tlw content

Another fucking miserable weekend. It could have been worse but when we have a nightmare like that there’s very little consolation to be had in any other result that goes our way. The result at Old Trafford was as good as we could have hoped for. We couldn’t afford either of them to win so this was a relief. It was also funny the way it ended. Goldbridge’s reaction alone was worth Everton having their moment of joy. Just look at this (from 6:15 onward) …. I know I’m stating the obvious here, but I think maybe we find it easy to forget as this is becoming the new normal now. But it isn’t normal. Watching MOTD and seeing United and Everton players walking out in deathly silence is just fucking weird. This no fans thing is so shit that I even miss hearing United fans at Old Trafford. Seriously. I’m looking at this now and it’s just grim. Maguire leading United out and there’s just complete silence from an empty stadium. I hate it. Like I say, I know that’s an obvious thing to say but I do think maybe we’re becoming desensitised to it after so long? I don’t miss their away following though, there’s literally no worse sound in the world than the nasal drone that emanates from a United away end. If they were never allowed inside stadiums again it would still be too soon. Horrible cunts. Anyway, Cavani headed United in front from a peach of a cross by Rashford and then Fernandez added a spectacular second from 25 yards. Great strike but he was given all day to line that up. Everton players just stood and watched. It was bizarre to see. United hadn’t even played especially well to lead 2-0 but that’s fairly standard. They rarely look that impressive but they don’t need to because they’ve got goals in them. Cavani, Rashford, Fernandez, Martial and Greenwood are more often than not going to produce some individual moment of quality and that can do a lot to offset a lack of great team play. They should have gone on to win by a landslide but because they’re not that good and have significant flaws throughout the side (and in the dugout) they threw it away (twice) in the second half. The Blues pulled one back in fortuitous circumstances when De Gea pushed out a harmless Calvert-Lewin cross directly to Doucoure who had an open goal. Shite once again from De Gea. Rodriguez then equalised three minutes later. United had gotten complacent but once it was level again they started playing once more and began creating chances again. McTominay restored their lead with a back header that Olsen should have saved. Then with the last kick of the game Calvert-Lewin prodded home after United didn’t deal with a free-kick. Dogshit again from De Gea who stayed rooted to his line until it was too late. Mad that a game was strewn with shite keeping yet Pickford was nowhere in sight. Everton are shit. I’m sick of saying it. It’s true though. But don’t blame me if they finally win at Anfield. If that happens it isn’t because of anything I’ve said. It’s because Everton are shit and for some reason, all of a sudden we can no longer beat shit teams. And they fall into that category because they are, without question, shit. Speaking of shit, Southampton bounced back from their 9-0 loss at Old Trafford by…. losing 3-2 to ten man Newcastle. Taki scored a lovely goal though and frankly that’s all I care about now where Southampton are concerned. I’ve sort of rooted from them this past year or so because of how well they rebounded from losing 9-0 to Leicester and because of Danny Ings. And the kit too. I love the kit. But they can fuck off now. I don’t care that they had two men sent off against United. You can’t lose 9-0. And you certainly can’t do it in consecutive seasons. They should have beaten Newcastle though. They battered them, especially after the Geordies went one and then two men down in the second half. Newcastle led through on loan Joe Willock and doubled their lead when Almiron’s cross shot was deflected in by Bednarek. Taki pulled one back with a blistering finish on his left foot. I know it’s easy to say this but he wouldn’t have scored that playing for us. He’s only had limited opportunities but when he has played he’s never shown that kind of purpose or confidence. It was one touch and then BANG. A fucking belting finish. Playing for us he wouldn’t even have attempted it. We know he’s quality because we saw what he did against us for Salzburg. Maybe it was just too much for him coming here and joining the then European Champions. He’s never looked comfortable from the moment he arrived so hopefully he can restore some self belief by doing well for the Saints. Almiron made it 3-1 when he latched onto an Alisson style sloppy pass by McCarthy and finished confidently. Ward-Prowse did what he does and buried a 30 yard free-kick right in the top corner to make it 2-3 and Hendrick was sent off for a second yellow card (both for fouls on Taki). It was a total bombardment of the Newcastle goal after that but somehow they held on for the points, even though Schar was stretchered off and they had to play 15 minutes with only nine men. You know what’s really galling? Southampton beat us. The cunts. Mind you, Newcastle got a draw against us too. God we’ve become fucking shit haven’t we? Saint-Maximin’s twitter game continues to excel. He changed his name to Sam Maximum this week after hearing that was how Paul Merson pronounced his name. Then he trolled Sunderland with a funny tweet after one of their fans had called Newcastle shit. I like him a lot. Good player, funny lad. In fact, he’s now “My boy Saint-Maximin”. Arsenal were without David Luiz after his ridiculous red card was upheld. I’m still pissed off about that. What a fucking disgrace that was. They fell behind inside two minutes at Villa Park as Watkins converted a cut back by Traore. That was the only goal of the game although both sides had plenty of chances. Villa are decent and Grealish was boss again, but Arsenal played pretty well and those kids up front caught the eye once more. They were denied a stonewall pen too when Lacazette was pulled down by the keeper on a corner. He was just stood next to the keeper, minding his own business, and then next thing he’s being dragged to the floor. The ref gave Villa the free-kick, which was understandable from his vantage point but what the fuck was VAR doing? Brighton and Burnley met at Turf Moor in the battle of the Anfield victors. Yeah, shit name that I know. I’m struggling for anything better though. Dunk’s header gave the visitors a first half advantage but Gudmundsen lashed in an equaliser after the break. Burnley should have won. We’ve got Fulham to thank for West Ham not overtaking us. I don’t think I’ll ever get over having to look over my shoulder at West Ham. It makes me sick to my stomach even thinking about it but this is where we are. Soucek was sent off in stoppage time for an accidental elbow on Mitrovic. Fucking unbelievable decision. Mason and Dean, the chuckle brothers, strike again. These two have been fucking rampant these past couple of weeks. I’ve got two words for you to explain this - spread betting. Dean is sitting out games this weekend because of ‘death threats’ made to his family on social media. Fuck off. If a football fan is going to kill you or a member of your family he isn’t going to warn you on twitter first. As if Mike Dean cares about something like this anyway. You know what would upset Mike Dean? If people weren’t talking about him. He fucking loves all this shit. Soucek’s red card was rescinded, which means that Dean and VAR have had two red cards overturned in a week. It’s rank negligence. You’ve got access to all the replays and angles you need and you’re still getting it so wrong that the decision is being overturned, even though we all know that overturning decisions is something they are absolute loathe to do. Even Mitrovic was appealing to Dean not to send him off, but let’s not fucking anoint him a saint just yet as if he hadn’t flung himself to the floor in the first place this wouldn’t have happened. Chelsea won again and now I’m officially concerned. Massively concerned. Red alert concerned. They’re one point behind us now. At this point I can’t say with any confidence we’ll finish above them or Leicester, let alone United. Mount’s sharp finish put them ahead but a comical own goal by Rudiger got the Blades back on terms. Chelsea’s lead was restored via a fucking scandalous penalty awarded by VAR. Again, I can’t believe that was given. Timo Walcott raced onto a short backpass and then completely shit his pants when the keeper came on. He had no idea what to do and ended up knocking the ball one way and then running straight into the keeper. If anything he committed the foul there. It’s just not a penalty. You could tell at first view but it was even more obvious on the replays. These cunts all need sacking. None of them are any good and the scary thing is they’re getting worse. Fucking Shearer said it was the right call. Wouldn’t have been saying that if it was Mo. Cunt. Speaking of cunts, Harry Kane was back this weekend. Back with a goal, too, predictably. Could have had more as he was brilliant. Son got the second when he finished off a typical Spurs counter led by Moura. Here’s something you probably haven't realised and it’s going to ruin your day. Spurs are four points behind us with a game in hand. Can you believe that? I honestly thought they were about ten behind us. This is fucking grim and getting worse by the week. I remember being staggered when I heard United were only a couple of points back. Then it was Leicester. Then Everton. Then West Ham. Then Chelsea came from nowhere and now it's fucking Spurs. Oh, and don’t forget Villa. Five points behind with two games in hand. I’m half expecting West Brom to suddenly appear in the rear view mirror in a few weeks time. They’ll win one game and suddenly the gap will be two points or something mad. Ok, maybe not them as the Baggies are fucking woeful. Of course we couldn’t beat them, but that merely proves it. When it comes to facing us, the shitter they are the less likely they’ll fall. As I said earlier though, if you disregard our horror show against City things didn’t go too badly for us on the whole this weekend. United, Everton and West Ham all drew on Saturday and Leicester followed suit by failing to beat Wolves on Sunday. Really poor game. Wolves had the better of the chances but Vardy came off the bench and almost won it late on. He’s fit again at just the wrong fucking time for us. We’ll get beat by them this weekend. They’re in great form and we’re in free-fall. If we win that game I’ll be fucking stunned to be honest. Finally, Monday night football and my boy Bamford hit his 100th career goal as Leeds beat Palace 2-0. Harrison opened the scoring with a deflected shot that gave the keeper no chance. Bamford twice went close before he eventually found the net. His performances in the last few weeks have been phenomenal. He looks as good as anybody in the league at the moment. It’s incredible what confidence can do for a player. He got off to a good start this season and it’s just snowballed from there. We’ve been linked with that Raphinha this week. From the little I’ve seen he looks good. Not sure he’s better than Harrison but he’s on loan from City so we wouldn’t be going for him anyway. Maybe Bielsa will take Firmino in a straight swap for my boy? Relax, I’m joking. Or am I? No, I am. I’m not being serious. Well maybe a little. But no, I’m joking. Honest. Maybe. Hold on, I’ve just a had a horrible thought….. *checks table* phew, that’s a relief. Eight points back with one game in hand. We don’t need to worry about Leeds until the week after next.

Along with signing Ben Davies from Preston North End on Deadline Day, the reigning Premier League champions also secured the services of Ozan Kabak. Brought in on loan until the end of the season, the Reds have the option to recruit the 20-year-old permanently for £18 million in the summer transfer window. As such, the onus is now on Kabak to prove that he’s capable of playing Premier League football for Liverpool for years to come. So, is he the short-term solution to ongoing defensive issues? How Does He Compare? To declare the 20-year-old a panic buy is somewhat unfair given that he was on Liverpool’s radar before the start of the 2020-21 season. Although he played his part in a Schalke defence that conceded 49 goals in 19 matches, that doesn’t tell the whole story. Regarding how he compares to Joe Gomez, Matip, and Virgil van Dijk, the statistics make for interesting reading. According to Squawka’s comparison matrix, in 2019-20, Kabak completed 42.8 passes per game. In relation to Gomez, this is considerably less, as the Englishman played 78.8. Of course, it’s worth remembering that Liverpool often dominated the ball last season, whereas Schalke was less commanding. Moreover, the 20-year-old also won 3.9 aerial duels, 0.7 more than Gomez. Crucially, the Turkish-born defender isn’t shy to play long passes, attempting 8.8 per 90, just 1.1. less than Van Dijk. One area that stands out concerns ground duel success. Although tasked with defending more, Kabak enjoyed a ground success rate of 68.32 per cent last season. By comparison, Gomez, Matip, and Van Dijk recorded 52.5, 54.29, and 69.57 per cent, respectively. The Importance of a Partnership At face value, Kabak’s arrival could be seen as a panic buy following a lack of movement in the early stages of the winter window. It appeared that the Reds weren’t going to dip into the market until Joel Matip suffered a season-ending injury in Liverpool’s 3-1 win at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. As per reports, the six-time European champions enquired about numerous options, including David Carmo, Duje Caleta-Car, and Samuel Umtiti. However, in the end, they opted for the financially-sensible solution in Kabak. In Kabak, the Reds have acquired a defender capable of playing on the right side of the defence. Davies, on the other hand, is left-footed. Between the pair, this will bring much-needed balance to the champions’ backline. During his time at Preston, who are 40/1 in Championship betting to finish in the top six in 2020-21 as of February 8th, Davies established himself as one of the best ball-playing defenders in the division. As such, with Kabak’s aerial dominance and the Englishman’s passing ability, as well as their combined pace, the Reds now have the tools to form a natural defensive partnership. Playing for His Future Although Kabak has only just arrived on Merseyside, his future in Jurgen Klopp’s squad isn’t guaranteed. With an option buy, the Reds are under no obligation to spend £18 million on the 20-year-old come the end of the season. That said, should he play to his potential, then Liverpool may have a gem on their hands. Given that he's comfortable on the floor and in the air, Kabak’s assertiveness may be exactly what Liverpool are missing.

I’m writing this immediately after the game so I can get it out of the way and try to forget it ever happened. This was an absolute shambles and I dread to think what’s going to happen between now and the end of the season because the team looks completely broken now. Klopp’s version of events afterwards couldn’t be further from my own but that’s fine because I don’t think he believed a word of it. He’s trying to boost flagging morale and putting the boot in and saying how shit this was is hardly going to help. He’s said the right things because the confidence of this team has gone completely and he needs to rebuild it. There’s no way he can possibly think that this performance was fine though. It wasn’t. It was shite. Even at 1-1 before Alisson’s sabotage act this was shite. That ugly bastard in goal for City didn’t have to make a save of note. By full time he still hadn’t. It's a recurring theme now. Too often we don't work keepers enough. We’d marginally been the better side in the first half but that’s only because City seemed to be in second gear and were possibly still gripped by their “Anfield hoodoo”, especially when they missed a pen. We hadn’t been good though. Not at all. I think we caught City by surprise by how shit we were. They were geared up for fire and brimstone and we gave them wet bogroll. Like I said last week, should change the sign to "This is NOT Anfield". In the end City won this without even extending themselves. They didn’t even break sweat because it was so easy they didn’t need to. Forget the mistakes that handed them the points and just focus on how we played. Not good enough. This just doesn’t even look like Klopp’s Liverpool. It’s unrecognisable. They aren’t mentality monsters currently. They’re feeling sorry for themselves and only a few of them look like they’re even still fighting now. Most of them look shell shocked. And fucking knackered. There's no energy, no zip. Like I say, I thought this performance was meek, timid, overly cautious and devoid of all confidence and belief even BEFORE Alisson fucking handed them the game on a plate. The first half was mostly shite but it maybe didn’t seem that bad because City offered absolutely nothing themselves until Sterling won a penalty. Gundogan skied it into the Kop but ultimately it didn’t matter. This will sound stupid but I knew after about five minutes we weren’t winning this game. One incident was all it took for me to come to that conclusion. Ederson kicked the ball straight at Mané and for a second I thought “aye aye, here we go”. Ten seconds later the ball was back with Alisson. What the fuck????? That’s not Klopp’s Liverpool. It just isn’t. It’s the exact fucking opposite of Klopp’s Liverpool. Klopp's Liverpool don't go backwards. They go forwards. All the fucking time. Over and over and over. They take risks. They lose the ball but they win it back and then shove it straight down the opposition's throats. We've turned into a team full of Gareth Barrys. Fucking slow, boring, crabs. It was a recurring theme in the first half. Any time we picked the ball up with City’s players out of position, we slowed it down, didn’t commit to the break and just kept possession while they got back into their defensive shape. It was slow and ponderous and safe and scared. As I say, the exact opposite of who this team is. It was soul destroying to watch it. Just what the fuck has happened to them? And don’t tell me it’s Virgil not being there. The centre back thing is a bit of a red herring. I’m not saying it isn’t a big factor because of course it’s hurt us and contributed to some of the shit we’ve witnessed these last couple of months, but it’s far more than just that. We’ve lost three home games on the spin and we never look like scoring. Even the goal we got in this game was a penalty after a defensive mistake. It was nothing to do with us breaking them down. Is it the midfield or is it the forwards? It’s a chicken and egg question. Do the strikers look bad because the midfield (and full backs) aren’t getting them the ball? Or are the midfield looking bad because the forwards are doing fuck all with the balls they get? It’s both but with a heavier emphasis on the front players for me. City are much better defensively these days because they don’t commit as many players forward and they don’t leave the centre backs one v one in the way they used to. Still, they don’t play with everyone behind the ball like most of our opponents do and there were plenty of opportunities for us to create chances. We never looked like doing so though. We had one good chance in the first half that Sadio headed over. Should have scored, but he looked way off the pace all day. He probably wasn’t fit but we couldn’t afford to leave him out as that would have meant Origi playing. Not that he could have been any worse than Firmino. Bobby’s a problem now. No doubt about it. The occasional good game gives us false hope that he’s going to get back to being the Bobby we all loved. Not gonna happen. This is who he is now and it’s pretty heartbreaking to see. It’s not just him though. The whole team just doesn’t look right. I’d like to think that playing centre backs at centre back and freeing up Hendo and Fabinho to revert to midfield will fix it, but I think it goes deeper than that now. We’ve got big problems. I can live with being beaten by City but not like this. Not without even making them work for it. Where is the fight? The pressing? The passion? The desire? I didn’t see ANY of those things. Just a meek, timid, scared performance that got exactly what it deserved. This isn’t Heavy Metal Football. Fuck me, it’s not even Ed Sheeran Football. I’d settle for Ed Sheehan over this. What we’re seeing is “Adele Football”. Feeling sorry for yourself, whiny fucking cryarsing shite. No fans continues to absolutely kill us. Those half arsed breaks when no-one wanted to take a risk and instead just went backwards? That doesn’t happen with a full stadium roaring the lads on. And we definitely don’t play the game at City’s pace inside a packed Anfield. We play it at our pace. And they can’t live with our pace. We’ve seen it time and again. This was as far removed from that as it’s possible to be. There was no intensity, no zip, no passion, no fight. It was a behind closed doors training match. Just like most of these fucking lockdown games. No wonder City are running away with it. These games suit them perfectly. They’re winning games without even having to extend themselves. They might even win the league by a record margin the way the rest of us are all going. Not that it matters. What City do is no longer of any consequence to us. They’re out of sight beyond the horizon and there’s no point us even worrying about what they’re doing now. We’ve slipped so far, so fast, that now we have to be looking at the results of fucking Everton and West Ham. And resurgent Chelsea are right up our arses now too. I feel sick even typing that, but that’s our situation. I don’t know how we reverse this tail spin and I no longer think Klopp knows either. It just feels like a case of getting this season over with and trying to regroup for next year. There is not a hope in hell that we can win the Champions League and it’s now just about ensuring we stay in the top four. There’s just not really any area of the side functioning properly. Thiago is a quality footballer who looks like he’s playing in the wrong team. He looks like a Man City midfielder. He’d fit perfectly into their side but he looks completely out of place for us. He’s not playing badly as such, but he’s just not helping us in any way is he? I don’t even blame him, it’s not his fault. It’s like putting the world’s best violin player in a rock band. The one big caveat I’d add to any Thiago criticism is that he was signed to play in a midfield with Henderson and Fabinho and that’s happened maybe, what, once? There’s no shortage of effort from him but he needs to stop picking up early bookings that mean he’s on a knife edge for the rest of the game. Klopp isn’t helping matters with some of his changes either. Shaq for Thiago made sense as we needed a spark and Thiago was walking that tightrope. Taking off Jones when he was our best player was baffling though. I love Milner and have no issue with him being brought on to give us a bit of intensity. It shouldn’t have been for Jones though. Get Firmino off, play Jones or Shaq as the false nine. Just do something fucking different because there was not a hope in hell that Firmino was going to do anything in this game. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference as there was no belief in that team at all, but it couldn’t have been any worse. Hendo tried to rally them and Salah kept plugging away but even after we equalised we didn’t seem to even get much of a lift from it. Again, not having fans killed us there as it’s so hard to create any emotion and momentum in an empty stadium. Still, at 1-1 we were comfortable enough even if we didn’t look like scoring. The only threat from City was Sterling running at Trent and Fabinho. He won the penalty doing that (definite pen for me, Fabinho shouldn’t be hanging out a leg like that) and he set up their opener by doing it. Just too easy really. But we came back from that with Mo’s penalty (superbly taken). At that point we had no idea of what was to come. Fucking hell. Not gonna lie, I’m fucking disgusted with Alisson. I know he’s been great for us and that everyone is entitled to an off day. I get all that. I’m not calling for him to be sold out or even dropped. I’m just saying right now, as I type this, I’m fucking disgusted, angry, resentful and it’s not something I’ll get over quickly. If it was just a case of being beaten by shots he should be saving I’d feel differently. But what he did was cocky, reckless, irresponsible and just fucking stupid. I hope something is said to him. Publicly Klopp and his team-mates need to back him but privately I hope they tear a strip off him as there’s no excuse for this. I don’t know what the fuck he was doing. He was flirting with that shit even before it happened. Taking forever on the ball and inviting pressure. I noticed it in the first half. Just too fucking casual and cocky. Was he trying to prove a point to Ederson that he can play with his feet just as well as him? Because he fucking can’t. As great as Alisson is, when it comes to his ‘footballing ability’ he’s massively over-rated. He’s decent, that’s all. Nothing special with his feet at all. I thought he was when he first arrived because that was his reputation and I bought into it. Truth is though, he’s not that great with his feet and his passes often go astray. Which is fine. I don’t expect him to be Xabi Alonso and in goalkeeper terms he’s definitely above average with his feet. He’s clearly not as good as he thinks he is though, as we’ve just seen, much to our embarrassment. He didn’t learn from the close call in the first half and even after he got caught and conceded a goal he carried on doing it, the tit. I can’t get my head around what he did. We’d got back into the game and who knows, maybe we could have sneaked a winner. City weren’t doing much, but then Alisson took an age on the ball, got it stuck under his feet and almost got caught out. But he got lucky and when the ball came back to him a second or two later he should have just been launching that. Instead he played some shitty casual half arsed chip straight to Foden and just like that it’s 2-1. And then, unforgivably, he did the exact same thing a few minutes later. A shitty pass to Fabinho that put him under pressure, and then seconds later a pass straight to Silva who set up Sterling to make it 3-1. Unbelievable. And if that wasn’t enough, he then allowed a Foden shot to fly past him to rub salt in the already seeping wound. Even I’d have saved that. It was straight at him. His head had completely gone though. This is the worst individual goalkeeping performance I’ve ever seen from a Liverpool keeper. It was worse than Karius, not least because at least Karius had the excuse of a concussion. It was marginally worse than David James against Coventry too, although I may be allowing recency bias to influence me there. James cost us a title. This title was lost weeks ago. I know that our keepers are instructed to play out from the back but that’s just not an excuse for what he did. You have to be able to react to the situation and the opposition. Playing out in those situations, when City were smelling blood and you’ve already been caught, it’s just not acceptable. Fucking get it as far away from your goal as possible and then clear your head. I also blame the defenders for continuing to pass to him though when his head was clearly up his arse. You know what though, fuck this, I don’t even want to talk about it anymore. It was another miserable experience in a miserable fucking season. And I’m getting sick of these bummings we’re letting City give us too. That’s three in as many seasons now. A team as good as ours shouldn’t be letting this happen so often. I just don’t know where we go from here now. I said a few weeks ago after we lost to Burnley that it probably wasn’t rock bottom. I had hoped that the Old Trafford defeat in the cup might have been the low point, especially as we won the next couple and looked to have our mojo back. But then came Brighton and now this. Have we hit rock bottom now? My gut feeling is no we haven’t. I feel like it’s going to get worse. We might even lose the derby, even though Everton are shit. We’re shit too currently. They’ll never, ever, have a better chance to win at Anfield. I mean let’s face it, every pother cunt is winning here now so why not them? Hopefully I’m wrong and Klopp can make the most of a full week’s training with no midweek game to fix things. I understood the logic in playing Henderson and Fabinho at the back just because it was Man City. Against anyone else I wouldn’t have been in favour of that, but I could see why Klopp went with that for this one game. Now though? Fuck that. We’ve got nothing to lose now. This isn’t working so let’s change it. Play whichever two you like from Phillips, Davies and Kabak in defence, get Fabinho and Henderson back in midfield and let’s see if we can start looking more like Liverpool again. This title defence has been fucking embarrassing. Star man is Jones. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Fabinho, Henderson, Robertson (Tsimikas); Wijnaldum, Jones (Milner), Thiago (Shaqiri); Salah, Firmino, Mané:

Sunday Jan 31: West Ham 1 L 3. Great stuff. Amazing goals, outstanding team performance and three points. Mo was on fire, Thiago is becoming more influential and what can you say about Hendo? What a man. What a captain. What a centre back. Milner joked afterwards that Hendo needs to be careful because if he keeps playing like that he’ll stay at the back. I could see that happening when he gets older but I can also see it happening in the next month or two because he’s at least as good as Fabinho and he might be better. He’s certainly more vocal and that’s going to be important if Phillips or Williams are playing. It would also allow us to get Fabinho back as the six. On the transfer front it looks like we’re actually getting a centre half. Finally. Not someone that many would have expected but beggars can’t be choosers as they say, and bringing in one of the top defenders in the Championship whose playing style suits our game is about as good as we could have hoped for considering FSG are adamant they aren’t spending anything. Irrespective of who that player is (most of us wouldn’t have a clue who the best defenders in the Championship are), we’d all have taken that at this stage, right? Except the loons still demanding we pay £80m for Koulibaly or Upamecano. This doesn’t come close to compensating for losing Van Dijk, Gomez and Matip (I doubt we’ll see him for a couple of months at best), but it does make us stronger because it’s another competent option and it’s a bit of depth. I say competent because I’m pretty sure that Ben Davies won’t be shit. He might not prove to be good enough in the long run, we’ll see, but he won’t be shit because if he was they wouldn’t have signed him. His name wasn’t plucked out of a hat, it was picked off a spreadsheet and signed off by Klopp. He’s got 250 games under his belt in the football league. It’s not the Premier League but you learn an awful lot as a centre back playing 250 games at football league level. The fact he’s in the Championship doesn’t bother me as half the players he’ll come up against have played in the Championship. The gap isn’t as big as people make out. Leeds were in the Championship last year but their players don’t look out of their depth do they? Players develop at different ages, especially centre backs. Ben White was playing in the Championship last year but no-one would have bat an eyelid if we’d signed him as he’s seen as a great prospect. We don’t need a great prospect though, we need someone who can do a job now. Other players will have a higher ceiling than Davies but our priority needed to be who can help us the most immediately. The fact Davies is 25 and not 22 is seen by some as a negative but to me it’s the opposite. You can ask “if he was that good why is he still playing at that level” but it’s not that simple. If he was 22 he probably wouldn’t have the experience or maturity to handle being thrown in at the deep end, unless he’d been playing every week from the age of 17. Davies has maturity which should help him adapt quicker. He will have been way down the list of options and we’re only signing him because the price is right and we couldn’t get any of the preferred targets. Let’s not pretend otherwise. That doesn’t mean he can’t be a success here though. This feels old school. I’m not talking about Clemence and Keegan from Scunthorpe, or Phil Neal from Northampton. For some reason the one that came to mind for me was David Burrows from West Brom. I had no idea who he was when we signed up but from his very first game I loved him. I’m not expecting Davies to be Alan Hansen but I’m confident he’ll be solid and will do what we need him to do because he’s got the skins on his wall. If Rhys Williams had 250 professional games under his belt we wouldn’t need to sign anyone. Well, we probably still would because ideally we need to be bringing in two, but you get my point. I keep saying how experience is more important at centre back than anywhere else but ideally you also need someone with the skillset to play in your specific style (which by all accounts this lad has), so the signing of Ben Davies is fine by me. Monday Feb 1: You wait all month for one and then two arrive at the same time. Davies is joined by Ozan Kabak, who we were linked with for much of last summer. The price wasn’t right then but fuck me it is now. £1m loan fee with an option - but no obligation - to buy for £18m in the summer? If there are any flies on Michael Edwards they’re paying fucking rent. With FSG being the mingebags they are it's a good job we've got someone like Edwards doing deals. Weirdly, I don’t actually have especially high hopes for Kazak THIS season and I expect Davies will play more (no idea why, just a hunch) but this is just a great deal. If Upamecano is the one they really want and they are prepared to pay his £40m buyout in the summer, these deals don’t impact that at all. We could loan out Davies next season and/or we could decline the option on Kabak if he doesn’t cut the mustard. And if Kabak turns out to be boss (which he might, as he was a target even before we were desperate) then we’ve got a steal. No sooner was it announced that we’d signed Kabak, Klopp was having to inform us that Matip is done for the season. Not a shock but it is sad. I feel bad for Joel. He’s such a great player and although we already knew he was injury prone, Klopp added some context to that by explaining how he’d been rushed back at the first available opportunity every time because our need was so great, and that hasn’t helped. It’s just a massive shame. Matip must be fucking devastated at this latest injury, which it turns out he picked up when he made that quality tackle on Son. He played on with damaged ankle ligaments but as soon as you stop moving and take the weight off it then it hits you, and at half time it ballooned up. Klopp suggested that the lay off with the ankle will be used as a chance to heal everything else and come up with a training regime to strengthen him and sort this once and for all. They did something similar with Sturridge, and it kind of worked as I don’t think he picked up a single injury in his final season here. That horse had already bolted though. Lallana’s final year with us wasn’t as bad either but he’s still picking up knocks every other week at Brighton. If Matip was dependable with his fitness he’d be an £80m player as he’s that good. But he isn’t dependable and I don’t see the club wanting to pay him 100k a week to play a dozen games a season. Other transfer activity saw Van den Berg go to Preston on loan to replace Davies and Minamino went to Southampton on loan after they were rebuffed in a bid to take Neco there. Good move all around that. Taki needs games and for whatever reason he wasn’t getting them here. Southampton’s high press, high energy style makes them a desirable club for him to go to and if he does well there then he either comes back to play a part here or he increases his value and we can move him on. So a surprisingly productive 24 hours then. I had said recently that if we brought someone in on deadline day I’d be annoyed because we should have done it sooner. I take it back. I’m not especially annoyed and I can see exactly why things played out the way they did and given the restrictions he was operating under Edwards has done a great job. We could have signed Davies on Jan 1 but it’s obvious he wasn’t the first choice and only became a primary target when deals for other players proved impossible. It’s also possible (likely) that FSG weren’t prepared to sanction ANY deal on Jan 1 and things only changed because Matip got seriously injured at Spurs. Singing Kabak at the beginning of the window was clearly not possible. That was obviously one of those deals where its who blinks first. Schalke wouldn’t have agreed to this deal earlier in the window but Edwards held his nerve and got us a great deal. By bringing Davies in that strengthened our hand with Schalke, who at one point probably thought they had us over a barrel. When Edwards threatened to walk away when they insisted on an ‘obligation’ clause, they knew he wasn’t buffing. So yeah, I’m satisfied with how it played out in the end in terms of what Klopp and Edwards did. The only problem I have with it is that had Matip not been injured when he was (especially with Fabinho out too) I’m not sure whether they’d have been given the free light to sign anyone, let alone two. Tuesday Feb 2: am: Klopp says Taki wasn’t playing much partly because he’s short and we don’t have much height since we lost our defenders. I expect a lot of people will see that as him just making excuses and being kind, but it makes a lot of sense really. After the Palace game Taki mysteriously fell behind Origi. The general opinion among fans was that this didn’t make much sense, but now it does. It’s a straight choice between Shaq and Minamino because Klopp isn’t going to pick both when we have no centre backs and very little height in the rest of the side. I’m looking forward to seeing how he links up with Ings now as this move could be the making of him. pm: Ok fucking bring him home. Southampton are a disgrace. Losing 9-0 once in your history is bad enough but doing it twice in as many seasons is enough reason to be fucking shut down. Cancel Southampton, the embarrassing cunts. Wednesday Feb 3: L 0 Brighton 1. Well that was grim. Worse than Burnley. We started both halves brightly but fizzled out when we didn’t score and lost of this game was just awful. Brighton weren’t troubled. They had a plan, they stuck to it and they deserved to win because they were more dangerous. Right now we’re just one of those teams that will win some and lose some and draw loads. The kind of team that finishes somewhere between 3rd and 6th. It won’t take too much for us to be better than that and secure second spot, but we’re not going to be anywhere near City as we’re dealing with too much right now and for them everything is just ticking over nicely. The lads having to fill in at the back have done great and even tonight I thought Phillips and Hendo were good, as was Kelleher who came in for the unwell Alisson. They weren’t the reason we lost. Other than Villa (and United in the cup) the defence has rarely been the reason we’ve dropped points. It’s the forwards most of the time. Mo had been great in the last few games and his fanboys were in full on “he’s so under-appreciated” “he’s an all time great” “if anyone else had his record they’d be getting far more pros than Mo gets” and that type of thing. It’s all fair, but then you see him tonight and this is why he doesn’t get that credit. These kind of performances are just as frequent as the great ones. It’s not just on him but when Firmino is stinking it up like he did tonight and Sadio isn’t there, the onus is on Mo to deliver. At West Ham he did, tonight he didn’t. I’m not singling him out, if anything I’m just trying to highlight how over-reliant on him we’ve become since Jota went down. We just have too many things going against us right now to be able to get on a consistent run. Too many injuries, too many players out of form, too many games, no fans. Just all kinds of shit being piled high on us. All I’m hoping for now is that we can get ourselves into some kind of shape for the CL because playing the way we are now there’s every chance we’ll lose to Leipzig. I’m not even thinking any further ahead than that. I’m just sick of footy without fans now. I’m really struggling to even care. I didn’t even get angry or upset tonight. I just felt sad and resigned to the fact that this season is just one massive shitfest. Thursday Feb 4: Southampton appealed against the red card Bednarek got the other night. Now, considering two referees had already watched the incident on video and decided it was a pen and a sending off, you have to wonder how any appeals could possibly be successful. But it was successful because both of those referees got it appallingly wrong. Even with the benefit of slow motion replays from various angles, they still got it wrong. How can that happen? Just how shit are these fuckers? Or is there something else going on here? I’m honestly struggling to comprehend how some of these decisions are being made. The David Luiz one too. That was a fucking disgrace but Arsenal’s appeal wasn’t successful because there was contact so they were able to hide behind the ‘letter of the law’ excuse. In the last two games Southampton have been on the wrong end of some of the worst decisions you’ll ever see. No-one cares because in one of those they lost 9-0 but that isn’t the point really. Usually it’s us getting screwed like that, but the Saints are probably being punished due to the unofficial ‘feeder club’ arrangement we have. Also today, we’ve completed the signing of the kid from Derby. Kaide Gordon. Looking forward to seeing him play. I haven’t watched a single u23s game all season as there’s just not really anyone in that side I have any real hope for. Most of the best prospects are still in the u18 side but I’ll defo watch when the new lad plays. Friday Feb 5: I fucking hate Guardiola, the little bald weirdo. Honestly, he’s a fucking oddball. Proper strange little cunt. His reaction today when told about something Klopp said in complete innocence was just ridiculous. Klopp mentioned that City had a kind of winter break because of Covid and they had two weeks off. I watched him say it and there was nothing snide or provocative in it, he just casually mentioned it and there was no implied criticism or cynicism in it at all. He was just pointing out something that happened. Yet that bald cunt is giving it the “I didn’t think Jurgen was that type of manager” and saying he will be having words as he wants an explanation. And all the while he’s saying this fidgeting and shifting around and just being a hyperactive fucking, can’t sit still cunt. The only words Klopp should be giving him are "fuck" and "off". Now maybe Guardiola didn’t see it and was just responding to someone reading him the quote out of context but he’s got form for this. Like I say, he’s a fucking weirdo. I wish I could say “I can’t wait for Sunday” but that’s just not how I’m feeling. Not because I expect us to lose, but because even if we win it won’t feel significant. In the last few years every game against them (other than the dead rubber at the end of last season) has had loads riding on it. Now, this one feels a bit like when United would be winning the league and all we had to console ourselves was maybe taking points off them at Anfield. Of course I hope we win on Sunday and I won’t be surprised if we do. It’s not going to have me buzzing for the rest of the week though because in the long run it’s not going to mean much and none of us are going to be there to even enjoy it. These games are always fucking electric and Anfield is buzzing for them. Fuck this season. Fuck Man City. Fuck Covid. Fuck Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock and fuck whoever the dirty little bastard is who ate that bat. …. and that was the week that was

They say necessity is the mother of invention. On the face of it, Liverpool's answer to their current defensive crisis was to sign players from a mid-table Championship club and the team sitting rock bottom of the Bundesliga. Jurgen Klopp has used a dozen different centre back pairings during the campaign to date, as serious injuries ended the season early for all of Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez and later Joel Matip. He had to sign someone; however desperate it might look. As reigning Premier League champions, the Reds cannot mount a proper defence of the title with a makeshift backline. Manchester City found that out to their cost when they didn't replace Vincent Kompany and Liverpool benefited from that last season. Ben Davies is a left-sided central defender with over 250 professional games under his belt. Over the last three-and-a-half seasons he became a regular at Preston North End following several loan spells away from Deepdale at lower levels. It's a bit of a jump from the Championship to challenging at the top of the Premier League. Davies has been thrown in at the deep end, but the crisis is an opportunity for him to prove himself at a higher level. Some honest, if a little unflattering, quotes from Klopp came out after his signing. It's true that the Reds wouldn't normally recruit from Preston, but such is the nature of this situation. The loan capture of Turkey defender Ozkan Kabak is arguably even more perplexing. Klopp sought a recommendation from David Wagner, the ex-Huddersfield Town boss who previously worked on his staff at Borussia Dortmund. Wagner, who signed Kabak for Schalke from relegated Stuttgart over the summer of 2019 when he was voted Bundesliga rookie of the year the previous season, gave him a ringing endorsement. The table does not lie, however. Schalke are well adrift at the foot of the Bundesliga with the worst defence in the division. In the 14 games Kabak played before leaving this season, he was part of a backline that conceded 38 goals. He has also served a four-match ban this term, so the player nicknamed the "Turkish Wall" leaves a lot to be desired on paper. Kabak looks just as big a gamble as Davies. Both players ideally need time to adjust to their new surroundings and to step up a level, but the way things are at Anfield they cannot have that luxury. Based on the fixture list on Sporticos: Football Today, they have a nice fixture against Brighton coming up before facing major rivals Man City, which is likely to be a trial by fire for the new arrivals. Any predictions about their performances must consider that this is very much a throw of the dice by Liverpool. Using players out of position as stop-gap solutions such as regular midfielders Fabinho and Jordan Henderson hasn't exactly worked. In many ways, it could be a no-win situation for Klopp. He is left cursing his bad luck with injuries in a key area. To do nothing and not sign cover would've invited criticism, while it remains to be seen how Davies and Kabak fare in front of the famous Kop.

