tlw content

Tuesday Jun 30: The content keeps on coming. Great little interview with Mo on LFCTV today where he spoke about five of his goals from this season. He doesn’t tend to do that many interviews and when he does he doesn’t give too much away, but this was great as he looked so relaxed and happy. But then why wouldn’t he? He’s been here three years and he’s won all the big trophies already. You'd be like a dog with two dicks wouldn't you? I was thinking today about last Thursday and how it all unfolded with the players watching together at Formby Hall. Short of winning it on the pitch at Anfield in front of a full house there was no better way that could have played out, as they were all together and could celebrate properly. After we beat Palace Klopp said he would watch the City game but only because we were playing them next week. He had no plans for a celebration. I believe him too. At that moment I’d bet that was exactly what he was thinking. In the end though it was Klopp himself who ordered the squad to stay together the next day and it was really the only decision to make. Otherwise you’d have had some groups of players watching it together and others staying at home. There would have been no moment to enjoy it together. What they did was a stroke of genius really. Organising a barbecue and then watching the game after. If City had won the game it would have been a good team bonding exercise regardless, and we’d never have known about it because it was kept low key. Players only started posting stuff to social media after the game when the celebrations started. It was all very clever really. Klopp will have hated the idea of ‘tempting fate’ by watching the game together hoping City lose as that’s not how he rolls, but it was really the only thing to do and as it turned out, it was perfect. They had a great day together, became Champions and then - based on some of the videos that have come out since - they had the party to end all parties. Klopp dancing in his little tight shorts was fucking hilarious. I wonder how many players didn’t have a drink? The muslim lads obviously didn’t, Milner defo won’t have, but Hendo was hinting that he might have one. Do we reckon they’ll have let Harvey have a little bevvy? Not only is he underage but based on what he did after Madrid last year there was also the risk he might get on snapchat and call Guardiola a fucking slaphead or something. My guess is they let him have a few bottles but confiscated his phone, just in case. Wednesday Jul 1: Speaking of Elliott, this is great. The club posted a training video on their Facebook account, and his nan replied to it, saying: “Harvey you are doing so well. So proud of how far you have come. Love nan xx Good to see Milner back too x” It’s cracked me up. It’s the most ‘nan thing’ ever. Sending it to the club account rather than Harvey’s was funny enough on its own, but it was the ‘good to see Milner back too’ afterthought that tipped me over the edge. To quote a famous washed up musician, it’s just ‘too funny’. Also today, there’s a training video on LFCTV and Shaq’s hair is incredible. However much he paid for that op it was worth it, as unlike other ones I’ve seen (Kloppo and Rooney for example) he’s actually got a head of hair that’s so thick it could be a pundit on Talksport (with apologies to Ray Parlour, my favourite fella on that station). Other content on the site had Lovren talking about winning the title and he was asked about the instagram post he made where he spoke of all the people who didn’t get to see us do it. He expanded on it to say he had spoken with a terminally ill 14 year old lad who was desperate to see us win the title, but he passed away three days before we won it. He had tears in his eyes and it was a really touching moment. He’ll probably move on this summer (although he wasn’t talking that way) and I feel that it’s time for that now, but he’s a good guy is Dejan and I’ll always have a soft spot for him. Ol’ Big Bird did an interview too. He doesn’t speak much and he has no social media presence whatsoever (I fucking love him for that) but we need to see more Matip as his voice is boss. He revealed that he won’t play again this season because of the injury he picked up at the Pit, but he hopes to be ready for the start of next season. Initially I thought ‘fucking hell, didn’t think it was THAT bad’. Then I realised that there’s only about four weeks left and then probably just a two week break. It’s just hard wrapping my head around all this shit, it’s been a mad few months. Thursday Jul 2: City 4 L 0. Well that wasn’t fun at all. Not what I was expecting, especially after the really bright start we made. The guard of honour was interesting. One City player didn’t applaud. You might know already who it was but if you don’t have a guess and I’ll reveal it a bit lower down. It was a really strange game because when I saw their team I thought we were going to snot them everywhere. The game started that way and we were well on top but then they got the penalty and it became clear that we were having one of those wasteful days in the final third. Happens quite regularly that but usually it’s not accompanied by Arsenal like defending at the other end. Robbo will never have a worse game in his life. Trent wasn’t much better either. Gomez struggled and even Alisson wasn’t himself. Virgil is great but he can’t hold off Man City all by himself. Ultimately this doesn’t mean anything and some Reds won’t care about it. I wish I didn’t, but I do. It pissed me off. It doesn’t take the shine off being Champions in any way shape or form and I’m not over-reacting to it. I’m just saying, I fucking hated sitting through this and it did sting. City are all cock a hoop about it which I find quite amusing. I know how they feel to be fair, we’ve had games like this where we’ve faced a team that has just won a trophy and we’ve wiped the floor with them, and convinced ourselves it meant something and there was relevance to it. There wasn’t, and there’s none to this either. All this ‘laying a marker down for next season’ shite. It’s stupid. This game means absolutely nothing in terms of next season. Next time we meet it will be in completely different circumstances and the line ups will be different too. Well, City’s will. They’ll no doubt spend like a drunken sailor now because FFP will be relaxed, whereas we’ve got fuck all to spend. Let City enjoy their little moment and we’ll hopefully learn from the experience. When you play against these you’ve got to be clinical in attack and you’ve got to be careful with the ball. We kept giving it away and letting de Bruyne get turned and running at us. If you do that, you’ll lose. Simple as that. We don’t usually do that and that’s why we’ve done well against them for the most part. Ok, the player who didn’t clap was Bernardo Silva. He’d have been high on my list as he’s a right snide little cunt but loads of people don’t seem to have realised it yet, presumably because he’s a tricky, skilful little forward player. He’s fucking horrible him though. Always leaving his foot in and generally acting the twat. So I’m not shocked he didn’t applaud. I’m more shocked that he was the only one who didn't, although I haven’t looked that closely so maybe there were others. Friday Jul 3: Klopp is pissed at the PL ruling that says players need to feature in five games in order to get a medal, and says his players will get one regardless of games played and if the PL don’t provide the medals then he will. He even said he’d give his own medal to one of the young lads if necessary. A far cry from the way the club just accepted that Sinama-Pongolle, Mellor and others didn’t get a CL medal in 2005. Yeah, I’m still banging on about that, I’ll never let that one go. What a man Klopp is though. He fights for his players and puts them above himself. That’s why players will do anything for him and why Robbo keeps saying that Klopp is like their Dad. Meanwhile, Sterling says “next season starts now” and Foden tweets “Congratulations to Liverpool but we showed we’re ready for next season”. Yeah, next season doesn’t start now lads, there’s still half a dozen games of this one left plus the close season. It’s funny seeing how fired up they are about what is the ultimate pyrrhic victory. You won the game on the night we took to the field as Champions having taken your title. Think about that. Saturday Jul 4: Thiago Alcantara? Nah, not having this at all. It makes no sense and it’s surprising to me that it seems to have gotten the traction it has. It’s being spoken about like it’s virtually a done deal. I’d be beyond shocked if that’s the case and here’s why: 1) We don’t have the money to sign anyone unless there are significant funds made from sales 2) If we did have money, we need a striker / wide forward as a top priority. Midfield is the last position (other than right back) we need to strengthen 3) He’s 29 and on huge money. We’ve got loads of players that age on big money, why would we add another, especially when that;s the exact type of transfer we've shied away from since Edwards and Klopp came together? 4) The two main sources on this seem to the two Italian phoneys Romano and Palmeri. What’s Italian for Dumb and Dumber? Pretty sure it's Romano and Palmeri. The only way this could be a goer is if Wijnaldum is leaving for the same kind of fee that Thiago would cost. So if that’s happening, then yeah this would be a smart signing. But if Gini is staying then this makes absolutely no sense at all so I’m calling bullshit on it. Also today, a new contract for Curtis. He only signed one a year ago but this is how the club operates these days and it’s great. When players out perform their contract they get a new improved one. And Jones deserves it after the season he’s had. The kid is a special talent and deserves more playing time. Whenever he’s on the field he makes things happen and I love his confidence. Sunday Jul 5: L 2 Villa 0 Shite for an hour then it was decent. The subs completely changed it as before they came on it looked like we’d never score. Origi’s display was as shocking as his new peroxide hair. Dreadlocked Div was boss, any other Div is pretty shite. Time is running out for him now I think. A pity, as we’ll always love him for last year but he hasn’t built on that at all and he’s been fairly useless this season. I didn’t think Ox or Keita did anything to stake a claim either. Keita at least had that brilliant assist for Mané but overall he didn’t do enough. This seems to be his standard performance, he just floats around showing nice technique but not really making any impact. Occasionally though he does something that keeps you hoping that he might be able to produce it regularly. I’m not sure he ever will but what does it matter what you or I think? As long as he retains the faith of Klopp he’ll still get opportunities to prove he’s worthy of it. Am I being unfair if I say that Jones has done more than Naby this season with far less opportunity? It could just be that I’m seeing it through rose tinted glasses because Jones is a local kid trying to break through and therefore anything he does is magnified whereas Keita was a player we had huge expectations of, but it feels like Jones has made more of an impact on the season. He scored the winning penalty in front of the Kop to beat Arsenal in the League Cup, he scored a worldy to beat Everton in the FA Cup, he scored away at Shrewsbury and had a brilliant game in the replay and now he scored in the league too even though he was only on the field five minutes. What has Keita done? I remember he scored in the World Club Cup and I think he’d scored in consecutive games prior to that, but there’s very little that immediately jumps out when I think of him. It’s not just goals either, it’s how I feel when I’m watching. This is almost certainly influenced by the different expectations we have of kids v big money signings, but when I watch Jones I’m excited and when I watch Keita I’m usually disappointed. As I said yesterday I just love the confidence of Jones. You watch him talk and he gives off an air of complete confidence and self belief even though he's still a relatively untested kid, yet he somehow manages to do that without it ever coming across as arrogance. There's just a real innocence about it. Like when he was asked what Klopp said to him before going on against Villa and he says casually "just the usual. You're great on the ball but it's about knowing when to dribble" and "he wanted me to just take the game by the scruff of the neck". He cracks me up. Anyway, this was shite for the most part but it’s a good three points and it restores our 23 point lead over Manchester “our season starts now” City. To be hones though I just want the season over now as it’s not really very enjoyable watching these games with no fans. I don’t have particularly high hopes for our remaining games. I’d like to think we’ll see more performances like the Palace one but I suspect that ones like this will be the norm now. Hopefully I’m wrong. Meanwhile, James Pearce and Paul Joyce both followed Thiago on Twitter today, prompting a tidal wave of “we must be signing him” tweets from Reds. Yeah, and that is exactly why they did it. They’re just taking the piss, I’d put money on it. Probably pissing themselves laughing at the hysteria it caused. Monday Jul 6: New contract for Harvey. Isn’t that the third one he’s had in the last few weeks? Defo getting a sense of deja vu about this. I feel like I’ve written about it at least once before in recent weeks. Anyway, good for him, he’s living the dream. Interesting that he did an interview with LFCTV as that hasn’t happened too often. Klopp even alluded to it in comments of his own where he said people don’t know the real Harvey yet because they’ve protected him to this point. He then went on about how humble he is, what a lovely kid he is and how brilliant a player he is. He absolutely loves the kid and it seems like his staff and the other players do too. The way Klopp was talking about him was not really the kind of thing you hear from managers too often. He doesn’t hold back on praise and he doesn’t really caveat it much with the usual “he needs to keep his feet on the ground” talk either. Most managers don’t like talking up young players in case they get a big head but Klopp’s line is more like “this kid is fucking brilliant and it’s up to us to ensure he makes it”. Klopp is just completely unique in how he does things. The psychology of how he interacts with people is fascinating and to me it’s probably the thing that sets him apart from everybody else. There are loads of good coaches who are geniuses on the tactical side of things, and Klopp himself is no slouch with that, but it’s how he handles people that is so different. Take Guardiola for example. He’s successful, he’s brilliant at what he does, but do you think his players love him? They probably appreciate what he does and have total respect for his knowledge, but I reckon they think he’s a bit weird and they wouldn’t want to socialise with him. That’s fine though, most managers keep a healthy distance with their players. It’s normal. Ours though? He’s the boss but he’s got no qualms about getting shitfaced with the lads and dancing around in his little tight shorts. A year ago he nearly fell off the back of the parade bus and a laughing Rhian Brewster was having to make sure he was ok. He just makes people feel good about themselves and creates a positive environment for everybody to thrive in. I honestly don’t know what we’d do without him. He’s probably the most important figure to arrive at the club since Shankly. ….and that was the week that was

Another big win for United over a struggling side. This time it was Bournemouth. I have no interest in watching their games unless they lose so I’ve only seen bits and pieces of this one. Obviously I’ve seen Bournemouth’s opening goal because it was all over Twitter. Maguire nutmegged in his own box and De Gea beaten on his near post. Standard stuff. I only wish Roy Keane had been on punditry duty. Maguire is so bang average it offends me that not everybody can see it. He’s not bad, he’s just average. Somehow though he’s the world’s most expensive defender and because of that price tag opinions of him seem to just be one over the top extreme to the other. He does something good and he’s Virgil Van Dijk. He makes a fool of himself and he’s Dick Van Dyke. The truth is he’s neither. He’s James Tarkowski with better PR. If I wanted to be cruel I’d say he’s Michael Keane, but like I say, he’s not shit, he’s just alright. A good Premier League defender but not a great one. Leicester sold him and the unknown player they replaced him with has had a better season. That says it all. He has his strengths and in a team like Burnley he’d look great. In a team that is expected to play on the front foot and get men forward though, he’s always going to get exposed now and again because he’s a big lump who can’t move his feet quickly enough when people run at him. He was so statuesque when Stanislas skinned him that the next time he takes to the field I expect he’ll have a bunch of far right goons out there ‘protecting him’. I noticed that Glyfi Fernandez scored another free-kick, but other than that and the Stanislas goal the only other thing I’ve seen from the game was one of the goals by Greenwood. As I said last week, he’s the only player at United worthy of the excessive hype given by their fans. He’s a brilliant talent and he’s literally the only United player I look at and think “Yeah I wouldn’t mind if we had him”. I’m not saying that none of the others ‘could’ play for us (actually I probably am, as the vast majority of them couldn’t even make the bench), I’m just saying he’s the only one that I’d like to have in our squad. The sky is the limit for him but it doesn’t mean that United are necessarily going to be any threat to us. We had Fowler and then Owen and we couldn’t stop United’s dominance. So while I do wish Greenwood was playing for someone other than them, I’m not worried by United for as long as Solskjaer is in charge. Fucking Bournemouth though. They’re doing my head in now, the West Ham enabling gobshites. Elsewhere, Vardy finally got Premier League goal number 100 as Leicester beat Palace 3-0 to boost their hopes of staying in the top four. That Iheanacho cunt got the opener from close range. Just typing his name gets me angry. I hate him. I think I hate him more than I hate anyone else in the league. After that it was the Vardy show. He’s been waiting a while to bring up his century and was starting to look a bit frustrated as he snatched at chances he’d normally bury with his eyes closed. Fortunately for him good ol’ Mama came to the rescue. There’s a lot to like about Sakho but his penchant for back heels and tricks in and around his own box isn’t one of them. Why does he do it? More to the point, why haven’t any of his managers been able to stop him doing it? It’s fucking ridiculous. Every time I see him play he attempts at least one utterly ludicrous trick in a dangerous area. Usually he gets away with it but he’s always going to get caught out two or three times a season. Vardy was still kicking himself over a chance he’d missed seconds earlier when out of nowhere Sakho fell over while attempting a Lallana turn in his own area, presenting the ball straight to Barnes who crossed to give Vardy a tap in. That’s why you’re playing for Palace and not PSG or Liverpool mate. The diet pills and showing up late all the time doesn’t help either, obviously. Zaha missed a sitter late on and then Vardy raced clear for a trademark Vardy goal to wrap things up and give him a little cushion int he race for the Golden Boot. I was becoming a big fan of Zaha but he’s been a massive disappointment this season. For the last few years he’s been on an upward trajectory and had become more productive each season. He wanted to leave last summer but no top clubs wanted him and his only option was Everton, who offered half of what Palace were asking. No wonder he’s gone into a slump. He’s got no chance of getting a move this summer either as no-one other than Chelsea and City will have any money to spend. Ok, United probably will too but he’s hardly going back there is he? So Zaha seems destined to never show what he can do on a big stage and he’ll continue to be the big fish in the little Selhurst Park pond. And it’s completely his own fault for taking the money they offered him and signing that long term contract. Chelsea bounced back from their shock defeat to West Ham with a comfortable win over Watford at Stamford Bridge. Giroud got the opener, Willian added a second from the spot (it never looks like there’s even the tiniest chance he’s going to miss) and Barkley wrapped it up in stoppage time. Interesting that Abraham is now behind Giroud in the pecking order. Funny this, as earlier in the season all we were hearing about was this ‘new Chelsea’ and how Frank was concentrating on youth. Then their transfer ban was lifted and the first thing he did was sign a striker for £50m to replace Abraham. He’s also trying to get Kai Havertz, who will probably take Mount’s place. Tomori has been dropped for Kurt fucking Zouma and is now reportedly going to be used as a makeweight in a deal for Declan Rice! Turns out the new Chelsea is pretty fucking similar to the old one. Moving on, and the biggest upset of the week saw Arsenal win 2-0 at Wolves. Don’t think anyone saw that coming did they? Wolves should be pretty annoyed with themselves losing to that shower of fannies though. You don’t deserve top four if you’re losing to Arsenal. Saka’s first Premier League goal gave Arsenal the lead just before half time and substitute Lacazette wrapped it up late on. In between, Traore had some flashes but Wolves didn’t really do anywhere near enough to deserve anything from the game. You have to wonder how Traore and Jimenez weren’t able to have any joy against an Arsenal back three that included Luiz and Mustafi, but then playing Traore at centre forward seems a bit daft really. Why would you do that, Nuno? He spent a lot of the game with his back to goal losing the ball. What a waste. You want him in space and generally that space is out wide. Put it this way, if the next time we play Wolves they play Traore through the middle, I’ll be fucking made up. Not as made up as Robbo will be though. Arteta has bombed Guendouzi out after his antics at Brighton the other week. He’s training on his own and has reportedly been made available for transfer. That’s quite a big call from Arteta that and it does suggest that he’s trying to change that smug loser culture they’ve had there for so long. Funny thing is though Guendouzi will probably thrive away from that culture at Arsenal and go on to become a really good player somewhere else. He’s got Serie A written all over him I think. Probably AC Milan. They love a Premier League reject. I see my boy Tariq Lamptey was man of the match for Brighton again. I’m telling you, this kid can play. I should be a scout I reckon. I spotted him playing for Chelsea’s under 18s and I didn’t need no fucking laptop and spreadsheet to see how good he was, just a working pair of eyes. The Seagulls won at Norwich to all but secure their place in the division. Trossard got the only goal of an awful game. Brighton were quite expansive early in the season but of late they’ve looked a lot like Chris Hughton’s Brighton. I don’t expect them to open up too much tomorrow night against us either. Norwich are just waiting to be officially put out of their misery now. They’ve been useless since the restart and the faintest of hopes they had of escaping are just a distant memory now. If they keep their team together I think they’ll run away with the Championship next year though. When I watch them I always feel like they’re a decent side but they take risks and always get caught out against better opposition. They played like this and got promoted because they didn’t get punished so much by the teams of a lesser standard, so there’s no reason why that can’t happen again. I hope so, as I like the manager and I’ve enjoyed watching Norwich at times this year. Plus they beat Man City early doors which did us a huge favour at the time. Little did we know that beating City wasn’t actually going to be that difficult. I’ll get to them in a sec though. Newcastle and West Ham drew 2-2 at St James’ Park. Antonio scored after just four minutes but Almiron levelled soon after. He’s their top scorer now which is mad considering he went about 12months before scoring his first goal. He works his bollocks off though so it’s nice to see him getting some reward. The Geordies have got a nice little attacking dynamic going on with Almiron and Saint-Maximin, but they just don’t have a centre forward worthy of the name. Joelinton is shite, Gayle is a Championship player and Big Andy has been a part timer for about five years now. Add a 15 goal a season number nine to what they already have and they might even push for Europe next year. They should go for my boy Pukki actually. West Ham regained the lead when Soucek scored again. Feels like he’s scored in every game since footy came back. Shelvey equalised a minute later with his sixth of the season and that’s how it finished. The best bit about that goal was Fornals had come back to help out and played everyone on by about eight yards. He still appealed for offside though! A good week for West Ham, unfortunately. Their fixture list is kind now and considering the goal threat they have they should be ok, sadly. Nothing worse than seeing Moyes looking all pleased with himself, the fucking weasel. I do like seeing Steve Bruce having a better time of it now though. One of the good guys him. Also on Sunday, the “Burnley Maguire” broke the deadlock at Turf Moor when he stole in ahead of Olli McBurnie to beat Henderson. John Egan equalised in similar circumstances when he got round the back to lash home the equaliser. Tarkowski undid all of his good work with that one as he dropped yards behind everyone else and played Egan onside. Still, at least he didn’t get megged in his own box and he didn’t cost £85m so there is that. So, Man City then. Hahaha fucking hell. They were so full of themselves last week after beating us. Giving it the old “next season starts here” bollocks, like that game actually had any significance whatsoever when it comes to next year. Look, I didn’t like losing to them and I’m still pissed off about it now, but that result brought City within twenty points of us. TWENTY POINTS!! You don’t get to talk smack when you’re twenty points back. Get back in your lane, City. It’s fucking hilarious that they went and lost their next game though, bringing our lead back to 23 points. TWENTY THREE!! It’s almost like last week never even happened now. They made six changes and left out De Bruyne, yet their team still looked almost like a normal line up. Hardly a weakened side when you’re bringing in the likes of Bernardo Silva, Mahrez and David Silva. They played pretty well in fairness and created loads of chances only to be continually denied by Alex McCarthy or a last ditch block from a defender. The only goal of the game was a belter. Hell of a finish by Che Adams to finally break his duck. I loved that goal because it’s about fucking time. Not about time that he scored, although yeah, that too. No, I mean it’s about time someone lobbed that shitty tattooed fuck in City’s goal. He spends half the game in midfield and it winds me up that strikers don’t seem to have done their homework on this. Even Mo last week went clean through and shot straight at him when he should have lobbed the twat. He’s off his line all the time so come on people, just lob the cunt. After the game Bernardo Silva did an interview with BBC. You may or may not have seen it. It’s not important what he said. What is interesting is what he didn’t say. Or specifically what the interviewer was instructed not to ask him. If you’ve been reading these rounds ups or the diary, you’ll know how I’ve regularly mentioned that there are people at City, especially in the press office, who are utterly obsessed with Liverpool. Well I’m reliably informed that just before Bernardo went to do a post match interview, someone from City’s press office scurried over to the interviewer and ordered her “don’t ask about the guard of honour”. She didn’t have a clue what he was on about. Most people wouldn’t. It was hardly a big deal and didn’t get much attention, but plenty of our fans on Twitter had noticed that Bernardo didn’t applaud so there was a bit of social media chatter about it. Not in media circles, mostly just fans. Of course City’s press office are aware of that because they’re aware of EVERYTHING. They have people on the payroll whose job is solely to monitor everything that is said and written about them. That’s the whole point of their existence now - sportswashing. Trying to get good PR for Abu Dhabi. So when they mistakenly thought someone might ask a question of one of their ratbag shithouse unsportsmanlike players that would portray him and City in a negative light while also highlighting that they’ve been soundly beaten by the Reds, they were all over that like a United fan on a positive Martial stat. Instead of obsessing about us and trying to create this big rivalry, maybe they should worry more about teams closer to their level? Like, oh I don’t know, Arsenal maybe? Now hold on, before you scoff at that you might want to consider that City have now lost more league games than Arsenal this season. It’s true, I’ve triple checked it because I couldn’t believe it either. To quote a washed up pop star with a jarg Paul Weller haircut, it’s “too funny”. Fair play to Southampton though, they put in a tremendous shift and played this game like their survival depended on it. It wasn’t that long ago it looked like it might do (they even lost 9-0 at home remember!) but they turned their season around spectacularly and are only one point off Everton now. Good for them. Speaking of whom, they lost 1-0 at Spurs in a game memorable only for a spat between two Tottenham players at half time. It was great. Son and Lloris almost came to blows and other players got involved as they tried to separate them. This little dust up had Mourinho’s fingerprints all over it. He was gushing about it afterwards and revealed that one of the things he’d been telling his players this week is to expect and demand more from each other and to hold everyone accountable. Lloris was the puppet and Mourinho was pulling his strings. Needless to say I’m “Team Hugo” on this. As my Mum always says, “that Son is a sly little thing”. Next time I go to my parents house I’m expecting to see a poster of Lloris on the wall, as she proper hates Son. She may even hate him more than she hates Jack Grealish, which I wouldn’t have even thought possible. Still not as much as I hate Iheanacho though.

