually have moments like this one that they look back on as being pivotal though. Hopefully this is ours. For so long it was looking like it wasn’t going to happen, yet because of the faith I have in these players I wasn’t panicking and even going into stoppage time I thought we’d win. It wasn’t until around 95 minutes or so that I gave up and had resigned myself to us ending the weekend in 3rd spot. It’s ironic that the moment I had given up was the moment that Forest are kicking off about and saying it decided the game. May as well get all that out of the way first. The game was in the balance and Forest looked just as likely to get a winner as we did in extra time. They had carried a threat on the counter attack all day and the more we pushed forward looking for the winner, the more space we left for them. They had the ball in our final third and time was running out. It was around the time they had that corner that I lost hope. In fact, it was the moment when play was stopped for the Konate head injury. Forest had already been wasting time (more on that in a bit) and Hudson-Odoi had been in possession when play stopped. I expected a brief delay while Ibou was sorted and then I assumed Forest would keep it in the corner and that would be that. The stream I was watching on buffered at that point and when it came back on we had the ball in the Forest half. So I didn’t know what had happened there until afterwards. Then a minute or so later we scored and all hell broke loose. On the final whistle the Forest staff were going mad (their assistant manager was red carded) and even the owner was on the pitch kicking off. The big fat fuck even waddled down the tunnel chasing after Paul Tierney. Imagine John Henry doing that shit. Add some more points to their impending deduction, the crying pricks. The commentators explained that they were furious that they didn’t get the ball back after Ibou’s head injury and at that moment I could understand why they’d be pissed off. I would be too. It made no sense why Tierney gave us the ball back, and even know I’m still not entirely what should have happened. I do know that Tierney had done virtually the same thing at the other end though.34 points -
Another one to add to the “was that our best performance of the season?” discussion. I’ve heard a lot of people say it is, I’m not sure though. Was it better than the Newcastle game? In fact, are Chelsea better than Newcastle? Probably not, beating Chelsea now isn’t the accomplishment it once was, that’s for sure. There’s a reason they’re 10th and we’re top. We’re miles better than them and it showed. We were at this one right from the start. You could tell after a couple of minutes it was probably going to be a comfortable win as long as we didn’t have to wait too long to make the breakthrough. Klopp hadn’t changed the team as much as I thought he might. Trent and Robbo didn’t come back in, but Dom did. I was a little surprised but at the same time Bradley was man of the match last game and Gomez has been one of our best players all season. They deserved to stay in. They probably deserve to stay in at the weekend too, but sports science comes into that to some extent too. Imagine if someone had sent a couple of months back that Trent and Robbo would be fit and available for selection but they couldn’t get in because Gomez was left back and Bradley was right back, both on merit. It’s mad really, but that’s the level they’ve played at. And Bradley upped that level and then some in this game. I don’t want to go overboard, but he might be the best player in the world right now. Ok, I’m joking, but the performance he put in against Chelsea was something really special. It was a performance that Trent would have been happy with, yet this is what, his third league start? Second maybe? Incredible performance from him. I’ll get to that though.34 points -
Monday Jan 22: The kids beat Arsenal 7-1 in the youth cup at the weekend. I love the youth cup, always have, going right back to my playing days when I scored against United in this competition. The kids will be buzzing about this, especially as last season there was that well publicised u16 game when they conceded double figures against Arsenal in a game when we didn’t have a goalkeeper. Some of these lads will have played in that game and I reckon that will have been a motivating factor in giving them a spanking. In other news, Forest have written to PGMOL again. They’re unhappy because… *checks notes* Ivan Toney moved the ball eight inches to the right before he scored from a free-kick. Hmmm. Couple of things here, and far be it for me to be defending refs and VAR, but this is ridiculous. Number one, the ref doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head. He doesn’t know what Toney did as he didn’t see it. Number two, VAR is actually not allowed to get involved in this. The rules prevent it. So if Forest have a problem, write to FIFA. But this isn’t the first time. Last season they told the press that they had put together a dossier of decisions that had gone against them, but when PGMOL asked to see it, it contained clips of only two incidents, which were both from the same game. Fucking babies. You know what, dock them 10 more points just for this cryarse behaviour. They’re undermining the clubs who have genuine cause for complaint. These cunts will be writing letters about not getting a throw in soon, it’s genuinely pathetic.34 points -
Monday Sep 4: Trent is out of the England squad and is expected to be out for two weeks. In other words, he’s out until our next game. Hopefully that’s the case anyway and this is purely about him getting out of England duty. If it’s not and he misses our next game, who plays right back? Gomez will be needed in the centre so who else is there? I keep thinking about this and can’t come up with anyone, so then I think it’s just me being old and I must be forgetting someone obvious, but I’m not am I? We genuinely have no other alternative aside from Gomez? Crazy. Staying with the international break, and Big Red Ron has kicked off about Gravenberch not showing up for Holland. This is an absolute fucking joke. He’s a lad who has a dozen or so senior caps and a shitload of under 21 appearances. He just played for the u21s in the summer tournament and that really should have been the end of his career at that level. He has literally just moved to another country three days ago and needs to find a house and sort out all sorts of other things. He pulled out of the u21s to get all of that sorted and Koeman is hammering him, the silly fat tit. Trying to make it up to the Blues after his red Crimbo tree. Meanwhile, it looks like that Antony cunt is going the way of Greenwood. Police in Brazil are investigating him after an ex girlfriend reported him for all manner of cuntish things. I’m shocked, I mean he looks like such a nice lad doesn’t he? Seriously, finding out he’s a real piece of work is the least surprising thing ever. I can spot twats a mile off, I’ve got a sixth sense for it and I’m hardly ever wrong. Man United should probably hire me to vet all of their potential signings, I’d save them a fortune. Because they paid £90m for this turd and pretty soon they’ll be suspending him and eventually letting him leave for free, like the other scumbag. Tell you what, Ryan Giggs is lucky there was no social media when he was in his pomp or he’d have been kicked out at 21, the horrible fucking walking carpet. Saw a report linking us with Mitoma as a replacement for Mo when he eventually leaves. Not really a surprise as he’s one of the best players in the league these days, but what did surprise me is that he’s 26. Honestly, I thought was about 22. He’s only been at Brighton a year or so, so where the fuck did they pluck him from and why was he still playing there at 25? Weird. He’s the Japanese Jamie Vardy.34 points -
Sorry to hear this. My Dad passed in October and he always phoned me at the final whistle. Today I was thinking Dad would have said ‘well that was good wasn’t it’.33 points
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We’re top, but are we actually that good? It’s weird because the league table and results suggest we’re REALLY good, but the performances are giving us more questions than answers. I definitely don’t think that’s a bad thing at this stage because we’re clearly a work in progress and have a long way to go until Klopp has things humming the way he wants, yet we’re finding ways to win regardless of how we play or whatever roadblocks are put in our way. Klopp said from 76 minutes to 105 we were really good, and before that we were really bad. That’s absolutely spot on isn’t it? We were atrocious for most of the game, even worse than the other night at Bramall Lane when I thought we were hideous. We had our problems against Fulham last weekend too but we’ve taken nine points regardless. There’s a saying in golf that “a scorecard doesn’t have pictures” and that applies here. The league table shows the points we have collected, it doesn’t show he we got them. I’m struggling to work us out though. The record since Trent switched roles is the best in the league. We’ve got more points than anyone and I think we have the best goal difference too. So that tells you it’s working. But is it that simple? I don’t think it is. I’m not sure it is working because we’re often a bit shit in the first half of games and it’s quite common that it’s Klopp’s changes that turn the game our way. How many of those points were gained because we were struggling and had to make changes, either to the system, personnel or both? Quite a lot I’d say. We finish games much better than we start them, so can we really say this system is the reason for our success when a lot of the time we’re getting results after abandoning it? Are the points we’re picking up because of the system, or in spite of it? It’s an interesting discussion I think. I don’t know yet, I need to see more before I’m convinced either way. In the last week we’ve had to scrap the system to come back and beat Fulham and Palace. We did beat Sheffield United but looked shite for the entire game. But we won all three games and it feels like we’re doing it through sheer willpower more than anything else. Nothing is coming easy to us. I don’t see that as a negative though. Well, maybe a bit, but generally I think it’s a good thing because I don’t expect this patchy form to last and I’m sure we’ll be playing well again soon. If you are a talented team that can keep collecting maximum points even when you stink, you won’t go far wrong because when you play well you’ll blow a lot of teams away. The amount of times we could / should have dropped points this season only to pull it out of the fire is the stuff of Champions. That doesn’t mean we’ll win it, but it definitely helps. Tired legs and the 12.30 kick off time contributed to this below par showing, plus I have to say that Palace did a really good job on us until that period of a minute or so when everything was turned on its head. Elliott came on, Ayew was sent off and then we scored. All of that happened in such a short space of time and it’s difficult to know which had the biggest impact. I’ll get to that though.33 points -
When we beat Villa a few weeks ago it was really impressive. Klopp was buzzing about it and it was a really good performance and result. This was better though. Why? Because while Villa are a decent team, they played right into our hands with their tactics. West Ham didn’t. They made it really hard for us but we stuck at it and eventually rolled over them. We were really fucking good in this game, and we needed to be because West Ham were very impressive. Much better than Villa were. They’ll finish no lower than 8th this year and if they had a goalscorer they’d be pushing towards the top five. They gave as good as they got in the first half and it was only when we stepped up after the break that we were able to shake them off. They started with a real spring in their step and I was surprised at how slick they were. Little one touch passes to play their way out of trouble when we closed them down, and some swift counters that caused us problems. Alisson needed to make a world class save to keep out Soucek’s downward header. Stunning save that. Then Antonio headed miles wide from a golden opportunity. If you’re gonna talk the talk you need to walk the walk, but Antonio failed to back up his pre-match bravado. “I’m backing myself. We’ll finish above Liverpool this season”. Not with you leading the line mate. This was his big moment the chance to put the exclamation point on his boasts, and he shit the bed. Thankfully. I’m sick of us conceding the first goal so it was nice that we avoided it this time. Thanks Michail, much appreciated.33 points -
Monday Aug 14: So not only did we miss out on Caicedo, but by making that desperate late pivot in a doomed attempt to get him we also ensured we didn’t get the lad we’d been chasing all summer. It’s quite the clusterfuck. So much so that right now we’re on the brink of the worst summer of transfers in my lifetime. Nothing against the two lads we did sign, who I’m very bullish about, but the way we’ve conducted ourselves in this window is even worse than the dark days of Parry switching off his phone to go to the cinema when a tearful Owen was stalling Newcastle and desperately trying to get hold of him. While it’s fair to say we don’t know the in and outs of how these things develop and to exactly what extent the club have fucked things up, there are some things we do know and based solely on that, this lurches from bad to fucking inexcusable. I was fuming with us a week ago, and that was before all this shit. So, Caicedo. When the news broke we’d had a record bid accepted I was fucking buzzing. He’s exactly the player we need for how we want to play. Perfect fit, the club putting their money where their mouth is, what’s not to love about that? Then it emerges he doesn’t want to come here. So why did we bid for him? You don’t do that without encouragement, but I’m reading reports today saying that’s exactly what we did. So we either bid for a player who gave us no indication he wanted to come, or we were played like a fiddle by him and his agent. Then there’s the question of why we didn’t walk away when he snubbed us? I think the answer to that is more simple. Spite. We wanted to ensure Chelsea paid through the nose. I’m good with that. The rest of it though? It’s a joke. This is what happens when you don’t have a competent Sporting Director. You think Edwards or even Ward would have been played like this? They’d have sniffed it out from a mile away. That lad and his agent have made cunts out of us. Actually we’ve done a good job of doing that to ourselves, but fuck them anyway. Fuck Chelsea too, what they’re doing is scandalous and it’s bizarre that the Premier League are allowing it. I hear all the explanations of nine year contracts, amortisation, book value and all that shit but I refuse to accept that a team not in Europe, with no fucking shirt sponsor, and that has been spending shitloads even before they replaced the last mad cunt with an even worse one, can spend ONE BILLION in three windows and somehow still be within the rules. But what about us. If we had that kind of cash to throw at Caicedo then why were we haggling over four mil for Lavia? We fucked that one up royally. I don’t blame that kid one bit for going to Chelseas. We were his preferred destination, he’d agreed terms and we left him waiting for weeks while we failed to meet the asking price. Then, we threw £110m at another player who plays in the same position. When that player snubbed us we went back to him. I’d have told us to fuck off too. Especially as Chelsea still wanted him even though they’d already signed Caicedo. If we’d got Caicedo would we have gone back on for Lavia or would we have left him high and dry? Honestly, the more I think about this shit the angrier its making me. Actually it’s more disgust than anger. I don’t know who to be angry at as I don’t know who is to blame for all this. I know a lot of it is on Klopp this time. Last summer was too. I’m just appalled at how incompetent we’ve become. I’m really looking forward to Kloppo’s next jibe about “whatever we do isn’t going to be good enough for you”. It’s not good enough for you either is it, considering you’re going to end up with someone who wasn’t even in the top ten list of targets a few weeks ago? Fucking shambolic shitshow this and there’s plenty of blame to go around. FSG’s role in this can’t be overlooked, but their culpability is probably not for what most people say it is. Not this time anyway. This summer is not about them being mingebags. I don’t think for a second we were lowballing Southampton because John Henry wouldn’t stump up the cash. That ‘strategy’ was on whoever was negotiating. Probably Ibiza George and Klopp between them. Maybe a bit of Billy Hogan mixed in. But it wasn’t about a lack of funds that stopped us getting Lavia, it was about trying to be too fucking smart. Where FSG fucked up massively was in taking their eye off the ball last year. When Julian Ward said he was leaving, what did they do? Mike Gordon fucked off and spent months trying to find investment. That chase was about as fruitful as the Caicedo one. So instead of bringing in a competent Sporting Director, Flash Gordon was off chasing money and coming up empty handed. So we then end up with this fucking German lemon who has been as useful as a chocolate fireguard. That’s where FSG are to blame. The rest of what we’ve seen this summer is on the ‘football people’. And that means Klopp for the most part. He’s got more power now than he’s ever had before and it hasn’t worked out well has it? I don’t think he’s actively gone looking for that power, he’s no Rafa that’s for sure, but no matter what happened to get us here, this is the outcome - Klopp with much more power and us no longer able to get the players we need. Meanwhile, we’ve fucked around for so long without signing a midfielder that Manu Kone has now recovered from his knee injury. May as well go for him now, there aren’t exactly a lot of alternatives anymore. The sporting director at his club is the son of Ibiza George so presumably even he couldn’t fuck this one up. Then again, maybe his son thinks he’s a deadbeat too. On the field tonight United were outplayed by Wolves but spawned a 1-0 win as Gary O’Neil was given an apology by the officials for missing a blatant penalty. They didn’t miss it, they knew what they were doing. United aren’t getting pens given against them at Old Trafford on Howard Webb’s watch. Our u21s kicked off their season with a 4-0 spanking of Everton that really should have been more. Brilliant performance, absolutely murdered them. If you can find the highlights anywhere its defo worth a watch as this was a massacre. Bobby Clark ran the show and the pressing was incredible. The goals came from Musialowski, Miles, Hill and Clark. These lads might be worth following this season. I’ve lost interest in the u21s in recent years but if this squad stays together that might change.33 points -
A 4-4 draw with the worst team in the league? Of course; how else would you end a looney tunes season like this one? From very early on – maybe even half time at Fulham – I had it pegged as one we wouldn’t look back on with too much fondness. I know I’m not Mr Optimism at the best of times, like. How poor it often was may have come as a shock to the system, but there were signs immediately. Losing Sadio was already big, really big. You had hopes there’d be a proper replacement, but once Nunez began to struggle that bubble got popped a bit. Tiredness after an immense effort during the preceding, fabulous year was bound to be exacerbated by a shorter summer. That winter World Cup screwed everyone, but especially a Liverpool squad that had given everything and really needed time to recuperate properly. The flies began to drop. Diaz, Jota, Fabinho and Thiago were still there but in shadow form only, while we never could rely on Keita anyway. There were occasional smiles, Bournemouth at home and Rangers in Europe. It was all sparsely rationed. By the time we could sign someone else, Gakpo was in but was always going to take a while to settle -especially with everyone else already playing poorly. This was when Klopp started to annoy a few. With huge credit in the bank, that mattered little, but if you’re picking a midfield three, they have to be quality, and ready to run miles. God bless Henderson and Milner, but they no longer came up to scratch and others couldn’t be trusted, but he spent 100m on forwards and expected everyone to go wild on Carvalho, Elliott and Jones. Which some did, obviously, because belieeeeve etc. Curtis did look decent near the end, but with younger players some fans can never rein in their enthusiasm. They always see Fowler, not Ojo. Opponents finally got round to doing some homework on Trent, his defending almost coming apart at the seams. A debate about where he could end up playing has always simmered, once doused by Klopp claiming he’d thump anyone who criticised the lad, but near the end of the season (too late) a role was found to maximise his considerable gifts and minimise his defects. Games we lost to Leeds, Bournemouth, Brentford but especially Forest gave off whiffs of complacency, in addition to the reduced press through tiredness. That’s when top four was squandered. Other teams gave us their all, and it often came as a shock to us having sailed through previous seasons like we merely had to turn up. A rude awakening. Mo signed his contract, hitting absurdly high personal targets without ever seeming his old invincible self. Reduced appearances for Firmino meant he had to work out new partnerships, new stratagems, often unsuccessfully. He reminded me a bit of the John Wark season, when he scored loads, but the team never really gelled. Not sure what to make of his tweet about the Champions League; “come and get me” or “here y’are say this, the fans’ll love it”, who can say? We got draws in the cups that were too tough to overcome, maybe the Real pasting was a shock but nothing else was. Nunez may come good, but Klopp went public on his language skills, hinting at someone who already thinks he can just move back to the continent if this gig doesn’t work out. Half the time he was like Rosenthal, someone who could have a phase of hitting everything on the sweet spot without convincing you it was all on purpose. The chaos theory soon palled. He just isn’t clinical enough. Yet, he said hopefully… The highlight was probably 7-0 against Them, but while it might be an itchy scar they’ll scratch occasionally, they’ve had the better year and still have room to improve. Watching them in the Champions League instead of us is going to hurt. If Chelsea and Spurs hadn’t made an absolute show of themselves, our season might’ve been even worse. Spending tons of money didn’t seem to work for Chelsea, but that doesn’t mean FSG can wash their hands of the improvements needed here. That late run may convince them that not much needs fixing. They’re wrong. Their Miracle Man needs help, lots of it. The rebuild begins now. Like many I’ve been pathetically grateful for the brilliant seasons we’ve recently witnessed. A stumble was expected, and fifth hardly qualifies as a let-down except by dizzying comparison. The standards Klopp set are what makes the social media screech all the louder. Tough, but that’s how it is in the big leagues. I thought there’d be a couple of years before we had to worry about Newcastle, but they’re ahead of schedule and the huge spending hasn’t even started. What? The Premier League will block that? Yeah, right. Lijnders said we had to be perfect. I have no problem with that. Who wants to be successful by throwing so much mud some is bound to stick? What’s the bloody point? City have already injected an air of apathy into English football; Newcastle could be its final nail. Klopp’s Liverpool is back in the Europa League, where it all began. Who’s up for the fight, what funds he’ll receive, whether his magic touch on transfers can be kept up. That’s what we’ll be discussing for the next few months. We oldies can say we’ve seen it all before, and though it may take longer there’s never been a time in modern football when Liverpool Football Club were dead and buried. There may come a point when all hope seems lost, but that’s always when they surprise us and disappoint everyone else. Yes, too many players are leaving and all of them for free. There were few moans about the likes of Shaqiri, Minamino or even Divock going, but there was cash for them and modern football chews through footballers like a hungry shark, spits out the bones and is never satisfied. FSG’s public claim of looking for investment gave off the impression they may have had enough of fighting a lost cause against City. It’s what would replace them that worries me the most. ---------------------------------------------------------- Or doesn’t. Barring miracles, this is the last time I’ll ever write about football. The paper’s gone quiet on me for a while, and I can take a hint eventually. I’ve had over 30 years of writing about the Reds, whether it was for Through the Wind & Rain or the Irish Examiner or a brief spell at ESPN thanks to Dave Usher. I’m not the go-getter type. Anything I ever did landed in my lap, from a casual remark in the dole office about fanzines way back in 1989, putting me on a course I couldn’t have veered off if I’d wanted to. The Examiner read my stuff on a website I didn’t even set up for myself, beginning an extra 20 years of writing about the (now only occasionally) mighty Reds. And not just humiliating puff pieces either; I got to say pretty much what I wanted. It was a bit stolid at ESPN, but still critical and not swearing was a small price to pay, even for someone with borderline Tourette’s. My last year produced a lot of silence from the paper, but the industry is going through tough times in the digital age and how I lasted this long remains a miracle. The ESPN gig ended abruptly too, but the bottom line is I got paid to give opinions that I was handing out for free all those years ago. Lucky doesn’t even begin to describe it. How it’s ended is a bit chicken/egg; was my increasing disgruntlement with the modern game seeping into my writing with undetected lethargy, or was a lack of columns making me care less and less? A bit of both. I was also getting oddly angry with people who complain all the time. That was a weird position to take, so much so that people often ask me if my Twitter account’s been hacked! Well, wonder no longer. Money’s a bit tight, which is my own stupid fault, but I’ve a great partner and family so no worries just yet. I thought I’d be doing this through to retirement, but sadly not. I won’t become one of those fund-me meffs, but if you see me on Lord Street with a plazzy cup, say hello. There are many people I have to thank for how long I’ve been doing this. The friends who sold and wrote for the fanzine, Colm O’Connor at the Examiner, Dave for getting me onto ESPN, but the people who were actually bothered about what I had to say meant the most to me. As a lifelong rule, I never think I’m up to much and can’t understand anyone who thought otherwise. That doesn’t make me any less grateful for everyone who read my interminable blatherings and got something out of them. Thanks for everything, and Up the Reds. Always. Steven View full article33 points
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A decent enough way to start our home campaign all things considered. Far from perfect and we still have a lot of question marks over our play (and specifically the system), but the encouraging thing was how the team responded to adversity. First, going behind and coming through a wretched opening 20 minutes, and then the way we handled the absolute joke sending off in the second half. This could easily have gone wrong, but it didn’t. So I’ll take the positives and the points and we move on to next week. That’s going to be much tougher though. Tougher even than Chelsea last week. And if we don’t get that ban overturned it will be tougher still. I’m going to start with that because it really was such a disgusting situation. The problem is twofold though. I’ll start with the initial decision first. I genuinely don’t see how the referee can be sure that was such a bad tackle that it’s worthy of a red. He couldn’t possibly know for sure because it happened so quickly. What he did know is that Mac Allister didn’t go in with studs raised high. He also knows that he didn’t leave his feet, or lunge wildly. So he was in control of his body and wasn’t throwing himself recklessly. So the worst that could have happened was that he was a fraction late and caught the lad on the shin, possibly with the sole of his boot. It’s possibly that it might be a red, but highly unlikely. So why was his first instinct to produce the red card? That’s just bad refereeing, but we have a safeguard in place for that now to prevent those mistakes from wrongly hurting teams. Don’t we? Ha! As if. The first problem is a referee who, if he is unsure (which he had to have been because how can you be sure when the tackles doesn’t fit most of the criteria for a red card?), should be issuing a yellow card and then letting VAR help him out if he has indeed missed something really bad. A referee should only be handing out a straight red if he’s certain, otherwise he should always err on the side of caution just for the good of the game. Klopp said afterwards that if a yellow had been awarded, VAR wouldn’t have overturned it. He’s probably right, but it’s Paul Tierney and his Toblerone shaped mate, so you can’t be so sure. Nevertheless, Klopp’s overall point is correct. There’s no way anybody looks at a replay of that and says “no that’s a red card”. So why didn’t they step in and tell the ref he was wrong? Well the answer to that is simple. We’ll hear a lot of bureaucratic nonsense about “high thresholds for overturning decisions” and “clear and obvious” but it’s really just about who is making the call. Paul Tierney is out to fuck Jurgen Klopp every chances he gets. He always has been, but it’s gone into overdrive since Klopp waged a public war with him. He was never going to overturn that. He was probably laughing his tiny cock off along with Captain Roid Rage beside him. So we got fucked again by Tierney and Webb (who put Tierney in position to do it, just because he can). The question now is what do we do about it? Klopp has wisely refrained from attacking the officials who made the decisions and has concentrated solely on the decision itself and why it was wrong. You have to do that and you also have to appeal. You can’t not appeal a decision as bad as that because you’re basically making yourself a punchbag for the refs. You have to stand up to it. So lodge the appeal and made sure as many pundits as possible call it out for fucking travesty it was. We shouldn’t need to do too much as I expect any ex pro who is commenting on it will say what a joke it was and that it needs to be rescinded. As far as I’m away it isn’t the refs who hear the appeal so we should be ok there. We’ll see though. But enough of that and onto the game itself.32 points -
What an absolute sickener. It’s an all timer for me that, just because of who it was, how it happened, and the fact that it was all so fucking unnecessary. We’ve lost here in the cup to a couple of late goals before and it hurts like fuck, but when that happened they were better than us and it would have been a great effort for us to have beaten them. It hurts but it’s understandable. That’s not how it is now. They’re shite, we should never be losing to them and I don’t feel any better about it today than I did yesterday. I'm still fuming. That said, having been able to sleep on it and collect some thoughts, I can compartmentalise this to some extent. With the dust having settled on it, I’m not that arsed we’re out of the FA Cup. I’d have loved to have won it, obviously, but going out of the cup in itself isn’t bothering me today. I can easily find a positive in that because not having to play in the semi final means the Fulham game takes place at the weekend and does not need to be crammed in somewhere late in the season when we’re already going to be overstretched. We still don’t have a date for the Everton game unless I’ve missed that. So does going out of the FA Cup help us when it comes to the league? To a degree, yes it does. Is the league more important? Fuck yes is it. I’d like to still be in the cup but it’s the manner of the loss and who we lost to that hurts today, not the fact that we’re out of the FA Cup. There’s a reason quadruples don’t happen and it’s not because no team is good enough to do it. It’s because competing on four fronts takes a monumental effort and you need a huge amount of luck. Trying for four actually makes it harder to win any because the mental and physical toll on a squad is huge late in the season. And when you’ve got as many players missing as we’ve had (and still have) then it’s even more unlikely. So yeah, I can make my peace with no longer being in the FA Cup quite easily. The thing I can’t make my peace with is losing to them. They aren’t a serious football team. They do things that proper football teams just don’t do. Honestly, look at the number of screenshots doing the rounds showing countless instances of how much space we had. We don’t get that kind of room to play against anybody. Maybe that’s how they’re as high as sixth, they just lull you into a false sense of security by being utterly fucking inept tactically. They’re the worst Manchester United side I’ve ever seen. If we’d been beaten by Fulham or Palace or someone of that ilk I’d be over it already. It wasn’t Fulham or Palace though. It was a shite team with cunt fans who spent all afternoon chanting about Hillsborough. We can’t do anything about that (the FA have put out a statement saying it’s not acceptable though, so I’m sure that will ensure it doesn’t happen again), but the players can. They need to fight that battle for us by inflicting misery on those cunts. Instead they gave those Hillsborough mocking lowlifes the best memory they’ve had in a decade. Nice one lads, thanks for that. Good job. *slow hand clap* We beat these cunts 7-0 a year ago. Seven fucking nil. They somehow escaped from Anfield with a 0-0 draw this season but we should have been going there and spanking them and - I don’t say this lightly because they’ve been incredible and I love them - but for once the players let us down. I don’t mean in effort as they gave absolutely everything, they always do. I mean in execution, in focus. I mean in just making the right fucking decisions. You just can’t not win this game. Can’t happen. Not acceptable. Not the way the game played out. Look, if we just hadn’t been at it and they’d played well, then of course we can lose to them. Shit as they are, it can happen. We almost lost at Luton and needed a last minute equaliser to spare our blushes. You can have an off day and when that happens you can lose. This wasn’t that though. We didn’t have an off day, we dominated the game. But you have to beat them and make your superiority count, and instead we thought 2-1 would be enough.31 points -
There are some games where beforehand I’d happily snatch your hand off for a one goal margin of victory. Not many, as usually I’d roll the dice on us getting more than that, but sometimes I think in the build up to a game that I’ll happily take any kind of win. This was one of those games. Klopp had not beaten De Zerbi in the previous four attempts. I’m not sure exactly why, but Brighton have always given Klopp trouble and especially so since De Zerbi arrived there. Maybe Klopp could have given Dyche a call and asked him for the secret to beating the little gel headed Italian. So going into this, with the stakes as high as they are, any win was fine by me. I didn’t think for a second it was going to be easy and I was expecting 3-1 or 3-2 with a lot of nervy moments and for the game to be in the balance until late on. I was close enough. It wasn’t comfortable at any point. Of course we conceded more or less straight away. What was it, 80 seconds or something? Feels like this happens every other week. I know it doesn’t, but it feels like it. It’s tiresome isn’t it? Having to come from a goal down all the time, it’s great when you do can do it but fucking hell, it’s not good for the blood pressure. It was avoidable from our perspective but it’s a brilliant finish by Danny Welcrap. It starts with an inaccurate pass by Mo. As soon as he shaped to play that pass I thought it was a bad idea, but I’ve seen the replay now and I’ve changed my mind. I thought it was a bad decision at the time but it’s not. Sure, it’s not the safest pass he could have made and there was risk to it, but it wasn't reckless and it defo shouldn’t be leading to a goal. Bradley was miles up the field and I think he may have even been the intended recipient of Mo’s pass. So Brighton broke up that side with Odingra and although we got enough players back to deal with it, we got pretty unlucky as Dom got a foot in to take it away from Welbeck, but Virgil then had to stretch to cut it out and the loose ball fell nicely to Welbeck who leathered it home. I don’t think we could do a great deal to stop it other than to not give the ball away in the first place. It’s just one of those things really, but it’s annoying as fuck to keep falling behind in games.30 points -
I wonder how many more players we need to lose before it actually becomes a problem? You can make a convincing argument that only two of the eleven that thrashed Luton would make it into Klopp’s preferred line up when he has a full squad to choose from. That doesn’t mean these lads are ‘reserves’ as it’s very much a squad game these days, but Alisson, Trent, Konate, Robertson, Jones, Szoboszlai, Nunez, Salah and Jota are all probably starting if they’re available. They weren’t available though (or in the case of Konate and Robbo they were being rested for the weekend) and yet I thought that starting eleven still looked good. Not great, and you wouldn’t want to be playing that eleven every week, but it’s a sign of how strong the squad is that we can be without all of those players (I haven’t even mentioned Thiago, Bajcetic or Doak either) and still field a line up that didn’t have any glaring weaknesses. Going into the game I was a little concerned simply because Luton never get battered and they’re in every game they play. If they lose, it’s usually by the odd goal and they normally score. If they scored in this one, would we have the firepower to get the win? That was the worry I had, but even though we went in at the break a goal down that worry had gone based on how the first half went. I couldn’t believe how open it was. Right from the first couple of minutes we were getting in behind them and it’s not at all what I expected. I thought Luton would be deep and compact and force us to try and play through them, but they seemed to just go man for man all over the park and although we went in a goal down, it felt like a game we should have been leading by two or three. It started early on. We’d already forced a couple corners in the first minute or two and then Diaz ran clean through from a ball over the top by Kelleher. I’m not sure how Luton allowed that as it’s the kind of chance you’d never expect to get against a side at the bottom, because they usually play a deep low block and won’t allow anything in behind. Yet Kelleher plays a ball over their high line and Diaz runs clear. He should score, it’s an easy chance really. One of the easiest chance you can get when running through on goal as it’s a bouncing ball and the keeper is coming out. Knocking it over him and getting it up and down is so easy and I couldn’t understand what Diaz was even thinking. He hesitated and as soon as he did that the chance was gone. I’ve watched it back and I think the problem is his first touch didn’t get it out of his feet and he never really got his body in position to just lob the ball over the keeper. And once he hesitated, that was that.30 points -
Thank you. He had dementia and had significantly deteriorated in the last few weeks. It stripped him of his personality, communication and mobility. An utterly evil disease. He gave a slight smile last night when we told him liverpool where top. The family were around him when he passed.30 points
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Monday Jan 8: Henderson wants to quit Saudi because the weather is too hot, the training facilities are shit and the crowds are pathetic. Apparently there’s loads of others who want out now too one of the reasons being given is the lack of freedom the wives have. I mean, where to even fucking start with this. How thick are these cunts? I assumed they knew all of this beforehand but just wanted the money. There are also rumours that players want to leave because of the human rights issues and how they impact their wives. You couldn’t make this shit up, it’s fucking pathetic. It seems almost incomprehensible that they didn’t know it was hot and that women aren’t allowed to do normal stuff over there, but after that interview Henderson did with the Athletic it’s clear he’s thick as fuck so maybe he didn’t do his homework before he went there. It’s more likely that he fell for the bullshit about how that league was the new happening place to be and that he was going to be playing with / against loads of stars in front of massive crowds, but now that he knows that’s not how it is he wants out. Imagine completely fucking ruining your legacy at Liverpool to go and play six months over there before coming back with your tail between your legs. What a fucking knobhead he’s turned out to be. I don’t really give much of a shit about anyone else who went over there. I didn’t like it, but didn’t judge them too harshly. With him though, I just thought he was better than that so it was a tough scene finding out he wasn’t. And then he did the interview which just made me think he’s a fucking helmet. And now it’s even worse because he’s quitting and didn’t even have the stones to stick it out. I hope he doesn’t come back to the PL because I don’t want to even look at him. There’s talk that Newcastle want him and that he’s interested. As much as I think he’s a fucking gobshite, I don’t think he’s that much of a gobshite. Meanwhile, United beat Wigan in the FA Cup tonight. Fernandes is getting shit for diving to win a pen, but not from Wrighty who called it ‘clever’. I love Wrighty but you’ve got to be consistent on these things or you look like Alan Shearer - in other words a twat. Last week Wrighty hammered Jota but tonight he’s justifying what Fernandes did. Come on, Wrighty, you’re better than that.30 points -
It’s always enjoyable beating Arsenal, but doing it when they think they should have won is especially satisfying. I think we’ve done this before, at least to some extent. My memory is notoriously sketchy these days but that cup game a couple of years ago when Jota knocked them out, didn’t they come flying out the traps in that one too? Maybe not to this extent, but I seem to remember us starting that game quite slowly and then gradually playing our way into it and breaking their hearts. This one was especially hilarious though, as our first half performance was a train wreck and we gift wrapped them five or six great chances. They didn’t take any of them and aside from the one that hit the bar, they weren’t even that close to scoring. What did Alisson actually have to do? A routine stop from Havertz and a tip over from Ben Shite, and after that I’m struggling to remember much. The first half basically went like this; we tried playing out from the back, got caught by Arsenal’s high press and then they wasted the chance that they created. It wasn’t like they were playing their way through us from back to front, it was mostly self inflicted on our part and when we fixed that the chances for them dried up. That isn’t to take anything away from what Arsenal did in the first half. They pressed with intensity and with organisation and it worked great for them. I’m just saying though, we kept playing right into their hands and it was doing my head in. That being said, when we got to half time at 0-0 I was 100% convinced we’d win the game. That was Arsenal’s chance and they didn’t take it. You come at the Kings you best not miss, and Arsenal missed repeatedly. If you let us off the hook like that it’s only going to end one way. Arsenal fans aren’t taking it well but I think Arteta had a point when he said they did everything right but didn’t take their chances, so what can he do? He did a good job setting his team up to get at us and give us problems. If they’d finished some of them off we’d have been in trouble and they’d probably be in the hat for the next round instead of us. They didn’t though and as soon as Klopp made his adjustments at half time to counter what Arteta had done it was a different game. The second half was much more of an even contest but I’d say we edged it. Arsenal’s chance to win the game was in the first half and they squandered it and then they lost. There’s no disgrace in that though, we’re better than them, even if a lot of them don’t realise it. Some Arsenal fans are still kidding themselves about that but that’s what they do. Saka is better than Salah, Saliba is better than Virgil, Tierney was better than Robbo, Arteta is better than Klopp…. these are the wild takes I see all the time from their social media whoppers. Almost every tweet I see from Arsenal fans reads like it’s come from a teenager. They’re proper weird. There’s no malice in them, they’re pretty harmless, but they’re just weird and irrationally arrogant. They’re putting the ‘goon’ in ‘gooners’. They actually booed their team off at full time, which is pretty fucking bad like. They’re the most reactionary fans in the country. A few wins and they’re lauding their players to the rooftops, a couple of bad results and it’s “I don’t think Arteta is the guy, blud”.30 points -
Was this our “Aston Villa away” for this season? We won’t know until May but it definitely feels like this might have some significance. It was a day when we never really got going but it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. We finished like a runaway train and Fulham were left in a bloodied heap on the tracks. It will mean nothing if we don’t take advantage of it, but it feels big because we don’t tend to have too many of these games at Anfield, but we found a way to get through it unscathed. Home games are usually easy. We win by two or three goals and don’t have to sweat much over the result. It’s reached a point where I’m taking these wins for granted and I didn’t see any way Fulham were leaving Anfield with anything. So for us to be staring down the barrel of a defeat with a few minutes left felt like a massive blow. With our away form being somewhat patchy, we absolutely can’t afford to drop points at home to anyone really, let alone bottom half teams. Yet it looked like we would. Imagine the mood today if we hadn’t turned this around. We wouldn’t be dreaming of a possible title that’s for sure. But we did turn it around and we are still dreaming of it. And wins like this give you that extra spring in your step on a Monday, and I’m sure it gives the players a little extra belief in themselves and what they can achieve. It’s still a long shot, we’re not favourites and nor should we be. But we’ve played 14 games and we’re above Man City. That’s a better situation that any of us expected. Wins like this help to create belief among the squad and also the fans. The next time we’re in a tight spot we’ll draw from this experience. This is a new team but they’ve had a number of tricky situations to deal with already and they’ve come through all of them really. They had to play with ten men against Bournemouth and Newcastle but they got the results anyway. They had to play with nine at Spurs and were a last ditch freak own goal away from getting a point, despite having a legitimate goal scandalously not awarded. We lost the day, but it was a test they passed with flying colours. We went a goal down away at City and came back to get a point and end their 100% home record in 2023. Even Luton, as shit as it was, can be spun into a positive in the sense that they managed to avoid losing the game when it looked like they would suffer a humiliating defeat. The draw was pretty humiliating, but they pulled that one out of the fire late to get a point. Then there’s this. Conceding late on to fall behind on a freezing day in which the crowd had offered virtually nothing. Everything was flat, we were heading for a result that would have really damaged morale and the faith the fans have in the team, but instead we ended up with a win and one of the most enjoyable five minutes we’ve had at Anfield in a good while. The crowd had barely made a peep for 80 odd minutes, but Anfield was rocking by the end.30 points -
Monday Oct 23: Fucking hell, this Konate / Beto thing is still rumbling on. It’s mental how much airtime it’s getting. A lot of you won’t even know about this if you don’t watch MOTD, but in the last round of fixtures two weeks ago Bruno Guimares was booked for a foul and then a couple of minutes later he did pretty much the same thing and the ref bottled it and didn’t send him off. That was MUCH worse than the Konate one (which was not a definite yellow) but hardly anyone knows about it? Why? Because decisions like that happen in most games, and sometimes they happen when a player is already on a yellow. It’s completely normal, yet this one has gone viral because these bitter fucks are piggy backing on the recent officiating controversies and trying to put this in the same ball park. It’s pathetic and it undermines the actual problems there are with officiating. You can’t be castigating a referee for THAT performance. Compared to what we usually see, Pawson’s display was very good. Yet these fucking paranoid cranks are crying conspiracy against a referee who didn’t give us a penalty for the foul on Diaz and needed VAR to tell him about the handball he missed. If he was trying to fuck Everton then he did a pretty poor job of it. Sean Dyche is a crying cunt. Always has been, always will be. Now he’s found the perfect home for his small time, everyone hates us, little club, paranoid, chip on the shoulder whiney bullshit. The sooner these go out of business the better for everyone, including their own fans who need saving from themselves. As long as Everton exists they’ll be miserable.30 points -
Monday Sep 11: A bit of discussion on the forum over a bit of clickbait Sky ran a few days ago where they had some graphic rating the strikers in the Premier League, and Darwin was in the ‘C’ category with the likes of Jay Bothroyd was one of the ‘judges’ and he said “When he has played he’s played the majority of games on the left, and when he has played as a striker I don’t think he’s played well. “We spoke about missing chances, and he’s missed loads of chances. I know pricetags, at £80m, I’m expecting him to come in and score goals, but he hasn’t done it in the Premier League yet. He has to really work on his composure as a striker.” It’s easy to mock him for that but he clearly doesn’t watch us that often if he thinks most of his games have been on the left. He’s just bought into the narrative he’s seen and heard about how he misses loads of chances and doesn’t have composure. That’s partially true but it’s reacting to a relatively smaller size, and to say he hasn’t scored goals in the Premier League is nonsense because he has. His goals per minutes played is good. Not brilliant, but good for a player in a new league who came into a team that fell off a cliff. But there are loads of people, let’s call them morons, who have no idea how good Nunez is and how high his ceiling is. They’ll find out soon enough though, and when they do pieces like this one will get the ridicule they deserve. The most surprising thing about all this though was that I learnt that Bothroyd actually played for England. Fuck me, they really do hand caps out to anyone these days don’t they? I remember growing up in the 80s and getting an England call up was actually a big thing. Steve McMahon was fucking tearing it up with us but it took a good while before he got a call up. Look at Tommy Smith too. Getting picked for England was really hard once upon a time. Now I find out Bothroyd got a call up despite only scoring *checks notes* SIX top flight goals. Or put another way, five less than Darwin has despite playing twice as many games. Saw a story today claiming we’ll move for Lloyd Kelly from Bournemouth in January. He’s out of contract in the summer and would be available for £20m. He ticks a few boxes. 24 years old, home grown, left back or centre half, PL experience. I don’t know if he’s any good or not though. He turned us down to join Bournemouth a few years ago but you can understand why young players would make the move that gives them the most playing time. In fact, I respect that as the easy thing to do is take the glamour move. In other news, Paul Pogba has failed a dope test. Not surprising, he’s always been a massive do… ohhhhh they mean a drugs test. Yeah ok, not surprised by that either, half the games I’ve seen him play in he’s looked like he’s been tranquillised.30 points
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What a wild ride that was. I went through the full range of emotions during this 90 minutes, from thinking our season was going to be even worse than last year to wondering if this was our “Villa Park moment” and whether we might just shock everyone and win the league! It was mental. I went from wanting to strangle Klopp to wanting to kiss him. I went from demanding for Trent to be subbed to screaming “fucking go ‘ed lad” when he took the ball to the corner flag, won a throw in and let out a visceral yell up to the away fans stuck up in the rafters. The only thing that was consistent is the love and unwavering faith I have in my boy Darwin. This is surely the springboard for him to unleash hell on the league now. What a fucking devastating cameo that was. I’ll get to that though, oh yes you know I will. There’s loads to unpack first though. What a mental first half. We actually started the game well I thought. The first few minutes were really good. We settled quickly, played some good stuff and the pressing was great. That part of our game was good all day I thought, it wasn’t easy for Newcastle to play through us even when we only had ten men. Five minutes in though it got wild when the referee decided he was going to make it all about him. I do think there’s a bit of blame to go around though and it’s as much on Howard Webb as any of the refs. He’s the egotistical prick who has decided he wants refs to fully embrace their inner traffic warden. All of this “refs need to be shown respect” is a bit rich isn’t it? I mean in theory I completely agree, mainly because of how it affects the game at grass roots level. But half of these jumped up little wankers at Premier League level just don’t deserve respect. They deserve a fucking slap. Eventually someone will give it to them too. I worry that one day Kloppo is going to snap and choke slam Tierney. I wouldn’t even blame him if he did, because there’s only so much of this shit you can tolerate. It gets worse every season and all VAR has done is exposed the bias that many of us suspected was there for decades (not specifically an LFC related comment that, more of a general observation). At least previously they could hide behind the “we only get one look at it, mistakes are going to happen”. That’s gone out of the window now, they’re still doing whatever they like even when they’ve got replays. John Brooks of course is the ref who Klopp stupidly celebrated in front of last season and pulled his hamstring in the process. That got him a touchline ban and we’ve been getting fucked by refs ever since. The double standards from Brooks in this game was there for all to see. Joelinton and Guimares were given free rein to foul as much as they liked. So many potential counter attacks of ours were halted by fouls and Brooks just let it happen. For those two to come out of this game with no yellow card between them shows you just where Brooks’ head was at. He laid down a marker early. I’d say Trent was both lucky and unlucky with how things went in that mad sixth minute of the game. His yellow card is a fucking disgrace. Firstly, I find it hard to believe how any referee could miss the blatant shove in the back by Gordon. It’s one of those rare incidents where literally everybody in the ground can clearly see what has happened and it’s as clear a foul as you’ll ever see. There’s no room for interpretation there, and it doesn’t fall under that “letting more physical stuff go to keep the game flowing”. This ain’t that. Both the linesman and fourth official saw it and told Klopp it was a foul. How didn’t Brooks see it? He must have. He certainly saw Trent’s little throw of the ball though didn’t he? Not giving a free-kick for that shove is genuinely incredible. Then he books Trent for throwing the ball back on the pitch. It’s almost like he was daring Klopp to do something. This happened right in front of him. Co-incidence? Nah. He knew what he was doing. Sending a message to Klopp again. Reminding him who has the power. “Celebrate in my face? See what happens.” Loads of people are justifying that yellow under this new ‘hard line’ stance on dissent. Fuck right off. He threw the ball back onto the pitch, he didn’t boot it into the stands. Was it dissent? A little, but it’s fuck all really and any ref handing out a yellow for that five minutes into a game is asking for trouble. You know what makes it worse? I didn’t get onto this at the time but I’ve watched the game back and about 20 seconds after Trent was booked, Gordon commits another foul which Brooks blew for, and Gordon then kicked the ball away to stop us taking the free-kick!! Trent and Dom brought it to the ref’s attention but he wasn’t interested. Honestly, how the fuck can he justify that? You book Trent but not Gordon. Why? What’s the difference? You’re either making a stand on this or you aren’t. We saw Mac Allister booked at Chelsea for asking for a yellow card when he was cynically brought down by Gallagher. Instead, he got booked and Gallagher didn’t. Yet when Trent put out an arm and caught Gordon we had half the Newcastle team and all of their bench charging to the ref demanding he send Trent off and Joelinton was waving an imaginary card. No punishment though. None for Trippier either who ran the full width of the pitch to demand a booking. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame him at all as he’s the captain so he’s the one who should be doing it and even though I think that’s acceptable, I don’t make the rules and I thought this kind of thing wasn’t ok anymore? That gobshite assistant manager went running from the bench to demand a card, and he’d done the same thing when Trent threw the ball away. Klopp told him to sit down and he shushed Klopp. How’d that turn out for you, you arrogant bellend? I only wish that photoshopped image of Klopp shushing him later on had been real. He’s not even meant to be in the technical area but the orange cunt sets up camp in there every game and for some reason it’s allowed. Are they joint managers like Evans and Houllier? He sure acts like it, and Beheddie Howe is such a snivelling little dweeb he does nothing about it. The entire league hates Tindall and rightly so. What a fucking scumbag. That being said, what the hell is Trent thinking putting his arm out like that, a minute after he’d been booked? You know Gordon is going to ground if you so much as breathe on him, and while it was a dive by him the fact remains that Trent deliberately made a move towards him and put his arm out and shoved him. I don’t even have a problem with Gordon going to ground there. He’d have been stupid not to and I’d expect any of our lads to do the same in that situation. If Trent had been given a second yellow, the blame would be is, not Gordon’s. It was stupid beyond belief and I can’t get my head around it. Trent is the most intelligent lad in the entire squad by all accounts. He’s not some thick fucker, yet he did THAT? The ref bottled it and such was the lack of control he had at that point he managed to piss everybody off. He could easily have sent Trent off but he knew if he did the spotlight would be on him for the ridiculous first yellow so he took the easy way out. Anyway, at this point I’m losing my shit at Trent and demanding that Klopp subs him. Gomez was sent out to warm up and I didn’t see any way Trent was staying on that field. He’d need to play 85 minutes plus stoppages without committing a single foul, because the next one would defo see him off. Even if he could do that why would you leave your right back out there knowing he basically can’t make a tackle, and he’s facing the biggest diver in the league? I know he’s an important player but he had to be subbed for me. Whatsmore, as the half wore on it was clear that his head was up his arse as his passing was way off. As each minute passed by with no substitution, the rage was building in me. Then he took his eye off the ball and allowed that rat Gordon to run through and score. I didn’t know who I was more pissed off with, Trent or Klopp. The mistake is on Trent but he shouldn’t have still been on the field by that point so I was mostly mad at Klopp I think. What the fuck was he thinking? Then we had the Virgil sending off as things completely unravelled for us. I don’t think it’s a red card (yellow for me) but I don’t feel massively aggrieved as I’d accept that it could be given either way. 60/40 in favour of no red card for me. It’s definitely not a stonewall sending off and I tend to agree with Carragher about it not being a goalscoring opportunity. If Van Dijk doesn’t make that challenge what happens? He runs alongside him, Isak is going away from goal and there is no clear goalscoring opportunity. Isak didn’t get the chance to create a clear goalscoring opportunity and without that challenge I don’t think he’s in on goal. So it isn’t a black and white decision, it’s a subjective call and there’ll be arguments about it. I don’t think it should be a red card but it’s not a hill I’m willing to die on. Virgil got the ball but he clipped Isak just before he got it. You know what struck me about this? We needed several replays to be sure of what happened, yet eagle eyed Brooks saw it immediately and had no doubt it was a red card. Great eyesight there for someone who couldn’t see that clear shove by Gordon. Look, it’s a foul (even though it needed a super slo mo from a certain angle to show it) but I just think the punishment does not fit the crime. It’s like a judge giving someone a custodial sentence for speeding just because he can. Most of the time it’s a fine and points, but instead he’s gone with the maximum penalty. It isn’t a wrong decision as he’s entitled to make it, but you’ll never convince me it isn’t harsh. Nevertheless, what it brings home once again is that Virgil just isn’t who he was anymore. He’d never have made that challenge in his pomp. If you disagree, show me when he did something like that and maybe I’ll reconsider. The only time I ever remember him doing anything reckless was a challenge he made against Napoli when he got a yellow card and it could potentially have been a red. He might be in trouble for his reaction to the red card too. He didn’t leave the field immediately which is ok because you have to wait for VAR now to confirm the decision. But he spent that time berating the referee. That’s not ok. I’m not going to condemn him for that though because these refs are out of control these days with the game changing bullshit decisions. I’m not saying this decision is one of them by the way, but from Virgil’s point of view he might see it that way and besides, this is just one of many contentious calls that have gone against us over a period of time and I just think they’re all getting pissed off with it now. I know how angry I’m getting with these fucking dickheads spoiling games every week (not just ours, the entire Premier League is a farce thanks to these arrogant clowns) and while the players have a responsibility to behave in a certain way, I completely get how they’d lose it in the heat of the moment. I was annoyed at Virgil at the time, but I”m not now. I don’t think his reaction was based on this one decision, I just reckon all of the players are becoming so pissed off about what’s happening every week that he just exploded. The other thing to consider here is that Virgil is the captain. That means he’s the one who is allowed to talk to the ref, and anyone who thinks Hendo or Gerrard wouldn’t have been giving Brooks a fucking earful has a short memory. I understand why he reacted like that and I’m fine with it. Imagine if Suarez was still here having to deal with this bullshit. He’d be on a manslaughter charge by now I reckon. Virgil also yelled at the fourth official “don’t touch me” as he headed down the tunnel. Again, I’m not holding any of that against him, but the FA might and I wouldn’t be shocked if the ban was increased. I wouldn’t object to it either, just as long as it’s the same for everybody. I won’t hold my breath on that though. Virgil has an impeccable disciplinary record though so that might go in his favour. We’ll see. Anyway, after that incident I’m even more adamant that Trent needs to go, because we’re down to ten already and he’s one foul away from us being down two players. Incredibly, Klopp left him out there. Instead he subbed Diaz, which infuriated me even further. He’d been our most dangerous player up to that point and looked really sharp. He’d also scored in both our previous games and he works his arse off so it’s not like he’d be a passenger. To me the obvious thing to do was sub Trent, put Gomez to right back and drop Endo in alongside Joel. Gakpo could drop into midfield with Macca and Dom, and then leave Diaz and Mo to do the attacking. Now let me stress that the only reason I’m saying that is because of Trent’s precarious situation. I wouldn’t have subbed him based on his poor performance, I’d let him play through that. This was a no brainer to me though, it was just too big a risk for me to leave him out there, but Klopp did it and it paid off. He’ll say it’s the right decision and the fact we won the game and Trent avoided further trouble does vindicate it. I would argue that he got lucky and he should have taken Trent off. Next time it may not go so well. However, for all the bewilderment I had at his management of the first half, I have to say that Klopp’s handling of the second half, the way he set the team up and the changes he made as the half wore on, it was impeccable. That second half was an absolute masterclass in how to deal with the difficult situation we found ourselves in. I didn’t think we had that in us. Sure, we had a little bit of luck at the right times. Almiron hit the post and Barnes wasted a great chance when he failed to square it to Wilson for a tap in, but by and large we weren’t really troubled much. The plan will have been to get to 75 minutes without conceding again, and if we hadn’t nicked anything ourselves by that point, then we throw everything at them for the last 15. And that’s exactly what we did. Apparently Allison made more saves in this game than he has in any other since he arrived here. That shocked me as I can only remember him having to make one proper save (a stunning effort to tip Almiron’s first half rocket onto the bar). The rest must have all been routine as I can’t recall any of them. That save from Almiron was a game changer though because if it had gone to 2-0 we weren’t coming back from that and it may have gotten a whole lot worse. The first spark of attacking threat we posed came after Jota had been introduced. He was really lively and made a big difference. We’d been focusing solely on keeping it at 1-0 and we’d barely been near the Newcastle goal, but suddenly Jota gave us a bit of thrust and energy. He played Mo in for a chance but Botman got over well to block just as Mo was pulling the trigger. That little moment of danger set nerves jangling around St James’ and showed that we weren’t out of it. Then Darwin was unleashed on them. Almost immediately he nearly went through onto a great ball by Elliott. Neville kept going on about what a bad touch it was but it really wasn’t. Had he taken that ball out of the sky and knocked it into his own stride to set up a shot, we’d have all been saying what an incredible touch it was. He didn’t produce an incredible touch but that’s because it was really difficult. His touch allowed the defenders to get back and clear the danger, but that little moment again caused ripples around St James. Newcastle should have gone right up the other end and scored but Barnes made a mess of it and the rest is history. A couple of minutes later Trent threaded a ball up to Mo, he knocked it round the corner for Jota and he tried to release Darwin. Botman looked to have it under control but it bounced off him and Nunez pounced, taking one touch to set himself before smashing it it across goal in off the far post. Stunning finish, absolutely emphatic. The celebration matched it. Proper South American emotions and a quality knee slide. Love it. When that went in it changed everything. The entire game had been a miserable experience up to that point but now we had all of the momentum and if anyone was going to win it was going to be us. I wasn’t worried at all about Newcastle scoring. They were done. The only question was whether we had enough in us to go and get the winner. Clearly we did, because Darwin, Jota and Mo had the bit between their teeth. Jota missed a glorious chance to win when he fed Darwin and then missed his kick when the return pass came his way. That was fucking brilliant by Nunez and it’s probably been forgotten about in all the buzz about the two goals. I thought that might have been our last chance, but Darwin had other ideas. Guimares was pressured in midfield and hit a pass straight at Harvey. The ball fell to Mo and Darwin immediately set off. The pass was perfect and the movement of Nunez matched it. Look at how he bends his run so when he meets the ball he can shoot straight away. The pass by Mo was spoken brilliantly placed and weighted but the run is great too. As was the finish. Wow. Two absolutely stunning finishes from a player who has missed a lot of those kind of chances. I read something a while back from Neil Jones about how the coaches have got Darwin working on converting those exact type of chances (because he gets them a lot) and you could see here the conviction and the technique. Those two finishes reminded me of how Suarez would finish in those situations. I’m not a big celebrater when I’m watching on the telly these days. I went nuts on both of these goals though, partly because it’s Darwin but mostly because we’d somehow won a game that I’d given up on. What a feeling it was when that second went in. Imagine being in that away end. Spine chilling. I’m buzzing for my boy as he needed this. He’s pissed off that he can’t get in the team and so he should be. He was our best forward in pre-season and the reason he isn’t being picked isn’t even specifically about him. Klopp doesn’t trust that the team is solid enough to be able to fully integrate Nunez into it, so he’s going with the more savvy, defensively aware forwards like Jota and Gakpo. I understand it to some extent but there comes a point when you’ve got to let the peacock fly. How can you not start Nunez next week? I’m fed up of hearing about what Darwin can’t do. Not enough is made of what he can do. I don’t think there is anyone else at the club who could have done what he did. Maybe Mo, he’s done it before, but would you have backed him to score from the positions Nunez was in? He’d have cut back inside and then it’s in the lap of the gods. Nobody else we have makes that run or finishes like that. They don’t have the physical tools to do that. Darwin is different, he brings things to the table others can’t. There are also things they do that he can’t of course, I know he isn’t perfect. The point is we would have lost this game if we didn’t have Nunez to call on. I keep seeing people say he can only play if the opponents are defending high and he has room to run into, but I don’t buy that. He’s a chance magnet regardless of how the opponents are playing. Things happen when he’s on the pitch and while his finishing has been erratic to say the least, he gets chances like nobody else in the league, not even Haaland. The stats will back that up. There’s something there with him. Something potentially great. You only have to listen to what other strikers say about him. Wright, Shearer and Owen have all praised his brilliant movement and they all said he’ll come good when he calms down a little with his finishing. Even Neville said he’d hate to play against him. There’s something in that. When the opposition defenders see the team sheet and he’s not on it, I bet they’re relieved. Not because Jota or Gakpo aren’t top players, but no-one is going to be scared of them. They are scared of Nunez because of the raw pace and directness he has. He struck absolute fear into Botman and Burn on that left side of their defence. His movement really is great. Look at him on both goals, he’s running in areas where defenders don’t want to have to deal with him. He also made that chance for Jota with a great run too. Mo has always been on the same wavelength as him and they’ve created plenty of chances for each other, but with Macca and Dom there now too, when Klopp eventually decides the team is solid enough to be able to unleash Nunez from the start in every game, he’s going to score shitloads. Hopefully this game is a watershed moment for him. It silences his critics for a while if nothing else, but it could be the catalyst for him to do what he’s done at previous clubs. Underwhelming first season and then BOOM, he explodes. I don’t know what this win will mean in the long term, but in the short term it’s put smiles on the fans faces and the impact it will have on the team could be massive. This is pretty much a new team. An entirely new midfield and other than Mo the forwards are relatively new as well. Teams grow together and games like this really quicken up the process. You go through adversity together and it builds character and team spirit. This is a massive result for all of the new lads and should give everyone confidence. I don’t think we really know what this team is yet or what they will be capable of. We can see there are flaws and we all want a couple of signings to help us maintain a challenge, but it’s way too soon to be able to get a proper handle on who we are. At this moment I have no idea what to expect from us, but seven points from nine considering the fixtures we’ve had is a promising start. We’re building the plane while it’s in the air so to come through away games at Chelsea and Newcastle with four points is a nice little return. Villa are next and that won’t be easy, but if we can win that then we’re in great shape going into the international break. Nunez is the star man but I’d also give a huge shout to Gomez who stepped in and performed superbly. Alisson as well, as you’d expect. Jota and Harvey made a difference when they came on, while young Quansah acquitted himself well on his debut. Finally, Mo deserves a mention for the great shift he put in as well as creating the winner with a sublime pass. What a fucking result against the odds! This one will live in the memory for a long time. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip (Quansah), Van Dijk, Robertson; Endo (Elliott), Szoboslai, Mac Allister (Nunez); Salah, Gakpo (Jota), Diaz (Gomez): View full article30 points
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Monday May 6: Goldbridge confirms he’s received a “cease and desist” order from Man City to stop talking about the 115 charges. He won’t stop talking about it, but it’s interesting that both he and Tony Evans have now said they’ve had these letters. No doubt loads of others have too. Might explain why Sky never mention it for example, yet when Carra is on CBS he’s happy to throw it out there. Fact is, City are cheats. They’ve been found guilty of it previously so anybody calling them cheats is only stating the truth. These cunts think they can lawyer their way out of everything. They usually can. Hopefully not this time, this isn’t those UEFA pussies they’ve taking on, they’re messing with Mark fucking Goldbridge now. This Nunez stuff is all a bit weird. The assumption was that he’s been getting shit on social media from the usual cunts who do that kind of thing. Some have said his wife has been getting messages and ‘death threats’ too, but they’ve both had comments switched off for a while so unless they’ve been getting DMs (and I don’t know if this is even possible) then where are these messages? No-one knows why he deleted all his LFC posts. I've seen some saying it's because he's just switched from Nike to adidas so didn't want anything with the Nike kit on, but that seems fucking ludicrous and I'm not buying it. Whatever the reason, it seems a bit pointless as what has he achieved by it? Sports people do shit like this all the time though, and I never really understand what they’re hoping to achieve by it. At least he didn't unfollow the club or remove us from his bio like other players in various sports have done. From what I’ve heard today, the club don’t see it as a big deal and feel it’s a storm in a teacup like Mo and Klopp’s spat last week. I hope so, but he really needs a fucking goal right now to quieten this noise. Meanwhile, United got humiliated at Selhurst Park tonight. I’ll cover the shitness of United in the round up, but one thing I wanted to say here is that Palace signed Adam Wharton in January and since then he’s probably been one of the top five midfielders in the league. He’s brilliant and he’s only 20. They got him from Blackburn, who we will have seen a fair bit of because Tyler Morton was on loan there last season. How did we let him end up at Palace when we needed midfielders last summer? Well the simple answer to that is we didn’t have the proper structure in place. Ibiza Jorg wasn't going to be doing any shopping in Lancashire. You’d like to think if there’s another talent like that out there this summer though then Hughes and Edwards will be on top of it. Palace will probably sell him in a couple of years for triple what they paid for him. And before that, they’ll do the same with Olise and then Eze, who are both brilliant as well. I wouldn't be in favour of us signing any of them for what Palace would be asking for. Sign them before Palace do is what we should be doing.29 points -
Monday Mar 11: Kyle Walker is doing the media rounds today for some reason or other, and for some reason Sky are asking him for his thoughts on the ref's performance yesterday. Of course he was effusive in his praise of Michael Oliver (or “Mike” to his friends such as dirtbag Kyle) because he showed great “character” to not be swayed by Anfield yesterday. This isn’t normal and I can’t believe Sky are putting shit like this out. What’s going on? I feel like we’re in a footy equivalent of a Black Mirror episode. This is even worse than someone slagging a referee off, as the next time he’s involved in a contentious incident and Oliver is the ref, this interview is going to do him a lot of good I reckon. PGMOL needs a massive shake up and I don't mean with the refs on the pitch, as their job gets harder by the week because of the "protocols" they have to adhere to. What needs looking at is how VAR is implemented and how it seems to exist for the purpose of backing up the on field decision rather than getting to the right outcome. Yesterday is a prime example really. Oliver doesn't give the pen and Attwell is coming out with complete horseshit to try and validate the decision. Foot not in an unnaturally high position apparently. So studs up into a players chest is normal then? Fuck off. You didn't want to tell Oliver he was wrong, that's why you let it go. We all know it. The technology is there but they don't use it properly. It's used to rule out goals for the most stupid of reasons (Solanke had one disallowed this weekend for a laughable 'handball' for example) and not used when it would be really useful. They need to work together to get the right outcome, but there's ego involved here. VAR rarely wants to tell the ref on the pitch he's wrong and the refs on the pitch don't seem to ever ask for help. It shouldn't be there to tell the ref he's made a mistake, it should be there for the ref to get a proper look at it and decide for himself what the decision should be. What should have happened yesterday is Oliver should have said "could that have been a foul, should I take a look?" and VAR should have said "yeah have another look and then make your decision". But that doesn't happen because of the protocols they have. All this 'clear and obvious' bullshit. If PGMOL aren't going to use the technology to help themselves then they need it taking out of their hands. Maybe like the NFL where the coach can challenge a decision and have it reviewed. But it can't be reviewed by the ref on the pitch as there's too much ego involved with some of them. Oliver for instance. He's not going to take kindly to a manager challenging his decisions and is likely to dig in even further. He doesn't even like his own colleagues questioning him when they've got access to angles he hasn't. Richard Keys (I know, I know) claims Oliver has told his colleague to never send him to the screen. The last time it happened was September 2022 and he stuck with his original decision. Keys reckons he's been told that Oliver was furious about that and at the next refs meeting told them to never send him to the screen again. Could be bollocks of course, Keys isn't the most reliable of witnesses after all, but he does have contacts within PGMOL and his claims have not been dismissed (not yet anyway, and he's been saying it for a while). All I know is Attwell's explanation for why VAR wasn't recommending a review was absolute nonsense. If there is even a shred of truth in what Keys is saying, then this cunt needs reigning in. A ref on the field gets one look at an incident and its therefore a really tough job. So it’s the absolute height of arrogance to refuse the help and advice of colleagues who have access to different angles, replays and slo motion footage. Oliver is either the most egotistical ref to have ever lived or he wants to influence results without the interference of colleagues correcting his wrong calls. Either way, it needs looking into.29 points -
I hope this is permissible to post amidst the to and fro of messages? My grandson Aiden [7] went to his first Liverpool game against Fulham. He had a great time. He was absolutely buzzing. He was hi-fiving all the fellas around him when Liverpool scored, and told me that he was screaming when they scored. He had his Alisson Becker kit on.
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Before the game I’d have been made up with a point. After the game, I am made up with the point, especially as we had to come from behind to get it. That doesn’t mean I thought we played well though. We were ok, there were plenty of things to like about this, but we were nowhere near our best. Neither were City, despite Guardiola’s protestations to the contrary. The early kick off after an international break just doesn’t do this game justice. The Premier League are a fucking joke, letting the Manchester bizzies dictate to them like that. This is their showpiece game and it’s been watered down in quality by that kick off time. This isn’t sour grapes as I don’t think it hampered us any more than them. I’m just saying that neither team were near their best level and the spectacle suffered because of it. We got a point though and that’s all that matters. It’s a better result for us than them, especially given they had the lead and were at home. They’d have expected to win from there, I mean, they literally do win all of their home games. Every single one in 2023, in all competitions. Until now. That’s why we should be happy. I wouldn’t be happy to settle for a draw at any other venue (maybe Arsenal currently) but City are better than us and our record there is shit. So this is a really nice result. As for the performance, it’s a weird one because we deserved a draw and did not get outplayed, so we must have played pretty well. If we hadn’t then they’d have taken us to the cleaners like they do everybody else at the Etihad. Yet I couldn’t help but feeling a bit frustrated by our play, particularly going forward where we did not make the most of countless decent situations that should have been converted into decent chances. That has to be a good thing though big picture wise. Going to City and getting a deserved draw without playing anywhere near as well as we can does make you wonder what might have happened if we had played somewhere near our best. Equally though, we didn’t get City on their best day and they were without De Bruyne and Grealish, who along with Son have probably been the biggest thorns in our side in recent seasons. I didn’t think there was anything surprising in Klopp’s team selection. Maybe Konate over Matip, but he’s not played much of late and Joel is in a better rhythm so I’d have leaned that way too. Curtis coming back in made sense because he keeps the ball and he’s our best presser. It didn’t work out like that in hindsight, but the selection made sense. Jota for Diaz was a coin flip really, but I’d have gone for Jota too. He was crap, but there was no way of knowing he would be as he’s been doing well lately. City were able to welcome back all of the players who missed the international games through injury. How about that eh? They all played the full ninety too. No matter how much he wins, Liverpool will always be front and centre in Guardiola’s mind. Sneaky cheating bald fuck.29 points -
Monday Nov 13: It’s been over a week now and there’s been no mention about any charges for Arteta after his outburst against refs. That was as strong as I can remember anybody going after them, and he did it in about four separate post match interviews so it wasn’t just one heat of the moment comment. His club then put a statement out backing everything he said, and absolutely fuck all has been done about it. He repeatedly used words like “disgrace” and “ashamed” yet nothing has happened yet. What are they waiting for? I don’t even care if he had a point or not (he did) because loads of managers (and players for that matter) have had just cause to go after refs, but you still have to face consequences when you do. Except Arteta it seems. Let me just remind you that Van Dijk was suspended for one match and fined 100k for simply saying “that’s a fucking joke”. Nowhere near enough of a stink was made of that when I look back. In other news, Ederson is out of the Brazil squad which means Alisson will play their two games in this break. If I’m Alisson I’d pull out too, because fuck that coach for not picking him. Alisson is a man of God though and probably prays for that coach rather than bear a grudge against him. The easy conclusion to draw here is that Ederson will be fine for the game with us and this is City pulling their usual shit, but I don’t think that’s it. He may well play against us but that doesn’t mean he isn’t legitimately injured now. Ederson probably never thought he’d be Brazil’s first choice and he won’t want to give that up lightly. If he’s out of the squad he’s definitely injured because he’s not going to miss two important qualifiers and allow Alisson back in just because Guardiola wants him to rest. Hopefully it’s bad enough that he loses his foot, but failing that I’ll settle for him missing the game in a fortnight. Ok ok, I’m joking, I don’t really want him to lose his foot, that would be awful. The only City player I’d genuinely wish harm on is that cunt Bernardo Silva.29 points -
St James’ Park was absolutely fucking bouncing on opening day. Geordie optimism is one of the worst things I can think of. It doesn’t take much to get them to go completely overboard but right now they actually have a lot to be excited about. If you can get past the whole ‘being owned by a murderous regime with an appalling human rights record’ of course, which they can, very easily it seems. Villa were chopped into pieces and stuffed into a suitcase as Beheddie Howe’s men picked up where they left off last season. New signing Tonali fired them in front within a couple of minutes as they flew out of the traps, but Villa caught them cold and soon equalised with a goal from a new signing of their own, Moussa Diaby. Isak restored Newcastle’s lead and Villa’s day got worse when Mings blew out his knee. We won’t see him again this season, looked a bad one that. Karma’s a bitch ain’t she? All those times he went down faking injury in that draw at Anfield a few months back, but now he’s genuinely fucked. Be nice if Karma came for that cunt goalkeeper next. Speaking of him, he was lucky not to be sent off when he raced out of his goal and hauled down Almiron. It was out wide and there were defenders covering, but I’m saying he’s lucky not be sent off just on the basis of him being a massive twat so the temptation must always be there to send him packing. Isak then took advantage of a howler by Konsa to make it 3-1 and then Villa basically just quit. Definitely feeling sorry for themselves there, and they were lucky they only conceded five in the end. Wilson came off the bench to make it 4-1 and Harvey Barnes added a fifth on his debut. Villa’s defending though, oh my god. That defensive line was so high they should have been drug tested. Scandalous. That isn’t to downplay how good Newcastle were. They may disgust me but I can give credit where it’s due and they were very good. The hope this season is that the extra demands of Champions League football will take a lot out of them and they’ll fall away a bit from what they did last season. That’s hope as much as expectation though. I’m not sure I’d put any sizeable amount of money on us finishing above them. Villa are a fraud team though who finished in a false position last year due to a good run in which they punched above their weight. I’ll call it now. Bottom half finish. I’m not having them at all. It’s horrible seeing Newcastle looking so good, especially as they haven’t even really started cheating yet. I thought they’d have spent a lot more than they have done and I’m currently reading about how they are trying to agree a loan to buy deal with Chelsea for Lewis Hall because…. wait for it… they’re trying to comply with FFP and don’t want to overspend. I mean, as unlikely as it seems that they’d do things by the book, if they are then I guess I’ll give them the tiniest bit of credit. We’ll see though. We go there the week after next and that game has the potential to tip me over the edge. If we go there and stink it’s going take some getting over for me. I’m not ready to be regularly looking up the table at Newcastle. Don’t think I’ll ever be ready for that. Imagine if 12 months ago someone would have told you that within a year Newcastle would better than us on and off the pitch. They’d be the Champions League side and we’d be in the Europa. Every signing they made would fit in seamlessly while we’d be making pigs ear of everything. None of us would have believed it, yet here we are. Who knows where we’ll be in another 12 months. So much uncertainty with us right now. Worrying.29 points -
Don't be sad he is going, be happy we have had him. He has transformed our football club and given us the one thing we all wanted more than anything and who knows what he may deliver yet before he goes. Thanks for everything, Jurgen - you made even the biggest doubters believers and you gave us our pride back.28 points
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Ah cheers mate, been busy of late, been clearing out my late Dads house. It's been a bit of a mare tbh. Sale is due for completion on Friday. Been struggling to find any worthwhile footage to make gifs from whilst the games are live too.28 points
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Struggling to find somewhere decent to make gifs up during the game latel28 points
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Monday Jul 31: As expected, Van Dijk is named captain and Trent is given the vice captaincy. I wrote about this last week and there’s not much to add. I don’t think Virgil is a perfect choice but I don’t think we had any choice but to give it to him, because otherwise it would have essentially been a demotion. Trent being promoted to next in line makes sense as he’s the future of the club and the extra responsibility should help get him ready for it. Meanwhile, Klopp is asked about this Mbappe loan move nonsense. I didn’t even mention it in last week’s diary as it’s clearly bollocks and what more is there left to say about all that? I’m glad Klopp was asked though as it gave him the chance to shoot it down. He did, sort of. But he used terms such as ‘as far as I know’ and ‘maybe those above me are working on it as a surprise for me’ which is obviously tongue in cheek but just leaves the door open enough for the click baiters to keep on churning it out. We’re closing in on Lavia now according to reports. Fucking hell, we’ve been closing in on him for weeks. We must be moving like Fabinho after a Sunday dinner. Elsewhere, Bobby Duncan (remember him?) has signed for a Spanish third division side. What a waste. It’s easy to go down the “fuck him, it’s all his own fault” road on this, and part of me wants to. He wanted it too soon, didn’t want to be patient and pay his dies, and he listened to the wrong people. Or person. That agent should be in fucking jail really, the absolute cunt. Shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near talented young footballers. There’s less of an excuse for Duncan than others considering he’s related to Gerrard and should have been looking to him for advice rather than the leech of an agent, but I still have some sympathy for him. I didn’t at first, but seeing how things have turned to complete shit for him now gives me no pleasure. It is weird how some of these teen prodigies fall off a cliff after making a bad decision though. Jerome Sinclair is another. He played for us at 16 and although he was never really Liverpool quality, he should have been a Premier League player. But he rejected a contract here for a big offer at Watford and now he isn’t even in the game anymore. He’s not even 30 yet. Chalk another one up to a cunt agent. Our old pal Aidy Ward was the agent involved in that one. Sinclair runs a fried chicken shop in Birmingham now. Maybe Bobby Duncan can open a chippy in Huyton when this latest move doesn’t work out?28 points -
Further confirmation - if it was needed - that this team can only perform with intensity and fight when they’re riding the wave of emotion provided by the Anfield crowd. Would we have come back from 2-0 down away from Anfield, or would this have gotten further out of hand? I think we all know the answer to that. Look, we were brilliant in this game for about 55 minutes. Really good, like our old selves and Arsenal were left hanging on and were extremely fortunate to escape with a point in the end. Ordinarily I’d take positives from that and be encouraged. But we’ve been here before and we’ve seen what usually happens after. So I’ll enjoy this for what it was, a great game, a satisfying comeback and battling performance. And that’s it, I’ll draw absolutely no conclusions from it for what it means moving forward, because it doesn’t mean anything. Not for us anyway. Arsenal fans probably should be drawing some conclusions as this doesn’t bode well for them holding off Man City. It’s not just that we came back from 2-0 down against them, it’s just how utterly dominant we were and how little resistance they gave in that second half. All they had was a couple of counter attacks when we had - understandably - over committed and left the back door partially open. It's possible that we may have come back to get a draw against City but it sure as hell would not have looked like this and we'd have needed a lot of luck. That’s not a criticism of Arsenal, I'm just pointing out that they’re at the beginning of their journey and they don’t have the battle scars yet. That’s why I don’t think they’ll be able to hold off City. If they don’t, they’ll be much better equipped to deal with it next time because that’s how it goes. We know that as we’ve lived through it. Apparently Carragher had said before the game that if it’s a football match Arsenal will win because we currently can’t live with them, but if it becomes a slugfest and the crowd are into it then they wouldn't be able to live with us. He was right, we didn’t win but we should have and we saw both sides of what he was talking about. The opening half an hour we looked vulnerable and conceded twice. It wasn't one way traffic though by any means. We weren’t good but we did put together a few decent move and could easily have scored. Other than a five minute spell after we went two down, it wasn’t that bad and Arsenal weren’t massively on top. But in that spell our heads had gone down, they were full of themselves and we couldn’t get near them. We were actually trying to press, it’s not like we stood off them, we just couldn’t get to them and it was threatening to get out of hand.28 points -
That’s more like it. We looked like us again and we popped Everton’s new manager bounce bubble. What this result means for our top four hopes remains to be seen. What it means for Everton’s survival hopes also remains to be seen. For now though, I’m just going to enjoy it because there hasn’t been much to smile about since the World Cup break. There wasn’t much to smile about before it either, but things had definitely got worse so this stops the bleeding and with injured players on the way back there are reasons to be a bit more optimistic about the weeks ahead. I wasn’t even thinking about that last night though. Top four was not on my mind, the rest of the season was just not even an afterthought. Beating Everton was all that mattered and I wasn’t I knew what Everton would do and there were no surprises. They played exactly how I thought they would and they played at the level I thought they would. Shite. That wasn't in doubt. We were never going to be outplayed by Everton regardless of how we performed. The question for me was whether we’d be able to create and then take enough chances to ensure we won the game. I’ll be completely honest, I had no idea if we would and there has been nothing in recent weeks to suggest that we would, so I had some trepidation. My main worry going into this was we wouldn’t be able to break them down, that we’d waste whatever good chances we did create and we’d either be held to a 0-0 draw or we’d give something stupid away from a set-piece and lose. Thankfully none of that happened because we took two chances and got a slice of luck when we needed it from one of their set-pieces. I may as well start with that, because it was the pivotal moment in the game and who knows, it might prove to be the pivotal moment in the whole season if we kick on from this. Time will tell on that and if we go and lay an egg at Newcastle this weekend then it’s back to square one, but if we did go on a bit of a run now we might look back at that mad 15 seconds or so as when everything changed for us. We’d started the game really well and the opening 25 minutes we looked good. The shape was nice and compact, the work off the ball was good and we were winning a lot of second balls, and the passing was good too (except for Trent whose radar was way off early on). It wasn’t really translating into clear chances but you have to expect that against a team focused only on defending. You have to be patient but in our current run of form that’s easier said than done. We’re looking for that spark and we want it quickly. We don’t want to wait because confidence is such a fragile thing. Klopp and the players all spoke about what a great week of training they’d had and how they couldn’t wait for the game so they could start to put things right, which of course they did. But what if that Tarkowski header had been a few inches to the right and gone in off the post? We’d started the game brightly and didn’t look like a team devoid of confidence, while the crowd had been bang up for it too. If that goes in though? It’s a real sliding doors moment really I think. Everton had barely left their own half for 30 minutes or so but it had looked as though they’d weathered the storm and they were enjoying a reasonable little five minute spell that culminated in that effort against the post. At that moment if you’d asked Dyche how he thought it was going he’d no doubt have said “exactly as we drew it up”. Soak up pressure, give nothing away, wait for the set-pieces and try to capitalise on one. It was textbook Dyche. But then the Red Arrows made their long awaited comeback. You all know how much I love a breakaway goal like that. There’s nothing better, they’re just the absolute fucking best goals. So exhilarating to watch, and this one is right up there with the best we’ve seen. If you freeze that picture when Darwin first picks the ball up, there’s just no way you could see that being a goal.28 points -
Back on the course. Looking a bit gaunt understandably, but walking the course and carrying his own bag is good for any fella approaching 70.
27 points -
Monday Jun 10: Alan Hansen is seriously ill in hospital and the way people are talking it’s touch and go. He’s only 68 and no-one is saying what exactly is wrong with him, other than he’s “in critical condition”. This has upset me more than I would have expected. I’ve been thinking about him a lot today, and weirdly I saw Phil Thompson getting cash out of the machine at Maghull Square today and he looked devastated. His shoulders were slumped, his head was down and there was something about his walk too. No spring in his step, he just looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. I’m sure all of Jocky’s team-mates and friends are feeling the same way. Come on big fella, pull through. Not a great deal else going on today but United are showing their lack of class again. Ten Hag is still United manager but they’ve been talking with Tuchel and are still considering other candidates including Southgate. That Jim Ratcliffe is a cunt and he has no idea what he’s doing. Typical big businessman who thinks he has all the answers. If United think he’s going to fix their problems they’re kidding themselves. He’s no different to the other divvies they’ve had running things, except he is almost certainly a much worse human being. Horrible tory cunt. I’m actually feeling sorry for Ten Hag now, even though I think he’s a knobhead as well. Meanwhile, I’ve gone back to reading Bobby’s book and there are a couple of interesting things I thought worth mentioning. He spoke a few times in there about how hard Klopp’s training was and that although he loved it, some of the other lads found it hard after a while and it definitely contributed to the hangovers we had in the seasons after we won the league and missed out on the quadruple. He also suggested that the injuries he picked up late in his time here were just a result of the grind. He didn’t mention players by name, but it was obvious that Fabinho was one of the ones he was talking about in terms of not being able to deal with it. Hendo as well probably. The demands Klopp placed on them allowed them to be as successful as they were, but it takes a pretty heavy toll. It made me think about Mo and what happened to him this season. Not just the injury he picked up (which wasn’t with us, but I’m not sure that’s relevant either way if it’s a result of miles on the clock) but how he looked. We’ve seen the best of him and there’s a chance that his drop off could be quite steep. I say that because of how it got Sadio amongst others. Mo played more than any of them, I know he’s supremely fit but even so, it’s not the age it’s the mileage. The other thing I took from it was that this book makes me like Bobby a whole lot less than I did before, so I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re a big Bobby fan (which basically everyone is). All the God stuff annoyed me. No problem with his faith and it definitely seems to have helped him become a much better husband and father than he was before, but some of the absolute fucking nonsense he’s coming out with was winding me up. Anything good that happens is because it was God’s hand at work. Anything bad was nothing to do with the big man upstairs though. The best was when he said we won the Premier League and Champions League because he had asked God to let him win some big trophies. Presumably the Brazilian lads in the Spurs squad didn’t pray hard enough that night in Madrid then? The last few chapters of this book had my eyes hurting from all the rolling they were doing. I saw a compilation video today of some of Mo’s best bits from his time here. Not goals, but brilliant runs and insane footwork. None of it was from the past year or two and it really hit home to me just how incredible he was and how much he’s dropped off from that now. He’s still putting up the numbers and if you’re judging him off a spreadsheet you will probably argue he’s as good as ever, but when you see him flying around the pitch dribbling past people and putting own the afterburners. We don’t see that anymore and it’s only really when you see what he used to do that you realise it. He may still be worth a new contract depending on how he does next season, but it can’t be on the same terms he’s on now as he isn’t a 350k a week player anymore.27 points -
Sheffield United are as bad a Premier League as we’ve seen and this performance was barely good enough to beat them. Wretched, worse than the Luton game, because Luton are much better than these. I didn't enjoy a single minute of this game, it was awful. But we won and we’re in great shape when you look at the table. I do feel a little uneasy about us after this though, particularly after what happened at Luton. Our away form hasn’t been too impressive so far and this was a good opportunity to rack up a comfortable win and bang in a few goals. I’d have felt more confident about us moving forward if we’d done that, but after seeing this I still have that nagging doubt about us in games like this. You can’t drop points to shite because there are enough decent sides that will take points from you. Look at Fulham at the weekend, they played really well and we almost came unstuck. I said after that game I didn’t think we played as badly as a lot of other people did. Sometimes when you’re just a bit off and the opponent plays well, it can be trouble. That was what happened on Sunday. This wasn’t that. Sheffield United are genuinely terrible and we made really hard work of it. You can’t just put this down to “one of those nights” because our overall body of work against the body teams these last couple of years points to a trend. We don’t perform against them. Some will put that down to complacency, but it can’t be. After dropping points at Luton there’s no way we were taking the Blades lightly. So why did we look so impotent? To me it has to be tactical. I don’t know what the fuck we were even trying to do. I’m not going to make this about Trent and the inverted full back thing. It isn’t specifically that, although that’s part of it and it’s fair to wonder whether it’s something that helps us against shite. We’ve been the best team in the league since that switch was made for that Arsenal game last season, and that record speaks for itself I guess. And Trent played well in this game. It’s not about him, or about where he plays. But if you’re going to do that and you have Joe Gomez on the left, then most of the play is coming down the middle. Chris Wilder knew that and he’ll have been delighted by it. Just as Luton were. It’s easier to play against us when the width isn’t there. The space is down the sides and we ignored it for most of the game. It’s a regular thing and it’s frustrating. But we won, and we’re second in the table and the only reason we aren’t top is because of what happened at Spurs, so it seems somewhat churlish complaining about it. I just think it’s a problem that might bite us in the arse again and with every point likely to be crucial, I want to see us adapt our tactics when we face shite, especially away from home.27 points