Lots to get through, very little of it is enjoyable so I’ll just grit my teeth and dive straight in. City beat Sheffield United and I have nothing to say about it as I’m still boycotting all of their games until further notice. So I’ll start at Goodison where under pressure Steve Bruce picked up a much needed three points against the Blueshite. The Geordies really seem to have it in for ol’ Brucey but has he really been that bad? They were doing ok this season until Covid hit them and they lost some key players. They’re getting everyone fully fit again now so I expect their results to pick up. They’ve got some good players there in attack but Bruce clearly doesn’t trust the defence and midfield enough to open up. So they play negatively and look to hit on the break. With Saint-Maximin on the pitch they can do that. Take him away and they lose an awful lot. Wilson’s a good striker and he ran Everton ragged. He hit the bar with a powerful header, hit the post with a little clipped shot, shot just wide after a boss counter attack and then scored two late goals to win the game. As for Everton, I’ve been telling you all season they’re fucking shit. Because they are. The league table is lying it’s bollocks off at the moment but come May they’ll be 8th or 9th where they belong. Bad week for Southampton. They lost to Villa in contentious circumstances and then had their pants pulled down at Old Trafford. A key element of both losses was VAR. They were denied a penalty against Villa when Cash blocked a goalbound shot from Armstrong with his arm. The set up from Ings was spectacular and that deserved a goal. It didn’t get one because Cash stopped it with his arm. It wasn’t given because the ball brushed off his thigh first. This isn’t what that rule was brought in for. That has to be a penalty, surely? Villa went ahead with a Barkley header after a superb Grealish cross but Southampton peppered their goal after that but just couldn’t score. Eventually they did, in stoppage time, but VAR gave it offside. Another one of those horrific ones that they could just as easily have given as a goal if they moved the line another inch or two the other way. Fuck this shit. Nobody wants a world in which that is offside. Say what you like about Grealish (and God knows I have) but he’s exactly the kind of player you want to unlock a packed defence. He can beat people, he can pass, he can cross, he can shoot, he can win free-kicks and pens (ok, he wouldn’t be able to do that if he played for us), he’s just developed into a top class player. He’d be incredible in our team, but even if we wanted him we couldn’t afford him now. Chalk this one down as another game completely fucking ruined by VAR though. Of all the shitty things VAR has brought to the game one of the worst has to be the way it has led to all common sense being removed from the game. So many decisions you see that are technically correct but morally just fucking shambolic and not in the spirit the game was intended to be. That was a penalty and it wasn’t offside. Stick your fucking rewritten rulebook up your hoop, anyone who knows football knows those decision were a joke. The fact they were correct tells you that the game is completely broken right now. It turns out that having every decision correct by the letter of the law actually kills the game. It’s not what the game needs and there has to be room for some interpretation and common sense on certain decisions. It’s not a black and white game like, say, tennis or golf. There are grey areas. Or at least there should be. West Brom v Fulham was a surprisingly decent game. Fulham should have won easily but in the end they needed Decordova-Reid latched onto a Mitrovic pass to give them an early lead. He nearly made it 2-0 in similar fashion but his shot came off the foot of the post. Really unlucky. He’s been a revelation since Parker converted him to a wing back. Lookman thought he should have had a pen when he was challenged by Ajayi. He got his shot away and it was saved, and when that happens it gives the refs all the excuse they need to give nothing. It was one way traffic in the first half but two minutes after the break it was 1-1 when the Baggies got a scabby equaliser from a deflected cross that was well converted by Bartley. Pereira made it 2-1 and suddenly Fulham were staring at defeat in a game they’d dominated. Cavaleiro levelled with a diving header but this was a game they should have won. Fulham are better than I gave them credit for and I’d like to see them stay up. Scott ‘Scotty’ Parker seems like he knows what he’s doing. Turns out Chelsea hired the wrong ex-midfielder a couple of years ago, because he’s clearly more clued up than Fat Frank. Arsenal and United played out a drab 0-0 draw at the Emirates and I have nothing more to say on that as I didn’t watch any of it. A lovely finish by Eze gave Palace the points against Wolves. He dropped the shoulder on the edge of the box to give himself room and then laced one in with his left foot. Zaha should have made it 2-0 late on when he tied Conor Coady in knots but hit the bar That Fabio Silva is a weird one. He cost a fortune and he’s really highly rated, but he doesn’t ‘look’ like a young superstar footballer. I don’t mean how he plays, I just mean his face, hair and general demeanour. He’s the science geek you see in movies. The kid with the backpack. The one who the jocks will trip up in the canteen and he’ll end up on the floor covered in mashed potato and everyone will be laughing at him. Everyone except for the lead cheerleader that is. She thinks it’s cruel and feels sorry for him. She’s dating the main jock and she gives him a piece of her mind and says he needs to grow up and leave the kid alone. Fabio Silva thanks her, sheepishly, and then gets out of there as quickly as he can. You know, I bet Adama bullies the shit out of him at the training ground. Anyway, yeah. Another loss for Wolves while Palace just keep on doing what they do every year - just enough. It was a decent enough weekend for us with United dropping points and Everton and Leicester losing. Leicester were without Vardy but actually went ahead against Leeds with an absolutely brilliant goal from Barnes. He’s got 11 for the season now. Not bad that. Leeds equalised with a lovely goal of their own as my boy Bamford played in Dallas to score. That Ayoze Perez loser thought he’d restored Leicester’s lead but he was offside, the big fucking loser. Leeds then had one ruled out for offside too. My boy hit the bar with a towering header but Klich was a yard offside when he put in the rebound. Leeds were playing some lovely stuff and Bamford set Raphinha in on goal only for Schmeichel to deny him. If you want a job doing properly sometimes you need to do it yourself, and my boy did just that when instead of playing someone else in on goal he just lashed one across goal into the top corner instead. Glorious finish. He’s such an elegant player and some of his goals this season have been sensational. He create them too though and he turned provider once again for the third goal when he raced clear and unselfishly squared for Harrison. Leeds just seem to win one then lose one then win one then lose one. You never know what you’re going to get from them but you know it won’t be boring. Unlike Spurs. Win lose or draw those fuckers are always dull these days. And without Kane that’s only going to get worse. Gareth Bale was given a rare start at Brighton but he just looks completely finished now. He either can’t run or he’s so worried about injuries he won’t let himself risk going full throttle. He’s largely pointless at the moment. Doesn’t do anything except pick up a fat wage. Injuries are such a bastard, they can completely ruin players. Bale is reminding me of Sturridge. Brighton played well and were full value for the points. Young Nigel Farage got the only goal of the game by converting a cross by Gross. They could have scored more and it needed a miraculous goal-line block by Alderweireld to deny Connolly late on. Tuchel got his first win as Chelsea boss with a really strong performance against Burnley. Chelsea dominated and created a load of chances. They only took two of them but it was enough. Both goals came from Spanish full backs. Azpilacueta opened the scoring just before half time and Alonso wrapped it up with a goal just before full time. The main thing holding them back was Lampard. I don’t particularly think Tuchel is anything great, but with the talent in that squad he doesn’t need to be. Competent should be enough to have Chelsea competing near the top spots again. Wolves finally got a win but they needed a big helping hand from Arsenal, who shot themselves in both feet. They blew a one goal lead and ended up playing with only nine men. Arsenal gonna Arsenal. Saka thought he’d given them the lead but Lacazette was correctly adjudged to be offside in the build up. They’d started well though and Saka had hit the post in the first minute. Pepe then hit the bar and Wolves were hanging on desperately. The goal was coming and Pepe eventually smuggled his way past a couple of defenders and found the far corner. Arsenal looked on their way to an easy win but then David Luiz conceded a pen and was given a red card. We’ve seen that so many times over the years but this time I don’t think he did anything wrong. The contact was completely accidental and if anything he’s desperately trying to avoid it. Its the back of the Wolves striker’s heel that catches Luiz on the knee. I don’t even think it’s a penalty but you can give that either way really. The red card is a fucking scandal though. Again, that’s not what that law is for. It’s supposed to be for cynical, professional fouls that deny a goalscoring opportunity. There’s nothing cynical or intentional about that, and you can argue it wasn’t even a foul. There’s nothing Luiz can do to avoid that, because he actually did everything he could to avoid it. I’m really fucking annoyed over that decision even though I don’t have a dog in that race. I don’t care if Arsenal lose but decisions like that are a big reason why footy is becoming proper shit these days. That’s just morally not a red card in a million years, but the cunts will hide behind ‘letter of the law’ as usual. Neves scored from the spot and all of Arsenal’s prior good work was undone just like that. Moutinho made it 2-1 with a 30 yard screamer and any hope Arsenal had of getting back into went when Leno was sent off for one of the more bizarre incidents you’ll ever see. Just what the actual fuck was he doing? Sheffield United won again. Huge three points for them considering they were up against West Brom, one of the teams they need to catch. Phillips poked the Baggies ahead but Bogle levelled before Billy Sharp got the winner. Could they pull off the greatest of escapes? Ian Wright tipped them to do it last week. I can’t see it, but at least they haven’t quit. Newcastle followed up a good win at Goodison with a bad loss to Palace at St James’ despite getting off to a dream start when with only a minute on the clock Shelvey scored from 20 yards. They joy was short lived. Riedewald smashed in an equaliser soon after and Cahill quickly headed Palace into a 2-1 lead. Both sides had chances but Palace held on fairly easily. City won again in midweek but I’ll say no more about that other than “fuck Burnley”. They’ve been dogshit in both games since beating us. It’s always the way. Watch Brighton do fuck all for the next couple of weeks now. The Mancs scored nine and I haven’t seen any of them and hopefully never will. Prior to the game the goblin had complained about decisions that went against them last week. For most teams that just means they'll get shafted again as the refs close ranks. United aren't most teams though. They were rewarded with an outrageous penalty for a clear dive (I can comment on that because I saw that incident on Twitter), two opposing players being sent off and a scandalous offside decision that chalked off a Southampton goal. They almost certainly wouldn’t have needed all of those favours but they got them anyway, and probably a written apology from PGMOL and an assurance it won't happen again. The penalty and sending off for Bednarak was such a disgrace that it was overturned on appeal. Disgusting that, because the officials on duty already watched the video of it at the time and upheld the decision!!! And let's not forget what a colossal cunt Martial is, diving in the box when they're 6-0 up with a few minutes left. If it has been overturned then surely the VAR fella needs sanctioning, as does Dean as he also looked at the screen and still stuck with the wrong decision. None of these cunts are fit for purpose. None of them. They’re all shite. Fuck them all. Southampton are considering launching a formal complaint against Mike Dean and Lee Mason. I’d advise against it. You can only pull shit like that if you’re Man United. Anyone else ends up getting punished even more harshly. Meanwhile, West Ham are hot on our heels again (what depressing sentence that is) after a good win over Villa. Soucek set them on their way (of course he did) but for once it wasn’t a header from a set-piece. It was a good low finish after he broke ahead of the strikers. That Lingard tool then added a couple of goals, with an Olly Watkins strike sandwiched in between them. So once again they’re just two points behind. This is the thing that is so hard to stomach. Teams that we’re clearly vastly superior to and have shown when we’ve played them (Leicester, West Ham, Everton) are either above or just behind us. This is what happens when you don’t beat the bottom six though. Everton won at Leeds. Close game, could have gone either way. Sigurdsson and Calvert-Lewin put the Blues in charge but my boy teed up Raphinha to pull one back and Leeds battered them after that but couldn’t find a way past Olsen, who had been preferred to Pickford. Hopefully that's not a permanent thing. Leicester got back to winning ways at Craven Cottage. That Iheanacho cunt got the opener when he headed in a Maddison cross and then Justin made it 2-0 with a lovely goal. Great play by Iheanacho and Maddison to set him up and he finished it well. Some of Leicester's football was brilliant to be fair. Finally, Chelsea won 1-0 at Spurs but it really wasn’t as close as that as they were comfortable throughout. They’re four points back of us now and of all the sides around us they’re by far the biggest threat now that they have an actual manager and not some big fat pretender. I’m officially concerned about Chelsea now. I’m not at red alert yet, it’s probably yellow. If that gets below four points then bump it up to amber. Things can change quickly though. It only seems like a few weeks ago that Spurs were top and now look at them. If they’re not careful they’re gonna finish below Arsenal. Spurs without Kane is like football without fans. Shit. There have been so many away wins this season (even more than home wins currently) and to me it’s almost certainly about fans not being there. I’ve seen other theories but that’s just overthinking it. Home advantage is 90% about having more of your fans in the stadium than the oppositions. Take that away and there isn’t any advantage. It’s shite isn’t it?