It turned out ok in the end but for a while this was turgid, pedestrian, uninspired shite. Understandable to a degree and we might see a fair bit more of this before the season is out, but in the end they found a way to get it done and it’s three points closer to a potential points record. It’s easy to over-analyse these behind closed doors games and put any below par performances down to the lack of fans, or blame it on the fact we’ve already won the title and our intensity has understandably dropped. There’s almost certainly an element of that, but how do we really know? Let’s not forget what happened last time we played Villa. It wasn’t exactly vintage was it? We needed two goals at the death to win it. At least this time we didn’t leave it that late. We probably played slightly better at Villa Park than here but until the triple substitution around the hour mark this was poor. The thing is, we’ve had a number of games like this one this season and most of them took place in front of full houses (not many at Anfield though to be fair) so maybe we can’t just put it down to ‘lockdown footy’. It sure feels like it is though, doesn’t it? The first half was largely a non-event. To be completely honest I was bored stiff watching it. Have we had a half that bad at Anfield this season? I’m struggling to remember one. We’ve had loads away from home, I know that, so this performance wasn’t actually THAT unusual. Villa were resolute and did their jobs well but it was too easy for them. I can only think of one shot we had in the first half, and that was a tame volley from Mo that didn’t trouble Reina at all. We had a couple of penalty shouts too, both when Salah went down after being grabbed. The first one was never a pen, it was more of a coming together than anything else. I thought the second one was a pen though. The defender reaches out and grabs Mo’s shoulder, pulling him back. He’s got no need to be putting his hands on him there. It would have been soft, but I’ve seen them given for less. I was more upset with our lack of creativity than any refereeing decision though. We offered virtually nothing. You could even argue that Villa posed more of a threat. Not much more, but it was more than us. I can only remember them having one first half chance when Alisson made an easy save to deny Luiz, but if they had a bit more quality up front there were some counter attacking opportunities to be had. They just weren’t good enough to make anything of them. Big difference to facing a fired up De Bruyne and Sterling, that’s for sure. Klopp had freshened things up a little by resting Firmino, Henderson and Wijnaldum. That made for a more attacking looking midfield which in theory should have been ideal against a deep defending side like Villa. Having Origi up front should have helped too, giving us that penalty box presence and aerial threat. It wasn’t ideal though. In fact, it was only when two of those players were replaced that we actually started to look like ourselves. The last half an hour was pretty good actually. Not great, we can obviously play a lot better, but it was night and day compared to the first hour. The tempo immediately lifted with Hendo getting on the ball and injecting some urgency into our passing, while Bobby linked more with his fellow forwards in five minutes than Div had done in an hour. I thought Keita was incredibly fortunate to have survived the hook because if anything he’d been even less effective than Ox. If I was Ox I’d have been annoyed that I’d been the one to make way, but Keita repaid Klopp’s show of faith by supplying the pass from which Mané finally broke the deadlock. It was a nicely worked goal that and the pass from Naby is brilliant actually because it’s not even on at the moment he plays it. Great vision, great anticipation and great execution. Definitely enough for his army of social media acolytes to use in their “Fabinho / Keita / Thiago” wet dream fantasies, but not enough to convince anybody else. Not yet. He needs to do more. I’m not even exaggerating about the fanboys either. Search for “Keita Thiago” on twitter and see what comes up. One loon even posted a picture of Jordan, Pippen and Rodman and said “Fabinho, Keita and Thiago next season”. Jesus. Keita was eventually brought off and his replacement scored. Don’t expect to see young Curtis being compared with…. well I’m assuming Keita was meant to be Michael Jordan in that imagery, with Fabinho as Rodman and Thiago as Pippen. Yeah, that’s where we’re at right now. Keita being compared to arguably the greatest sportsman of all time. The Naby groupies are the “LFC Family” equivalent of those deluded United fans with their little green and gold twitter badges bigging up Wan Bissaka and Martial. I was made up for Curtis getting his goal but I wasn’t surprised. That’s what he does. He got a bit lucky with the deflection but the instinctive movement that got him in space is something you can’t really teach, it’s just natural football smarts. The cross goes over his head but as soon as he sees Mo is going to get it he just drifts back a couple of yards to allow Mo to find him with a knockdown. I like the options we have in most positions now but without labouring the point it is a concern seeing the drop off whenever one of the front three doesn’t play. Sometimes things don’t look great even when they do play, but take one of them away and it gets really bad. I’m not scapegoating here because Salah and Mané were no great shakes either, but Origi did absolutely nothing. If Sadio and Mo don’t have great games they won’t be judged as harshly as they have nothing to prove. Divock on the other hand, has everything to prove. I’ve made excuses for him who he’s been used wide left but this was his chance to do something at centre forward and I honestly can’t remember a single thing he did in the game. He didn’t win any headers, he didn’t try to take anybody on, he didn’t have any goal attempts. He was just there, standing out for his hair rather than his performance. Klopp has a decision to make next season. Is Origi really the answer as the fourth forward? Would Brewster be a better option? Do we need to buy? To me it’s clearly option three, but Klopp better than I do, so we’ll see what he decides. Going back to Keita for a second, I can see ability and occasionally he’ll do something that makes you go “yeah that was nice”, but it’s not enough really is it? He’s been here two years now, he should be showing more. In fairness, so should Ox. We’ve seen flashes from him but he’s another who often flatters to deceive. Ox, Keita and Origi were all given a chance to shine in this game and none of them took it. Keita at least did something worthwhile but none of them did anything to seriously threaten any of the first choice lads places. I think a big part of it is that none of them play week in week out and it’s difficult to show your best form when you don’t play regularly. When Ox has had a little extended run he’s usually got into some good form. When Naby has an extended run he’s always gotten injured. Origi hasn’t had an extended run for about four years. We’ve got our first choice midfield three, then we have Keita and Ox, so that is making it difficult for Jones to get the minutes he deserves. Personally I’m at the stage now where I’d happily give him the minutes Keita is getting. I think he deserves it because he’s done more with far less playing time. It won’t happen though because Klopp loves Keita and seems convinced that he’ll come good. Maybe he will, let’s hope so. I have a lot more confidence in Jones establishing himself in the team than I do Keita. I love the swagger Jones has. He has a lot of improvement to make defensively, but he makes things happen when he’s on the pitch. He’s positive, he tries things and he scores goals. He needs more minutes and hopefully a start or two before the end of this season. I hope to see more of him over the next few weeks because he’s fun to watch. Not necessarily starting all the time, but he needs more minutes than he’s been getting. Same with Williams. He should start the next game, probably at right back but you could even try him on the left, even if it’s just for 45 minutes before switching him over. That way Trent and Robbo are only playing a half each. It’s a difficult balance though, I get that. Klopp won’t talk about points records and I genuinely believe him when he says it’s not something he thinks about. He does, however, want to win every game, which in turn will lead the record. And because he want to win every game you’re not going to get him making six or seven changes from his usual line up. He also has too much respect for the competition to fuck about with his team selections when we’re playing teams at the bottom. I don’t expect him to go close to full strength against one relegation struggler and then rest everyone against another. So we’ll probably see three, maybe four changes each game. I’m good with that as I want the record but I also want to see the kids getting some meaningful minutes. Not necessarily all at the same time, in fact I’d prefer it if it were one at a time in an otherwise strong line up. I want to see Jones playing with Firmino, Salah and Mane. Not with Elliott, Origi and Shaqiri. All in all this was a decent enough win. It was shite for an hour but in the end we wore them down and it’s a win and clean sheet. I’ll take this every game between now and the end of the season, although obviously I’d much prefer performances to be like what we produced against Palace. I just don’t think it’s realistic though. Maybe occasionally but I don’t believe it’s sustainable week in week out with no crowds and nothing really to play for other than pride and the points record. Villa deserve some credit too though I think. We were shite but that’s partly because of how organised and resolute they were. All season I’ve been banging on in the round ups about how much I want Villa to go down. Well I’ve had one of my trademark changes of heart. I hope they stay up now. Why? Couple of reasons really. The first is Dean Smith. I really like the guy and I feel like a bad arlarse wanting him relegated just because Villa’s fans are generally knobheads and some of them threw a party on a train to Wembley when it was Stevie’s birthday. I am a petty man and I’ll hold a grudge with the best of them but I’ll admit I’m struggling to hold onto this one. Especially after the guard of honour they gave us. Correct me if I’m wrong, but they didn’t have to do that, did they? If City had refused last week that would have been frowned upon as it was our first game after clinching the title. I don’t think everyone we face has to do it though, do they? It’s been that long since we won it that I genuinely have no idea. I dunno, maybe they do. Doesn’t matter anyway, the thing that stood out to me was that Villa did it properly. They showed proper respect in the way they lined up and the way they applauded. They didn’t have to but they did. Fair play. Last week the body language of most of the City players was fucking terrible, and that little rat fuck Bernardo didn’t applaud at all. Some of them fucked off before all of our players had even reached the pitch. Petty gobshites. You see how Villa did it and it shows City up for what they are. So, if Villa manage to get out of this mess then good for them, I won’t begrudge them it at all. And if they don’t, I’ll just focus on those train nonces in their party hats and I’ll take great comfort in them having to watch Championship football again while their hero Grealish moves on to pastures new. Star man is… *exhales* I don’t know. I don’t think anyone was at their best or even close to it. Alisson did what he had to and made a class save late on from Grealish, but the game changed when the three subs came on, and of the three subs Hendo probably had the most impact so fuck it, I’ll give it to him even though I don’t feel good about it. I’m tempted to give it to Jones, but that really would be taking the piss seeing as how he was only on five minutes. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson (Williams); Fabinho (Henderson), Oxlade-Chamberlain (Wijnaldum), Keita (Jones); Salah, Origi (Firmino), Mané:

Three Watford players were filmed at a gathering of over 20 people last Friday, according to Match of the Day. I googled it and the ‘gathering’ was a birthday party for Andre Gray, organised by Gray himself. All three players were left out of the squad for the Southampton game for ‘health and safety reasons’. Translation: They were told to stay the fuck away because Nigel Pearson was going to kill them with his bare hands. Seriously, how fucking irresponsible is that? Watford aren’t mid-table with nothing to play for. They’re still in a relegation fight, but their players can’t social distance for the next few weeks? No shock that Andre Gray was involved. If I had to pick one Watford player who’d do something like this he’d have been top of my list. I daresay my boy Troy won’t be happy. He didn’t want to come back and play at all because his little lad is in an at risk group. Now three of his team-mates are putting him at risk by… well I’ll let Gray himself tell you what happened. "It was not a late-night party like what is being portrayed. It was only a gathering of friends which turned into a sort of football tournament on my birthday.” A ‘sort of football tournament’. In other words, a kick about with a load of his non-footy player mates, who unlike his actual team-mates are not being tested twice a week. If I was Deeney I’d want to smash their faces in. They probably wouldn’t have made any difference to the result against Southampton as the Saints were just too good for them, but it’s not really the point is it? Ings fired Southampton ahead with a terrific goal and then doubled their lead with another sharp strike. 21 goals for the season, 18 of which have come in the league. I referred to Timo Werner recently as a “Harrods Danny Ings”. A massively more expensive but only slightly superior version of the actual Danny Ings who you can pick up at Asda. I’m quite pleased with that analogy but it might actually be flattering Werner. I was thinking about this the other day though. It would have been difficult for Klopp to justify (to himself as well as Michael Edwards) spending so much on Werner when he’d sold virtually the same player for less than half that price. How do you rationalise that? Ings is one goal shy of being the leading scorer in the league this season. If Werner matches that next year then he’s done well. If Mo can’t win the Golden Boot this year (and he still might, he’s only two back of Vardy) I’d love Ingsy to win it. Anyway, Bednarek put through his own net to give Watford hope but a stunning free-kick from Ward-Prowse wrapped it up. Great technique that, as his entire body shape suggested the ball was going around the wall into the far corner but he whipped it right back across and over the wall into the opposite corner. Final note on this. Bednarek is a dead ringer for short haired Milan Baros. The other game at the weekend saw Wolves put another nail in Villa’s relegation coffin with a narrow 1-0 win at Villa Park. My boy Adama was back on the bench for Wolves as they took on Villa. Is there a fitness issue with him as he seems to be left out quite a bit doesn’t he? Maybe Nuno Holy Spirit likes the option of bringing him off the bench against tired legs. To be fair it is a great weapon to have. Imagine being a little bit leggy and then having this cunt come on and just fly past like the Road Runner. Getting deja vu there as I’ve defo used that line before but can’t remember who I was referring to. No wait, it was Gabby Agbonlahor! Remember how fast that fucker was before he developed that little ale gut? Even then he was still like shit off a stick. He was always boss against us and he’d just fly past people. Meep Meep! Just had a little look to see where he is now, and he retired at 32 because he didn’t want to play for anyone other than Villa and couldn’t face the thought of playing against them. He said he planned to spend his retirement watching Villa. Fucking hell lad, get yourself a hobby or that shit will drive you to an early grave. Back to the game though. Villa did alright really and a sharp finish by Dendoncker from the edge of the box was the only difference between the two sides. Villa can’t score but they are defending well and not conceding many. Dean Smith had a bit of a moan afterwards but he had a point. Villa’s schedule has been hectic as fuck since the return, partly because they had a game in hand and he wondered why this game couldn’t have been played a day or two later. Fair point. There is no real reason it couldn’t have been played later and another game been arranged for the weekend to satisfy TV. Another thing he said was that these games are basically shit without fans anyway but they’re even worse when players are knackered. We might see that ourselves over the next couple of weeks when we’re playing every two or three days too. It’s a necessary evil because we missed three months so it needs to be condensed, but it does seem like Villa have been given the shitty end of the stick. Still, never mind, eh? Moving on, and Arsenal beat Norwich 4-0 so no doubt those players are now swaggering about, dicks swinging, feeling pretty good about themselves again. Beating up on a team that’s already down and has given up is pure Arsenal. Fair weather cunts. Tim Krul handed them the opener when he dwelled on the ball too long and was robbed by Aubamayeng who was left with a simple tap in. He’s a decent keeper him and he’s been great for Norwich, but if I was his manager he’d be watching the rest of the season from home after that. You know how I feel about those kind of goals. They’re inexcusable as it shows a lack of homework. It’s not quite as bad as a keeper fannying about when Jamie Vardy is in the vicinity, but Aubamayeng is very similar. Quick as a hiccup and always looking to pick people’s pockets. You just don’t take chances around certain forwards, and he’s one of them. Krul needs his arse kicking for that. It didn’t get any better for him either. Arsenal’s second was a strike from Xhaka that went right through his legs. The third was a joke too, although Krul could do nothing about that one. A defender played the ball across his own box straight to Aubamayeng who gleefully accepted the gift. Goal number four was a long range shot by Cedric Soares that deflected into the bottom corner. The first I knew that Soares was even at Arsenal was last week when he was given a new contract. I didn’t know he even had an old contract! It’s games like this that probably make it so difficult for some Arsenal fans to accept just how far away they are. Because when they’re on, they play some lovely stuff. They always have. They can’t do it against anyone decent though. I reckon every Arsenal fan’s day begins with the radio switching on and Sonny and Cher singing “I got you babe”. Because it’s the same shit on a continuous loop. Terrible, spineless defeats that have the fans on the brink of despair, then a few spanking wins over shite that make them think things maybe aren’t so bad, before another spineless defeat sends them spiralling again. Saka signed a new deal though. It was always on the cards that even though us and United were supposedly trying to land him. An Academy kid who has just broken through into the first team at a ‘big six’ club is unlikely to want to move somewhere else where he probably won’t get the same playing time. If Saka develops as expected then he’ll move in two or three years when he gets fed up of the spineless mediocrity around him. Unless Arteta can completely purge the entire club of that Arsenal stink, and seeing as how he handed Luiz a new contract I wouldn’t hold out too much hope of that happening. So I said last week that with the title now wrapped up the only thing I was rooting for now was for West Ham to get relegated. That’s not looking likely after the events of this week. Not only did they somehow beat Chelsea, but Bournemouth are just lurching from bad result to even worse result. They got smoked at home to Newcastle. Dwight Gayle got the opener, Sean Longstaff added a second after great play by the lively Saint-Maximin, Almiron added a brilliant third and Lazaro (who’s he?) lashed in a fourth. That Dan Gosling jabroni managed a consolation but this was a proper spanking. Nice Guy Eddie’s side don’t look like they are capable of winning another game. I don’t know what’s happened to them as the one thing they’ve always had is a goal threat, but right now they just look toothless. Mind you, they’re like Burnley in that they can be right streaky bastards. Every season they seem to lose ten on the bounce but then go ten unbeaten and finish somewhere between 11th and 15th. They’re leaving it a bit late this season though and West Ham are benefitting more than anyone. They recorded a surprise victory over Chelsea, the bastards. Willian scored from the spot after Pulisic had been fouled, but Soucek levelled with a header from a corner. Kevin Abraham was on the line and should have cleared it, but he seemed to misjudge the speed of the ball and whiffed at it. Antonio then fired West Ham into the lead but a brilliant free-kick from Willian made it 2-2 and that’s how it looked like finishing until Yarmolenko broke clear on the counter attack in stoppage time and won it for the Hammers. You know what’s one of the worst images in football? Moyes being happy after a win. I’m so used to seeing him looking miserable as fuck that anything else is a real shock to the system and turns my stomach. Such is my desperation for him and the West Ham board to be relegated that I had to check myself from laying into Chelsea after this. They did, after all, beat City last week to clinch the title for us, so any criticism of this would seem a little bit churlish. Still, West Ham?? Really Chelsea? West fucking Ham? Take a long hard look at yourselves, knobheads. Klopp has been telling the press that we won’t be spending any money this summer because of the financial situation. Fair enough, if the club say that the money isn’t there then that’s just how it is. With that in mind though, surely Willian on a free is a no brainer, especially if we offload a few fringe players to cover his wages? United had a comfortable 3-0 win over Brighton to keep the hype train rolling. They’re not as shit as they were but they’re still a million miles away from where they think they are. Still, as long as they think they’re on the right track they’ll keep Solskjaer, which is good. I’m sick of all this fawning about that Fernandez fella though. Even loads of our fans have bought into the hype about him. I keep seeing people going on about how great he is but I’m not buying into it. Just because he’s better than their other midfielders doesn’t make him special. Being an upgrade on Jesse Lingard and Anreas Perreira isn’t difficult. Look, he’s good, I get it. I’m not going to say he’s shit when he clearly isn’t, but let’s not go overboard here. United’s fans will do enough of that themselves, the deluded fucks (the one player they are entitled to go overboard about is Mason Greenwood, who looks like he’s the player people thought Rashford was). Here’s my scouting report on Bruno Fernandez: Shoot on sight merchant. He’s Gylfi Sigurdsson when he was at Swansea. Gets it, shoots. Rinse and repeat. Yeah he looks good now, but so did Sigurdsson for a while. Stop him shooting from outside the box and then let’s see what else “Portuguese Gylfi” has. Speaking of Gylfi, the “Icelandic Bruno Fernandez” scored from the spot as the Blues added to Leicester’s recent woes with a 2-1 win at Goodison. Richarlison *spits on floor* fired Everton ahead and then they were awarded a pen when Ndidi handled in the box. That Iheanacho fuck pulled one back and Leicester piled on the pressure, but despite the best efforts of the comical Pickford to gift them an equaliser the Foxes couldn’t manage it. Since the restart Leicester have been fucking abysmal and the top four spot that once looked nailed on is now under serious threat. That’s pissing me right off to be honest, because if they miss out then either United or Wolves will get in, and I’d much rather Leicester were in there as they’re the lesser of those three evils. In an ideal world they’d regroup and secure a Champions League place and then Wolves would pip Chelsea and United for the other spot, but that ain’t happening is it? Burnley won 1-0 at Palace thanks to a diving header from Ben Mee. Incredibly, they’re level with Spurs, one point behind Arsenal and only two points behind Sheffield United, who up until a week ago were in Champions League contention. This league is mad. I’d like Burnley to finish above Arsenal though. There’d be something quite fitting about that as they’re complete polar opposites. Burnley’s players have to fight and scrape for everything they get. They survive each year on hard work, honesty and effort. They’re the absolute antithesis of Arsenal. Finally, Sheffield United produced arguably the biggest upset of the week by beating Spurs 3-0. They’ve looked terrible since the restart and have lost some key men through injury. Lockdown footy is mad though, results are just too unpredictable and you never know what’s going to happen. Of course it helps when Harry Kane has three goals disallowed! That Sander Berge looked good. He opened the scoring with a nice little turn and finish. Then we had the absolute abortion of a decision to disallow Kane’s equaliser. I’ll expand on it in a sec though. Mousset made it 2-0 from close range and McBurnie added a third following more good work by Berge. I’m not sure I can remember seeing anyone ever being happier about scoring a goal than McBurnie was, especially in an empty stadium. He was giving it fucking loads. Kane did grab a late consolation but Spurs were well beaten in the end. Mourinho didn’t use the disallowed goal as an excuse and said the team weren’t mentally strong enough to recover from it. That may or may not be the case but they shouldn’t have had to recover from it. Look, I don’t give a fuck about Spurs and I’m glad they lost, but I’m genuinely angry about that decision because it just demonstrates that the game is run by complete morons. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, what happened was Moura was running with the ball and was fouled by two defenders. He fell to the ground next to the ball and another defender came in and booted the ball against his arm from about an inch away. The rebound fell to Kane who scored. Not only did they disallow the goal for ‘handball’ but they even forgot to give Spurs the free-kick. It’s not even funny, it’s just an absolute fucking disgrace as this shit could be happening to any of us. The VAR ref was Michael Oliver and he had no choice but to disallow the goal. Common sense isn’t allowed and by the ‘letter of the law’ (hate that expression as it’s just licence for jobsworths to be jobsworths) the goal couldn’t stand. Not giving Spurs the free-kick was just rubbing salt in the open wound and either Oliver or Chris Kavanagh fucked up badly on that aspect of it. This genuinely might be the most ridiculous ‘correct’ decision I’ve ever seen though. The rule is so fucking stupid that technically it was the right call. This wasn’t a mistake. Imagine coming up with a rule that legitimately rules out a goal like that. Whichever smug cunt in a suit came up with that needs to be fired out of a massive cannon and launched into orbit. Or better yet, stick him in a locked room with Moyes and force him to listen to Moyesy discuss all of his ‘achievements’ and why he’s such a winner. That’ll learn him. Twat. Other than Corona virus that attacking handball nonsense has been the worst thing about this season. Worse than VAR even. It’s so bad it actually had me siding with Mourinho and Kane. I wouldn’t have though there was anything on this planet that could do that, but there you go.

After the Lord Mayor’s Show as they say, and as far as results go this was a dung cart and a half. The performance didn’t really reflect the scoreline but against City you only have to be a little bit off and this is what can happen. I’m just glad our Etihad nemesis Aguero was missing otherwise this could have been really embarrassing. Ordinarily 4-0 would be embarrassing enough but with the title already won and this result cutting our lead to a mere 20 points, embarrassment isn’t really the right word. Neither is humbling, or chastening or whatever. We’re the Champions and we’re 20 points ahead of City regardless of what happened in this game, so I don’t actually know how to best describe this loss. I know I hated it though. I had a proper cob on for the rest of the night and I’m still irked about it this morning. Maybe that’s unreasonable and if you’re not arsed about what happened at the Etihad then more power to you. I just hated seeing us lose like THAT. And to lose like that to THEM. Judging by how tetchy Klopp was afterwards on Sky you could be forgiven for thinking he felt the same. It’s only when you watch the interview he did with LFCTV straight afterwards that you understand how he really felt about it. He was more philosophical than angry, but that’s almost certainly because of the line of questioning. When assessing Klopp’s post match mood you have to take into account just what a monumental dick bag Geoff Shreeves is. He’s probably the worst one out there as his questions are just fucking moronic half of the time. Lowest common denominator, basic, shitty redtop style questions. He’s the Jim White of TV. Usually Klopp shows more patience with him but I completely understood why he got so arsey this time. There’s a reason every top manager has had run ins with this tool. After a bad result the last thing you need is Shreeves pushing his own little narrative and trying to get you to take a stroll down “Whopper Avenue” with him. He asks a stupid question based on his own agenda and when he doesn’t get the answer he wants he asks the same stupid question in a slightly different way hoping he’ll get what he’s looking for. Instead of asking Klopp “so, how did that happen?” and just letting him talk (Jurgen is great analysing how the game went) he wanted to peddle the story he’d tried to get going pre-match about our players not being prepared or focused because they’ve been celebrating all week. Like I say, it’s lowest common denominator, redtop shite and it clearly got Klopp's back up. The players had one night on the ale, a week ago, and have been training hard ever since. There was no lack of effort from them and they took the game seriously. They didn’t lose because some of them got bevvied a week ago. They lost because they were wasteful with the countless opportunities they created and they made far too many stupid mistakes in defence. The effort was there in spades, it’s insulting to infer that it wasn’t. If you want to put the result down to partying or them not being arsed about the rest of the season then that just tells me that you haven’t been paying attention. It’s not who these players are and it’s definitely not who Klopp is. That was why he was pissed off in his Sky interview, not because we lost. The LFCTV interview was much more informative simply because Peter McDowall basically just says “disappointing result there, Jurgen. What went wrong?” Klopp then tells him what went wrong. Not clinical enough, too many mistakes, can’t do that against such a strong opponent etc. And that’s exactly what it was. The easiest and laziest thing in the world is to put this down to the players not being up for it, but it’s nonsense. They were still running and trying to score even in stoppage time at 4-0 down. Effort wasn’t the problem. Intensity wasn’t the problem. Sloppiness at both ends of the pitch was the problem and yes maybe that’s in some tiny part due to them not playing for the highest stakes possible, and therefore not quite being fully switched on mentally. Rather than it being a lack of effort, I think it was more a lack of fear. By that I mean usually when we play City everyone has to be completely focused on not making any mistakes because the stakes are so high. You have to play almost the perfect game because if you don’t the consequences can be catastrophic. That wasn’t the case this time though as we already had the title sewn up. Maybe players were taking too many risks? Being a little too casual? Some of the decision making was terrible so I'm just saying, maybe the ‘nothing to lose’ thing comes into it, even at a subconscious level. We might have gotten away with it against most opponents but Sterling and De Bruyne were bang up for this game and they made us pay. It hurts. I don’t like it. I’m still sore about it but it can happen. If anything, it highlights even more just how incredible it is that we’re 20 points ahead of these fuckers. This game really came down to who scored first. We started the game well and I felt we were well on top for the most part until we gave away the penalty. That changed the momentum of the game but it was the second goal that really killed us I think. After that I thought we looked wide open and ripe for City’s counter attacks. We never really got close enough to De Bruyne (even though funnily enough I thought Fabinho actually had a good first half) and Trent and Joe had too many problems with Sterling. I can sort of understand that. You come up against De Bruyne and Sterling when they’re at their best and it’s tough. The most disappointing thing for me was how Robbo made that little fucking manc ballbag Phil Foden look like Messi. That was hard to take as I just hate Foden. I have no rational explanation for it other than it’s just his fucking face. He’s right up there with the most annoying faces out there. He’s my new Jon Dahl Tomasson I think. I see his face and just want to slap it. This was such a strange game. The score makes it look like we got battered, especially as City could easily have scored more, but it didn’t really feel like a battering and it definitely didn’t start out that way. We began the game really brightly. Mo should have done better when Van Dijk’s ball over the top sent him clear. He brought it down on his chest and then went for power with his shot, forcing Ederson into a decent save. Thing is, Ederson was stood 14 yards out and the ball was bouncing so Mo should have lobbed him. It would have been more difficult to miss than score in that situation. All you have to do is get it over his head and you’ve got the whole goal to aim for. To make it even more frustrating, Bobby completely fluffed the rebound, which summed up his night really. Mo then went through again and struck the post with a well placed shot. That was just unlucky. To make it even more frustrating, Sadio completely fluffed the rebound, which summed up his night really. It felt like the goal was coming but then City went ahead completely against the run of play. I don’t have any complaints about the penalty. Yes, Sterling grabs Gomez first, but that’s just two players grappling and it’s fine. It’s also fine when Joe has a grab back at him too. The problem is he keeps hold of him and then has two bites at trying to tackle him while doing so. Sterling went down easily in the end but when a defender has been pulling you for two or three seconds, preventing you from getting away, at that point you’re entitled to go down. Clear penalty for me. Not great from Gomez, but Henderson and Wijnaldum are both just stood there looking at him and neither moved to help him out. I do wonder if Joe defends that way against another City player though? Was he trying to outmuscle Sterling rather than just defend him properly, or am I overthinking that? Anyway, absolutely no complaints for me on that decision by Anthony Taylor other than why exactly was Gomez booked? If that’s outside the box there’s no way that’s given as a yellow card. A penalty is more than sufficient punishment and I thought Taylor was completely out of order putting Gomez into the book too. Maybe that’s the law now, it’s hard to keep track of the bullshit changes that they’re making every year. Joe was actually hooked at half time and the booking was probably a big factor in that. Fabinho moved to centre back for the second half and did ok. At this point it feels like it makes more sense using him if needed than bringing in Lovren, but we’ll see what happens whenever Gomez is rested. I feel like we haven’t seen the last of Big Dejan yet. I wasn’t overly concerned at going a goal down but the second one really was a killer. Suddenly it felt like we had a mountain to climb. Just a really shitty goal to give away too. When we’ve played City in recent years the thing we’ve done really well is not give the ball away cheaply. Because when you give it away cheaply and De Bruyne picks it up in space, you’re fucked really. They get runners going wide to spread you out and De Bruyne always picks the right ball. This time Gini gave it away needlessly and before you know it they’ve bypassed our midfield and are running at our back-pedalling defenders. It was happening all night. De Bruyne found Foden and he picked out Sterling. Gomez has no chance at this point as he’s caught on his heels when Sterling immediately cuts back inside with this first touch. 2-0 and it’s the player we’d least want to make an impact who’s done all the damage. Turns out he can play well against us after all, but only when there’s no fans in the stadium. The third goal was probably the worst. Oh Robbo, just what the fuck was that? Actually I forgot to mention that on the second goal when Gini gave it away, Robbo inexplicably went chasing a ball he had no business going for and he ended up taking himself out of the play completely. Well he did it again on the third goal. It was embarrassing actually. So rash it was worthy of a Sunday League player. He just charged at Foden, completely out of control, and he made it easy for the City youngster to just pop the ball off and then spin off him into space. I don’t think Alisson covered himself in glory either as Foden was on his right foot and had Alisson dropped back and made him beat him with a well placed shot then you could accept that. Instead he just charged out and was beaten by a shot that ended up in the middle of the goal. Not good. Sterling almost bagged a second when he ran half the length of the field before his shot was deflected inches wide by Fabinho. Look at Robbo on that one again though. Chasing the ball like a dog in the park. The fourth goal was self inflicted too. Trent was just so fucking casual and weak there. He presented the ball to City and once again they had us turned around and De Bruyne was running at our retreating defence. Again, look at Robbo though. He’s with Sterling but leaves him to track another runner who is already being picked up by Ox. The ball goes to Sterling in space, he turns inside a desperately trying to recover Robbo, and although his shot was going wide Ox didn’t know that and put it in his own net as he tried to block it. It summed up the whole night. Just a comedy of errors. In between all those goals we had loads of opportunities but wasted them all. The high press worked well at times and we won the ball back frequently only to do nothing with it. If there was one moment that summed up the attacking performance it was when Sadio found himself in front of goal with only Ederson to beat and he literally did nothing. Didn’t even touch the ball. Just allowed it to roll past him. In the end City could have scored more than four. Actually they did but they had one laughably ruled out for ‘handball’ in stoppage time when Mahrez beat Alisson on his near post. Alisson had also gotten away with murder earlier when he came out for a cross he had no chance of getting and had to watch gratefully as De Bruyne put his header wide of an open goal. I’m not actually sure this was Alisson you know. Are we sure it wasn’t Adrian in an Alisson mask? For all the calamities at the back though, on another day we’d have scored four or more too. You need to be clinical against City and we weren’t. It feels like this happens quite a lot in general and games are often a lot closer than they should be because of it. It’s funny really because De Bruyne said before the game that we played better last season when we finished second. In some respects I think he’s right but I’d go one step further and say that in attacking terms we played even better the year before. Of course we’re a vastly superior all around team now and we know how to get results in different ways, but as a unit I thought the front three dropped off a level last season from the year before, and I think they’ve dropped off even more this year. Not to the extent that it’s hurt us, obviously, but can you honestly tell me that Firmino or Salah are playing as well as they did two years ago? Mané has actually gotten progressively better every year, but the front three as a whole have dropped off this year in terms of their goal output. It seems daft pointing that out when we’re twenty points clear at the top and don’t get me wrong, I’m not making too big a thing of it. It’s just interesting I think. The amount of games they’ve played over three years might even be the explanation for it. Bobby in particular has looked goosed for much of this season and seems to get subbed a lot. Could the lack of quality cover / competition for the front three be causing the drop off? Not only does it mean they don’t have to fight for their place but it also means they are hardly ever rested. Over the last three seasons they've gone from being unstoppable to brilliant to very good. Bobby was really poor against City and it was no surprise when he was replaced by Origi, who unfortunately was equally ineffective. He's not the answer, although in fairness it's really difficult for bit part players who hardly play to ever show their best level. Look at Danny Ings now, for example. He wouldn't be playing like that if he was getting 15 minutes from our bench every other week. You know what, I’m going to crunch some numbers here just to see how much of a drop off there has been. I’ll disregard the domestic cups and just go with Europe and the Premier League…. hold on. Ok, so two years ago, the season when we reached the CL final and finished fourth. We scored 131 goals. An incredible 89 came from the three main forwards (we also got 12 in half a season from Coutinho). Last year when we won the CL and got 97 points, we scored 113 in total and got 69 from the front three, twenty less than the previous year. This year, we’ve romped away with the league and so far have 87 goals. The front three are on just 51 though (which includes the World Club Cup when Bobby scored a couple). At best it looks like they’ll finish on mid 60s, which continues the downward trend. My eyes tell me the same thing. When they’re on it the front lads are sensational (last week against Palace for example) but whereas the team as a whole is much better now, the front line has dropped off two years in a row now. Maybe it’s nothing to worry about and next year they’ll bounce back and score shitloads. But maybe they won’t? And if they don’t, what viable alternatives do we have to mix it up? The answer to that is none, unless you think Minamino is going to be able to provide the same kind of impact we’ve had from Mo, Sadio or Bobby over the last few years?. Don’t mistake this for moaning. I love all three of those lads and they’ll all be remembered as legends when they eventually move on. This is a great team that has achieved great things and hopefully this is just the start. I’m not actually even criticising them as individuals and I’m certainly not calling for any of them to be replaced. If anything I’d like us to get them some help as I fear we might be asking too much of them. A fourth player who can share the load and help to keep everyone fresh and fighting for their place would be just lovely, but I won't hold my breath. I just think it has to be at least a little bit of a concern to Klopp that the goal output from the forwards is decreasing year on year. It’s not like they don’t get enough chances. It feels like we get loads of great situations in almost every game, yet so often we’ve been winning 1-0 or 2-1. It just makes life more difficult when you aren’t clinical. That’s what this came down to in the end. City were just much sharper in the final third and they were marginally less error prone at the back. I say marginally because they made shitloads of errors too. How many times did we catch them playing out from the back, nick the ball from them and then waste the opportunity? Half a dozen at least. Do you remember who it was who gave the ball away though? I don’t but that’s only because we didn’t score from any of them. If we had made them pay for those mistakes then I expect people’s view of the performances of Laporte, Garcia, Rodri, Ederson or whoever would be entirely different. City would be discussing them the way we’re talking about Trent and Robbo today. Games like this are often decided on little things. Yeah, in the end it got away from us and if you make the mistakes we did then you deserve whatever punishment you get. For a while though this game was in the balance. If Mo’s shot goes in instead of hitting the post then we’re talking about a different game. If Anthony Taylor and VAR did their job and gave handball against Ederson and sent the cunt off, then we’re talking about a different game. If the title had still been in the balance then I’d probably be talking about that decision forever, much like I still obsess about the same manc ref not sending off Kompany in this same fixture last season. This time VAR also comes into it, but it still falls on Taylor because if he’d given handball it wouldn’t have been overturned. And it was handball. And it prevented a certain goal. That reckless, ugly, neck tattooed cunt came flying out of his goal as he tends to do, and he completely fucked up his clearance. The ball hits his foot but then goes underneath him and if it doesn’t hit his elbow then Salah is clean through on goal. With the title already wrapped up it’s not a big deal and will soon be forgotten but decisions like that change games. I don’t want that twat anywhere near our games with the Manchester clubs in future, but then I said that last year and here we are talking about him again. I’m not blaming him for the result but equally there’s no denying that we’re talking about a completely different game if he sends Ederson off. He didn’t though and we lost 4-0. It’s not nice but it was self inflicted and it might be a lesson that the lads can learn from. The margin for error you have in most games is just hugely smaller when Kevin De Bruyne is on the pitch. What happens next is the most important thing. The points record is still on but we need to play much more like we did against Palace and a lot less like we did at Goodison and the Etihad. I expect to see some changes for the weekend. Trent needs a kick up the arse and Neco is pushing hard for a spot so let him play against Villa. You could also make a case for starting Minamino in Bobby’s spot to see if he’s a viable option there. Keita will probably come back too. I thought he was fairly lively when he came on in this game, whereas Ox didn’t really do anything to justify getting a start. I honestly have no idea what to expect over the next few weeks now because football without fans is fucking weird and we’re seeing all kinds of mad results. With the title sewn up and so many games in a short space of time there’s naturally going to be a lot of rotation and we don’t know what that will mean for results. One thing I’m not expecting is for us to win all six games as that almost seems impossible now under the circumstances. I know it doesn’t ultimately mean anything as winning the league was all that mattered, but I don’t want the season to fizzle out with a spattering of draws or even defeats. Let’s finish strong and lay down a marker for next season too, and yeah, that points record would be great while we're at it. Chances to make history don't come along that often so let's not waste it. Star man isn’t easy as hardly anyone played well. Fabinho was fine, Hendo did alright and Salah looked lively (especially in the first half). I’ll probably go with Van Dijk as he did his job well enough and couldn’t really be held responsible for the clown show going on around him. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Van Dijk, Roberton; Fabinho, Henderson, Wijnaldum (Keita); Salah, Firmino (Origi), Mané (Minamino):

Tuesday Jun 23: Uh-oh. Some girl drops a bombshell on twitter claiming she was touched up by Keita back in January but that the police wouldn’t take it further because it was her word against his. What followed was predictable tribal nonsense from some of our fans calling her a liar and then rival fans bringing up ‘yeah and you defended Suarez too, this is why everyone hates you”. None of us know what happened and we never will. It’s easy to pick holes in her story and plenty have, but some details not seeming to add up doesn’t automatically mean that she’s lying. Every word she said may be true, or none of it might be. We’ll never know and given the lack of evidence the police can’t really do anything. Just because it wasn’t prosecuted doesn’t mean she’s lying, but it was enough for some of the "LFC Family" to go right after her. Sickening really. It’s mad how some people wanted to immediately insist Keita couldn’t have done this and even madder that they chose to say that to the girl herself. They were the only two people there. Literally nobody else knows what happened, but I even saw one crank (there may have been others, I stopped reading as it was too infuriating) who insisted that Naby couldn’t do it because he’s muslim. I mean where to even fucking start with that? Are we seriously claiming that anyone who follows a religion is incapable of crime now? Incredible. Just imagine going on Twitter and calling some girl a liar just because you want to defend a lad you’ve never met and who, let’s face it, we know absolutely nothing about. It’s mental. To be fair we don’t actually know anything about any of the players and what they are or aren’t capable of, but at least with some of them you like to think you have a feel for their character and personality because we see and hear from them all the time. I feel like I know much more about what Henderson is like as a person than I do Fabinho for example. And I feel like I know what kind of character Mané is because we’ve seen him do loads of interviews, there’s been a documentary about him and generally you just feel like you ‘know him’. I realise that’s daft really as we don’t actually ‘know’ any of these lads, but Keita is like a complete stranger. I know nothing about him, have no feel for what kind of lad he is at all. We never see or hear from him because he never bothered learning English. He might be the nicest lad in the world (I doubt it because I’m fairly sure Sadio has that honour) or he might be a twat. I have no idea, which is kind of the point here. I’m not saying he did it or he didn’t do it because what the fuck do I know? Other than the two people involved no-one else has a fucking clue. It would be typical Naby though. Started full of promise, looked like he was making good progress and then all of a sudden he's stopped in his tracks by forces beyond his control and it all ends up with his fanboys defending him on the internet. Sorry, I know, shouldn't make light of it but I couldn’t help myself. Right, so I just saw something on twitter from sky sports news who were quoting Jurgen over something he said about BLM and why those banging on about “White Lives Matter” are missing the point of it all. I looked at the replies, and here’s the first five that showed up….. I scrolled down, and here were the next five…. After that it was a mixture of both sides of the argument. Here’s what I’m struggling with here though. Look at the time of the tweets. They aren’t listed in order of posting, they’re just pretty random. Yet the first TEN replies shown by Twitter were all basically anti BLM and ripping into Klopp. That can’t be a co-incidence, surely? Anyone know how that kind of thing works? Wednesday Jun 24: L 4 Palace 0 Well that was nice wasn’t it? Behind anything I could have hoped for actually. I’ve watched a few games since the restart and it’s just watered down shite, nothing like what we see when the stadium is full. I dunno though, maybe I’m being overly critical and I’m allowing my preconceived notions to influence my opinion, but I don’t think so. Even the ‘good’ games have been crap. Until this one. Yeah it’s going to seem better because we won and played so well, but it wasn’t really the goals or the good football that made this different. It was the intensity, the almost manic desire to win the ball back when we lost it. You don’t see that in empty stadiums because it’s the crowds that drive players on to that extra effort and provide them with the extra shot of adrenaline. Think about all the superhuman effort we’ve seen from the lads on European nights when they’ve defied the odds. Well this was like that. It was unbelievable. I felt sorry for Palace because no team could have lived with this. They couldn’t get out of their own half. As soon as they got the ball they had three players on them before they could decide what to do with it. Despite what he said publicly, I reckon Klopp was as disappointed as the rest of us with the derby performance. Players talking tonight about how they wanted to produce the best behind closed doors performance ever. That’s come from him. They’re just repeating what he’s drummed into them. Klopp himself said he doesn’t know if its the best, but it was definitely the best counter pressing performance behind closed doors. It’s probably as good a counter pressing performance as I’ve seen full stop. Can’t actually get over how good we were you know. I expect this in front of a full house. I wouldn’t have thought it possible in an empty stadium, but it just shows what these lads have within themselves. Every single one of them was right at it tonight. The goals were all different but all fantastic, and we could easily have scored more. We should have had two penalties for a start. It was just great and I’m buzzing now. Footy has been back a week or so but I’ve not been feeling it. NOW I feel like footy is back. We’re on the brink of the title now and if City falter tomorrow night it’s all ours. If that happens then we wouldn’t have the pleasure of winning it on the field, but it doesn’t matter. If this is the performance that seals it then it’s a fitting way to do it as it showcased everything that makes this team great. If you could write a perfect way to win the title then maybe beating City at the Etihad would be the way to go, and that might happen. Personally I like the idea of them fucking up tomorrow and then having to give us a guard of honour next week. I just want it won as quickly as possible now, so…. *spits on floor* come on Chelsea. *spits on floor again*. Thursday Jun 25: So there it is. The 30 year wait is over. I thought I’d be going mad when it finally happened, but I couldn’t have been calmer. Subdued even. The best way to describe how I felt when it was confirmed is I was a bit like Admiral Ackbar at the end of Return of the Jedi when the Death Star was destroyed. Everyone is going mental, dancing, singing, partying. And Ackbar just slumps back in his seat. Relieved. Satisfied. Happy for everyone else. That’s how I was tonight. I saw loads of mates bearing their souls in various group chats. For them the ale was flowing, and some tears too. Me? I just wasn’t feeling it. Of course I’m happy about it but I’ve known for months that we had this in the bag. There was no “Aguero moment” and that’s fine. I’d prefer it this way as it’s far less stressful. It does impact massively on the actual moment of triumph though. Is it less enjoyable? Not really, it’s just different. There’s no outpouring of emotion from me because it’s been such a slow procession. I can’t pinpoint the moment when I knew we’d won it but when the lead got to around 12-15 points I knew there was no way this team would blow it. So basically it was a long time ago, probably as far back as December. I’m also thinking that I’m so subdued because I was just sat here at home, knowing that there was not going to be any opportunity to celebrate this at the ground with my mates and with my Dad. No watching Hendo and the lads parade the trophy around a packed Anfield. 30 years we’ve dreamed of that moment and we’ve been robbed of it. It does make a difference. We’ll all make the best of it and it’s still fucking boss, but we’ve been denied the biggest party of all time and it’s not fair. Thirty fucking years we’ve waited. THIRTY!!! And now when our skipper lifts the trophy it will be in an empty stadium. It’s not fair but it is what it is and we’ll all make the best of it. Better to be lifting the trophy in an empty stadium than watching some other cunts do it and then see them singing about us on the fucking plane back home. Some might say (nice little Oasis reference there, fuck you Liam and especially fuck you Noel) that winning it on the field would have been better than this. Some might even say winning it at their place next week would be the sweetest way to seal it. Not me. This is actually fucking perfect. Now they have to give us a guard of honour. A wonder wall if you like. No doubt none of our lads will mention this as it’s just not how they are, but a year ago City’s players were singing about Kompany injuring Salah and Sean Cox being assaulted by Roma fans. And now they’ve got to stand there and applaud our boys who’ve just taken the title off them. It’s fucking sweet. Life comes at you fast sometimes, eh City? One thing that I have found a bit baffling is the constant references to “Thirty years of hurt”. I get it, but it’s not really accurate is it? We haven’t had thirty years of hurt, we’ve had some amazing years in that time. We just haven’t won the title. Some of those years hurt like fuck but not all of them. In fact, in the last 20 years we have actually won every single club trophy out there. We’ve got the full set, some of them more than once. Think about it. Both domestic cups, the UEFA Cup, the European Cup, the League, the Charity Shield, the Super Cup and the Club World Cup. We’ve won ALL of them in a 20 year period. Friday Jun 26: Bit of stick flying around for the fans who showed up at Anfield last night. I’m not condoning it and don’t think it should have happened, but the government have basically made it a free for all by reducing social distancing to one metre and telling everywhere that they can open up again next week. Half a million people crammed onto beaches in Bournemouth yesterday so get to fuck sitting in judgement of a thousand or so who wanted to celebrate ending a THIRTY YEAR WAIT for a title. The best thing about winning big games or trophies is the content we get. Usually I spend the next day or two just watching and reading everything. The stuff from last night was great, about from Kenny going full on ‘yer da’ and saying to Klopp “if your dad was in the war he must have fought on our side because you seem like a scouser to me”. Honestly, if anyone else had said that there’d be murder. Klopp breaking down when talking to sky was something I’ll never forget. It might be the most iconic moment of this triumph. It’s like the hug with Hendo last year in Madrid. I love all this, especially as there’ll be more and more stuff over the next few days. Players posting videos, fans doing compilations, it’s never ending and it’s fucking boss. We’ve got a season to finish first though and records to break. Watching Klopp’s press conference today and he started reeling off the games we have left. What struck me was I remembered at the start of the season when the fixtures came out, and we’re looking at this City game as potentially being pivotal. Then, further on, I remember looking at Chelsea and thinking ‘what if they fucked us up again?’. It’s absolutely incredible that none of these games are even relevant now. Yeah we still want to win them, but the title doesn’t hinge on any of it because we won it with seven games to go. It’s unbelievable really when you stop and think about it. Because we’ve lived through it and it’s a gradual thing, we’ve had so long to get used to it that sometimes it’s easy to forget just how unprecedented this is. There are still seven games left. SEVEN! Do you realise that we could forfeit those seven games and we’d still be Champs. The table would read “Played 31” and we’d still be top. It hasn’t happened before. Not just for us, but for anyone. No-one has ever done this. Now hopefully we can go on and shatter other records and just keep this going so we start next season flying. Saturday Jun 27: Ok, see what I said yesterday about the fans going to Anfield? I stand by that, but it’s a completely different story for those who went to the Pier Head last night. Selfish and stupid. I ripped Joe Anderson for saying he was worried how our fans would behave when we won it but he was proved right and those of us who took offence and stuck up for our fanbase have been made to look like the naive dickheads we are. I woke up this morning to see all hell had broken loose about it, and while most of the ‘outrage’ I saw from Blues and rival fans was just fucking hysterical nonsense (some tit claimed launching a firework at a building was an act of terrorism!), what actually happened is bad enough in itself and didn’t even need to be embellished. It just makes me depressed and angry. We’d all love to go and celebrate the title by having a massive piss up with thousands of fellow reds, but there’s a fucking reason the vast majority of us have not done it. There’s a pandemic and people are still dying every day. And if that isn’t enough of a reason to keep you in, then how about this one; Jurgen asked you to. Chances are none of the fuckers who were partying at the Pier Head will die of Covid, but how many people will they pass it on to? And how many will they pass it on to and so on. People will die because of this. People died because the Atletico Madrid game went ahead but at least we could claim ignorance on that. There’s no excuse this time. It would have been bad enough if it was just thousands gathering in town, but what made it ten times worse was how some of them behaved. Shooting fireworks at the Liver Building? Get to fuck, you soft cunts. Same goes for those cheering it. The place looked like a bomb site the next morning so thank fuck for all the volunteers who went down there to clean up. It’s just so disappointing that we only had one day of enjoying the title win before the rest of the nation had the ammunition they wanted to throw at us. And the Blues have gone into fucking overdrive. Embarrassing pricks, they’re almost as bad as fuckers who have tarnished our reputation. I just can’t get over the selfishness of it all. In the months and years to come when news reports show people irresponsibly ignoring social distancing, it won’t be the beachgoers who we see. It won’t be the BLM protests, or the whoppers applauding the NHS on London Bridge. It won’t be the VE Day celebrators or the far right statue shaggers. No, it’ll be us. This is the footage you’ll be seeing. And you know what’s even worse? The government will use shit like this to shift blame from themselves onto the public. So yeah, thanks for that. Hope your ‘party’ was worth it. Sunday Jun 28: Klopp says Jason Sancho would “look good in red” but don’t get too excited because he’s also saying we’re doing nothing in the transfer market this year. I’ve got mixed feelings about that. Some fans are just dickheads about this shit and I fully expect all kinds of bitching and moaning when we sign no-one, as that’s what we saw last year when we signed no-one then either. I actually feel the same way I did a year ago. We don’t need much but I’d be a lot more comfortable if we brought in another wide forward. So far we’ve been lucky in that the front three have stayed fit for the most part. Can we rely on that indefinitely though? Others will want another left back and a replacement for Lovren amongst other things. I’m not arsed about any of that as I’m all in on Klopp’s policy of promoting the kids. It’s only the drop off from Salah and Mané to whoever replaces them that concerns me but I trust that there’s a plan in place. Maybe that’s Sancho or Mbappe in 12 months time? It might not be, I may be kidding myself, but I’m not going to waste time stressing over a quiet transfer window when we’re the best team in the world already. Meanwhile, Luis Suarez: “I know some Liverpool supporters were angry with me because I celebrated a goal against Liverpool here in Camp Nou and for that I am so sad.” I wasn’t angry at him celebrating his goal. Were any of you angry at that? I didn’t enjoy seeing it but he was entitled to do it. What I was angry with was the constant shithousing and trying to get Virg and Robbo in trouble. In fact, and I might be remembering this wrong, I wasn’t even angry with that. It just made me realise that all bets were off and if he was looking for any little edge to help his team win, then we could do the same and that booing the shit out of him at Anfield was fair game. His whole approach to that tie was “Nothing personal, just business” so the same applies from our point of view. I don’t have any beef with Suarez over what happened when we beat them, but those two games helped me get over him once and for all. I don’t hate Suarez but I don’t love him anymore either. He is the best player I’ve ever seen in the red shirt though. At least he was until Virgil showed up. Now it’s a more nuanced discussion. Difficult to say who was better because they play at opposite ends of the pitch. Maybe a better way of putting it is that Suarez is the most exciting player I’ve ever seen. Monday Jun 29: Jesus. Danny Murphy doesn’t half talk some fucking Zlatan at times. “I think it’s a load of nonsense! Kevin De Bruyne is the best midfielder in the world and he’s clapping his hands and giving a guard of honour to players who can’t even lace his boots!” No Danny, he’s clapping his hands to players who are 23 points ahead of his team. He’s such a moron at times. It might actually be a valid conversation as to whether the guard of honour is an outdated concept, but how come it’s being discussed now just because City are having to applaud us? If anything, it’s even more valid now than it ever was because it’s a passing the torch thing. The old champs paying respect to the new ones. It’s actually quite fitting when you think about it. It’s not like it’s Villa or Norwich having to do it. I don’t remember any of these conversations when we had to applaud Chelsea. Or when United had to applaud Chelsea. Even disregarding all that though, Murphy is so far off base here it’s embarrassing. De Bruyne probably is the best midfielder in the world, but name me one player in our starting line up who is ‘not fit to lace his boots’. There isn’t one. It’s insulting. And you know what? I’d bet that De Bruyne himself feels the exact opposite. Aside from him being a boyhood Red, he always seems like a top fella. He won’t think he’s above applauding an adversary that got the better of him. It’s called sportsmanship, Danny. …..and that was the week that was

It’s hard to be arsed about any of this in the week when we finally ended our 30 year title drought, but the season doesn’t stop just because we’ve won it. I expect our lads to continue putting in maximum effort until the end of the season and therefore so will I. So, while I appreciate that you probably don’t give a shit about West Ham losing to Spurs or Bournemouth’s perilous slide towards the Championship continuing apace, I have a job to do here and given that I’ve always had a work ethic that makes Dirk Kurt look like Homer Simpson (stop laughing at the back) the show must go on. There’s only one place to begin this. Stamford Bridge. An empty Stamford Bridge, which was great because it meant that there were no Chelsea fans there to sing about Steven Gerrard all night. You know they’d have been banging that one out for the entire 90 minutes, just to try and sour our moment of glory. Not that anything could, but still, it was nice not having to listen to them. Chelsea were the thorn in our side in 2014 and they’ve dined out on it ever since (which is actually fair enough, it’s all the other fuckers who had nothing to do with it yet jumped on the Demba Ba song that really pissed me off). So this was a nice situation. Their fans won’t have wanted their team to be the ones who confirmed us as Champions, but it was a really important game for them and they needed the points. Lampard’s men carried out his gameplan well and fully deserved their win. There were a lot of encouraging signs for Chelsea but it’s funny because nobody, absolutely nobody, gave a fuck about how they played. Normally after a win like this the conversation would be about how Chelsea look like they’re a coming force and what a good job Frank is doing. They weren’t even an afterthought really. All of the talk afterwards was rightly about the new Champs. Chelsea barely even got a mention. It was well over an hour after full time that BT eventually showed a post match interview with Lampard. In the meantime, it had been all about the Champs. Even the next day Talksport was wall to wall Liverpool, to the extent that loads of listeners were texting, calling and tweeting in kicking off about it. Glorious. We don’t even need to rub anyone’s noses in it because the media coverage is causing meltdown’s up and down the country. Chelsea should be encouraged by how their team played and this was a huge win for them under the circumstances. United and Wolves were breathing down their necks and if they’d lost they’d have been on the brink of dropping to 6th, but you’d think that this result and performance cements them as firm favourites for a top four spot. They’ll probably get third actually as they’re only a point behind Leicester now, who’ve looked shite since the break. This result wasn’t too surprising as it was City’s most difficult game other than when they play us. Prior to us smashing Palace on the Tuesday night I full expected City to win. After the statement made by our lads at Anfield though I began to get a sneaky feeling that City would falter. They’ve been dominant since the restart but they lost Aguero for the rest of the season and with us playing so well against Palace it had to have had some impact on City. They knew they weren’t going to catch us anyway, but after our draw at Goodison they might have felt they could prolong it a bit longer and make us sweat a bit. So seeing us looking so formidable against Palace, they must have known once and for all it was over. Guardiola was even talking about resting players for the FA Cup this weekend. He didn’t exactly follow through on that but even in the absence of Aguero he did leave Jesus on the bench. Additionally, he included Mendy at left back and that’s enough to weaken most sides in fairness. He plays football like he acts on social media. Doesn’t seem to take anything seriously. His defending for Chelsea’s opener was comical. Future Arsenal player there if I ever saw one. What a fucking clown. Credit to Pulisic though, he took it really well. The little “slow and go” move was vintage Torres. Arl Fernando perfected that before he just went shit and it became “slow and slower”. Lovely goal though from Klopp’s former protege; the balance and the finish, just lovely. I didn’t celebrate it too much. I may have said “get in” and made an ironic “Captain America” comment (usually I fucking hate that) but I wasn’t overly excited. I’m not entirely sure why but I think it’s because the title has been a foregone conclusion for a long time in my eyes. If Chelsea couldn’t hold on then no biggie, we’d win it soon enough anyway. Of course I wanted to win it as soon as possible though. Some may have preferred to win it at City next week. Yeah obviously that would have been sound, but fuck that. I’d rather win it in record time and then have them applaud us onto the Etihad pitch next week, but the stakes weren’t really that high in my eyes as we won this title months and months ago. That would explain why I wasn’t especially deflated when De Bruyne equalised. Great strike but sorry, Alisson doesn’t let that beat him. I find myself saying that a lot, which is a combination of Alisson being great and most other keepers being… well, not so great. Kepa is young so may go on to become one of the best, but he’s not very good right now is he? If Abramovich is indeed splashing the cash again then the first thing he should do is sign Oblak. Let’s hope he doesn’t. Anyway, City’s equaliser lifted them and they had a good spell in which Sterling hit the post. Had he squared it Mahrez had an open goal but he went for glory himself and blew it. Following that let off Chelsea weathered the storm, if you can call it that - it was more of a mild breeze really - and always looked dangerous when they attacked. They just didn’t really attack much for some reason. Maybe because they couldn’t get the ball. It’s not easy against a Guardiola side. The good thing is now though that a lot of teams who play City don’t need much of the ball to hurt them. When Chelsea did win it back the counter attack was on every time. Pulisic ran City ragged and Willian was quality. If we can’t get a shit hot wide forward this summer then we could probably do worse than Willian on a free to give us much needed depth. He wouldn’t be my first choice by any means, but he’d definitely add SOMETHING if we couldn’t land one of the stellar names out there. Can’t see it though. The pace and skill of Mount and Pulisic combined with the energy and nous of Willian gave Chelsea a real threat on the break all night and City never looked comfortable. Their goal led a charmed life at times. Pulisic should have restored Chelsea’s lead when he raced clear, rounded the keeper and then produced a real wet wipe of a finish that took an age to reach the goal and allowed Walker to get back and clear. You have to credit Walker for the sense of desire and urgency he showed to get back so quickly. It was as though someone told him the knocking shops were about to open again. It was all a bit surreal to me because most of my mates were kicking every ball and stressing out over Chelsea’s near misses, but I couldn’t have been any calmer. I genuinely wasn’t really arsed because if City went on to win it didn’t really mean anything. I just kept thinking “imagine if we didn’t have a huge lead and this game actually meant something”. It would have been unbearable. Last season was stressful enough but this would be ten times worse. As it was, with a 23 point lead I had a serenity about me that is never normally there when watching City. So when there was an almighty scramble when it seemed certain that Chelsea would score only for City to somehow get the danger cleared, I was actually laughing. I can imagine most of you will have been on the verge of a heart attack at that moment, but personally I just found it funny and shrugged. What will be will be. I didn’t even have a clue that Fernandinho had handled until I saw a Chelsea player going mad and chasing the ref. Then they announced the VAR review and you could tell by the guilty look on Fernandinho’s face that he knew he was done for. The replay showed a clear, deliberate handball and the worst case scenario now was that even if Chelsea missed the pen they’d still be playing against ten men. So all of a sudden, the title was suddenly within our grasp. Willian buried the pen and we all knew then. Game over, and I love saying that. City weren’t scoring twice with only ten men. It was done. We finally had our title and all that was left was for the game to play out. To their credit, City still looked like they were trying to get back into it even though they had no chance. I don’t think there’s too much wrong with them that a couple of new defenders wouldn’t solve, but that’s eight defeats for them this season now. Unthinkable back in August when this all started. They set the benchmark over recent seasons. What they did points wise in their last two title wins hadn’t been done before. They averaged 99 points over that period. Staggering. That meant that for us to overhaul them we’d have become the greatest side this country had ever seen. And guess what, that’s exactly what we did. We’re light years ahead of everyone else now, even City, but that could change. I don’t see anybody else threatening us any time soon but City still might. We’re 23 points ahead of them but we’re not 23 points better than them, if that makes sense. They’ve lost games they wouldn’t normally lose and it’s entirely conceivable that next season they get back to the level they were previously. And yet it’s also conceivable that they won’t. David Silva is off, Aguero is another year older, Fernandinho is on his last legs and who knows what will happen if that ban is upheld. Maybe De Bruyne and Sterling will want out? Then again, maybe with FFP rules possibly relaxed due to the current situation they will just go out and spend a billion quid and rebuild the team. If they signed Koulibaly as has been mooted today then that immediately solves their biggest problem. The big thing though is Guardiola. While he’s there they’re a big threat. If they go back to the likes of Pellegrini and Mancini type managers they’ll never catch us while we still have Klopp. Guardiola’s City have been one of the greatest sides this country has seen but they needed some friendly officiating to finish above us last season and now they’re 23 points behind us. What does that say about us? It says we’re the best ever, that’s what. Ok, who’s next. May as well get the other mancs out of the way I suppose. Their 3-0 win over Sheffield United has me thinking that the Blades might not pick up another point. They had to wheel out Phil Jagielka (complete with mid-life crisis bleached blonde hairdo) along with some jabroni keeper who replaced the ineligible Henderson. Martial scored all three goals and I saw he was trending on Twitter. Couldn’t help myself, I needed to see what kind of delusions of grandeur were coming from the smartphones of @Carrick_Philosophy, @CollossalMaguire and all those other Fifa generation virgins. I wasn’t disappointed. It was mostly nonsense comparing him to Firmino. Here’s a selection (all of these are genuine, I haven’t made any of them up). “Martial has more PL hat-tricks than Firmino has league goals at home in the last 15 months” “Don’t ever compare Martial to bums like Lacazette and Firmino again” “Martial slander from people who have Giroud, Lacazette and Firmino as their strikers. No shame whatsoever.” “Hat-trick for Martial and Firmino disaster class with 0 G/A on the same day I’m hearing?” “Martial over that “defensive” striker Firmino all day long” “Martial just scored more home goals in one game than Firmino has managed all season.” “#MUNSHU martial > firmino once again” Cool, when’s the parade? You sad, low standards, how the mighty have fallen fucking whoppers. This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been banging on about with United fans. It’s dead funny because they just don’t get it though. They don’t see it. They have no idea what they’ve become. They’re just clinging onto these completely irrelevant little stats and factoids and using them to convince themselves they’re getting closer. Firstly, Martial isn’t better than Firmino, but even if he was, so fucking what? Does that seriously make you feel better about the fact that your team is *checks table* 37 points behind us? I guess it must do, or why do it? We probably (definitely?) did similar shit over the years but thankfully we were mostly doing it on our own forums and not on social media for the whole world’s amusement. We’ve already had the Maguire > Van Dijk cringefest and the AWB > Trent nonce off, and it looks like Martial v Bobby is now a thing for them. Can’t wait until Dan James scores against Norwich and is suddenly catapulted into the Salah and Mané bracket. Fucking losers. Speaking of losers, the man who most definitely isn’t a loser because “all I do is win” lost again. What an absolute loser. The “formerly Special One” got the better of the “formerly Chosen One” as Spurs won at West Ham. Son thought he’d broken the deadlock just before half time but he was offside by about an inch. In general I’m not a fan of these hairlines decisions but I’m good with that one because it was his standing foot that was offside (as opposed to an armpit or an eyebrow) and because I don’t like Son (“he’s a sly little thing him” © my mum). The Hammers fell behind after the break when the unfortunate Soucek (whoever the fuck he is) put through his own net after the ball hit him from a corner and ricocheted past Fabianski. Kane then wrapped it up when he ran clear from halfway to score his 137th goal in 200 games. Great record that. He’s a great striker, I can’t deny it. He’s massive tit though. Moyes said West Ham played well and they restricted Tottenham. No mate, the only manager who restricted Tottenham is their own, because that’s what he does. You had nothing to do with it. Moyes did have a point when he said VAR should have disallowed the Tottenham opener for handball though. The ball brushes the arm of Sanchez before it hits the defender for the oggy. Prior to this season you’d say that’s never a handball offence but with the rule change you have to say that goal should not have stood. Awful from the VAR ref. Still, never mind, eh? Now that the title is wrapped up if there’s one wish I could have it would be for this deluded fraud, still dining out on the half decent record he had with Everton, to be relegated along with his null and void wanting Tory cunt board. Fuck Moyes. Meanwhile, Wolves continue to put pressure on the top four while Bournemouth continue to ease the pressure on the bottom three. Wait, are Bournemouth actually already in the bottom three? *checks table* Yep, below West Ham on goal difference. Fucks sake Bournemouth, if you’re the reason West Ham stay up I’ll never forgive you, no matter how much you overpay for our unwanted kids. Get your act together for fuck’s sake. Wolves have given us our two toughest games of the season. I’m not counting the Watford defeat as although you can say they gave us a tough game, it was mainly because we were just shite. We had to play well to beat Wolves both times and they gave us all we could handle. They won this one with a familiar goal. My boy Traore (brilliant again) beating two men on the right and dropping one onto the head of Jimenez who powered it home. Out of them and Leicester you’d have to say that they’re looking much stronger currently. Leicester were held to a draw by Brighton but it could have been worse but for Schmeichel saving a pen from Maupay. Leicester haven’t got going at all yet since the restart and it might cost them that top four spot that at one time looked nailed on. Tariq Lamptey started for Brighton. You might remember me talking about him before as I saw him a few times playing against our youth teams when he was at Chelsea and he looked sensational. Keep an eye on him. Villa picked up a good point after coming from behind to equalise at Newcastle. Substitute Dwight Gayle (I used to really fucking hate him but he’s nothing to me these days) put the Geordies ahead from a right wing cross by Big Andy, only for Elmohamady to steal in and equalise with a near post header from a corner. Horrific from the keeper though. Elsewhere, Burnley nearly scored within seconds against Watford but were denied by a smart stop by Foster. They weren’t wasting any time there like, the racists hadn’t even had time to start up the plane. The Clarets got the only goal of the game through Rodriguez. It takes some of the heat off them and probably secures their place in the league for next year. Watford still have a bit of work to do though. Norwich lost again as Michael Keane’s goal was enough to give Everton the points. Norwich are one of the sides who are going to miss their home crowd the most. With a full house they’d probably have gotten something from this game as Everton are shite. Speaking of shite, Arsenal actually managed to win a game. It was virtually handed to them on a plate though as Alex McCarthy passed the ball straight to Nketia for the opener. That was what Arsenal needed as their confidence will have been on the floor going into this game. It got worse when Hoijberg’s terrible pass sent Aubamayeng clear and Stephens brought him down. Red card for him and Arsenal scored from the free-kick when Willock converted a rebound after Lacazette’s shot had been parried. What a missed opportunity that was. Arsenal were ripe for the picking and Southampton should have stepped on their throats. Instead they gave them a hand job.

Well that’s how you bounce back from a disappointing performance. Bloody hell, that was something wasn’t it? Complete dominance from first minute to last. We were so good that OPTA reported that Palace didn’t touch the ball in our box (turns out they managed one touch about a foot inside the box) and I can’t even remember seeing Alisson touch the ball with his hands all night. Absolutely incredible. This is what you’d expect from a team urged on by a full house, not one in an empty stadium. You don’t see intensity and desire like that in behind closed doors games. Certainly not when a team is 4-0 up. I thought Klopp summed up the performance perfectly when he referenced “in the 86th minute four of our boys were chasing one poor Crystal Palace player like he had the last ball on earth”. That’s it. That’s exactly it. It was relentless pressure on Palace from the start of the game to the end of it. They weren’t helped by losing Zaha through injury early on as he was their main route of escaping their own half, but honestly I don’t think it would have made any difference if he’d stayed on, and in fairness Hodgson said pretty much the same thing after. We were very good with the ball but we were fucking unbelievable without it. I reckon if you talk to those Palace players privately they’ll say it’s the hardest game they’ve ever played in. They didn’t get a second on the ball and Jordan Ayew never had a Palace player within thirty yards of him all night. He was so isolated up there, partly because he himself couldn’t hold onto the ball to allow anyone to get close to him. Van Dijk and Gomez just smothered him every time the ball went near him. This was everything that Sunday wasn’t. When you see this you wonder how it could have been so lacklustre at Everton, but maybe it’s just as Salah said afterwards, that sometimes you just have games where you don’t play well. Or maybe it was that he was back. And Robbo too. Both played a big part in this, but especially Mo. We just looked a completely different animal in this game and he was a big reason for that. Without harping on too much about Sunday, the main problem was we were just too stagnant and didn’t carry a threat in behind. This couldn’t have been more different. With Robbo bursting forward out wide we then had Sadio able to move around and get involved more, while Mo was always looking to play quick give and goes around the box and making runs in behind. Palace defended just as deeply as Everton and with even more numbers behind the ball. They couldn’t deal with us though. Mind you, the derby could have been hugely different if Trent had done what he did in this game from the first free-kick he had. There’s one big difference right there. Goals change games. You can credit me with the assist for our opening goal as I reverse jinxed the shit out of that with what I wrote in the Everton report. In case you missed it…. "I think that might have been the last time we even remotely threatened until Fabinho saw a decent free-kick tipped over by Pickford. We don’t usually see him on set-pieces but that was a decent effort. Maybe he’ll get another chance, as I do feel we all vastly over-rate how good Trent is at free-kicks. He’s alright like, but he’s not the lethal dead ball specialist he’s portrayed as (here’s hoping I’ve reverse jinxed him there and he pings one into the top corner against Palace or City)." Absolutely nailed that one. On a similar note, what the hell was going on with Gini’s finishing in this game? He had two great chances when the game was still close and he scuffed both of them. Gini’s ball striking isn’t as great as we think it is (here’s hoping I’ve reverse jinxed him there and he pings one into the top corner against City). Anyway…. Trent whipped the free kick around the wall and into the corner, leaving Hennessey helpless. It looks like he had no chance of saving it but maybe that’s because he was too far over the other side? I don’t know, I’m not a keeper, but I don’t see Alisson being beaten by free-kicks very often and it’s probably because of his positioning. Regardless, it’s a lovely hit by Trent and just what we needed at the time. We’d started well and created some chances, but having drawn a blank last time out and not played for three months before that, getting our first goal was hugely important. I have no idea how Klopp or the players felt, but it was a big relief to me anyway. The whole performance was. I feel like football is finally back now. Until this I hadn’t really been feeling it. It’s interesting that both Mo and Klopp said afterwards that they want to play the best ‘behind closed doors football’ anyone has seen. Clearly that’s been something Klopp has been drumming into them as a motivational tool since Sunday’s drab derby. We know we’re the best when there are fans in the stadium so he’s telling them that this is a new challenge and he wants them to be the best at this too. The motivation from the lads stood out all night. This looked exactly like a normal game. I can’t say that about any of the other games I’ve watched so far, but this was exactly like one of our normal high octane home performances. Palace will be relieved to have only conceded four as it could easily have been double that, especially given we were denied two clear penalties in the first half. First Van Dijk was manhandled by Cahill as he attacked a corner. Martin Atkinson has to see that, but if he doesn’t then VAR needs to be telling him. There was another good shout when Bobby tried to lob the ball over Cahill and the ball struck the defender’s arm. Those incidents are quite subjective and usually I come down on the side of ‘ball to hand’ but that one was 75% a penalty I’d say. Cahill’s arm is not in a natural position, it’s high and to the side and he stops the ball with his elbow. Should have been a pen. I have to say though (through gritted teeth) that overall Atkinson was good. There were loads of occasions where we won the ball and a Palace player was virtually begging for a free-kick, but Atkinson seemed to get all of those right. He could easily have given fouls in those situations even though they weren’t. The way he refereed the game helped us to play the aggressive, almost maniacal pressing game that just overwhelmed Palace. That was probably the most pleasing aspect of the performance. Klopp described it as “the best counter pressing performance in a behind closed doors game ever” and that’s just a massive tribute to the players. That kind of desire and discipline to do that without a crowd comes from within. Mentality monsters. The goals weren’t bad either were they? Trent’s free-kick was a lovely strike, Salah’s was an expertly taken finish from a stunningly weighted pass from Fabinho, Fabinho then replicated his Man City goal with a thunderous strike and Sadio wrapped it up with a glorious “front three” goal as Firmino and Salah combined to set him free. Klopp was asked which goal was his favourite but he wouldn’t be drawn on it. I’m happy to choose. Number one was the Mané goal because that’s the type of goal I love seeing. I prefer the counter attack from opposition corner type goals, but Sadio or Mo charging into open space and scoring is the type of goal I most associate with this golden era we’re enjoying. Salah’s pass with his right foot to put Mané clear was fantastic and the outcome was never in doubt after that. Sadio always finds that far bottom corner when he cuts in. So yeah, that was number one. Number two was Salah’s goal. Why? Because that was everything that we didn’t have on Sunday. That little diagonal run in behind the full back is something Mo does brilliantly. Sadio does too actually. The run was great, but Fabinho has to drop that ball on a sixpence as the window to complete that pass is tiny. A bit less and Van Aanholt heads it away. A bit more and the keeper comes and gets it. It was perfect. Number three is Fabinho’s thunderbastard because it came out of nowhere. Even when he shaped to shoot I still thought he was going to feint and then lay it off. Next thing it’s bursting the net. And last but not least (actually technically I am saying it is least I suppose) is Trent’s free-kick. Imagine that being the ‘worst’ goal of the four you scored. The quality in this performance can’t be over-stated. It was nice to see Williams and Elliott given an opportunity and they both did well. Neco is genuinely brilliant. He might be the best kept secret in the Premier League as I don’t think many people (even our own fans) realise yet just how good he is. Aside from maybe one game when he struggled a little (Shrewsbury away I think it was) he’s looked terrific any time he’s been given a chance. He’s a strong defender, a fierce competitor and a tidy footballer, but the thing that really sets him apart for me is the uncanny knack he has for being involved in virtually everything. The ball is drawn to him like a magnet. Despite being a right back he’s somehow a huge goal threat and seems to have chances to score every time he plays. In the replay against Shrewsbury I remember him having five or six decent attempts on goal and in the short space of time he was on against Palace he was a serious goal threat. He could have scored two with a little more luck. He also played a lovely slide rule defence splitting ball to set Mo in too. I’m telling you, this lad is special. Getting him games is the problem because he’s got the best young right back in the world ahead of him. There’s a common belief that Trent will eventually move into midfield, especially if Neco continues to progress at this rapid rate, but I see things going a little differently. Having two quality right backs is certainly not a problem. Besides, there’s no reason why Neco can’t play left back too, meaning he’d be able to cover both full back spots and therefore see plenty of action, which would also allow us to rest Trent and Robbo far more than we are currently able to. He’s more accomplished as a right back, obviously, but his left foot isn’t bad. He’ll never be Robbo as he’s right footed, but who knows, maybe he can eventually be another Stevie Nicol? I expect him to get at least a couple more starts before the end of the season, especially when we play four games in nine days. It’s an exciting prospect, seeing how Williams, Elliott and Jones do over the coming weeks. Harvey looked like he’s added a few pounds of muscle too, which you’d expect as he’s still growing and doing weights every day at Melwood. If he gets stronger and a little quicker then we could be talking about the best teenager we’ve had since Owen. We’ll see though. This team is so exceptional that it’s really hard for anyone to break into it. We know what the first eleven is and that’s the line up that played in this game. There are a few positions that are interchangeable (Ox or Keita can come into midfield without weakening it too much, while Matip for Gomez isn’t a big drop off) but by and large we know the best eleven and that best eleven is currently the best club side in the world. Imagine how good you need to be as a teenager to be able to come in and hold your own. Yet those three all look like they might be able to do that soon. The beauty of the next few weeks is that Klopp should be able to experiment a little because the title will be soon wrapped up. Mind you, I want that points record too. Some might dismiss the importance of it but to me it’s fucking huge. Yes, it’s being greedy but I want this team to break every record they can, because they deserve to be regarded as the best team to have ever played in this country. If you look at the body of work over the last two to three years, I don’t think there’s much doubt. Who is better? Nobody, that’s who. But if they can beat (and preferably shatter) City’s points record then there’s not really any argument to be had. They’ll be out on their own as the best ever. If we can keep playing like this for the rest of the season then there’s no reason to think we won’t do it. There is always a danger that once the title is won we might see an easing off and the deckchairs might come out, but I just can’t see that. It’s not who this team is and it’s certainly not who Klopp is. He’ll want them to win every game and they’ll want to win every game. The Everton game was shite and serves as a warning of what can happen, but there were extenuating circumstances for that and maybe the lads just needed a game to blow off the cobwebs. I worried it might take a few weeks for them to get back to full speed. Turns out it only took a few days. The football was sensational at times but as I say it was the desire and work rate from the players that stood out. This was what I expected when footy came back. It’s why I was so disappointed at the weekend. I thought we’d be fitter and hungrier than everyone else and that teams just wouldn’t be able to cope with it. Against Palace that’s exactly how it looked. And in the opening round of fixtures at the weekend Palace had looked like one of the better sides. They played really well at Bournemouth and this had the potential to be really tricky given our frequent Anfield struggles against them. I was worried (about this game, not about the title. Anyone worrying about that needs to give their head a wobble as this was settled months ago) and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. So seeing the boys play like this has made me feel much better. I’m looking forward to all of the other games we have left now as it was just fucking ace being able to watch the lads do their thing again. I keep saying it, but I haven’t missed football at all during this break - I’ve just missed the Reds. And now they’re back. Star man is tough as everyone was outstanding. Salah and Fabinho probably stood out the most though and I’ll go with Fab I think. A wonderful goal, a top quality assist and just a completely dominant display all around from him. By the time we play again we might already be Champions but if not we have the chance to win it against City. In an ideal world I’d want City to win at Chelsea and then for us to stuff them to secure the title next week. If you could guarantee me a win at the Etihad I’d happily cheer City on tonight at Stamford Bridge, but you can’t guarantee me that so I just want it settled as quickly as possible. Therefore, I’m hoping for Chelsea to do us a favour tonight meaning that next week City will have to give our players a guard of honour. Thinking about it, that might even be a more satisfying scenario than winning it on the field against them. Why? Because last year when City won the title their players were on the plane home signing songs about us and poor Sean Cox. How fitting would it be for them to have to stand there applauding us onto THEIR pitch knowing we’ve taken their crown? So yeah, come on Chelsea, do the business tonight so we can see Sterling having to applaud Gomez onto the field as part of the Champions. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold (Williams), Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson (Keita); Fabinho, Henderson (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Wijnaldum; Salah, Firmino (Minamino), Mané (Elliott):

Ok, the games are coming thick and fast and it’s difficult to keep up. The best way to do this I think it to do the Round Up after each round of fixtures, but because there’s no break in between this means that the next round of games will have started before I can get this out there. For example, I’m writing this while Leicester and Brighton are playing, and there’s another game after that. Those will be in the next round up, not this one, so bear with me as I’ll try to keep up as best I can. Right, to kick this one off we go back to last Friday’s game at the new White Hart Lane or whatever the fuck they decided to call it… *checks google* Hahahaha Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Fucking hell. Bet they paid a fortune to some marketing dick in a suit to come up with that one too. Christ. If that’s the best they could come up I’d love to hear the suggestions that were rejected. Anyway, Spurs took the lead against Ole’s resurgent Yernited (mad the way they’ve been talked up lately. They seemed to get better with every week they didn’t play) when Bergwijn sliced thorough the middle of the United defence and beat De Gea with a shot that was straight at him. How many times have we seen that over the last year or two? Maguire’s ‘defending’ was a sight to behold too, as Bergwijn went round him like he was a cone on the training field, but De Gea’s blunder meant that most people overlooked that. Not Roy Keane. He wanted to murder both of them with his bare hands. Ok that’s not true. He only wanted to murder De Gea. He’d have been happy enough just slapping Maguire about a bit. I don’t care what people think of Roy Keane, I’m going to come out and say that his assassination of Maguire and De Gea is the best thing I’ve seen since footy came back. It’s an admittedly low bar. The goal wasn’t really deserved and I thought Spurs were fucking woeful. After going ahead they sat back and tried to ‘Mourinho’ a result out of it. Why are they playing like that when they’ve got talented attacking players and one of the best centre forwards in Europe? That’s a rhetorical question. I know why. We all know why. It’s who he is. He can’t help himself. Enjoy the next couple of years, Spurs fans, because this is what you can expect on a weekly basis. The football is going to be brutal but Daniel Levy won’t be sacking Jose any time soon as he’ll need to pay him off, and that’s simply not an option with Levy controlling the purse strings. With Spurs just camped in their own half United were able to apply some pressure but it wasn’t until Pogba arrived that they looked threatening. He was good to be fair. I don’t say that often because I’m not a liar, but credit where it’s due he looked decent in this game. He played one terrific through ball that caused a collective orgasm among his army of twitter virgins. They’ll be showing the gif of that for the next decade in response to anything and everything, because that’s what the Fifa generation do. It’s not just United fans, but they might just be the worst for it. Arsenal are bad too, you only have to see how many times that gif of Pepe sort of slightly not really dribbling past Virgil has been posted. But United fans seem to be the specialists in celebrating minor moments and making out that they’re much more significant than they actually are. When Henderson lifts the Premier League trophy you’ll see underneath a clip of Pogba playing that pass along with the comment “yeah but can he do this?”. Kevin De Bruyne will surge past three players, ping a sixty yard ball to Sterling and then race into the box to convert the cross and you’ll see the Pogba pass with the comment “My midfielder > your midfielder” I’m not even kidding. United fans have gone fucking loopy these last few years since they became shite. They’ve been spoiled and now don’t have a clue how to handle not being successful, so they’re claiming all sorts of little ‘victories’ and embarrassing themselves on social media. These absolute dangers will big up Wan Bissaka as the best right back in the world just because he slide tackled some fucking slapdick winger from Carlisle or Rotherham in a League Cup tie. They usually have names like @Tactical_McTominay, @Martialista, @Rashfordology, @Pogba-Fernandez-Goal! or some other cringey shit like that. Cunts. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got the same type of wanker posting the same kind of shit about our players (usually Keita doing a stepover). The difference is we’re miles clear at the top of the table and we’re the reigning World and European Champs so we can do that without looking like our hard drives should be checked. Actually that’s not true, the Keita obsessives definitely need their hard drives checking too, but I digress. So yeah, Pogba made the difference after he came on and United drew level when he skipped past the lumbering Dier and then conned his way to a penalty, which was converted by Fernandez, who is surely the most over-rated player since…well since Pogba actually. In fairness Fernandez is actually very good, he’s just been massively overhyped due to United’s midfield having been so fucking bad until he arrived. Tell you what though, Jon Moss hasn’t lost anything during the lockdown. Either in poundage or incompetence. He was fat and shit before the break and he’s still fat and shit now. He actually gave two pens to United. One was allowed to stand and the other was overturned by VAR. The truth is neither of them were pens. Pogba dived for the first and Fernandez dived for the second. Thank fuck for VAR or Fernandez would have gotten away with that. I genuinely don’t get how come more wasn’t made of the Pogba one though. Everyone other than me and Jose seems to have just said “yeah clear penalty, you can’t do that in the box”. Do what? That’s not a foul in a million years. I know Eric Dier is shit but what’s he supposed to do there? Pogba went past him and then reached back to hold him off. Dier sort of reaches out to move Pogba’s arm out of the way and then Pogba just fell down. Dier doesn’t push or pull him, he doesn’t really do anything at all. Still, if he had moved his feet in the first place instead of standing there leaden footed like some kind of Harry Maguire tribute act then the penalty incident doesn’t happen. He’s terrible. Always has been. That’s why I always used to refer to him as Eric Dire until he nailed Sergio Ramos and I felt that he deserved a little bit of respect for that so I started to spell his name correctly. So God bless him for that horrendous challenge on Ramos but the lad is a terrible football player. Remember when there was a national debate about whether he was better than Henderson? Kinell. Like arguing that (insert any band you like) are better than Bon Jovi. Absolute insanity. Spurs are now an awful shadow of the side they were under Pochettino. It’s night and day in terms of how they play, but is anyone other than Daniel Levy surprised by that? Why would you appoint that fucker? Busted flush. Still, it could be worse. They could be Arsenal. Fucking hell. I don’t even get a kick out of them being shit anymore. I’m sure I’ve said this before but it’s been such a long time since I was doing these that it’s worth repeating. I’m actually offended by Arsenal. They’re so spineless, shit and shameless about it that I don’t even enjoy them losing, I actually get fucking irrationally annoyed by it. They’re a disgrace. They’re the most spineless, self satisfied team I think I’ve ever seen. What they’ve become is not only an insult to what went before, but it’s also an insult to my football sensibilities. Nothing screams out “losers” more than Arsenal of the past few years. What a pitiful, gutless, cowardly, deluded, arrogant, our shit don’t stink bunch of fucking wasters. Arteta must be off his fucking head to have his cushy role at City to take that job. Other than some of the kids and maybe Tierney (if he hasn’t already been permanently doused in that Arsenal stink) there is not one player there worth keeping. Not fucking one. Aubamayeng is the only top player they have but they need to fuck him off while they can still get money for him, because by the time Arsenal are competing again he’ll be long retired, and possibly drawing his pension. Everyone laughs at some of the Arsenal Fan TV crew and yeah, it’s funny as fuck watching their constant meltdowns. Imagine if you had to watch that team every week though? That loss at Brighton was just as Arsenal as it gets. Leno went off on a stretcher after a clash with Maupay. He was shouting and pointing at the striker as he left the field. Wasn’t really much in it to be fair, but it was just pure Arsenal that they then went on to allow Maupay to score the winner in stoppage time. Pepe put the Gunners ahead with a beauty, cutting in from the right and lashing one into the top corner. Maybe now Arsenal fans can replace that ‘beating Van Dijk’ gif? I won’t hold my breath like. So it was looking for Arsenal but Lewis Dunk scrambled one in from close range with 15 minutes left and then Maupay won it at the death, FIVE minutes into stoppage time. Guendouzi and Mustafi kicked off on Maupay after the final whistle. Again, typical of this Arsenal team, only showing fight after the game is over. Maupay said afterwards that some of the Arsenal players need to learn humility and he’s fucking bang on there. They do. Arsenal are FUCKING SHITE. Embarrassingly so. Yet they strut around like they’re the fucking Invincibles. Maupay said one player in particular was running his mouth all game. Turns out its was Guendouzi, who was calling Brighton players shit and boasting about how he and his team-mates earn more than Brighton players ever will. A little surprising that he’s the one doing that but he’s been there a couple of years now, which is long enough for that arrogant loser stench to get on him. That whole situation sums up Arsenal. They don’t ‘earn’ more than Brighton’s players. They might be paid more, but they sure as hell don’t fucking earn it. And yeah, Brighton’s players are shit (relatively speaking), but guess what, Sideshow Bob junior, those shit players have done the double over you this season. What does that say about YOU?? This is what I’m saying. It’s why Arsenal offend me. It’s not about them not being very good. Spurs aren’t very good currently either, but I don’t find them offensive. No, Arsenal get me angry because they’re a bunch of fucking losers who for some reason still have this superior attitude about themselves. No wonder my man Troopz fucking hates them all. And now they’ve just given David Luiz a new contract. See? This is what I’m talking about. They just reward failure. There is no hope for them at all. They’re a fucking steaming heap of cow shit that thinks it tastes like a chocolate gateau. Can’t believe I’ve written so much about Arsenal. I’m angry as fuck even typing this. This is how wound up they get me. I could easily do this for another ten paragraphs as the hate is flowing, but I’ll keep some powder dry as we’ve still got eight games left before the season ends. So, moving on. Palace looked quite good didn’t they? That doesn’t bode well for us as we take them on tomorrow in an empty Anfield. They were a lot more comfortable at Bournemouth than the 2-0 scoreline suggests. Milivojevic is something of a dead ball specialist. Usually it’s pens but he takes a mean free-kick too, and he fizzed one into the top corner to give Palace the lead. Ayew made it 2-0 when he side footed in a cross from my boy Van Aanholt, who earned that status over the lockdown period by taking on that cunt Katie Hopkins on twitter before the vile fascist bitch was permanently banned. I liked him anyway as he seems like a top lad who has always been complimentary about the Reds, but yeah, he’s defo my boy now. Hopefully he doesn’t make me regret that by shining against us tomorrow. Interesting that Nice Guy Eddie reckons that playing at home is now a disadvantage. It’s been like that in Germany since the restart with loads of away teams winning, so it’s something to look out for over the next few weeks. Norwich went into the restart with faint hopes of mounting a great escape. They showed signs of life before the lockdown and had a chance to make a statement with a home game against Southampton, who don’t really have anything to play for. The Saints murdered them though. They played some lovely stuff and Ingsy looked great didn’t he? On the one hand I think it’d be nice to have someone like him to bring in whenever one of the front three can’t play, but on the other you have to realise that the reason he looks so good now is because he plays all the time. He would never have had that here so he’d never be sharp enough to do himself justice. Ings, Armstrong and Redmond all got on the scoresheet and it could easily have been more. Norwich’s defending was so bad and their tackling so non-existent they could have been wearing Arsenal shirts and you wouldn’t have known the difference. Onto Sunday now and Villa lost again. Chelsea’s starting line up was a bit weird, with Giroud and Loftus-Cheek both starting in a front three with Willian. It didn't work and it wasn't until they changed it and got Pulisic on that they looked dangerous. Villa took the lead through some guy I’d never heard of. Courtney Hause?? New one on me that. Villa seem to have come back from lockdown with half a new starting line up though. Not that it’s made any difference as they’re still shite. Pulisic then stole in at the back post to equalise and Giroud got the winner minutes later, the big handsome bastard. Games like this are the ones where you wonder if the lack of a crowd is a big factor, as Villa were standing off Chelsea and letting them play. Would they have been able to hold onto their lead better with 50,000 fans urging them on and encouraging them to press and get stuck in? There’s no way to know for sure, but I definitely think a raucous crowd can lift players maybe 5% at least. So in relation to Eddie Howe’s point I’d say that playing at home isn’t a disadvantage, but it’s probably not much of an advantage anymore either, especially in games like this when Villa could really have done with all the help they could get. Newcastle did alright without their ‘best fans in the world’ though didn’t they? Not a result you’d expect but under these circumstances there’s going to be all kinds of mad ones between now and the end of the season. Saint-Maximin picked up where he left off before lockdown and the Blades struggled to cope with him. He’s like a Poundland Adama Traore, and I mean that as a compliment as I like him, he's exciting to watch. He’s good on Twitter too, got a great sense of humour. Joelinton went clean through early on and fell over. Twenty odd games without scoring and it showed. He was then booked for going head to head with John Egan, who was also booked. Pair of fucking dickheads. I realise social distancing isn’t really possible in a game of football, but touching foreheads and breathing on each other is the height of stupidity. Egan then pulled him back when he went through on goal, which was even more stupid. Red card for him, but why would you not just let him go through and take your chances that he’d miss? I’m being serious. You’ve got to know your opponent and if I’m playing against a striker that hasn’t scored since August or whatever, I’m not going to pull him back and get sent off when I could just let him go through and he'd almost certainly bottle it. So Egan was off, the Blades were down to ten and soon after they fell behind when Stephens fell over his own feet and Saint Maximin converted at the back post. Ritchie made it 2-0 and then even Joelinton got in on the act to finally break his duck. Sheffield United have looked rubbish in both games so far though so this break may well end up hurting them more than anyone. They were a win over Villa away from going 5th, which given City’s ban would secure a CL spot. But they couldn’t beat Villa, they were stuffed by Newcastle and it feels like their bubble has now burst and they’ll do well to even stay where they are, let alone finish higher. Wolves on the other hand, look like they could make a real push for the top four. My boy Adama was left on the bench (strangely, this happens a lot) but within seconds of coming on he had West Ham petrified as he was beating people for fun. He created the opener with a brilliant cross that was headed home by Jimenez. West Ham doubled up on him but you can’t actually stop him from doing that. If he wants to go on the outside and cross, then he’s going on the outside and he’s crossing. He was involved in the second too. Showing good feet before playing it out wide to Doherty. His cross was superbly volleyed in by that little Neto prick. Great goal that. As was the goal that put Leicester ahead at Watford. What a fucking hit by Chilwell. Stunning. Hilariously, it wasn’t enough for the three points as Craig Dawson fired in an equaliser a minute later. Fair result as there’s no way Watford deserved to lose the game. Finally, as expected, City slaughtered Burnley. I didn’t watch it as there was no point. With the lack of intensity we’ve seen in all of the games so far I fully expect City to sweep everyone aside. If you don’t play at your maximum then you’ve got no chance against their possession based game. They just pass pass pass until the opening comes and someone gets a tap in. Burnley started ok and looked comfortable enough until they conceded and after that they gave up. There are lots of problems at Burnley currently, and I don’t just mean the far right Brexit loons who flew a “white lives matter” banner over the stadium just after the players had all taken a knee. I feel sorry for Burnley as a club and for all the decent fans, because shit like this just re-enforces what people already think about them. They’ve got a higher percentage of far right goons than most, but the majority of their fans will have been mortified by that. Ben Mee’s interview afterwards was fantastic. He’s a credit to his club, fair play to him. They are a club in crisis though as some key players aren’t going to play because of expiring contracts and by all accounts nobody (by that I mean Dyche and the other players) is blaming them because this is a board issue. The suggestion is that Dyche wanted to keep them all and give them new contracts but the board wouldn’t sanction it. So you can’t blame those players for sitting it out as why would you risk injury to play for a club that doesn’t want you? This isn’t a Ryan Fraser situation. Aaron Lennon, Jeff Hendrick and Phil Bardsley have to look out for themselves now as Burnley haven't looked after them. Now Dyche is reported to be unsettled too and it’s hardly surprising really. Whatever you think of him, the job he’s done there has been fantastic and if anyone has done enough to deserve a free reign with no board interference it’s him. I sometimes wonder what would happen to Burnley if he left. It depends who they replaced him with of course but I suspect it’d be like Charlton when Curbishley departed. Would anybody miss them? I think I might, just a little. I went to Turf Moor earlier this season and I must admit I enjoyed it, it felt like a proper football ground from a bygone age. Too many clubs have soulless bowls now, so going to Burnley was actually quite nice. One of the pubs near the ground is called the Royal Dyche and has an image of him wearing a king’s crown. Will they have to rename the pub if he goes, or has he earned the right to have that permanently in his honour? Chances are it’ll be ‘the Royal Farage’ before Dyche’s office chair seat is even cold.

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 Finally, there is also the option for you to play instant games wherein you can try your luck in scratching cards. There are several types of cards, each having their own prizes. Some can easily win you your bet back, while some may surprise you with a hefty sum. To wrap things up, you can win the lottery by playing the lotto, as well as the little lotto, which is a version of the former. You can also try your luck with the dailies or go for major prizes through multi-state games. There is also the option for you to scratch a card and win instantly should the odds be in your favour. Just keep in mind not to rely solely on luck because, sometimes, it takes quite a while before luck is finally on your side.

Tuesday Jun 16: As expected, the Government were forced into a u-turn on the meals for kids because of the pressure put on them by Marcus Rashford. This was always going to happen because that tefal headed cunt Hancock called on footy players to ‘do their bit’ and Rashford turned it back on to them. Great work by him by saying "well I've done this, so how about YOU do YOUR fucking bit". Of course, Johnson initially claimed he knew nothing about it until that day and that it’s a great idea and the right thing to do blah blah blah. Great idea? Making sure that kids don’t starve isn’t a ‘great idea’, it’s just basic fucking humanity. Something Johnson and his ilk have no concept of as it doesn’t line their pockets. Hancock then went on telly and got Rashford’s name wrong. So transparent this shit. Instead of people talking about why the government needed to be railroaded into making sure kids aren’t going hungry, now the discussion will be how Hancock called him “Daniel Rashford”. This shit happens constantly. It’s all about deflections. Politicians these days are like Mourinho's Chelsea when Cole and Lampard seemed to score with th ball flying in off an opponent's arse every other week. Deflect. Deflect. Deflect. Get people talking about the unimportant things to shine the light away from the big fucking massively important issue that isn’t being dealt with in the manner it should be. And it works every fucking time. Meanwhile, footy’s back tomorrow and I can’t wait. Not just me who’s excited about it though. Funnily enough, those same pundits who were so against footy coming back are now banging the drum about how excited they are. Rio Ferdinand for example. The same cunt who wanted footy scrapped and claimed that “Liverpool fans should think about people’s health” is now tweeting “Buzzing the @premierleague back this evening.... just sorting my Fantasy Football! Who’s going up top... Aguero or Aubameyang?” How about going with “Null” and “Void” as your front two, you fucking hypocritical manc turd. When they announced the fixtures and I saw that the first Saturday was basically wall to wall footy I was made up and envisaged just locking myself away in my office watching game after game. In reality what will probably happen is I’ll skip the first one because I’ll have to run the missus somewhere. I’ll catch a little bit of the second one before having to take my daughter somewhere. I won’t be arsed about the third one because it’s two shit teams. I’ll start watching there fourth one but then get bored and switch off because there’ll be something on Netflix or Disney+ I fancy watching. Still, it’s great to have it back and for those of who who will have the dedication to watch all the games, I salute you. I’ll defo watch City v Arsenal tomorrow because it’s going to take us one game closer to the title when Arsenal win. No, hear me out. Arteta knows City like the back of his hand and he’s had months to prepare his game-plan. The three months has also given them time to get everyone fit, as you know Arsenal always have an injury list as long as a pensioner’s lockdown shopping list (those of you who’ve been shopping for parents know). This will be the first and last time Arteta has a full squad to choose from, and with City not having any motivation get ready for Arsenal to shock the world. I’m actually mildly excited about Villa v Sheffield United tomorrow too but I daresay that won’t last. It’ll be like when German footy came back and I watched 20 minutes of Dortmund’s game out of curiosity before I got bored and went in the garden. It’s highly unlikely I’ll sit through a full Villa game, especially knowing I’ll be watching Arsenal beat City afterwards. Wednesday Jun 17: Yeah I’m a dickhead. You’d think I’d know better by now, especially as under normal circumstances the only people with a lower opinion of Arsenal’s players than me are DT and Troopz. They might have held out for a draw if they hadn’t had to send in the clown, but they didn’t deserve anything as I don’t think they even managed one shot did they? Arteta is so fixated on tightening them up at the back that they appear to have forgotten how to attack. Then again, when you’re leaving Lacazette on the bench for that Nketia kid you probably deserve all you get. Has Lacazatte shagged Arteta's cat or ran over his wife or something? The other game was fucking dire. I managed to sit through an hour of it, although after about ten minutes it had been reduced to background viewing as I did some work instead. Yeah, it was THAT bad I chose to do some work. But yeah, footy is back which is great. I already know now that I’m only really going to be watching our games though, as well as the occasional other fixture that takes my fancy. Most of the other games I’ll just catch up on through MOTD, as I can’t be arsed watching shit teams in empty stadiums. I’ll leave that to Evertonians. Also today, there was a rumour that we want to swap Naby for Ruben Neves. Of course it's bollocks and when do 'swap' deals ever happen except in the gossip columns? Even when they do, they don't. To all intents and purposes we swapped Kev Stewart for Andy Robbo, but in reality they were two separate transfers that just happened to be made by the same two clubs in a similar time frame. Players don't get swapped like Panini stickers. This one is clearly just nonsense anyway. A lot of fans might have given up on Keita but Klopp hasn't and is unlikely to for another year at least. And why would Wolves do that deal? They've proved to be shrewd in the transfer market and have made some great signings. They aren't going to swap a top Premier League star for a player who is usually injured and isn't the most consistent when he isn't. What's tomorrow's bullshit rumour, a swap between Adama Traore and Shaq? Speaking of bullshit rumours, the Echo are trying to talk us into a move for Ryan Fraser. I like him, or at least I did, but he's nowhere near good enough to even make our bench. He isn't as good as Harry Wilson and chances are we won't keep him, so why would we sign Fraser? The answer is we wouldn't, but the Echo has clicks it needs to accumulate I guess. Besides, even if Fraser were good enough (he isn't) he's refusing to play for Bournemouth now because he's out of contract after this month. To me that puts him a pretty bad light and if I were a club looking at signing him that would make me pull the plug on it. Thursday Jun 18: Richarlison says Van Dijk is not even in the top three defenders in the world. HERECY!! The fucking nerve on this tit. What makes it even worse is, get this, he didn’t have Lovren in his list of three either. He went with Thiago Silva, Marquinhos and Sergio Ramos. I’m embarrassed for him to be honest. Silva is brilliant and his performances in both games against us last season were as good as I’ve seen. Marquinhos I couldn’t even pick out of a line up, although I know PSG often play him in midfield, which you wouldn’t do with a top three centre back in the world. So that’s bollocks. As for Ramos? He was shit when he was good. I’m serious. This isn’t because of what he did to Mo (although that’s why Richarlison picked him). It’s because Lovren was right about him. You can’t get sent off that many times, leaving your team a man short, and still be regarded as a world class defender. It’s common sense. The greatest defenders rarely if ever get sent off because they read the game so well they don’t need to make last ditch tackles or show how 'hard' they are by hitting people will sly elbows and shit. Sergio Ramos is David Luiz with an evil streak and better PR. Stick him in that Arsenal side and he’d be just as much of a liability as poor old Sideshow Bob. As for Richarlison, he isn’t even in the top three strikers in the city he plays in despite his dubious claim that “I’ve already dribbled past Van Dijk”. Yeah, he actually said that, which even if true (when did this actually happen? Does anyone know?) is hilariously lame. Still, the Blues will probably have that on the side of a bus soon. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. They’ve done worse. Remember when Merseybus came up with the idea to have one of their buses commemorate Liverpool’s achievements and then another listing Everton’s? The Everton one had, amongst other things, “First club to install undersoil heating”. So yeah, “Richarlison once dribbled past Van Dijk (maybe)” would certainly find a place on there. He’d do well to remember this piece of advice, which I believe was from Omar in the Wire. I don’t remember the exact wording but it went something like this: “If you come at the King, he’s not going to hear you if you’re in Nat Phillips’ pocket”. Friday Jun 19: James Pearce reveals that Klopp’s coaching staff have been ‘raving’ about Naby Keita. I’m not surprised as in the little clips from the training matches I’ve seen on LFCTV he’s looked dynamite. Probably him and Sadio have looked the sharpest. Does it really mean anything though? I hope it does, but we’ve been down this road before. Every time he looks like he’s coming into form and is about to finally make his mark on the team, he picks up a stupid little injury that keeps him out 2-3 weeks and then the whole process begins again. I haven’t given up on him and there’s clearly a big talent there but I’m not getting my hopes up either until he can stay fit for an extended period of time until he actually proves he can. I’d probably start him on Sunday though. Not sure who I’d leave out for him, probably Fabinho I guess. Or Gini. Defo not Hendo. Meanwhile, Roy Keane goes off on one about De Get (and to a lesser extent Maguire) as United were held 1-1 by Spurs. Now, to clarify, I’m not going to disagree with anyone saying Keane is a wanker and that all of this ‘rage’ is just something he’s doing almost as a character he’s playing. Whatever negative thing you want to say about Keane is fine by me. Defending Roy Keane is not a hill I'm prepared to die on. That being said…. That was funny as fuck tonight. He just went off and although Evra initially wanted to pull him up he thought better of it and just let him carry on. Evra did step in eventually when Keane called De Sea the most over-rated keeper ever and insisted he should have caught a ball that he spectacularly tipped over the bar. I’d say around half of what Keane said was accurate and the other half, although completely off the mark, was fucking hilarious. Put it this way. I’d rather watch Keane shouting and spitting than listen to Jermaine Jeans or Alan Shearer tell me that “the keeper will be disappointed with that”. Meanwhile, here’s your weekly Chico…. What a guy. I love him. Saturday Jun 20: Klopp lays into the government’s handling of Covid and compares it unfavourably with how Germany dealt with it. Here’s the thing, anybody who is even remotely surprised that Germany dealt with something better than a Conservative government led by the biggest clown in political history clearly hasn’t been paying attention. These fuckers are incapable of getting anything right, because common sense and doing the right thing is completely alien to them. The only things that come natural to them are self preservation and making money. That’s it. Nothing else. That's why we're right up there with America and Brazil as the worst hit nations. This mess isn’t on Boris Johnson and the Tories though. He's just 'being Boris'. It's who he is and it's hardly a secret. This mess is on those who elected him, because it’s blatantly obvious what he is and has always been, but none of that mattered because all he had to do to get people's votes was not be Jeremy Corbyn and trot out his little "Get Brexit Done" mantra. If you needed this crisis to prove to you that he’s a fucking clueless, selfish, incompetent oaf then that’s on you. Mind you, what's even worse is there are some who STILL don't see it. I like that Klopp isn’t afraid to speak out on these things, although he’s clever enough not to go too strongly because when you do that the message often gets lost. He seems to always know the right thing to say and the right time to say it. We’re incredibly lucky to have him and not just for his abilities as a football manager. Meanwhile, Guardiola confirms that Leroy Sane has rejected a contract and will be sold at the end of the season if they can do a deal. Reading between the lines he’s more or less said that Sane wants to play for Bayern Munich and City can’t talk him out of it. So, there’s no chance that we could sign him which is a shame as remember last week when I said there are only a few players out there we could sign who would make me happier than if we brought Coutinho back? Well you could add Sane to that list. Other than De Bruyne, I think he’s City’s best player and he’s criminally under-rated. I could never understand why he didn’t start more games as he’s fucking brilliant. Elsewhere, best headline on news now today: Liverpool target Mbappe in £350m swap deal. I almost have to admire how brazen that is. It’s like “yeah we know how utterly ludicrous this is but fuck it, let’s run it anyway”. I mean where do you even start with that? £350m??? It was on F365 so I had a little look and forget what I said about almost admiring it. They were quoting the S*n who apparently ran a story today that we were planning on sending Mané plus £200m to PSG to get Mbappe. When you think about it, it’s actually offensive that some cunt is being paid to write that. Not as offensive as the shit that other cunts there are being paid to write, but still, it’s offensive. There are other reports today claiming Klopp is ‘growing anxious’ about Mané not signing a new deal. Hold on, didn’t he sign one not so long ago? I’m sure he did, because I remember writing something about how it was worrying he hadn’t signed (whereas Salah and Firmino had), and about 10 minutes after I filed it with ESPN, LFCTV had Sadio announcing his new deal. So what’s this shit about then? Ok, I just googled and he signed a five year contract in November 2018, so he has THREE FUCKING YEARS left. Honestly, I know times are hard for the press but if they continually make up this kind of shit then it’s best if they do go to the wall. Sunday Jun 21: Everton 0 L 0. Fuck that was bad. We should have lost but we didn’t because we’ve got the best keeper in the world and lady luck was on our side. And because Everton are shite and are as adept at winning derby matches as I am at ballet dancing. The fake crowd noise was actually worse than the real Goodison crowd. Hate it, but as I watched the game on Pick TV I had no choice but to endure it, and I can’t complain too much about it because Sky did at least make the game free for everyone. It’s grim though. Almost as grim as Richarlison’s playacting. Cunt. It’s stupid to make any snap judgements based on our first game in three months, but I’m going to do it anyway as nothing I’m saying here is based solely on this anyway. It’s about what’s happened before. We simply MUST buy a top quality alternative to Sadio and Mo because nothing we currently have is worth a damn. Minamino can’t play there, neither can Ox and while I think Origi definitely has some worth he’s being completely undermined by constantly being used out wide. What the fuck is that about? How many times does Jurgen have to see him play there to know he’s miles more effective at centre forward. Origi is actually a pretty good striker and he knows where the net is. His finishing is very good and he’s got a knack for scoring important goals. So when he’s given a run out, let him play up front for fucks sake. We looked a million miles off the pace today and I don’t think we’ll just flick a switch and start playing well again. We’re a team that relies on rhythm and sharpness and after three months off we have neither. There’s also the issue of how much (or how little) we’ll be impacted by not having fans there at home. No team has more of a symbiotic relationship with the crown than we do, so will Anfield still be a fortress? I tell you something, I’m so fucking glad we built up such a massive lead because I genuinely don’t think I could cope with the next few weeks if this title race was close. We only need five more points, assuming City win all their remaining games, which they probably will. I totally misjudged that situation as I didn’t think they’d be that arsed about the games they have left. Even if they aren’t fully motivated they’ll still win most of them easily because based on the games we’ve seen so far there’s just no intensity and these are like training games. And no-one is more suited to that type of game than City. I expect them to win every game, including when they play us next weekend. But we only need five points so thank fuck for that. Meanwhile, on the rumour front we’re still being mentioned as one of the suitors for Arsenal youngster Saka. I just can’t see this happening as I doubt he’d go anywhere. Kids who are getting a game at the big clubs rarely move. Saka is getting a lot of playing time at Arsenal. Would he get that here? Doubtful, although there’s every chance he’d have started at left back today. I like him, he’s talented, but I won’t get my hopes up on this one. Monday Jun 22: City smacked Burnley around at the Etihad. No surprise there. They’ll beat Chelsea on Thursday too, but at least Chelsea might offer some resistance. Burnley were totally disinterested from the moment they conceded the first goal. The Koulibaly link resurfaced today with rumours of a £60m bid that ‘insulted’ Napoli. It has to be bollocks as yesterday confirmed what we already knew. The priority if we’re spending big has to be a world class wide player who we can rotate in and out with Sadio and Mo. Who that is I don’t know, but there’ll be someone out there who we can get and we need to do it. Koulibaly is fucking awesome but spending that much money on a position where we already have Gomez and Matip would be completely reckless and irresponsible. And if there’s no-one who we can get at the right price, then fuck it, just get Coutinho back on loan. From what I hear the main stumbling block is Klopp and some of the players are still sore about the way he left. Fair enough, I get that completely. But unless there’s a better option out there then fuck all that shit and get it done. Put it this way, he’s miles better than any other option we had to bring in for Mo yesterday. If there is a better option out there then great, I’m all in, but otherwise just get him back here. Aldo agrees with me, he wrote a column today calling for the club to bring him back because it makes sense for all parties. So that’s Aldo and Stevie Nicol agreeing with me. Hmmm, right, yeah I see it now. Not done myself any favours there have I? All I need now is Dean Saunders and I’ll have the set. Finally, Antonio Rudiger reckons he convinced Timo Werner to snub the Reds to sign for Chelsea. Ok mate, whatever. Fact is, Werner was hitching up his skirt and flashing his drawers at Klopp for months, but for whatever reason Klopp decided not to pursue it. Maybe because he finally realised that Werner is just a Harrods Danny Ings. A little bit more high end than you can buy on the high street but more or less the same product at a vastly inflated cost. …..and that was the week that was

We waited three months for THAT?? Jesus. Even allowing for rustiness and the fact that Goodison derby games are usually dire, this was unexpectedly woeful. Suddenly the whole ‘scrap the season and decide it on points per game’ doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world. Seriously though, I don’t know what I was expecting but obviously it must have been too much because this was a really tough watch. I was far too wound up about it considering how far ahead we are and that there really wasn’t too much riding on the result. I’ll be honest, I was fucking fuming for most of this game even though I can see that's not a rational or fair reaction. I thought we’d batter them without their rabid home crowd hissing them on and dragging every last ounce of effort from their players. We always twat them at Anfield but at their place it’s a different story. I put that down to their crowd. Turns out that has fuck all to do with it. There was very little difference between this game and other recent Goodison derbies. We usually create one or two clear chances (this time we didn't) but generally the pattern of the game has been exactly like this one. I’ve always put it down to their players getting energised by their baying, frothing at the mouth, consumed by hating the redshite fans, but now we know different. For whatever reason, we’re just shite at Goodison. It’s the same at Old Trafford too. Why I have no idea, but the evidence is there for all to see. Of course there are mitigating circumstances for this performance, not least the three month lay off that makes this and the next few games almost pre-season fixtures. “Our identity is our intensity” said Pep Ljinders earlier this season. If that’s true then we’re going to look like imposters for a while, because it’s next to impossible to achieve our usual level of intensity after such a long lay off and without a crowd to provide the adrenaline. This is completely understandable, yet I didn’t think it was just the lack of intensity that was our problem at Goodison. It was more a lack of quality and of ideas. Jordan Pickford barely had to extend his little arms all night. He made saves from two free-kicks and I think that was it. In open play we created absolutely nothing. Ancelotti clearly knows how to set up against us as any time Klopp has faced his teams it’s been a war of attrition. I don’t know what he does that makes it so difficult as my eye isn’t trained enough in that area. He plays with two up front and two banks of four behind, but other teams do that too and have been swept away by us. Whatever Ancelotti does seems to work though. He’s a wily old fucker and obviously being Italian he knows about blanket defending. I give credit where it’s due but I also think the way we played was equally if not more responsible for how easy it looked for them. A central defensive pairing of Keane and Holgate managed to restrict us to virtually no shots on goal in open play. That's criminal. Ancelotti is good, but that’s as much on our failings as it is anything else as those two are fucking woeful, especially that donkey Keane. The game started in farcical circumstances with our lads having to change in a porta-cabin in the car park and then walk onto the pitch from a side entrance. The Blues, meanwhile, had their usual dressing room and came out through the tunnel. Imagine Wimbledon making Roger Federer take to centre court by climbing through the crowd after getting changed in the bogs. It’s not acceptable. We’re the World Champs. Fucking tramps with their shitty old rickety stadium. Our lads resembled a Sunday league side as they walked onto the field. Little did we know they’d then play like one afterwards. Then we had the kick off and everyone taking a knee. Everyone except Mané that is, who on the whistle took off sprinting into the Everton half and then had to sheepishly run back before kneeling! As it turns out, these farcical scenes were a sign of what was to come. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised but I was. Hugely. This wasn’t how I expected it to go at all. All week I’ve been thinking that we’d batter Everton. I’d talked myself into a 4-0 or 5-1 win. My reasoning was sound enough I think. Firstly, we’re like a million points ahead of them and are clearly a much better side. Secondly, they wouldn’t have their fans there which in theory was a big disadvantage for them (in reality it made zero difference). Thirdly, and this one was probably a stretch on my part, I thought we’d be miles fitter than everyone we faced because of how professional we are. I figured that the forensic attention to detail from Klopp, his staff and the players would give us an edge over most if not all other teams. Fourthly, and this one is ridiculous on reflection, I’d been taken in by the hype of all the training videos on LFCTV and the reports about how sensational the likes of Keita and Minamino have been. So yeah I expected an easy win, but in my defence I did reassess that when I saw that there was no Robbo or Mo in the starting line up. I looked at the team we’d picked and suddenly I was thinking 1-0 rather than 5-1. That may show a lack of faith on my part in the players not normally in the first eleven, but really my concern was only about one position. I’m fine with Milner at left back and I was fully on board with the selection of Keita (I’d have left Fabinho out rather than Wijnaldum but that’s neither here nor there). It was the absence of Salah and the inclusion of Minamino that was largely responsible for the complete disappearance of my bravado, and I’d say the way the game went justified how I felt. Minamino has been getting rave reviews for what he’s done in training and I was made up when we signed him as he looked brilliant when he played against us for Salzburg. He’s a boss little player but I’m struggling to see what he’s ever going to bring playing wide in the front three. He’s virtually the complete opposite of Salah and Mané. We’ve got a way of playing that is very successful and a massive part of that is the thrust and threat in behind we have from the two players either side of Firmino. It works so well because Bobby likes to drop off, and we then have two players who can burst into the space behind, while the full backs then utilise the space vacated out wide. Minamino isn’t that type of player. He’s a nice little footballer but where does he fit into this team? He spent all of his time in this game coming short to get the ball and link up with people, and the contrast with what Salah does couldn’t have been more striking. I wouldn’t say Minamino had a bad game. He didn’t do much wrong and he worked hard, but there was nothing he did that a kid from the Academy couldn’t have done. Neat and tidy, kept it simple, ran around a lot. Offered virtually no goal threat. To be fair no-one else did either. I’m just struggling to see what we’re going to get from him though, as while he’s clearly a good player can you ever see him dislodging anybody from this current team? I don’t even know what position he’s suited to. The only spot that looks like it might suit how he plays is Bobby’s. I actually think he might be a better midfielder than forward but we’re so well stocked in that area he’s unlikely to ever get a chance to prove it. Most of his opportunities will probably come in the wide positions because when you delve beneath the first choice players there’s not really anything there. This is why I didn’t want Timo Werner. If you’ve been reading the diary then you’ll be as bored of reading my views on that that topic as I am of writing them. The point is though, we desperately need another top quality player to compete / rotate with the current front three, but to me it needs to be someone who plays wide. I don’t want a centre forward who can ‘do a job’ out wide (like poor old Divock who is always shunted out there), I want a specialist. Someone of a similar standard to Salah and Mané. I’m aware that’s not an easy thing to find, but that is what we need. I don’t think Werner is an accomplished enough footballer to play that role, which is why I’m glad we didn’t sign him. Time will tell if that was a mistake or not. We need someone though, as you can see the fucking monumental drop off whenever one of the front three isn’t available. It hasn't held us back because the front three have stayed largely injury free, but that won't go on indefinitely and it needs addressing this close season. Like I say, Minamino did next to nothing but Ox came on and somehow managed to do even less, which was quite an impressive feat. Ox is shite in a front three though. Always has been. I don’t expect much more than what we got from him as he just isn’t a viable option to play there. Shaq is a good quality back up for that spot but he’s had the longest calf injury in the history of the world. Perhaps that’s a result of him having the biggest calves in the world? We missed Salah so much in this game. Even when he’s shite he offers that threat in behind and can stretch teams. Everton’s defenders won’t have had an easier game all season. All they had to worry about was not letting Mané run at them, and they surrounded (and usually fouled) him every time he got the ball, rendering him largely ineffective. I’m trying to think of anything good we did in attacking areas and I’m struggling. There was one nice little run from Keita in which he played a couple of one twos. I think that ended with Minamino having a shot blocked, but I might be wrong. I also remember a decent move that ended with Bobby scuffing a left foot shot wide when he should have rolled in Keita. Matip put a free header wide from a corner and Trent had a free-kick saved by Pickford but other than that there was nothing. And speaking of free-kicks, I was irrationally fucking seething when Trent opted to cross it to nobody rather than taking on a shot with the first free-kick of the game. I can’t even tell you how pissed off I was about that, as taking a shot was just common sense to me. It was the obvious thing to do. With a slippy pitch and a shit goalkeeper who has a history of making mistakes against us, you try a fucking shot and make him save it. Hendo was stood right there over the ball and I blame him rather than Trent for that debacle, as he should have been telling him to have a go and see what happens. We didn’t shoot anywhere near enough all game. Pickford is shite, put him under pressure until he cracks. Anyway, I was a lot angrier about that free-kick than I had a right to be, but I felt like that virtually all game. I don’t know why I had a such a cob on as with a 23 point lead I certainly can’t justify it, but I found the whole experience to be utterly infuriating. And the longer the game went on the more pissed off I became. The only period of the game when I was relatively calm was in the opening exchanges of the second half when we looked to be in total control and ready to turn the screw. We had a little spell where we were knocking on the door but then the subs started coming on and it killed any momentum we may have been building. It’s not like we were creating any real chances but it did feel that maybe we were about to, if that makes sense. We certainly seemed to have a bit more urgency at the start of the second half. There was one lovely move when Matip ambled forward into the right wing area and picked out Keita on the edge of the box. He popped a ball into Firmino who chested it back into his path. I’m not sure if Keita was going for goal with his volley or if he tried to find Mané at the back post. Whatever, he did neither as he managed to get caught between the two. It did come to him at an awkward height though. I think that might have been the last time we even remotely threatened until Fabinho saw a decent free-kick tipped over by Pickford. We don’t usually see him on set-pieces but that was a decent effort. Maybe he’ll get another chance, as I do feel we all vastly over-rate how good Trent is at free-kicks. He’s alright like, but he’s not the lethal dead ball specialist he’s portrayed as (here’s hoping I’ve reverse jinxed him there and he pings one into the top corner against Palace or City). Other than the defeat at Watford this was comfortably our worst performance of the season but after a three month break it is entirely understandable and excusable. The anger I was feeling during the game was not justified at all just based on that fact alone. Three months is a long fucking time and my expectations were not in sync with that. Shit, for this team three weeks is an eternity. We were shite against Spurs in the Champions League final after a break and we’re always off the pace whenever we have any time off during the winter (usually after warm weather training camps during FA Cup weekends). So three months? On reflection, it was completely unrealistic to expect any different really. And it might be several weeks before we start to look anything like our usual selves. The good thing is that with Alisson and Van Dijk back there we should still be fairly secure in defence but it might be a while before the goals start flowing, especially as I expect we’ll see a lot of rotation over the coming weeks as Klopp tries to avoid injuries. We’re already suffering on that front. Salah and Robbo have hardly trained all week and missed this one, Milner did his hamstring early on and Matip also had to go off later on after having his toe stepped on. We’re soon going to have a spell of four games in nine days, so by that point we’ll probably have the kids out there and at least one of those games might resemble an FA Cup line up. Before that though we will ideally have picked up the points we need. One thing I didn’t get about this was why Mo was even on the bench. If he can’t get on when we’re allowed five subs that tells me that there was never any intention to use him. That being the case then leave him out altogether, as with Robbo. Seeing Mo sat there while we looked to the likes of Minamino, Ox and Origi for inspiration was pretty deflating. The five sub thing will take some getting used to and I thought some of Klopp’s changes were a little odd. Gomez for Milner was enforced and we had no better option available. That was fine and I thought Joe did as well as could have been expected. Can’t be expecting him to replicate what Robbo does but he at least tried to offer us width and got forward regularly. Ox for Minamino I didn’t like. I had no qualms with Minamino being replaced as it was an obvious call, but as I’ve said countless times I don’t see the point in putting Ox in the front three as the performance we got from him is similar to what we usually see. The good games are the outliers. Generally he stinks there. Wijnaldum for Keita was another one I didn’t get, although I can put that down to fitness reasons and them wanting to ensure Naby doesn’t tweak something. There was no footballing reason to make that change though as he was our most dangerous player, although that’s damning him with the faintest of praise given how shit the rest were. It’s like being the smartest contestant on Love Island. Origi for Bobby seemed a bit like change for changes sake to me. Divock is the Everton slayer. They’re petrified of him and he obviously feels good about facing them. He should have started. Failing that, he should have been the one to replace Minamino. In fairness he was shite in the time he did get, but yet again he was put out wide and Sadio was moved to centre forward. WHY? Just fucking why? Origi is a goalscorer. He’s a finisher. He’s got limitations but that’s the thing he’s good at. Why maroon him out wide and ask him do what Salah or Mané do? Bringing him on for Firmino and then sticking him out wide just fucked up what little attacking shape we had and after that we were just completely disjointed. The worst change made though was Lovren for Matip. That made no sense to me at all. Obviously ol’ Big Bird couldn’t carry on, but drop Fabinho back there and get Salah or Elliott on and try to do something a bit different in attack. Alternatively, move Gomez inside and let Neco have a go at left back to see if he could make something happen. Instead we got Lovren coming on in catastrophe mode and he immediately handed the initiative to Everton. Calvert-Lewin and Richarlison had barely had a kick since the opening ten minutes but all of a sudden they both came into the game and Everton began getting chances. Prior to that all I can remember is Richarlison getting in on the break a couple of times. The first occasion saw him fire one across goal from a tight angle. I think Alisson got the slightest touch on that and if he hadn’t it may have been on target, I’m not sure. The second time he got in he shit himself and ballooned it miles over the bar into the top tier of the Gwladys Street. Virgil probably had a little chuckle over that. When Matip went off though our composure seemed to go with him and really we ought to have lost this game. That wasn’t solely on Lovren as others began giving the ball away cheaply which put him on the back foot, but nevertheless he was fucking brutal. Everton’s front two had gotten no change whatsoever out of Van Dijk and Matip (whose passing out from the back was impeccable) but then Lovren arrived and just like that Everton had two great chances to score. Three actually, as Calvert-Lewin could have done better with a back post header after Lovren had been beaten to a corner by Mason fucking Holgate. *shakes head* The other two chances though were much clearer. First, Richarlison got in down Lovren’s side and put in a cross for his strike partner who back heeled it goalwards, forcing Alisson into a smart save. Then Richarlison got in again and left Lovren on his arse before getting his shot away. Again Alisson came to the rescue but Davies seized on the rebound and seemed certain to score. Gomez threw himself at it and got the slightest touch which diverted it onto the post. I defend Lovren more than most but it was not a co-incidence that the game turned completely on its head from the moment he came on. He more than anyone in the squad relies on rhythm and regular games and when he comes in from the cold he usually struggles. He was so rusty you could hear him creaking even over the shite fake crowd noise used by sky. Turns out that booting your kid in the back garden isn’t good preparation for facing Richarlison as the toddler cries less and is more difficult to put on the floor. Everton had barely even been in our half all night yet they could have scored three times in the brief period Lovren was on. Thankfully they didn’t and so their ten year wait for a derby win goes on. That’s just about the only positive thing to take from this shitshow. That and the fact we’re one point closer to the title. It’s good to finally have the Reds back but the next game can’t come quickly enough for me as I want to just completely forget this one ever happened. Palace isn’t going to be easy though, especially if we play anything like this. Unless we improve significantly they’ll beat us because they’re better than Everton. Winning the title is the main thing of course but I did have my sights set on the highest points total ever. I don’t think that’s going to be possible now as we’ve been completely derailed by this break and the rest of the season may well resemble a load of pre-season friendlies, with changes galore and no atmosphere at any of the games. This is better than nothing of course, but it’s not the same and the sooner we can all get back into Anfield the better. The whole experience was very unfulfilling and it’s not just because we played shite (although if we'd beaten them 4-0 I doubt I'd be dwelling so much on this). What is clear beyond any doubt is that football without fans is nothing. Even when it’s Everton fans. The games I’ve watched so far just haven’t been the same. So far I’ve watched with the fake crowd noise switched off, but I had no choice but to suffer it this time because that was only service offered on Pick TV. I absolutely hate it though, I’d rather listen to the nothingness of the empty stadium as this fake shit is terrible. At least they knew to add booing any time a decision went our way, but it’s just shit. And what was with the Everton PA announcing the subs on and off? Whose benefit was that for? Presumably the handful of journalists in the stands, but give them some fucking credit here. They cover these teams for a living, they know who the players are. Are we going to have George doing that? Hope not, let the poor guy have the rest of the season off. I thought I’d be happy that football is back but the main thing I’m feeling is relief. I'm relieved that they can’t take our title away from us and relieved that we will be able to win it on the field. It’s hard to be happy about football in its current guise though. Or maybe that's just me? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about how any of it is being handled as the football authorities are making the best of the awful hand that’s been dealt. It’s good that they’ve been able to get things going again and I don’t think there’s anything else that could be done to make ‘the product’ any better. I'm not pointing fingers or being ungrateful. I’m just saying, it’s shit without fans and it’s hard for players when they’ve not played for three months. It isn’t the same but I accept that there’s no way it could be. Hopefully the quality gets better when the players get their match legs under them, but the sooner things get back to ‘normal’ the better. There was some argument afterwards between the Sky pundits as to whether Everton deserved to win the game. Interestingly, Tim Cahill (and Calvert-Lewin) both said a draw was fair, while Carragher said Everton deserved to win. I see both sides of this really. We had most of the ball but we did fuck all with it. And we only had so much of the ball because they didn’t want it. It’s not like we were just so good they couldn’t get a kick. They were happy to sit back in their two banks of four and play for a clean sheet. So does a team with such a negative approach ‘deserve’ to win a game? It really does depend on how you look at it. I’d say a draw was a fair result because both teams were fucking awful going forward, but in terms of carrying out their gameplan Everton were miles better than us. Everton didn’t try to win the game, they sat back and frustrated us and hoped to nick something on the break because they believed that was their best chance of getting a positive result. And it so nearly worked. When it comes to carrying out their manager’s instructions they did a hell of a lot better job than our lads did. Those instructions were so negative though that it’s hard to say they deserved more than they got. Given how shite we were maybe they should be looking at this as an opportunity missed. Perhaps if they’d shown a bit of ambition they’d have won but I doubt they care because they’ve got another famous draw they can celebrate for a few months like they did last season. On reflection, a derby was not ideal for the first game back after such a long lay off. Facing Ancelotti’s blanket defence is not what we needed. It’s a shame we didn’t have an easier fixture, like facing the likes of Arsenal or Norwich to ease ourselves back in. It doesn’t get any easier either. Palace are one of the last teams I’d want to face in the current circumstances with no Anfield crowd to spur us on. If they score first it’ll be a long fucking night on Wednesday. Then it’s City, which is always tough but will be even more difficult while we’re still in pre-season shape. I thought City would struggle due to a lack of motivation but I think I’ve misjudged that one. The pace of these games is nothing like normal and nobody is more suited to this than City who can just keep the ball and keep probing and probing. City’s fans haven’t contributed anything to their success, whereas our lads are definitely helped by the crowd and the little bit extra we give them when they need it. A lack of atmosphere doesn't hurt City as it's business as usual. The success we’ve had against City has mostly been at Anfield and it’s largely due to our high tempo, adrenaline fuelled heavy metal football which is helped massively by the turbo charged atmosphere. We haven’t played as well at the Etihad but our high energy style has still given City lots of problems. Can we produce that after such a long lay off? We’ll see I guess. This is uncharted territory for everyone so we don’t really know anything yet. Thankfully the stakes are nowhere near as high as they might have been. Imagine going into the City game with a five point lead or something? I shudder even thinking about it. At least we only need five more points from eight games, so it should be fairly stress free even if the next couple of games don’t go well. Star man is Matip, just ahead of Keita. As for the rest, I thought Hendo was ok, so was Virg, Fabinho overcame a terrible start to have a decent game and…. actually that’s it really. Oh, credit to Alisson for being there when we needed him. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip (Lovren), Van Dijk, Milner (Gomez); Fabinho, Henderson, Keita (Wijnaldum); Minamino (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Firmino (Origi), Mané: