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We live to fight another day then. Defeat here would have buried us and considering the run we’d been on it wouldn’t have been much of a shock. Fulham is a difficult place to go when they’re at it, but thankfully they weren’t and it was fairly comfortable in the end. The game was still in the balance at half time though so it wasn’t a completely stress free afternoon, but once we got the second goal it was generally without drama and the third goal made it completely safe. In terms of how we played and what it means moving forward, we played ok and no-one has a clue what it means. Winning this doesn’t solve all of our issues but it should go some way to refocusing everyone and it’s something to build on. The points are the only thing that matters now anyway. Performances are nice and all, and they make it easier to get results, but winning is all that counts now. Just find a way. Five games left, we need to win them all and even that might not be enough. But it might be, so we’ve got to find a way to win them all and then see how the cards fall. Going to Craven Cottage on a Sunday after a fruitless Thursday night trip to Italy isn’t easy, so this is a great win all things considered. Klopp made several changes but he had to really. You can make those changes based on freshness, but you could just as easily make them based on performances. The only players who should consider themselves ‘safe’ after the past week or two are Alisson, Virgil, Trent and Robbo. Every other place is up for grabs as far as I’m concerned. Some players (Endo and Macca) have looked knackered, some are finding their way back to sharpness after injury (Jota and Jones), while the others have just not been good enough (everyone else). So Klopp shuffled his pack. Konate, Macca and Salah were rested, while Nunez wasn’t selected despite not starting in midweek. Fair to say his omission was not based on tiredness, and he might not start at Goodison on Wednesday either. In fact, it makes a degree of sense not to considering Everton will be defending so deep it’s going to feel like being in the Death Star trash compactor for our forward line.

Monday Apr 15: Feels somewhat inappropriate to be as down about the Palace game as I am considering what today is. It’s always a sobering day, especially when you see some of the things posted on twitter by survivors or the families of one of the 97. To be honest, I try and avoid it, which I’m not proud of, but even now after all these years it’s so upsetting and the sense of injustice is as strong as ever, and I didn’t even lose anyone close to me. I never know what to say either, even JFT97 feels kind of hollow now because what does it even mean? There’ll never be justice, I think the only thing we can do is ensure they’re never forgotten, which of course they won’t be. The Blues had a nice banner on display at Chelsea, as they usually do at this time of year. For every shithead who sings Always the Victims there are a dozen sound Blues who know the score. One of the best was always Bill Kenwright, and I found myself thinking of him today for some reason. He was always a top fella when it came to standing with us on this issue. Everton’s support is always appreciated and maybe that’s part of the reason I didn’t take any particular pleasure in them losing 6-0 tonight. Maybe it’s because it was Chelsea beating them. I don’t know, but whatever the reason it did nothing for me. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted them to lose, of course I did, but it’s just not really getting my juices flowing anymore because it kind of feels pointless. If they ended up in the bottom three the PL would give them some points back on appeal anyway. Tuesday Apr 16: Bradley is only going to be out for 2-3 weeks which feels like a let off as it looked like a bad one when it happened. Hopefully Trent doesn’t need to be overplayed and rushed back, as this has been happening all season. We get one player back, then someone in the same position goes out. It’s been so weird. Meanwhile Keita has been suspended for the rest of the season after going home when he found out he wasn’t in the team. What a train wreck of a season he’s had. I wasn’t expecting great things from him but fucking hell, his career has gone into the toilet. It’s a bit weird in the sense that he actually seems a bit of a cunt, when despite his under-achieving here he seemed extremely popular with everyone and there were never any murmurings of him being trouble. Maybe that’s the Klopp effect? In the CL quarter finals tonight PSG went to Barca and sprung an upset to go through. I didn’t watch any of it but some of the lads in the chat did and their view on it was similar to what I saw on twitter. An awful lot of talk about a ref who looked like he’d been paid off. Now the first thing to say here is fuck Barcelona, they were nobbling refs for years so if PSG did get to this ref then you reap what you sow. The second thing to say is fuck PSG too, hopefully Dortmund send them packing and go on to win the whole thing. Meanwhile, FA Cup replays have been scrapped from next season and there’s a load of uproar about it, with Evertonians predictably leading the charge against “the sly six”. Look, I’m not in favour of replays being scrapped either, but apparently every Premier League club voted this through, it’s not just “the Super League six” or whatever. And since when did Everton become the Patron Saint of Little Clubs? These cunts were part of the original breakaway Premier League and they recently voted through that multi club loan bullshit thing too, which sure as hell wasn’t to help those less fortunate than them. Actually I’m not sure there is anyone less fortunate than them, but you get my point. And all those points they had docked? There was a reason for that. They cheated, trying to gain an advantage over the Burnleys and Leeds of this world. So they need to pipe the fuck down. In terms of the replay thing, I have zero sympathy with Premier League clubs on this issue, for several reasons. Firstly, if you aren’t good enough to beat a lower league club at the first attempt then that’s on you. Secondly, virtually every top flight club fields weakened sides in the cup now, even those who aren’t in Europe, so if they have to play an extra game then fine, pick the squad players or give kids a chance. Every PL club has enough players to put a team out without having to risk their top players. The solution to this is simple though. Let the two clubs decide beforehand if they want a replay or not. So if we’re playing Man United, both teams will want that settled on the day. If we’re playing Newport, they’ll probably quite like the idea of a potential replay, which is fair enough. Bottom line here though is that it feels like Klopp and Guardiola (Arteta to some extent too) are getting most of the blame for this shit, even though it’s got fuck all to do with them. The clubs had a vote and it was unanimous.