I’ll keep this brief for all our sakes. There’s not much to be said that wasn’t already discussed at length in previous home games. We've seen this movie before. In fact, it's been on a loop since 2021 started. Maybe coming off the back of those two good away wins this defeat was somewhat unexpected, but really this had “trap game” written all over it and there was very little difference between this and Burnley a couple of weeks ago. None of us really wanted this game did we? City this weekend was the big one and this game was almost an inconvenience. Brighton were just in the way and we needed to find a way to brush them aside and take the points whatever way we could. It’s not that easy though, especially with the team so depleted and disjointed at the moment. Being at Anfield isn’t any kind of advantage anymore either. They may as well change the sign over the tunnel to say “This is NOT Anfield” because it isn’t the same. We’ve lost twice at home in as many weeks but no-one was there to witness it so they may as well not have happened. Not having fans in stadiums changes everything. I’m sick to death of it. I want to be back at the match. I want to feel like I can be a part of it, to contribute in some small way (even if it’s only shouting myself hoarse abusing the Main Stand linesman). I’m sick of watching on telly every week. It’s not even so much about me not being there though. I could live with that if others were there. But this empty stadium thing is wearing me down now. I hate it. In recent seasons visiting teams have often been beaten before they even got off the bus, but with no fans, no centre backs and now no unbeaten home record, nobody is scared of coming here anymore. Why would they be? The likes of West Brom, Burnley and now Brighton have all had success here so the fear factor has gone completely. We’ll probably lose more home games before the season is out (quite possibly this weekend), not to mention some away ones too. We’ll win plenty as well, but there will be no long winning streaks this season, I think that’s now obvious. I didn’t feel much at all watching this. Just a bit sad and extremely demoralised. I wasn’t the least bit surprised though. This was never going to be easy, although we made it more difficult than it should have been by playing like shite. Villa aside, this was probably the worst we’ve looked all season. Brighton know how to play against us. The stat nerds will tell you that. They’ve had the better of us in both games this season in virtually every meaningful statistic. They’re a superbly coached team and we always find it difficult when we play them. Klopp knows this. He is probably more complimentary about Potter's Brighton than he is anyone other than City. They’re not a great team because they don’t have great players, but their style doesn’t mesh well with ours and it’s a slog when we play them. It doesn’t help when we have so many players throw in a stinker on the same night but Brighton deserve credit for that too. They stopped Salah while Firmino stopped himself. When those two are giving you very little and Sadio isn’t even on the pitch then it’s going to be difficult. I don’t want to single anyone out for special criticism as it was a wretched team performance, but what I will say is when Firmino plays like this we have virtually no chance. Wretched. He was great at Spurs a week ago but then he plays like this? It seems to be who he is now. He hasn't shown any consistency for about two years. We started quite well, didn’t score and then just plodded our way to half time. The second half also started brightly and for ten minutes it looked like we’d upped the tempo and might score. When we didn’t get one in that spell I knew we were in trouble. You could smell it a mile off. Brighton defended well and in numbers but they also got men forward when they could. It’s a bit galling that a fucking nine foot tall left back threatened more than all of our players combined though. We had a couple of half chances and that was it. Not having Alisson isn’t an excuse. Kelleher did nothing wrong and Alisson wouldn’t have stopped that goal as it was a complete fluke. Still, it must be mentally draining for the team to constantly be having these injury setbacks thrown at them. Every week it’s someone else, and eventually it catches up with you. We were never getting back into this after we conceded. You could see the lack of belief in everyone other than Hendo and maybe Thiago, who was always looking to play passes forward even if they were constantly being miscontrolled by those ahead of him. We can’t get Jota back quickly enough. The title is gone. I made peace with that after Burnley, although there was still a lingering hope after the impressive back to back wins. That hope has gone now. Even if we won every game it still might not be enough, and there is not a chance in hell we will win every game. Given all that we’ve had to try and overcome this season I’d say that finishing second would be an achievement. You can’t finish above City with half a team either missing or having to play out of position. There’s no shame in finishing below them and I’ve accepted that fate. Finishing below anyone else would be tough to take though. There’s an argument to be had that as long as we ensure a top four spot then we can take that and forget this season ever happened. I’m not ready to go there yet though because finishing below United isn’t an option as far as I’m concerned. I thought we were past that and if it turns out that we aren’t then that’s going to be difficult to swallow. Them winning 9-0 and us losing the next night? What the fuck? Have we time travelled back to the fucking 90s? Not having this at all. Finishing below them isn't a fucking option. If you offered me a point on Sunday I’d snatch your hand off right now. City’s record at Anfield is awful but this is no longer Anfield and they’ll never have a better chance to end that hoodoo. I’m fucking dreading it now. There’s no star man but I thought Phillips and Hendo were fine, and Kelleher can also hold his head up. Team: Kelleher; Alexander-Arnold, Phillips, Henderson, Robertson; Wijnaldum (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Milner, Thiago; Salah, Firmino (Jones), Shaqiri (Origi):

Another great win. Two in four days. Things are looking up again. West Ham were riding high in the table but I think we all know they’re one of a few teams in a false position and that come May they’ll be scrapping for 8th or 9th with Everton. Still, they’ve been in good form recently and given the players we had missing this was really impressive from us. The points are obviously welcome but just as in midweek against Spurs it was the performance that really gives cause for optimism. We’re looking like we’re back in the groove again now, and we’re doing it with makeshift looking line ups. No Sadio, Bobby on the bench and a central defensive pairing of Henderson and Phillips. Yet we made this look easy. It was complete domination and from the moment we finally opened the scoring the result was never in doubt. The only negative was we didn’t get the clean sheet the lads at the back deserved. We did all the damage in the second half but but I thought we played well in both halves, just in different ways. The second half was brilliant, obviously, but I was relatively pleased with the first half too. We didn’t threaten enough but that was partly due to the way we kept the ball and controlled the game. That seemed to be the focus. I don’t mind that in our current situation. Don’t give the opposition any reason to think there’s something in the game for them and then gradually turn the screw. Maybe West Ham fancied their chances ahead of this one but you’d never have guessed based on the performance and the longer the game went on the less belief they had. It’s easy to say it looked like they didn’t believe they could win or that they didn’t have a go, but I don’t buy that at all. West Ham’s lacklustre performance said more about us than it did them. What was different in how West Ham played the game to how any of West Brom, Southampton, Newcastle, Burnley or Man United approached it? Nothing at all. None of those teams ‘opened up’ and had a go at us either. Not really. Some were more adventurous than others but the gameplan was more or less the same. Defend in numbers, stay in the game and hope for a counter attack or set-piece. Unless you’re Man City, that’s how you play against us because it’s the only approach that gives you a chance. Going toe to toe isn’t an option for anybody else. Moyes is getting a load of stick for not going for it but the truth is he did nothing differently to Sean Dyche, who came away from Anfield with an unlikely (and undeserved) win. He was no more adventurous than Moyes, he just got lucky and Moyes didn’t. Same with most of the others who got results against us. None of them did anything that differently to Moyes. The only team I can think of that actually had a right good go at us (not counting the Villa debacle) was Fulham and even that was only for half an hour until we forced them back for the rest of the game. West Ham didn’t have a go at us because we didn’t let them and because if they had really tried to open up and attack us they’d have got their arsed handed to them. Look at what happened for the second goal. They’d had a little spell of pressure, had a couple of sights of goal and their tails were up. They get a corner and 10 seconds later the ball is in their own net. Not for the first time either as we seem to punish them like this every season. No wonder they’re scared to open up! The narrative on Sky prior to the game (and afterwards for that matter) seemed to be all about how we “were there for the taking” and that Antonio should be “licking his chops” about facing Henderson and Phillips. It was a bit weird I thought, especially as even Souness was buying into it. I kept having to check that we were playing West Ham and not 1970 Brazil. Yeah, we all had a concern about Antonio against Big Nat. So what? I’d have had concerns about Antonio against any of our defenders other than Virgil because he’s really fucking hard to play against. He gives everyone problems, so Nat was obviously going to have his hands full. Was that really the biggest ‘key to the game’ though? It’s still West Ham versus a vastly superior team, irrespective of our makeshift defence and the current state of the table. Anyone who saw the game the other night must have known that we’re much better than them. Moyes defo knew. Attacking us was not the smart play. All due respect to Antonio, who I like a lot, but it was just weird listening to the way our chances were being talked down. All we heard was how West Ham’s height on corners was going to be decisive and that Phillips and Hendo would be over-run by Antonio. I’ll tell you what I thought when I heard that. I thought it was the kind of lazy shite we’d hear when teams faced Barcelona with Mascherano at centre back. I’m not comparing us in our current situation with that Barcelona team, but the point remains the same; they can’t hurt you if they can’t get near you. West Ham obviously did have an edge in height and would be a threat from corners (and yeah, they scored from one late on). So you know what you do to counter that? You keep the ball, don’t let them near your goal and restrict the amount of corners they get. And yeah, Antonio could have joy against our high line and if he got one v one against Phillips it would be a problem. So the answer to that is don’t allow them to play that ball that gets him in behind. And we did both of those things brilliantly. In the first half we just dominated the ball and smothered West Ham. They had one or two excursions into our box but mostly we just passed it around and didn’t give them a sniff. Antonio wasn’t a factor because Nat did everything right and those in front of him completely closed off any option for West Ham to play him in. We weren’t especially dangerous ourselves either and that was why Klopp changed some things at half time. He said the three midfielders were all behind the ball too much which meant Shaq had no-one to pass to when he turned. That wasn’t really what I saw if I’m honest, as I thought Milner made a lot of runs ahead of the ball. And considering Klopp said afterwards that he had to tell Milner at half time to stop running forward (to protect a tight hamstring) it doesn’t really tie in with his explanation of what changed does it? He definitely changed something because you could see as soon as the second half started that we were more direct in our passing and we instantly looked more threatening, but I don’t think it was what he told us it was, which is fine because I’d rather he kept any tactical adjustments in house anyway. The change was immediate though. Origi started the second half very well having been largely dreadful in the first. I’d have subbed him at half time because he was so fucking passive. He should be so much better than he is and it’s frustrating as hell. When he misses a chance or plays a bad pass, you see him ruefully smiling. I want to see him fired up and angry. He’s too laid back at times. As I say, he should be better than this. Something definitely changed at half time though because there was just more purpose and direction to our attacking play. Not just Origi, but the way the whole team attacked was different. It was more direct. The possession football was still there but it was mixed in with moments when we got it forward much quicker and it was definitely a result of instructions from the manager. I think Klopp just doesn’t want to discuss what we’ve started doing differently and he was deliberately just talking shite there about the midfielders to throw people off the scent. I don’t know what we did differently but he has hinted that he has changed things up front recently and that the message is now getting through, whereas before it wasn’t. It will be tactical stuff that’s too complex for most of us to pick up on. The timing of runs made by forwards, or the midfielders playing one extra (or one fewer pass). Things that you or I wouldn’t notice because we’re not privy to what they do in training or how Klopp wants them to play. Something has definitely changed though because we’re creating more chances and looking more dangerous. Mind you, the biggest change is probably just that we’re finishing better. Even in the bad run we were still dominating games and creating chances (albeit not enough). Now we’re finishing them, which tends to happen once you get out of the rut and players are more relaxed in front of goal. We’ve gone from no goals in five to six in two. It’s partly down to improved play but mostly about better finishing and higher confidence now that the monkey is off our back. Salah was pretty dreadful for most of that five game run but then all of a sudden he’s been razor sharp in the last three games. He scored two at Old Trafford, had one wrongly disallowed at Spurs and then hit another couple here. We needed him to step up in this one as two thirds of the front three didn’t start. And step up he did. Both goals were brilliant but the second one was a work of art. I’ll get to that in due course though. Mo had been busy and looked hungry in the first half but we weren’t getting him the ball in areas where he could do much damage. West Ham had a lot of men behind the ball and we were passing it around so much that by the time it reached the forwards there wasn’t really much on for them. Origi had a couple of sights of goal though. He was making decent runs and showing for the ball but there was no conviction in anything he did. He put an ambitious left foot shot high and wide when the better option was the cutback for Mo, and then he had a poor attempt at converting a ridiculously good disguised ball by Thiago. In between that there was a whole host of not attacking crosses, not really chasing anything with conviction and general ambling about. He was doing my head in. Playing opportunities are going to be few and far between when Jota comes back so games like this are a chance for him to stake a claim. He should be busting a gut but he isn’t. As I said, he was better after the break when Klopp said he wanted him to play more through the centre (funny thing is it looked to my untrained eye like he was even wider left after the break!) but the team in general was just much more threatening. The opening goal came seconds after Jones replaced Milner. That was so funny. Milner and Klopp had a discussion as Milner came off. It never looked to me like a row even though that’s how it was being described on commentary. Milner looked more confused than pissed off and there was no tantrum or open show of dissent. Seconds later he’s running over to Klopp and telling him he was right and it was a good decision as Curtis ran at the defence and rolled it to Mo who cut inside and curled one into the top corner. That goal doesn’t happen if Jones isn’t on the field because it wasn’t a run Milner (good as he’d played) was going to make. That little bit of something different that Jones brought was decisive. Having one behind West Ham now had to try and commit more men forward and they had a decent little spell until they were ruthlessly punished with one of our trademark breaks. You know how much I love these goals. These are my favourite, there’s nothing quite like those fast breaks from an opposition set-piece. If that doesn’t get your juices flowing nothing will. This is one of the best ones we’ve seen, not least because it wasn’t all about pace. When you’ve got Salah and Mané leading a charge it’s difficult for anyone to handle, but this was Shaqiri charging down the left, and if you look in the centre when Mo collects the ball, the nearest Liverpool player in support of him was Hendo!! I fucking love this goal so much. It’s just perfection. Every little part of it is just perfect. Robbo wins the header at the near post. Trent collects on the edge of the box and assesses his options before playing the right ball at the right moment into the space Shaq was running into. This is where it got really special. Most players take a touch or even two in that situation. Shaq didn’t. He saw Mo in the centre and even though it was a difficult ball that needed to be landed on a sixpence, he knew that playing it in that moment - and at that height - was the best chance of finding Mo. If he’d tried to play that ball low the defender was in position to cut it out. The execution of that pass was ridiculous, but it was eclipsed by the first touch and then finish from Mo. I thought Bobby’s first one at Palace would be the best counter attacking goal we’d see all season. I was wrong. This was better. It’s probably the best goal we’ve score since Mo’s header against City at Anfield last season. This one might even be better. It probably is, quality of opposition notwithstanding. It felt symbolic in a way. After the terrible run we’d had this goal was like a massive “WE’RE BACK!!” moment. This is what we do. Attack us if you fucking dare, because when we get the ball back we’ll do this. Just exhilarating. The third goal wasn’t bad either. I think there were thirty odd passes before Bobby played a one-two with Ox (lovely back heel from him) and then unselfishly squared for Gini to finish. Great stuff, some proper swag to that goal. Unfortunately the clean sheet was denied us when Dawson stole in to meet a corner and give Alisson no chance. Phillips would have headed that one away if it hadn’t brushed off the top of Robbo’s head. Frustrating but no real harm done. That could have sparked a late comeback as there was still a bit of time left but we saw the game out very well and just kept the ball confidently and gave West Ham no glimmer of hope. There was so much to like about this performance. Henderson was flawless at the back and no doubt helped Big Nat through the game with his covering play and vocal support. Not that Phillips looks like he needs too much help as he’s a clever lad who clearly knows the game. More importantly he knows HIS game. That’s what I like most about him. He plays to his strengths, which is attacking the ball and being physical. He’s not Franz Beckenbauer with the ball but he’s competent and doesn’t take risks. If he doesn’t think he can make the forward pass he has no qualms about rolling it five yards to Trent and letting him do it. Other than one moment when he got done by Callum Wilson I can’t think of anything Phillips has done wrong. He’s stepped in during our hour of need and been a fucking hero really. It remains to be seen what today’s transfer window will bring and how that will effect the playing time for Phillips, but if he isn’t called upon too much between now and May he can be proud of what he has done and of the contribution he’s made when we needed help. As for the rest, the full backs were good again even if they weren’t quite as influential as they often are. We didn’t need to them to be this time. Gini was class (I’ll say again, pay him whatever it is he’s asking because he’s earned it) and Thiago is looking more at home with each game now. If we can ever get Hendo and Fabinho back as midfield options alongside him and Gini then choosing three from that four is going to be nigh on impossible. One of them will play at the back and we might now have reached a point where Hendo might be the better option. He’s brilliant at the back, and maybe having Fabinho as the six will make us stronger overall? Food for thought definitely. Shaq was neat and tidy and I like what Jones gave us when he came on but star man was obviously Mo. It’s a big concern if Sadio misses any more time but if Salah plays like this we can overcome it, especially if Bobby is on his game. Having all three of them out of form at the same time was impossible to overcome but hopefully that won’t happen again and when one of them isn’t on it another one is able to pick up the slack. We’ve not just steadied the ship with these last two performances, we’ve put our foot down and we’re speeding away again out to sea chasing after Man City. A week ago we were stuck in the harbour, trapped in a bottleneck with Leicester, Everton, Spurs, West Ham and whoever else had stuck up to with a few points of us (I think Arsenal got within four at one stage) but we’re free of that now and the focus is on chasing down City. Yeah I know United are still just ahead of us too but it’s only a matter of time before we go past them now. We have to beat Brighton this week and that won’t be easy because they’ve been tough opposition for us since Potter went there. It’s a game we need to win though to set things up nicely for City next weekend. With fans in the stadium I’d have no doubt whatsoever that we’d win both of these games, but without fans it’s just much more difficult to call, especially the City one. Their record at Anfield is hideous, but this isn’t the same now. Without fans Anfield isn’t Anfield. City will fancy their chances. We’ve got to beat Brighton first though. Get the job done there and then we’ll see what happens next weekend. The mood is so much lighter now though isn’t it? As much as I want to catch City and retain the title, if they were to go on one of their mad winning runs and stay ahead of us then I can live with that. The thing that was really getting to me was being surrounded by teams who really have no business being within ten, twenty, in some cases thirty points of us. A few days ago we were below West Ham and there was the chance that Everton would also go above us. That’s something my brain just couldn’t process. Even being below United was tough to accept, but Everton and West Ham?? Fuck me, that shit just wasn’t right. Thankfully some kind of order has since been restored and let’s hope that kind of nightmare doesn’t happen again. As I say, being below City is one thing. It’s not nice but it’s not exactly a disgrace either. Being below any of the others is just impossible to swallow. Like, if your missus left you for Brad Pitt you’d be upset but you’d also shrug and go “yeah fair enough, he’s Brad Pitt”. If she fucks off with Peter Beardsley or the fella from the Pogues then you’re going to struggle to process that and you’ll be pretty irrational about it. Final word on the ref. I can't stand Jon Moss. He's crap. He was ok in this one though. Nothing majorly wrong, although thankfully there were no big decisions that he had to make. It's funny really because going into games now, other than when we play City I'm more worried about the officials than I am with the opposition. Even against City I worry about whether we'll get screwed, but there's also the concern they could beat us anyway. I don't really have that with anyone else, it's the officials that put the wind up me these days. Can't wait to find out who'll be in charge next Sunday. Ordinarily I'd want Oliver but after Goodison I've got no trust in him either. Just keep Atkinson and Mason well away from it. And Marriner too. And Friend. Ah fuck, it doesn't matter who it is does it? Can't trust any of the fuckers. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Phillips, Henderson, Robertson; Wijnaldum, Thiago, Milner (Jones); Shaqiri (Oxlade-Chamberlain); Salah, Origi (Firmino):

Saturday Jan 23: Danny Ings is stalling on a new contract because he wants to play for a CL club. I'd love him back here but it won't happen because we don't have luxury of spending that kind of money on another forward when we have other holes to fill more pressingly. I don't really see where he could go though other than Spurs, and they aren't a Champions League club. Maybe Leicester could use him to play alongside and to rotate with Vardy? I think he'll stay put though. There’s still talk that Sepp Van den Berg will leave on loan. Jesus, how shit must he be for this to even be a consideration right now? I know he’s behind Phillips and Williams, but we might still need him. Billy Koumetio is also ahead of him although I can’t fathom that one. That kid looked in waaaaaaay over his head in that CL dead rubber he played in. Long term Koumetio is a better prospect but VDB wasn’t THAT bad when he played in the cups last season. Ok, he kind of was to begin with but he did get better and he at least has a little bit of experience of first team footy in Holland plus the cup games last year. I don’t want to see him playing at any point before the season is out but I wouldn’t be allowing him to go anywhere as we might need him at some point. Christ, it’s depressing that it’s come that. And so needless too. Just fucking sign someone as a temporary fix. It can’t be that hard finding someone who is a better option right now than Williams, Koumetio and Van den Berg. Make no mistake, we’re one more injury away from needing to call upon them in games, because even if we have two or three from Hendo, Matip, Fabinho and Phillips to choose from they can’t play every game so we’re going to need to rotate. Sunday Jan 24: Man Utd 3 L 2. See, look at that. Williams had to play today in a game he’s not ready for and look what happened. This is the risk we’re running. No Hendo and no Matip, so Klopp has to pick Williams. There’ll be other games when we’re missing Matip and in some of those we might also be without Hendo or Fabinho. What happens then? How long before Phillips and Williams are playing together and Koumetio is on the bench? Fucking sign someone, you pricks. Result aside there was at least some things to be encouraged about. We scored goals, so that’s a big improvement. We had spells in this game when we looked like our old selves and we definitely didn’t deserve to lose the game. Doesn’t matter though, we didn’t deserve to lose against Burnley or Southampton either. Shit happens, especially when you defend like this and you’re also playing against the officials as well as the opponent. The amount of soft free-kicks given to United today was galling, as was the time wasting they were allowed to get away with. Par for the course this season though. Losing to these is never nice and I wanted the win today to knock them down a peg or two and to get ourselves back on track. Staying in the cup wasn’t even a secondary consideration because I’m honestly not arsed. I have no interest in it whatsoever. It no longer has any worth or value to me and given how stretched our squad is I can spin this as a positive because it means less games and less chance of players getting injured. I know some of the more traditionalist among you will see that as heresy and that a trophy is a trophy, but what can I say, it’s how I feel. Under different circumstances maybe I’d want to see us have a right good go at the FA Cup, but currently it can fuck off because I don’t want to lose any more defenders. Meanwhile, Everton won their cup tie and at full time they played that song about “singing the Blues, when Everton win and Liverpool lose”. Imagine being that sad and obsessed. Shit like this doesn’t upset me anymore though. I couldn’t give a fuck what they do as they just aren’t important enough to get wound up by. I do think it’s proper cringeworthy though. It’s like when you’d get some fans on the Kop singing about the mancs when we weren’t playing them, and they’d just get shouted down by everyone else. Only with Everton there’s never anyone shouting it down because they’re all the same. Their entire lives seem to be measured against what we are doing. Concentrate on yourselves and enjoy when you’re doing well because you are doing well, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing you bitter, obsessed, fucking losers. Monday Jan 25: Interesting to see the reactions of a lot of the LFC patch reporters today about how FSG need to be backing Klopp. You don’t tend to get this when the manager is entirely happy with how things are. I’m not saying Klopp has given them the green light to go after the owners, he’d never do that, but maybe word is filtering out from other sources that he’s frustrated with things. How can he not be? You know he doesn’t want to pick Williams because he’s been playing Hendo there when he could. Phillips and Williams are last resorts at this point, although I feel that Phillips can serve a purpose against specific types of opponents. I’d have played him against Burnley for example, but it’s obvious Klopp would rather not pick either of them and the journos have seized on that now. We’ve known them to back down before when pressure is applied but I’m not holding my breath this time, especially a there are no fans in the ground to make themselves heard. It’s pissing me right off though because it’s really not difficult to find somebody who can help us right now. If there was a guarantee that we’d have Fabinho, Matip and Henderson all fit and available for the rest of the season we could muddle through with that, but we know that won’t happen. Matip plays one game in two (at best) and Hendo has had problems too. We’re playing twice a week every week until May now, which is why bringing in Sokratis should have been a no brainer. I wouldn’t be bringing him in to start every week, I’d be bringing him in for depth so that when we do need to look to the backs ups, it’s not going to be inexperienced lads being thrown in at the deep end. I mean fucking hell, lets say we get past Leipzig (and I’m taking nothing for granted) and end up getting City or Bayern Munich in the next round. Would you really want to see Rhys Williams having to go out there, because that might happen. After all, we needed to start him on Sunday so why wouldn't that happen again. Maybe next time it will be when we're playing City. *shudders* Tuesday Jan 26: Hey we’re signing someone! That’s the good news. The bad news is that he’s not long turned 16 and he’s a forward. So he’s not going to help us now but I do like this as these are always smart deals to be doing. He’s left footed, quick and a great dribbler. He’s been in Derby’s first team squad under Rooney and he basically sounds a lot like Elliott, who continues to tear up the Championship for Blackburn. He’s only costing us an initial £1m because he hasn’t signed a pro deal. I like the thinking behind it because we’ve all spoken about the issue of one day replacing the front three and how difficult it will be because they’re all the same age and - unless we sell one of them soon - they’ll all need replacing at the same time, which won’t be cheap. If either or both of Elliott or this kid can step up it’ll potentially save us a fortune. But it’s not doing us any good now though is it? We’re down to the bare bones at the back and it genuinely baffles me that we haven’t brought anyone in. At this point, any semi-competent defender is going to help. There has to be a Ragnar Klavan type out there, surely? We’re paying the price for what we did last summer. This time last year our cover behind the three main centre backs was Lovren, Fabinho, Hoever and then Henderson as a last resort. We sold two of those and didn’t buy anyone, so we now have Fabinho, Henderson, Williams and Phillips. We sold Lovren because he wanted to go. We sold Hoever to cover the first instalments of Jota and Thiago. If he was still here he’d be getting more games for us than he’s getting for Wolves. Maybe we could get him on loan? He knows how we play and Wolves would benefit from him playing regularly. Jesus, just read that back. It’s mad that we’ve ended up in this position. Meanwhile, the offside rule has been changed because of that farce at Man City last week. We knew it would be because the entire world knew that decision was fucking bullshit. The only people who tried to justify it were the cunts who made the decision and ref enabling bootlickers like Walton and Gallagher. Everyone else knew it was a scandal, and this today proves it. The game is bent. There’s no way those officials watched that and thought it was a legit goal. No-one is that stupid. They gave the goal because - for whatever reason - they wanted to. So although it’s a good thing that from now on goals like that won’t be allowed, it’s not good that City have three points because of it and that Villa got screwed. Today’s news won’t pacify Dean Smith, if anything hell be more pissed off about it. I know I am. It’s like the nonsense with the handballs. They went from giving pens any time it hit a defender’s hand to going back to the old way a few weeks later. You can’t be changing mid-season though as it isn’t fair to the teams that were punished by it. God I hate Premier League football right now. Between the lawmakers and the officials they’ve fucking ruined it. Wednesday Jan 27: Ok so finally, FINALLY, some results have gone our way. I did not see the Old Trafford result coming in a million years. Not because the Mancs are great, but they’re pretty good and you’d expect them to see off the Blades without too much trouble. So that was a nice pleasant surprise. The reaction from United fans on Twitter was funny. “This is why we’ve got no chance of winning the league” and lots of ripping of players like Martial. A week ago they were all full of themselves after picking up a point at Anfield. This is what they were doing early in the season and then somehow, out of nowhere, they appeared at the top and no-one knew how they got there. Hopefully a couple more results like this are in the post and they’ll go back where they belong, in fifth. United being above us is a major irritation but recent concerns notwithstanding I’d be pretty shocked if we didn’t catch them by the end of the season. City are the ones I’m genuinely worried about. In fact, I’m probably more worried about Leicester than I am the Mancs, because they’ve got a better manager and there’s not much difference in the quality of their first elevens (I actually think Leicester have much better players but I’m factoring in my bias by saying there’s ‘not much difference’). They battered Everton at Goodison tonight but could only draw 1-1 and needed a standard Pickford error to even get that. Great result for us as we didn’t want either of them winning. I’m not the least bit worried about Everton finishing above us as they’re shite and over 38 games that will be reflected. It’s the present that concerns me and I don’t want them going above us even for 24 hours. Fuck that. Leicester are a good side but I can’t get past how comfortably we brushed them aside at Anfield. They looked like a team that knew they weren’t in our class, yet since then they’ve been winning every game and we’ve dropped points all over the fucking gaff. Again, it’s annoying being behind them. It’s annoying being behind anyone other than City really, as they’re the only ones who should even be close to us under normal circumstances. Thursday Jan 28: Spurs 1 L 3. Get. The. Fuck. In. Great performance and just what we needed. The points are welcome but the return to looking like us was even more so. A scabby win wouldn’t have really done much for morale even if the points would have been helpful, but seeing the lads play like this was big for the weeks ahead. When we play like this no-one can live with us. No-one. Playing like this every game isn’t going to be possible but even getting close to it will be enough to win most weeks. And when we play like this, it doesn’t matter who we have playing centre back because the rest of the team can carry them through. A lot of what we did tonight was similar to what we saw on Sunday. The difference was we did a much better job tonight of restricting counter attacks. Spurs hardly had any. That’s the key. We looked great with Matip back there but even after he went off it’s not like we got exposed. Nat Phillips is a limited but competent lad who plays to his strengths. The more he plays the more likely he is to get found out, but he’s probably a Championship level centre half and while that’s not going to be enough in the long term, for now it’s not the worst option in the world. Put it this way, if it was reported tomorrow that we were signing a defender from the Championship as cover, there wouldn’t be a big uproar would there? We’d mostly see it as desperate times needing desperate measures, beggars can’t be choosers etc. Big Nat will be fine against half the teams in this league, especially in games when he has Hendo talking him through (he didn’t shut up tonight, you could hear him all game). You just wouldn’t want him playing against the likes of City, Leicester, United or anyone with pace and skill up front though. So many players came back to form tonight. The front three were a menace and for the first time in weeks (months?) they were linking up together and playing each other in. Mo set up Sadio twice in the first half with passes he just wouldn’t have played a few weeks ago. Great to see. Bobby was linking things like it was 2018 and Trent was back to his brilliant best too. One of the keys to the improvement over the last two games has been Milner though. He’s brought what we needed just when we needed it. His intensity, knowledge of how we play and just general know how has been massive. He was brilliant tonight. Him and Gini. Top class. It’s amazing how much one performance can change a mood. I feel so much lighter tonight. Like a huge burden has been lifted. I said last week I just want to see us playing well and looking like us again. If that leads to us retaining the title then all the better, but it’s not the main thing right now. Let’s start playing well and then see where it eventually leads us. Friday Jan 29: Lots of talk about how we ‘must’ get a centre back now because Matip is injured. Fuck off. Matip getting injured last night hasn’t changed anything. Unless anyone actually believed he was going to stay fit until May? No-one thought that, surely? I’m actually glad it happened last night and not next week, because now they have no excuse for not doing anything. If he got injured next week you’d have apologists for the club arguing that “how could they have known?” and talking about how ‘unfortunate’ the timing was, and that ‘if it had happened a week ago they could have done something’. Well they could have known because he’s had about half a dozen different injuries in the last 12 months. It’s not unfortunate either, it’s predictable. Matip just has loads of minor ones which is far more of an issue as that’s not bad luck. Some players just can’t cope with the physical demands of Klopp’s football. Sturridge, Lallana, Matip, Keita. Makes it all the more fucking galling that Gini hasn’t been extended. So Matip’s injury changes nothing. There should have been a new defender in the door on Jan 1 and the question we would be asking now is whether we should bring a second one in. And the answer to that would also be yes. We need two but chances are we won’t even get one. We’ll look to muddle through with a combination of Hendo, Fab, Nat and Rhys, with Gini likely to end up having to play there at some point as well when one or more of them gets injured and needs a rest. But the fact that many seem to be overlooking is if we do that then the midfield is going to be stretched to fuck for the next few months. We’d need Thiago and Gini to play virtually every game, and then Milner, Ox and Jones would have to do their bit too because we’re playing twice a week (if we stay in Europe). It’s nowhere near as strong without Hendo and Fabinho in the mix though. A new centre half or two would make a massive difference to the depth and general contentment of the squad. Not gonna happen though is it? If we don’t sign anyone then the owners have not only let Klopp down, but they’ve let the players down too. It must be demoralising for them too, knowing there’s no help coming. Bet Fabinho is sick to death of playing at the back now as well. Filling in is one thing, but the club’s inaction in the market has turned him into a full time centre back. If I’m him I’m proper pissed off. He’s trying to establish himself in Brazil’s midfield and this isn’t going to help. Hendo won’t like it either. Of course he’ll do whatever it takes for the team, but when the big games come around and he can’t influence them from midfield it’ll do his head in. …. and that was the week that was

For the first time in three years, Liverpool’s incredible run of dominance appears to be in danger of coming to an end. Jurgen Klopp’s men produced outstanding seasons in the 2018/19 and the 2019/20 campaigns, claiming the Champions League and Premier League crown. The Reds were on pace to defend their Premier League title in the opening third of the term, despite the loss of Virgil van Dijk from the heart of their defence. However, after crushing Crystal Palace 7-0 at Selhurst Park, the wheels have fallen off for Klopp and his men. The loss of Van Dijk was supposed to leave the Reds vulnerable, but it has not proven to be the case as Fabinho has risen to the occasion in the backline. The problems have occurred at the other end of the pitch as Liverpool failed to fire in the final third since their demolition of Palace. The goals dried up, with the club enduring a four-match run in January without finding the back of the net. Consequently, the club's incredible 68-game unbeaten home record was ended in a 1-0 defeat to Burnley. Liverpool have fallen off the pace in the Premier League title race and their odds have drifted for the crown behind Manchester City, who are now the favourites in the minds of the bookmakers. By using BonusFinder, you can find an online site and gambling advice highlighted by their comprehensive list to place a bet on the Reds to battle their way back into the Premier League and receive offers to use in areas of the sportsbook and casino. However, it might be in vain as the Reds are off the boil and need a great deal to work in their favour to return to the summit of the top-flight table. Mohamed Salah has been his consistent self throughout the first half of the term leading the Premier League goal charts after 19 games. Roberto Firmino’s contributions have not matched his usual form from season's past but perhaps the primary concern is the form of Sadio Mane, who has been too quiet in the first half of the campaign. The Senegalese has been nothing short of outstanding over the last three years for the Reds. It could be the case that a hectic three-year schedule of deep runs in Europe and competing for the Premier League crown is taking its toll on the 28-year-old, who has barely missed a game since 2018. Mane is not the only player that has underwhelmed. Trent Alexander-Arnold’s impact from the right flank has been diminished. The 22-year-old is going through the first dip of his career, struggling to create opportunities for the front three. In the past two Premier League seasons, the full-back provided a combined 25 assists. After 19 games of the 2020/21 campaign, he mustered only two. Alexander-Arnold might be influenced by the fact that Van Dijk is not in the line-up and has to be more aware of his defensive duties. Perhaps he has lost a fraction of confidence. Whatever the reason, Liverpool cannot afford for his slump to continue throughout the campaign if they are to work their way back into contention. Both Mané and Alexander-Arnold were on the scoresheet as the Reds won at Spurs to end their winless run and hopefully set themselves back on the road to challenging City once again. The odds are stacked against them though, having likely lost Van Dijk for the season along with Joe Gomez. Losing two key players is tough to contend with, but the lack of form from Mane and Alexander-Arnold is more concerning. Liverpool cannot carry two of their stars given their injury issues. Unless they return to a semblance of their best in the near future, Klopp and his team can wave goodbye to the prospect of repeating their Premier League title win.

Oh we needed that didn't we? Not just the points, but the performance. The statement. Klopp summed it up afterwards when he said "the boys showed who we really are". This was the team that ran away with the league last year. The team everyone is terrified of. Spurs just looked completely overawed and outmatched. Yet despite how comfortable it was I couldn't enjoy it until it was over. It was an emotional roller coaster and I couldn’t relax until probably two or three minutes into the allotted five minutes of stoppage time at the end. Only then did I feel completely safe. Not so much from Spurs, as they didn’t worry me much all night. The threat was from Martin Atkinson and VAR, but when we reached the closing minutes the game was beyond them. What a turbulent night though. It was just one thing after another, highs and lows, joy and frustration. Injustice and misfortune. And it started about one minute into the game when Sadio missed an absolutely fucking sitter. That was hard to take in light of the recent goal drought. I was fuming to be honest as it was just a terrible attempt. It was hesitant though and he clearly overthought it, which is what happens in bad runs like this. Normally he just buries that without even thinking. So that already had my stress levels up and the game had barely even started. Seconds later it got much worse as Son was putting the ball in the net at the there end. I didn’t see the initial offside as I was still dwelling on Sadio’s miss and wasn’t even watching the TV. I looked up and saw Son running clear, so a VAR check wasn’t even on my radar initially. I thought we’d gone a goal down because of Sadio’s fucking awful miss, and I wasn’t taking that very well. Then there was the glimmer of hope when they said there was a VAR check. I saw the replay and it was obviously close. So initially I’m fearing the worst as from what I can recall every close one of those has gone against us other than one at Chelsea last season. There might have been one more too, but as a general rule when it’s close they find a way to make it go against us. When they started drawing the lines it was obvious that it was going to be offside because it was about 6-8 inches off, which is too big a gap for them to ‘fudge it’ as we’ve seen them do before. By that I mean when it’s anything from six inches or under, they can manipulate it however they want. They’ll start the line higher up on the defenders shoulder or further back on the attackers foot etc On the really close offsides it comes down to whatever the VAR wants to make it look like. I’m 100% convinced about that because we’ve seen it, specifically on the two ones at Goodison that went against us. Honestly, it’s fucking easy for the to do it. You move one line a couple of inches past the cut off point on a player’s arm, and the other one goes a couple of inches to the wrong side of a toe and Bonb’s yer uncle. So I’m thankful that Son was far enough offside that they had absolutely no choice but to disallow it, because we’ll never know the damage that goal may have done to us. I said before the game that the one thing we have to do is score first, because Spurs can’t chase a game but they can protect a lead and counter attack as well as anyone. That’s what Mourinho lives for. So that goal being ruled out was huge, especially going so soon after we squandered such a great chance. But what VAR giveth it also taketh away, or something. The goal we had ruled out n the second half was fucking outrageous I thought, and I was convinced we would go on to lose the game because of it. Thankfully we didn’t because the lads didn’t let it affect them the way I let it affect me. I’ll get to that later though. The point is, the game was just a melting pot of emotions for me and it was a much tougher watch than it should have been. If I were to watch the ninety minutes again now, knowing the outcome, it would be great fun because the performance was fucking brilliant. It’s the best we’ve played away from home in a long time. I sensed before kick off we had a big performance coming. It sounds daft, but as soon as I saw Hendo and Milner in the warm up and just the general body language and determination that seemed to be exuding from all of the players, I fancied us. Of course if Son is a few more inches the other way then my good feeling about the game goes up in smoke, but for once we caught a break and the great thing is we took advantage of it. I thought we were brilliant in both halves. The second was more convincing but that was in no small part to Spurs losing Kane at half time. I know we lost Matip too, but Spurs these days are basically Kane, Son and a bunch of stiffs. Kane is not only the main goal threat, he’s also the main supply line too. He might be a cunt but he’s a world class one, and when he went off Spurs offered virtually nothing. I give our lads a lot of credit for that too, but the point I’m trying to make here is I thought our first half performance was a lot better than it was given credit for. It’s easy to say that because we got the goal just before half time, but if we’d have gone in at 0-0 I’d have felt aggrieved because I thought we deserved to be ahead. It just felt like we were bossing it and unlike a lot of games recently, there was an undercurrent of menace in our attacking play. It didn’t always lead to chances but it always felt to me like we could unlock them at any moment because we just looked more like us. Sadio had that sitter early on that he missed and he was also twice denied by Lloris. The big difference in this game to recent weeks was that Firmino was running things and Salah and Mané were actually linking up with eachother. It was like old times. Those three chances Sadio had were created by Mo (twice) and Bobby. Finally they looked like a unit again rather than a bunch of individuals. The two passes from Mo to create those openings were brilliant. Sadio was having a weird night. He was our most dangerous player but he seemed to be fighting against himself most of the night. Standing on the ball, tripping over, missing chances. But he always looked like he’d be the one to make it happen because he was relentless and Spurs couldn’t deal with it. It was his spin in behind to collect a Henderson pass that finally ended the barren spell. They said on commentary it was eight hours without a league goal or something, which is staggering. You wonder how that’s even possible, but hopefully it was a freak occurrence that we don’t ever see again. Sadio’s low cross was somehow missed by Lloris and gleefully tapped in on the line by Firmino and we went into the break a goal to the good. Of course at the point we didn’t know that we were about to lose Matip. Not surprising, but the timing couldn’t have been worse with Fabinho also missing. You know what though, for all the justified talk about our defensive issues I looked at that Spurs backline and couldn’t believe how weak it looked. A back three of Rodon, Dier and Davies? Sorry, but that’s shit that is. They had Sanchez and Alderweireld on the bench, so how come they’re playing those three? I saw someone on Twitter jokingly suggest a swap deal with Origi and Alderweireld. It would actually make sense for both parties to do that as a loan swap until the end of the season. Spurs need a striker, we need a defender, and both players need playing time ahead of the Euros. So big Nat came on at half time while Spurs also made a couple of changes as Kane was unable to shake off injuries to both ankles and Aurier was unable to shake off the issue of being shite. Kane has glass ankles and seems to miss a couple of months of every season because of it. He hurt one ankle when it got stuck under Matip's arm as they fell to the ground. That was unfortunate. When he hurt the other ankle though that was just poetic justice. He was doing that shithouse move of his where he looks to see where the defender is and then backs in trying to win a free-kick. It's dangerous and he's almost injured a few opponents doing it. This time he injured himself because instead of jumping for the ball Hendo continued moving and wasn't there when Kane jumped into him. Kane landed awkwardly and twisted his ankle. Shame. So Aurier and Kane went off and Lamela and someone else came on. Genuinely can’t remember who. Winks maybe? I think it was, but to be honest I don’t remember even seeing him so it might not have been. I didn't see Lamela either, I just remember the commentator mentioning that he was coming on. Other than the goal Spurs were a virtual non-entity in the second half. The way the second half started was mental. Spurs were all over the place after the substitutions. It was frantic and we nearly scored within seconds. Bobby almost got in only for his shot to be blocked, but he did well to cut it back for Mo who did everything right in creating space for his shot but he couldn’t keep it down. We didn’t have to wait long for another chance though. Sadio brilliantly spun away from Doherty and sent a low shot towards the far corner. Lloris parried but only as far as Trent who lashed it into the bottom corner. Interesting to see how high up the pitch he was, not just in that moment but for much of the game. One of the big problems against United was that Rashford would just hang about in the space Trent was leaving, and you’d have thought Spurs would have been looking to do similar with Son. Maybe they were, but it didn’t work. Why that would be the case is for someone who knows more than I do to explain. The obvious solution people would call for is for Trent to not bomb on as much, but he's such a key part of our attack that it's counter productive asking him to curtail those instincts. If anything he was charging forward even more, yet we never got caught out down that side at all because of it. I’d guess that we did a better job ‘protecting our attacks’ and of making sure we didn’t give the ball away cheaply, as that’s when problems start. It’s when you lose it needlessly and unexpectedly that you get caught because the full backs aren't anticipating it and get stranded. That rarely happened in this game though. We were also helped by switching Thiago and Wijnaldum. That strengthened us in two positions because it allowed Thiago a bit more attacking freedom and we benefitted from Gini’s tactical discipline, mobility and absolutely ridiculous ability to not let anyone take the ball off him. This was one of those monstrous games from him when he was constantly shielding the ball, holding people off and spinning out of trouble. The second half was a Gini masterclass. I do wonder just what the fuck Spurs were trying to do though. As great as Bobby was in this game, even I could see that it was because he had space to operate in. He was just dropping off, picking up the ball and turning with it time and again. With Spurs playing a back three, Dier didn’t seem to want to follow Bobby in case he left the gap in the middle for the diagonal run that Sadio and Mo both love. And because they only had two in midfield they were outnumbered in there and Hojbjerg couldn’t sit on Bobby. So what happened was Firmino just ran the game. Virtually everything we did went through him and Spurs never did anything to address the problem. I found it baffling because the one thing Mourinho does better than anyone is nullify the opposition’s strength. So many teams have kept Bobby quiet over the past year or so but this was 2018 Bobby. Great to see. I loved 2018 Bobby, he was amazing. Anyway, at 2-0 it was looking great as Spurs seemed rattled and ripe for a hammering. Then out of nothing they pulled one back. It was a fucking fluke too. Don’t give me any of that ‘great strike’ nonsense. It wasn’t. Not unless you want to call half of my driver shots great. He sliced the arse off that shot but because he was aiming at the left side of the fairway he just about managed to keep it out of the rough on the right hand side. I’m deadly serious. That was a fluke. It was an awful strike and not what he intended. No-one tries to hit their shot like that, it just happens when you hit across the ball due to poor technique. He’s trying to put his foot through a ball that’s rolling across his body, and he slices it. If the net hadn't got in the way that ball would have ended up in the East End. So that annoyed the fuck out of me as we got really unlucky on that. He did have far too much room on the edge of the box though so that’s something we could look at. Generally though, 99 times out of 100 the ball doesn't end up where it did. Then came the disallowed goal. What a goal it was too. Lovely counter attack, Bobby holding it up and finding Thiago. Thiago playing it left to Mané. Mané playing it back into the box, Thiago stepping over it and letting it roll to Mo. And Mo lashing in the finish. I celebrated that more than I’ve celebrated any goal in ages. A combination of VAR and not being able to go the game has taken that moment away now, but I was giving it the beans on this one. So I completely lost my shit when it was disallowed. Shouting and swearing at the telly (earning me disapproving scowls from the wife, a shocked look from my daughter and sending both dogs running for cover) and then eventually leaving the room so I could punch something without them seeing (the first thing that caught my eye was the fridge, so I gave that a dig). I’m still fuming about it even though it didn’t ultimately cost us. It’s not the point. It might have done. On another day it would have. Shit, on previous days this kind of bollocks has screwed us and I’m sick of it. As soon as they showed the replay I knew the goal would be disallowed. Not because I thought it was the right decision, but because there was enough in it to allow them to do what they wanted. When Fat Jon Moss told that turd Atkinson to go and look it was then a formality. Any time there’s 'just enough' in an incident for them to be able to screw us over, that’s what they’ll do. The ball hit Bobby’s arm and that was all the justification thy needed. Forget context, that’s all they wanted. A reason to disallow the goal. You know how I know this? Because they weren’t looking for anything else. It’s exactly like the Virgil Pickford thing. The only thought in their heads is can they give the decision against us. Nothing else is even on their radar. That’s why Pickford’s assault was ‘forgotten’ and it’s why Spurs actually got the fucking free-kick here. VAR can't give the free-kick, but that didn't matter because they didn't make the decision, they just told Atkinson to take a look. He did, and he gave Spurs a free-kick. The twat. The rules state that unless the attacking player scores or plays the decisive pass, then an unintentional handball can’t be punished by VAR. So assuming the officials know the laws of the game (not always the case) the only way to interpret this is they have given that as a deliberate handball by Bobby. It’s not deliberate though, he wants to control it with his chest but he’s got a big fucking dope hanging all over him and knocking the ball away from him with his arm. That’s the only reason it hits Bobby on the arm, otherwise he controls on his chest. So although it’s a massive stretch to say that was deliberate they can argue their corner on the basis that it’s a subjective decision, but it’s a complete farce that Dier was allowed to have two hands on Bobby’s shoulders, fouling him, and then knock the ball away with his forearm. There’s two fouls by Dier before Firmino even touches the ball. Both of those were completely ignored and Spurs were awarded the free-kick. And fuck all will be said. Yet again. Honestly, they can get to fuck with this shit. No-one is now going to convince me that foul play isn’t happening here. It’s happening too often now. I keep saying it but the numbers tell the story. You can’t look at this on the basis of each individual incident because there’s almost always enough of a grey area to say “I can see why it’s given”. It’s the ratio for and against that tells the true story here. If that’s Harry Kane instead of Bobby, that goal is given. If that’s City or United, the goal is given. You’re not going to convince me otherwise because I’ve seen enough now to have made my mind up. Any chance to go against us is gleefully taken. I keep saying, looking at each incident in isolation tells you nothing because even with this one you can say “I can see why they gave it”. The sheer weight of these ‘subjective’ decisions that have gone against us is dodgy as fuck. And as I said earlier, I was convinced at that moment we’d lose. Against a more dangerous opponent maybe we would have, but Spurs just didn’t look like they had any idea how to put us under any kind of pressure, even with Phillips at the back and on a yellow card. He stood up well and did everything we needed him to. Other than being done for pace by Calum Wilson he’s been largely flawless when he’s played. Ideally you only want him playing sparingly but that’s not a luxury we have now. We’re going to need big Nat quite often now by the looks of it. Hopefully he can continue to be solid, but if he isn’t I hope that no-one gets on his case over it as this situation is not his fault. He’ll try his best and if he isn’t up to the job then the blame lies at the door of the money men who haven’t given Klopp what he needs in this desperate situation. They’ve tried wrapping Matip up in cotton wool by only playing him once a week but it isn’t going to work. It reduces the risk, sure, but it’s not going to prevent him getting hurt as we saw in this game. We got 45 brilliant minutes out of him and then off he went. When did the injury happen? He wasn’t limping, was he? Did he turn his ankle walking down the fucking tunnel? It’s infuriating because as I keep saying, he’s the best centre back in the league not named Virgil. He’s so good but it doesn’t really matter now does it? We can’t count on him and having him as one of the four options hurts us because for half the season we’re down to three. And one of those is Gomez, who also seems to have rotten luck and misses a few months every season. Availability is a massive thing and we’ve got too many players who aren’t reliable on that front. Matip heads the list but Keita, Gomez, Shaq and Ox are not far behind. Of course injuries happen, but they seem to happen to these lads far more than they do to most of the others. Saying we need another centre back before the window closes is just stating the obvious. I don’t know how anyone could possibly dispute it. It needs to happen and we can’t be too choosy, because we need another body or even two, for depth as much as anything. It’s fine if you want argue that Henderson and Fabinho can play there, or you pair one of those with one of Williams or Phillips. What happens if one or more of them picks up an injury or suspension though? They were our depth, our emergency cover, but what happens when the emergency cover isn’t there? Honestly, our situation is so dire currently that I would have taken both Sokratis and Mustafi until the end of the season. The squad would look much healthier with both of them in it, despite their obvious limitations, but we passed on Sokaratis and don’t seem to be arsed about Mustafi. That’s fine, as long as there’s someone else coming in. There fucking better be. But anyway, while I was still seething from that disallowed goal Trent whipped in a stunning ball and Sadio lashed it in to make it 3-1. “DISALLOW THAT, YER CHEATING BASTARDS”. Then a brief moment of panic in case they somehow found a reason to do just that. It’s just shit isn’t it? Goal celebrations are just a thing of the past now. The first thing I’m thinking is “will there be a check on this?”. Thankfully there wasn’t. Rodon made a mess of dealing with it but that was such a great ball and it was also a sharp finish. Sadio didn’t think about it, he just instinctively lashed it in. Easier to do that when we’ve scored a couple and everyone is feeling lighter now that the goal burden has been lifted. After that we focussed more on controlling the game rather than pushing forward for more goals. We kept it well, made smart decisions and restricted Spurs to virtually nothing. They sent on Bale and he did fuck all. He looks like a spent force now doesn’t he? His biggest asset was that frightening pace and strength he had. He could play as well, don’t get me wrong, but the speed and power was what separated him from most mere mortals. That’s gone now by the looks of it. The closing stages was mostly about Gini getting the ball and challenging Spurs players to try and take it off him. They couldn’t, he just made them look like mugs. The only threat to us was Atkinson but we did a good job of restricting his influence on the game and in the end it was a comfortable win. The three points were desperately need so I feel good about that. But it wasn’t just the points we needed, was it? We needed to see a performance, something to suggest we’ve come through that awful run and are ready to have a right good go at it again. We defo saw that and the performance was much more significant than the result I think. The leadership of Henderson and Milner was massive and it looked like the front three finally realised that they’re much stronger as a group than they are individually. It was that teamwork, understanding and enjoyment of playing together that made them great. Somewhere along the line it’s like they forgot that, but maybe now having had to do some soul searching we’ll see more of this and less of what we’ve seen from them for much of this season. This win and performance, coupled with some results going our way this week for the first time in ages, has definitely lifted the mood now and given us something to look forward to again. The centre back issue is definitely a dark cloud over everything but if we play like this every week it won’t matter who we have at the back because no-one will have the balls to try and attack us anyway. West Ham are up next and although they’re flying high it’s a game we should win if we play anywhere near this level. Fabinho won’t be back so that means Hendo and Phillips again. The midfield may also need tweaking because do we really want Milner playing his third game in seven days? Last time he did that he pulled a hammy. So bring in Jones or Shaq for him and otherwise it’s same again. We’ve taken a step back towards where we want to be and the chance is there now to beat West Ham and Brighton and see where that leaves us before we go into the crunch period of games against City, Leicester and the Blueshite. I feel as though a corner has been turned and I’m far less worried about any opposition (other than City) than I am about the officiating. I think we’ll be fine now performance wise, but it won’t always translate to results because of this ongoing situation with referees. Star man was really difficult as everyone played well and some were immense. Trent got it on BT which was fine with me. He was back to his best. It could just as easily have gone to Bobby, Milner, Gini or Hendo. Any one of them would have been deserving but I’ll lean towards Milner because it just felt like in the last couple of games he’s helped to bring back the intensity to our game. The others were all brilliant though and I wouldn’t argue against any of those. Quick word on Thiago. He was alright and got better the longer it went on. His tackling always looks like it's going to get him in trouble though doesn't it? I like him much more as an 8 than a 6 so far but it depends on the opposition and who is alongside him in the middle. For now I'd defo be using Gini in front of the centre backs because they need all the protection we can give them. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip (Phillips), Henderson, Robertson; Wijnaldum, Thiago (Jones), Milner; Salah, Firmino (Origi), Mané:

Not exactly surprising was it? Even when we’re in a good run we never get anything at Old Trafford so this result was entirely predictable. We played pretty well for the most part, better than we usually do here anyway, but it wasn’t enough because we made too many mistakes. For some inexplicable reason I felt good about our chances when I woke up on Sunday. I’ve been on such a massive downer of late and my faith in the team (specifically the forwards) has been shaken to it’s core, yet I had a feeling we’d do well in this one. I don’t know why that was but I suspect it’s probably because it was the cup, which meant less pressure, and that expectations were pretty low and that also means less pressure. United were expected to win this because they’re top of the table and our form has been awful since the turn of the year. So in some ways this was a free hit for us. Even when I saw the team I thought we might come through the tie, although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about Rashford up against young Rhys Williams. Sadio not starting also weakened us but the flip side to that is it’s good being able to call on someone like that from the bench when the game becomes more stretched. So all in all I still felt quite hopeful. And the way we started the game was great. We were on the front foot, positive and we looked more like us. We had a chance in the first minute when some nice play got Trent in down the side and his low cross was scrambled away. Great start, something to build on, and we did build on it. We even managed to finally score a goal when Bobby’s brilliant through ball was superbly finished by Mo. At fucking last. I actually thought we were superb right up until the moment they scored. After that we definitely lost some confidence for a while. It was a shitty goal to concede but the warning signs had been there. It was obvious what United were doing and I thought it was naive that we allowed it to continue without fixing it. When our full backs went forward they just left Rashford and Greenwood upfield in the space they vacated. Every single time. And when they got the ball back they found those two early and they were able to get a run at Williams or Fabinho. It was just to easy for them. Greenwood had already broke clear once only to greedily try and score himself when he had two players available for cutbacks. Williams did a good job there in blocking off the angle for the cutback to Van Der Beek but Greenwood only ever really looked like he wanted to score himself, and he was never beating Alisson from that angle. That said, it was a warning that we never heeded. Their goal was just far too easy. We lost the ball on the edge of their box when Pogba made a sliding challenge and won the ball. Normally it wouldn’t be a problem but too often in this game we were just wide open. We’re usually pretty good at ‘protecting our attacks’ but when you take Henderson and Fabinho out of the midfield it probably shouldn’t be too surprising that we’re more vulnerable as they’re as good as anybody out there at that side of the game. I also think maybe the lack of goals has become such a mental thing that maybe the midfield were over-committing in attack and not thinking about preventing the counter attack. Milner spent more time in the opposition box in this game than Wijnaldum has all season for example. We didn’t just get caught once, it looked like it was going to happen virtually every time we lost possession. And while it’s easy to point the finger at Williams for this I don’t see it as being his fault at all. The second goal was a mistake, that’s on him, but how wide open we looked to counter attacks was not his fault. He was the victim of that crime, not the perpetrator. That equaliser just looked like a really shit goal to concede though, especially as we were 1-0 up at the time. If you’re trailing you can concede like that as everyone piles forward looking to get back into the game but we were 1-0 up and in control, so to concede on the break like that was a sickener. It was Arsenal like in fact. Rashford did well but I don’t think Milner covered himself in glory trying to cut out the pass. He could have been further over and closer to Greenwood maybe, or he could have not committed to trying to head it away and instead just concentrated on staying between Greenwood and the goal. Unfortunately the pass was just close enough for him to think he could get his head on it. He couldn’t, and Greenwood lashed a shot into the bottom corner. That seemed to really knock us for six and for the rest of the half they looked more dangerous. It always felt like they were one pass away from getting in behind us and the game was really on a knife edge for us. Rashford got away from Williams just before half time after the kid dived in needlessly thinking he could win the ball. Criticise him if you like but 19 year old defenders do things like this. It’s completely normal. That equaliser just sucked the air out of our balloon and you could visibly see we weren’t the same side for the rest of the half. Then we went 2-1 down early in the second half with another really bad goal. Thiago didn’t win it midfield (a feature of this game) and the loose ball broke to Cavani. As they tried to do all day (and most of the time failed) he looked to release Rashford early. Williams was in position to cut it out but he misjudged it and could only get a little touch on it to send Rashford clear. There was no way he wasn’t scoring there. That’s the position he always wants to be in and Alisson had no chance. I thought it might have been offside but given the way they’ve completely fucked up that law I expect they’d have given it anyway and claimed that because Williams touched the ball while trying to intercept it, that ‘reset the phase’ or whatever bollocks they want to use to justify favouring certain teams. Williams should be cutting that out though so that mistake is on him. It wasn’t inexperience, that was just an error, but I’ll say it again, young centre backs make mistakes. That’s why you never see them playing for the top clubs. They need to make their mistakes somewhere else (either on loan or in a difference position) because when you make a mistake at centre back there’s only the goalkeeper who can help you out. Do you think Van Dijk or Matip weren’t making mistakes like that at 19? Or Alan Hansen? Because they were. It goes with the territory and this is why Klopp would rather weaken his midfield by playing Henderson at the back than select a kid who has done well but just isn’t ready. It isn’t fair to Rhys or to the other players for that matter. It’s not really fair to him either that we just play exactly the same way as we would if Matip had been back there. He’s thrown in there and expected to play like an experienced international defender. He didn’t have anyone babysitting him (he even had a midfield player as a partner) and he wasn’t given any kind of protection. Everyone just played as though we had Matip or Gomez back there and not a young kid who was in over his head. I just feel bad for Williams and I hope he doesn’t let this ruin his confidence. This is not his fault and he shouldn’t be scapegoated for this loss. Playing centre back for Liverpool is a lot more difficult than it is playing centre back for anyone else in this league. Only Man City compares really, and now I’m not even sure about that because their tactics are now much more ‘centre back friendly’ than they were and they don’t have deal with as many one v ones as they did previously. Our lads though? It’s fucking hard. Because the full backs are so high up that when the opposition has pace and can play on the break, it’s a huge test, particularly if the midfielders aren’t protecting as they should. Rhys got very little help from Trent or Gini (who was playing on that side of the midfield three). Williams could be in Burnley’s back four and look great because he’s got a full back on his outside that never moves out of position, a bank of four midfielders sat in front and the only thing behind him is the 18 yard box and a goalkeeper. Playing for us? You’re on the halfway line most of the time with only Fabinho to help and when you turn around there’s acres of green grass behind and you can find yourself in a foot race with opponents who are quicker than you. It’s really pretty fucking scandalous that he’s been put in this situation. He was playing non-league football last season remember. There’s a lot to like about the kid. His passing is really crisp, he’s good in the air and he seems to have a fantastic mentality. I actually think overall he’s been outstanding this season all things considered. He’s done as well as, or actually much better, than could have been expected. The mistakes he’s made in games haven’t caused him to go to pieces and he seems to have the ability to keep his head up and that’s a good sign for the future. He’ll need a short memory and it would be a good idea to avoid social media. Hopefully he’s getting good advice on that. The lack of pace is a concern but I’d be interested to know if he was any slower than Matip. I doubt there’s too much in it, but experience makes such a difference in positioning and decision making. Williams doesn’t have that and frankly won’t have it for several more years. Again, not his fault. This is why 19 year olds don’t play centre back for top clubs. Anyway, at 2-1 I thought we were done and for a while we looked like we were. At one stage I was worried we were going to lose all idea of shape and get torn apart on the break as we got desperate and tried to force an equaliser. It didn’t look like we had much left to offer but then something changed. I don’t know exactly what the trigger was but I think it might have been Firmino. He gave the ball away dreadfully and then something just seemed to snap as he went chasing off to win it back. He did win it, and then he did it again. And for the next few minutes the whole team was more energised and we began to look dangerous again. Milner put one over the bar on the stretch and he was becoming more and more influential now. The equaliser came when we pressed them and eventually forced a sloppy pass from Cavani that Milner intercepted. He played it to Bobby and then continued his run into the box. Bobby squared it to him but Milner cleverly let it run for Mo who scuffed a shot that went through the legs of the keeper. De Gea would defo have saved that but thankfully he wasn’t playing. That was the bit of luck we haven’t had in weeks. Were things finally turning around for us? *Narrator’s voice. No, they weren’t. I really thought we had them now and we had chances to win it. Sadio had come on and we were on top. Trent had a shot saved and Mo missed two good really good openings. Then they were given a soft free-kick on the edge of the box and the rest was entirely predictable. I’m not complaining about Pawson’s decision to award a free-kick. I don’t think it was a foul but it was one of those that could have gone either way and Cavani just used his experience to win that. Sometimes you’d get that, other times you wouldn’t. It’s typical of how things are going for us and how things are going for them. Portuguese Gylffi took the free kick and put it in the far bottom corner. Maybe Alisson could have done better but to me the real issue was Thiago crouching down and allowing it to go over his head. Nice one lad. Way to take one for the team. He’s been massively underwhelming to this point. I don’t think he’s playing badly and he’s done lots of things to show just how special he is. But he hasn’t helped the team at all. Not his fault, he’s got to get used to how we play and he’s probably still trying to find top form and fitness after being sidelined for months by that Everton shithouse. It’s just really frustrating that we thought he was going to really give us something a bit different against deep lying teams, but he just hasn’t. I don’t like him in the number six role for two reasons. I think it restricts his creativity and he’s also not the most mobile. There was a moment late on when he had to chase back after Pogba and it was seriously alarming to me. He couldn’t run. His legs had gone and his head was wobbling all over the place. He looked like one of those marathon runners who get to the home straight and they’re completely fucked, but they don’t want any help getting over the line so they just kind of wobble their way to the finish. Thiago and Henderson with Fabinho operating behind them is pretty mouth watering to me, but we aren’t going to see that until next season because FSG think it’s ok for us to rip out our midfield to patch up the defence. It’s so hard at the moment but it’s like I said after Burnley. My thoughts now are mostly that I feel bad for Klopp and the players. They need help, both in the transfer market and from the fans. They’re getting neither. They’re completely on their own. The second part of that is unavoidable. The first is something that is within the control of the club but they seemingly just won’t do anything about it. Klopp has to try and take the positives from this just to keep the player’s heads up. There were positives even if it doesn’t really feel that way after yet another shitty result. We were much better going forward even if it did come at a cost at the other end. Mo scored twice but should have had at least three and probably four. The first finish was sumptuous, the second one was shite but he got lucky, and there were two others he could have done better with. So that’s a good thing as at least we created clear openings. It felt as though Firmino created every one of those (he defo created three of them) so that’s good too. It was a real mixed bag from him because in between those moments of quality he was generally shite. It’s sod’s law that when we finally remember how to score we forget how to defend. We conceded as many in this one game as we had in the previous five games of this shitty run. So frustrating, but when you are forced to field an inexperienced kid in the most important position on the pitch (not including goalkeeper) then this is the risk you run, especially against a side who thrive on counter attacks and who have the most in form forward in the country playing in direct opposition to the kid. Williams was thrown in at the deep end into a fixture he ordinarily wouldn’t have been anywhere near, but you can’t blame Klopp for picking him as what choice did he have? Literally his only option was choosing between Williams or Phillips, and neither is ideal. I’d have gone with Phillips because he’s got four years more experience and to me that’s vital at centre back. But I don’t see them every day in training and Williams is probably considerably better. That’s why he was picked. The real problem here is the club not backing Klopp in his recommendations on who we can bring in. He’s made recommendations, we know this because he told us last week. We also know he can’t make the decision on whether we can buy anyone because he told us that too. So, we were knocked out of the FA Cup because we had to play an inexperienced kid at the heart of the defence. With Matip or Gomez in this team we don’t lose this game. I’m not even mentioning Virgil because we didn’t need the world’s best defender in order to win this game. We just needed someone who is ready for this level of football and we didn’t have it. So yeah, we’re out of this competition because the owners wouldn’t back the manager. You can argue we’re out of the title race for the same reason (for me there’s far more to it than that, but it is a factor) and unless Virgil makes an all time record recovery for an ACL injury we can forget about the Champions League too. And I don’t want him coming back that quickly because history shows that players who come back sooner than nine months from that injury usually suffer all kinds of other problems in their first year back. Klopp is having to wrap Matip in cotton wool but that won’t make a difference anyway. We’ll get another game or two out of him before he picks up another knock, and we don’t even have Hendo to plug in there at the moment either. Against Spurs we’ll have Matip available to partner Fabinho, but if Hendo isn’t back in midfield then I don’t like our chances. I don’t actually like our chances regardless if I’m honest, because there’s a tried and tested way of getting results against us this season and we’re about to come up against the fucking king of that way of playing. Spurs will sit in and use Kane and Son. They tried that not so long ago at Anfield and almost stole an undeserved point. We were a much different animal back then than we are currently though. I’m dreading Thursday if I’m being truly honest. Star man could (should?) have been Milner but I'm going with Salah, not least because I've been so critical of him recently. So credit where it's due. It wasn’t his best all around game but he usually does fuck all against these so two goals and another couple of near misses is massive progress. More of the same on Thursday please Mo. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Williams, Fabinho, Robertson; Thiago (Shaqiri), Wijnaldum (Mané), Milner; Salah, Firmino (Origi), Jones:

Saturday Jan 16: Reports today that Gini has turned down our contract offer. Seems pretty certain he’s going now. I’m not happy about it and I can’t understand the logic at all. Why are we allowing him to walk away for nothing rather than give him the kind of salary that he’s earned? Maybe I’m over simplifying it but giving him a four year contract and then selling him in two years still has to be better financially than allowing him to walk away for fuck all now? Especially as we’ll need to buy a replacement. Unless they’re under the illusion that Naby fucking Keita is finally going to come good? Please God don’t let them be under that illusion. I hear the arguments as to why we shouldn’t give him what he wants, but look at it this way. Imagine the state we’d have been in this season if he’d left last summer, which he would have done if Barca had any money. We’re in a bad enough state as it is, but without Gini? *shudders* So we don’t pay him because he’s 30 soon and we let him leave for nothing. Then what? We’ve got fuck all money to go out and buy a replacement because whatever cash we do have will be needed on another centre half and probably another forward. How are we replacing him? Klopp and Edwards have earned our trust with how they’ve handled things over the last few years, but this feels different, not least because I suspect if Klopp had the choice he’d want Gini to stay. I don’t like this at all, it concerns me greatly but we have no choice but to just hope they know what they’re doing. Sunday Jan 17: L 0 Man United 0. Shite. At least part of it was. A lot of it was fine, good even. But when there’s nothing at the end of it then it doesn’t really count for much. We had all of the ball and they had the clearest chances. It shouldn’t be that way but this is us at the moment. West Brom, Newcastle, Southampton, they all had hardly any of the ball but they all hd good chances. And it’s not the chances we’ve given up that concerns me as it’s not easy to go through a game against PL opposition and restrict them to no clear chances, unless you’re playing us, so I’m not concerned that Pogba and Fernandez had clear chances. I’m just completely dispirited that we didn’t have any of our own. Actually that’s not strictly true. We had chances but they didn’t look like clear ones because the finishing was fucking risible. What was Firmino doing? He was all over the place today. Usually you have to put a gun to his head to get him to take a shot as he always wants to pass. Today he had a glorious situation where he could have rolled Robbo in and instead he shot. Badly. His choice of pass was abysmal too. It’s like he’s lost the capacity to make any right decisions. Then you’ve got Sadio, who looks great until he gets in the box. And Mo, who’s just been fucking woeful since his angry two goal cameo at Palace after he’d been dropped for that interview with AS. I’m depressed. There’s fuck all to do except watch the footy and that’s just too stressful now. There’s no enjoyment in this at all. Just a helplessness that the lads are struggling and need us and there’s nothing we can do for them. Today brought that home more than anything. This should have been our moment to lord it over United. We’ve waited years for this. Decades in fact. All the shit they’ve thrown our way and now that we’re finally back on our perch we can’t stick it to them because the stadiums are empty. I know there are more important things going on in the world and people are dying. That doesn’t really make this any less distressing though. By the time we’re back in the ground the moment to celebrate and revel in it will have long gone and there’s now the possibility that it might be United taking the title from us. What kind of sick fucking joke is this? If we have to relinquish the title then it better be to City, because if it’s to anyone else that’s going to be the bitterest of pills to swallow. And the officiating today was a fucking disgrace. Blowing up six seconds early because Mané was clean through? You’re never going to convince me that wasn’t a deliberate act to ensure we didn’t score. I don’t know why Tierney didn’t want us to score, I just know he clearly didn’t because that was just not a normal thing to do. Not that we’ll say anything about it. We’re the biggest pushovers in football. You can do what you like to LFC because the only people who’ll say anything are the fans. Look at the lack of free-kicks Salah gets. He isn’t in the top 100 most fouled players this season and I saw something today saying that last season he wasn’t in the top 300 and actually ranked 16th on his own team!! 15 of our players were fouled more than Salah? Fuck off. Why has no-one mentioned this? I don’t understand. I don’t know why Klopp has never had those stats quoted to him and asked for his thoughts about it. I don’t understand why it hasn’t been written about. I mean Christ, the Athletic can churn out 10,000 words on a new security guard farting at Melwood but they haven’t done an in depth piece on this? What am I missing here? Monday Jan 18: Speaking of Mo, he’s angling for a new contract. Any time a player uses the expression “I want to stay but its in the club’s hands” you know it’s about money. He wants a new contract. That’s why he pulled that shit with the Spanish press the other week. He’s got two and a half years left on his contract hasn’t he? And he’s the highest paid player at the club (along with Virg and presumably Thiago). You know, I think I’d rather burn down Anfield than give him a new contract with a pay rise, especially when Gini is on fucking buttons and they won’t pay him. I’m not saying I wouldn’t give Mo a new deal at some point in the future (actually I probably am saying that) but why the hell would we do it now? And why is he saying this shit now, after the shit performances he’s been putting in. Here’s a thought Mo, how about next time you face Luke Shaw you actually go past him at least once, or maybe even try and get a shot on target. Then maybe you can talk about wanting a pay rise. Until then, fuck off. Score some goals, stop bitching, start linking up with your team-mates again instead of obsessing about personal milestones, and maybe then you might be worth a new deal. You’re already overpaid though, so you can forget about getting any more dough. Honestly, I’m getting fucking sick of his antics. The covid thing, the bitching about Trent being captain, the weird interview with the Spanish press and now this. He’s been shite for weeks and we’ve gone from first to fourth and he’s talking about wanting a new deal? The fucking balls on him. We never get anything like this from Sadio, or Bobby for that matter. It’s always Mo. The little diva. Tuesday Jan 19: Guess what, West Ham are two points behind us now. Can you believe that shit? It’s just hard to comprehend what’s happened here. We’ve only lost two games all season but we’re on the verge of being overtaken by Everton and we’ve got Moyes breathing his cheesy dog breath down our neck. We’re four points behind Leicester now too. You remember Leicester, right? That team we fucking spanked everywhere not so long ago. Yeah, well that team that we’re clearly better than are now four points ahead of us after beating Chelsea. I’m fuming that we’ve somehow allowed this to happen. To go from where we were the other week after scoring seven at Palace to being where we are now is incomprehensible. Wednesday Jan 20: Still fuck all happening with regards to a new centre back. It’s a difficult one in some regards, I get that. The obvious thing to say is “bring forward whatever deal you had planned for the summer and pay a bit extra if need be” but it’s not that simple. Firstly, how do we know they actually plan to buy anyone next summer? By the time the next window comes around we’ll be £200m down in match day revenue. Other teams are spending due to borrowing against future earnings. We could do that too. I’d go as far as to say that we should do. In fact, I’d even go as far as to say it’s negligent not to. But they aren’t going to do that. If we don’t sign a centre back it will be because they don’t want to spend any money right now but it could also be that the player we want isn’t available and we know Klopp is prepared to wait. I just think that desperate times call for desperate measures as I’d be amazed if Klopp wasn’t willing to think short term for once. Sitting back and waiting for Van Dijk when you had Lovren, Gomez, Matip and Klavan was a risk, but it was a calculated one. You still had four experienced international centre backs to choose from while you waited. Waiting for the ‘right’ target when you’re using your two best midfield players at the back because you quite literally have nobody else is not a calculated risk. You know what it is? It’s writing off a title defence that’s what. Not making a defensive signing this month is tantamount to giving up. I’m not expecting us to go and break the bank for Koulibaly or the Ajax lad. But honestly, how difficult is it to find someone (even on loan) who is a better option for us than Nat Phillips and Rhys Williams (bless the pair of them)? They’ve had since October to figure this out. We knew Virg and Joe weren’t coming back and we all knew Matip would miss more games than he plays (and that’s exactly how it turned out). Yet here we are, more than halfway through the month and nothing has happened. As I say, negligent. I mean fucking hell, I know it’s not ideal but Arsenal have released Sokratis. The second he left their training ground there should have been a taxi waiting to bring him up here. Sure, he’s slow, but are you honestly telling me he wouldn’t be a significant upgrade on Williams and Phillips and give us more flexibility between now and the end of the season? Fucking get him in if you can’t find anyone else. All those soundbites about “ we won’t defend the title, we’ll attack it” look pretty fucking hollow now. I suppose they were half right, because we’re defo not defending it at this moment are we? Thursday Jan 21: See? L 0 Burnley 1. The title is gone and so has the player’s confidence. It’s so tough to watch right now. Everything is so laboured when we reach the box. Up until then it’s all good. But we get in the final third and it’s like they’ve forgotten how to play football. That said, we did not fucking deserve that late kick in the balls with the penalty. We played well enough to win this game but nothing is falling for us and we’re not capable of forcing a change of luck. The finishing isn’t good but we’ve had about 80 shots in the last five games and have only one goal to show for it. Against Palace we scored seven goals from not too many more attempts than that. What’s happening to us now is a statistical anomaly and three points from the last 15 is a total freak occurrence based on the balance of play in those games. Unfortunately it has sapped all the confidence from the lads and they look pretty dejected right now. Klopp does too, although he’s been through this before in his last season at Dortmund (freak results when they were playing well enough to win games) and he eventually turned it around. He’ll do it again but by the time we’re back on track it will be too late. We’ll always look back on these five games (possibly more if it continues) as being catastrophic and the spell that cost us the title. It’s pretty devastating how quickly it’s turned to shit. We were top a few weeks ago and everyone thought we would run away with it. I just feel throughly dejected about it all as it wasn’t meant to be like this. Friday Jan 22: Klopp’s press conference sees him re-iterate that he doesn’t have the final say on buying players. He never has done. He can say what he wants, he can make recommendations, but he can’t write the cheques. We knew that anyway so this isn’t new. It is the closest to expressing dissent that we’re ever likely to see him get though. He must be fed up of constantly being asked why he isn’t signing anyone when he wants it as much as we do. If not bringing anyone in was his call then fine (as it often has been in the past), but it isn’t and he therefore doesn’t want to take the heat on that. We now know that he wants to bring someone in and that he’s made recommendations as to who it should be. We also know he’s fully understanding of the situation and won’t be demanding we splash out £50m on someone who will be on the bench when the other three are available. So he’s not going to be making unreasonable requests as it’s not his way. He’s given so much to FSG and he’s raised the value and the profile of their investment massively without them having to bankroll it. He’s done it on a shoestring, so now they need to fucking help him out by doing whatever it takes. FFP rules have been relaxed due to Covid so there is flexibility to do something. Time is running out, and to be honest even if we brought someone in now I’d still be seething about it not happening sooner. I’m not someone who constantly bashes FSG over signings, in fact I hardly ever do it, but this is unacceptable. What other club in the league would do nothing after losing every senior centre back they had on the books and had to dismantle their midfield to plug the gaps? Honestly, I don’t think there is any other club in the league who would act like this. None. FSG have form for it though with the Red Sox. They won a World Series recently but did nothing to strengthen the team and the season after they were shite. We’ve got more problems right now than the lack of centre backs, but at least by addressing that one is shows they give a fuck. They don’t though, not really. They might give a fuck if it costs us a top four spot, which is a distinct possibility right now. Meanwhile, Rafa has agreed a severance package and is leaving China after a distinctly underwhelming spell over there. I’m sure it wasn’t his fault though. It never is. It’ll be the board. Promising him a wok but bringing him chop sticks. …. and that was the week that was

Initially I wasn’t going to write this as 1) I didn’t feel like I could face it, and 2) I didn’t think anyone would want to read it. The latter may still be true but having had time to sleep on it I actually wanted to get this done and getting my thoughts out there instead of having them rattling around my head will probably help me process all this. I feel differently today to how I felt last night and indeed how I’ve felt for weeks. I’d even go as far as to say I feel better. Not because I’m more encouraged about anything (if anything it’s the opposite) but because the emotions have changed. I still feel sad but I’m not distraught about it in the way I have been of late. Every result has been a hammer blow because all I can think of is how damaging it’s going to be to our title defence. As of now, I’ve written the title off and that acceptance and resignation is almost cathartic in a way. What’s left is just sadness and a sense of resentment about how this shit we’re going through is completely unfair. I’m no longer angry at anyone (other than the constant stream of officials screwing us over) and the main thing I’m feeling today is sympathy for Klopp and the players. I just feel bad for them. Even the front three who I’ve been hammering lately. I was angry but what’s the point being angry at them? They’re trying their best. It’s not working, but you can see they’re doing all they can and they just can’t catch a break. Not just the front three either, it seems like everyone is suffering. Everything is going against them. From little things to big things, literally nothing is falling for them at the moment. I could mention yet more decisions going against us and I will do, but for now I’ll leave that and concentrate on football stuff. It really is the finest of margins right now. Sure, you can say we weren’t good enough but in this particular game I don’t think that’s true. We’ve been shite in a lot of games this season but this wasn’t that. It wasn’t great by any means but we’ve won games playing far, far worse than this. We just needed one chance to go in, one ball to fall kindly for us in the box, the keeper to let one through his legs. Something. Anything. The problem is that when you’re in a run like this you need some luck and we’re getting none. “You make your own luck” they say. Nah, not really. You get luck when things are running for you and you get none when they aren’t. On another day Origi’s shot is an inch lower and we go on to win comfortably. Or the rebound from Pope doesn’t land perfectly by his own foot so he can hack it away from Sadio on the line. I could go on, because it’s just fine margins. Everything we hit against Palace went in and since then it’s done everything but. Sure, we’ve not played well, but it’s also true that fuck all has gone our way. Not one thing. Nothing. I don’t tend to put much stock in those XG numbers but those who do would tell you that statistically what has happened in the last five games is a complete freak occurrence. To have come away with only one goal from the chances created is a huge anomaly, but that’s what happens when things conspire against you. I looked at the players in the second half of this game and you could visibly see they were almost broken. The lack of goals and the bad run of results and everything else around it looks to have destroyed their confidence. To then lose this game to a late, soft penalty, they must feel like the whole world is against them right now. Because it is. Of course there are a lot of things they could be doing better and need to be doing better. The performance wasn’t great but it was mostly alright. It’s not right in the final third, that much is clear, but we still did enough and forced enough openings to have won this game nine times out of ten. But it was clear that the one game out of ten would come now, because it never rains but it fucking pours. Klopp’s team selection was interesting to say the least. I don’t know why he left out Bobby and Mo. It might have been a kick up the arse because they’ve been shite. It might have been a case of just doing something different to throw Burnley a curveball. It could have been a pre-planned thing based on the sports science info they have. Maybe it’s all of the above. I had no problem with it though. Well, I didn’t when I thought it would be Shaq in the front three and Ox in midfield. When I saw it was the other way around my heart sank. I don’t know how many times I’ve said this, and I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but OX IS FUCKING SHITE IN A FRONT THREE. How many times do we need to see this exact performance from him before Klopp finally accepts that it doesn’t work? Never has and never will. He’s absolutely useless on the wing. It’s like having ten men. He’s not been great in midfield of late either but at least he has prior form for doing well there. He’s never been any good on the wing though. If I’m Minamino I’m wondering what the fucking point of being here is now. Playing second fiddle to Salah, Firmino and Mané is one thing (add Jota in there too), and I could even accept being overlooked for Origi in certain situations, but if I’m Taki sat there watching Ox being the invisible man then I’m onto my agent this morning and saying “I made a terrible mistake, get me out of here”. Not that I’m saying he’s good enough. He’s shown nothing to suggest he is. What he has shown is that he’s a better option up front than Ox, which is admittedly not saying much. So yeah, I didn’t like that tactical choice but in terms of dropping Bobby and Mo, I was on board with that as I think it was necessary. And this might be an unpopular opinion but I thought Origi played quite well and shouldn’t have been brought off. I know he missed that great chance but I’ll get to that in a sec. He looked lively and he wanted to get shots in whenever he could. He had two efforts that went straight at Pope but at least they were efforts and he was positive. It’s just such a shame that he didn’t take the gift that was presented to him by Ben Mee just before half time. Burnley don’t make mistakes like that usually. You have to work for everything you get against them but this was the bit of luck we needed. At least it looked like it was. But what Lady Luck giveth, she can also taketh away. And she did. The cunt. You can say that Origi has to score and I agree. That’s a chance you have to take, especially in our current predicament. He didn’t take it, but fuck me he couldn’t have gone any closer than that. He was literally one inch away from the most emphatic finish you’ll see all season. He didn’t bottle it - that was the finish of someone who absolutely believed he was going to score. Maybe if he’d been more hesitant he’d have got lucky and seen it squirm through the keepers legs or something, but he wasn’t hesitant and he approached it like a man thinking “fucking pick this one out”. Problem was he just struck it too hard and too high. It hit the bar and bounced on the wrong side of the line from our point of view. As I say, an inch lower and it’s a spectacular one that rattles in off the underside of the bar. Instead it was just another kick in the balls and further added to the weight already on everyone’s shoulders. Be honest, when that didn’t go in you thought “we’re not scoring here tonight yet again” didn’t you? I know I did. And it probably went through the minds of some of the players too. Two years ago everything Divock touched turned to gold. Now it just turns to shit. This was his liveliest performance in ages though and like I say, I wouldn’t have taken him off, certainly not for Firmino anyway. If Divock buries that chance everything is different. We needed that to go in but it didn’t. We got a bit tetchy after that and it all kicked off at half time with Klopp chasing Dyche down the tunnel screaming at him. It was all caused by a nothing incident right on the half time whistle. Fabinho went to challenge for a goal-kick but the whistle went so he was pulling out when Barnes barged into him. Fabinho had a little kick out as did Barnes at the exact same time. It was nothing really, but it ended up sparking a flare up that a few other players got involved in. Matip had one of his weird flappy arms meltdowns and Robbo got involved with Brady, while Klopp ran down the tunnel screaming at Dyche and then came back out to see what was going on. Mike Dean booked Fabinho, which was utterly bewildering because if he’d seen Fabinho kick out then he had to see Barnes do likewise, as it was a simultaneous thing. VAR checked it for violent conduct and a possible red card. I don’t know the protocol here and from what I understand they can’t overturn yellow cards, but surely they could have said to Dean to take a look because it’s either a yellow for both or it’s no action on either. Of course, a yellow for Barnes would have meant an early bath as he’d already been cautioned. Can't be doing anything that might help Liverpool out, eh? So we ended up with Fabinho being booked for fuck all. That might be costly when he picks up a fifth yellow and ends up with a ban. But this is how it is this season. There is unquestionably something going on, although at least Mo was finally given a free-kick after he came on. Dean obviously didn’t get the memo there. Expect a slap on the wrists for that, although he might have redeemed himself with the penalty decision. We did plenty of things right in this game but the finishing wasn’t as sharp as it needed to be and we had no luck whatsoever. Of course I’m not blind to the fact that a lot of it was fucking garbage too. Klopp continues to bemoan the decision making and he’s not wrong. It might not be the decisions that are obvious to us though. By that I mean what if it’s not always the player on the ball making the wrong decision? What if it’s the runner who isn’t going where he’s supposed to be? A lot of what is going wrong won’t be apparent to us as we’re not privy to the patterns of play they work on in training. What I’m thinking here though is that Trent hasn’t suddenly forgot how to cross a ball. Neither has Robbo. But so many of their crosses are being cut out by defenders. Some of that will be poor delivery into a packed box, but what if it’s the forwards not being where they are supposed to? Combine that with midfielders who rarely if ever get into the penalty area (why isn't Gini doing it? He's great at it), and you’re basically looking at scenarios where Trent and Robbo are trying to find three forwards in a box containing at least eight opposition players. I have a big problem with the aimless floated crosses into the box we keep seeing. Robbo doesn’t do this much but Trent is guilty of it and so are the likes of Shaq and Hendo. They’re always looking for that diagonal to Robbo or Sadio but it’s an almost impossible ball when the opposition is waiting on it. Then you have Sadio and Mo often doing similar, dinking the ball in when there’s no space to drop it over anybody’s heads. All of this is shit and not what we should be doing, but it comes from desperation that the things we are supposed to be doing just isn’t working. Trent was poor in this game but he wasn’t anywhere near as bad as is being made out to be. As I say, some of those crosses were shite, but there were loads when he put it in low into a good area but the forwards were all either stood still or just not in positions to create space for themselves. Klopp seemed to hint at this himself afterwards and says it’s on him to make sure they understand what they’re supposed to do, because currently they aren’t doing it. We still had plenty of openings though, particularly in the second half. Trent had a low shot saved, Bobby had one cleared off the line and Mo was denied by Pope at the near post when everyone thought he'd go to the far. Sadio put one over the bar as well. We just needed one of them to go in and although it's partly our own fault as the finishing needs to be sharper, as I keep saying we just need a break. As sterile as we've been in attack lately I do think one win will change things around. Not to the extent that we'll start scoring four and five every game, but it just gets the monkey off everyone's back and things might start to feel a bit more normal again. Right now nothing is normal, the tension is there for all to see and it's effecting everybody when they get to the final third. We're battling everything at the moment. Ourselves, the opposition and the officials. Mike Dean annoyed me but it’s not specifically because of the penalty. It’s the old ‘death by a thousand cuts’ thing that we’re seeing more and more of. The little decisions that stop the flow of the game and allow the opponent to regroup and get a breather. The phantom free-kicks we keep conceding. Allowing the opposition to time waste as much as they like. Ashley Barnes backs into defenders and knocks them off balance when they’re in the air. Everyone knows this. I’m not knocking him for it, I actually have a lot of respect for how he’s maximised his talent and made a good career for himself. Ashley Barnes isn’t the problem. The problem is that despite everyone knowing how he plays and that referees usually punish him for this (hence him being second only to Hoijberg in the foul count), when he comes up against Liverpool suddenly it’s different and Matip and Fabinho find themselves conceding free-kicks even though they’re the ones being fouled. There were two or three absolutely clear ones where Barnes just backed in and wasn’t even looking at the ball. Dean knew what Barnes was up to but gave him the free-kick anyway. Then there’s the penalty. I have mixed views on this because Fabinho clearly fouled Barnes before he got into the box. Maybe without that foul he gets there a split second earlier and scores? The ‘foul’ that the penalty was awarded for though, hmmm, that’s contentious. Yeah you can give a penalty for that without there being a huge uproar, but was that really a foul? And given that Barnes had got his shot away and missed, any contact with Alisson that came after is incidental, surely? When there’s a penalty appeal against us it’s given almost every time. When it’s at the other end, it isn’t. There’s nothing ‘subjective’ about this. I mean fucking hell, Burnley are known for NEVER getting penalties. It was nailed on that the one time they'd get one it would be against us. Bottom line is Burnley got a penalty because Barnes had a shot off target and then collided with a Liverpool player. The collision was instigated by Barnes, who left the leg in to ensure contact, but that part is subjective. The rest of it is black and white. He had a shot, missed the target and then he ended up on the floor. The ball was virtually in the stands behind the goal by the time he ran into Alisson. This wasn't like the pen we conceded at Brighton when Gross lifted it over Kelleher and went down. That ball was still in play and Gross can argue that he would have got there and scored if he didn't collide with the keeper. Barnes can't say that. He missed his chance. So why is that a pen when the exact same thing happened to Mané at the other end and wasn’t given? Sadio met a cutback from Mo and shot over the bar before he was clattered by a defender. How is that any different? It’s only different because when it’s a goalkeeper for some reason it’s not judged in the same way as when a defender does it, and because when it’s Liverpool it isn’t judged the same way. Funny thing though, I seem to remember Rashford being given one for pretty much the same thing that happened to Sadio. We play by a different set of rules though. VAR isn’t going to overturn the pen because they’ll hide behind the ‘clear and obvious’. I’m nowhere near as enraged by this as I have been with other decisions though because if Dean hadn’t given the penalty then it was a free-kick on the edge of the box and a red card for Fabinho. I haven’t checked, but Fabinho may still have had hold of him in the box so that may have been a penalty anyway. So yeah this decision doesn’t rankle in the same way others do. It was a sledge hammer to the balls though. Conceding wasn’t even an after thought at that stage as Burnley had done virtually nothing. We went from wondering if we could snatch a late winner to get us back in the race to all of a sudden facing a defeat and the end of the record unbeaten home run. I don’t think anyone expected us to equalise, least of all the players who clearly had no belief whatsoever now. The way they played the final few minutes and stoppage time was pitiful really. As the clock ticked past 90 minutes we had the ball with Alisson. Then Fabinho and Matip started passing sideways to each other as they advanced up to halfway. It took about 30-45 seconds for them to do that. Continuing to play your football is one thing, but not when time is ticking away and 'your' football hasn’t yielded a goal in four fucking games! I’m not saying they should have launched it into the box, but you can’t be taking that much time to reach the halfway line. After Burnley scored there was no urgency, no belief, no confidence, they were just feeling sorry for themselves. I don’t even blame them. It’s completely understandable at this point. Trent passing the ball straight out of play when Robbo was only ten yards away from him summed it up. I know not everyone does, but I care that that the unbeaten home run has gone because we are living through history with this. It’s the best home run we’ve ever had and we may never see it again. So I’m sad that the record is gone and I’m irked that it went to someone as shit as Burnley. In the grand scheme of things though we’ve got more important worries right now. It’s hard to process how things could have gone this bad this quick. The signs have been there in fairness as for 12 months our form has been patchy. No-one could have seen this five game run of results coming though. It’s just a shit time for us now, which stinks because we didn’t even get to properly enjoy the great time. I’ll tell you what it feels like. It feels like we defied the football gods by winning the league and ever since they’ve been like “think you can go against us do you? Well have some of this, yer bastards”. We won 26 of 27 games last year to basically wrap up the title by February. A big fuck you to the football gods who had taken great pleasure in fucking us over in title races. Then what happened? A global pandemic hits that initially threatened to stop us winning the title at all. But footy resumed and we got to finally end the 30 year wait. But the football gods were like “well you might have won it, but you’re not going to enjoy it”. No celebrations and no parade was bad enough but that was the tip of the iceberg. After decades of having opposing fans take the piss and revel in our title drought we’ve been denied the chance to stick it to them and enjoy our achievement because we still aren’t allowed in stadiums, It's almost a year now. And even when a small amount of us were allowed back - briefly - there were no away fans in there anyway. But the football gods weren’t finished there. No. It’s been open season on us. Not a week seems to go by without us getting shafted by refereeing decisions, both big and small, while we’ve also lost our two centre halves and had to do without both of our summer signings for large chunks of the season too (admittedly the Jota one was self inflicted, but even so). Empty stadiums has been a massive leveller. For some teams it hasn’t hampered them at all, it may have even helped. Us though? It’s killed us. Our game is all about energy and emotion and feeding off the buzz generated by an atmosphere. That’s hurt us but it’s even more apparent now because this is exactly the kind of scenario when Klopp would be calling for the crowd to help the team through this bad spell. I can picture him on the touchline whipping everyone up because Robbo won a tackle or a throw in. I can hear the roar of the crowd in response to it. It’s incredibly frustrating. Football without fans is fucking shit. The team desperately needs the fans right now but we can’t help them. There’s nothing we can do and they have to play themselves out of this funk on their own. I feel for them right now. They’ve given us so much but they appear to have hit a wall. I’ve been getting angry and frustrated with them but I’m over that now. They deserve better than me being pissed off with them (even though I put most of that down to the frustration and helplessness of lockdown). There’s no magic formula to fix this. You can talk of system changes or tactical switches all you like but this is now purely a mental thing. Nothing more. Everything is normal until we reach the box and then the mental block kicks in and the lack of confidence comes to the fore. Taking extra touches, not making the right runs, playing passes too late or too early, reluctance to shoot, shooting when it’s not the best options, it’s all of that and virtually all of it is in the heads of the players. It’s not physical and it’s not about ability. It’s poor form that in most cases can be attributed to a lack of confidence and general stress about the recent results and lack of goals. The pressure of being Champions and wanting to defend it so we can have a proper celebration when fans are allowed back in has been suffocating. It’s sucked the fun out of it all, for us as fans and for them as players. We’re miserable watching and players look like they’re thoroughly fucking depressed by it all. Last night they looked completely defeated, not just by the result but by the overall situation. The title has gone. We’ve blown it with this five game spell. Yeah the gap isn’t that big and if we were playing well now after recovering from a bad start you’d still think we could catch those above us. That’s not the case. The gap is more likely to increase rather than decrease. We’re in free fall and the title should really be the last thing we’re thinking of now. Forgetting about the title might actually relieve a lot of the pressure. At the moment every game we fail to win feels like a catastrophe and it seems to be weighing everyone down. If I’m Klopp I’m telling the lads to forget everything that has happened these last few weeks and to not worry about where we are and what it means for our season. Just forget all of it, relax and play without the pressure. Have some fun again. Maybe we go on a winning run and get back into the race, but if we don’t then so be it. Let’s just get back to playing our football again and see where it takes us. The Champions League is still there to be won if we can regain our mojo but don’t try and sell me on the FA Cup as some kind of consolation prize. It isn’t. It’s like spending three years with Pamela Anderson and then she runs off with the fella up the road who you can’t stand. Then Rebel Wilson shows up at your house wearing nothing but a cheeky smile and your mates are like “I know she’s not Pam but beggars can’t be choosers”. I want to beat United on Sunday but not because I see the FA Cup as a chance to ‘save the season’. Fuck that. I want to win because we need to get back on track and because it’s THEM. Don’t expect me to embrace Rebel Wilson when I’m pining for Pam. I don’t see us winning on Sunday though. As deflating as this defeat was I worry that we haven’t hit rock bottom yet. Not when I look at the games we have coming up. Let’s hope I’m wrong. Star man is Matip, for the floppy armed strop as much as anything else. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Fabinho, Robertson; Thiago, Wijnaldum, Shaqiri (Minamino); Oxlade-Chamberlain (Salah), Origi (Firmino), Mané: