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All that good work from the kids to get us this far, only for it end like this? With a fucking whimper. This was a chance to get back on track and prevent a wobble becoming a slump. After this? Yeah now it’s a slump. There’s a danger of over-reacting and I’m very conscious of that. It wasn’t our strongest eleven and Chelsea away is always tough. The first half performance was alright other than some pitiful finishing. So all of that comes into play. But that second half was so fucking shambolic that it’s hard not to be concerned about just what the fuck has happened to us recently. If it was just Origi being shite, Lallana being off the pace and Minamino completely vanishing in the second half there’d be nothing to worry about. It wasn’t just that though. The key players are the biggest worry. This was a chance for some of them to put Watford out of their system, but instead they’ve just added to the sense of unease. Fabinho was dogshit. Robbo wasn’t much better. Mané cut a frustrated, irritated figure all night and I thought he was going to get sent off after the final whistle when he lost his shit with the snide that is Azpilacueta. Even Van Dijk’s standards have plummeted. He was so fucking casual he may as well have taken to the field with a dressing gown and a pipe, while Gomez was worse than all of them. Maybe they’re all still unsettled by Lovren on Saturday? I’m glad Lovren was nowhere to be seen this time because now people have to look at what the real problem is; it’s not one player, it’s all of them. And I mean, ALL of them. Nobody is playing well right now. Not one of them and I defy anyone to tell me I’m wrong. It’s hard to fathom what’s happening right now, but that second half was just so desperate. It was really tough to watch because it was obvious we were never going to score and there was a real danger we’d concede three or four. From the moment it went to 2-0 I was fighting the urge to just switch the telly off because it was just so frustrating. Obviously I didn’t do it, but the fact it was even a consideration shows how hopeless it seemed. It didn’t start off like that though. The first half was frustrating as fuck, but only because we just couldn’t finish off a lot of damn good approach play. There was a lot to like about the first half. We looked like us again. Not exactly like us, as we were far too open in midfield and looked vulnerable to counter attacks. The midfield trio of Fabinho, Lallana and Jones looked unbalanced. In the Watford report I dismissed the notion that our problem was the absence of Henderson. I’m still not going there, not completely anyway. We should be able to cope without him but the evidence suggests maybe we can’t. He wouldn’t solve all of our current ills but the one thing that is glaring is that teams are able to run right through us when he’s not there. We play such an offensive style that it’s a really fine line we walk. Klopp describes it as ‘protecting our own attacks’ and what we can clearly see now is we don’t do that anywhere near as well without Hendo. Our openness coupled with some inventive play up front made for an entertaining half though. We had loads of chances and played some excellent football to slice through Chelsea. Williams was bombing forward and putting in some sumptuous crosses. Minimino buzzed around was involved far more than we’ve seen him in any of his other appearances, while Mané got himself into some great situations without making the most of them. Our finishing was fucking hopeless though. If we hit the target then it was usually straight at Kepa. I think we all feared the worst after that pinball incident in their box when Kepa made three saves in as many seconds from Sadio, Origi and Jones. We had others chances that we squandered too. The only time Kepa was actually stretched was after a sensational run and shot by Sadio that he parried wide. That was also the only time all night that Sadio looked like Sadio in front of goal. Chelsea had their chances too. Adrian made an incredible save to deny Willian, but seconds later he undid his good work by fumbling one in from the same player. That goal was a fucking shambles, and not just because of Adrian’s blunder. The fannying around with it around our own box when Chelsea had so many players high up in position to press was just reckless. Fabinho’s role in it can’t be ignored either. Shite that, but then he’s looked off the pace ever since he came back from injury. Adrian made another incredible save after the break to tip Giroud’s effort onto the underside of the bar, and he also denied Pedro when he raced clear after a mix up between Williams and Gomez. I don’t attach any blame to him for Chelsea’s second goal either, but I am convinced that Alisson would have saved it. Alison is too good to let that fucking bum Ross Barkley score past him. That isn’t a knock on Adrian as most keepers would have been beaten by it, but you rarely if ever see Alisson concede anything that doesn’t go right into the corner. This wasn’t in the corner. Adrian was beaten by the pace of it, but I don’t think Alisson would have been because he never is. Which brings me to the question; why was Alisson not selected? Klopp went with a strong team and the only regulars who didn’t start were ones who clearly needed to be rested - Trent, Gini, Bobby and Mo. Alison didn’t need a rest though. So why not pick him? Probably because of this gentleman’s agreement that clubs seem to have with the back up keeper whereby they get to play in the cups. I get it, and if Klopp has indeed promised Adrian that he’d feature in the FA Cup then he has to stand by that. All I’m saying is that if Alisson had played then I don’t think we’d have lost. We’ll never know of course, and as I say if Klopp has made that agreement with Adrian then it’s all moot anyway. The one thing I really can’t fathom is the continual selection of Origi on the left. He’s SHITE on the left wing. Absolute fucking shite. Time and again we see the same performance. from him, yet time and again Klopp puts him out there on the left wing. He’s a centre forward. Not a great one, but he’s got a good knack for finding the net. Klopp has done him absolutely no favours this season by persistently using him on the left. He’s better on the right than he is on the left, and he’s not really much good there either. The priority this summer has to be signing another forward who is as good as or even better than throatier we have. That’s how you avoid stagnating. The front three are all 100% sure of their places and after a while that is no longer healthy. Origi is no threat to them. Neither are Shaqiri (if he was ever fit) or Minamino. That’s the next step we have to take. Whether that’s Timo Werner or somebody else I don’t know, but that’s what needs to happen. You know what pissed me off more than anything though? Klopp’s substitutions. Firstly, he left it too late to bring on Milner and Firmino. Secondly, taking Jones off ahead of Fabinho or Lallana was absolutely incredible to me. What the fuck? I know it was done for defensive reasons but we were 2-0 down. So what if Jones is somewhat naive in his off the ball positioning. At least he was doing something when he had it. That change annoyed the fuck out of me to be honest. Move him into the front three then, or switch to 4-2-3-1 or something. Replacing him with Milner was not going to overturn a 2-0 deficit though, that’s for sure. Thirdly, Salah should have been on the instant it went to 2-0. Why would you wait until 80 minutes to put him on if you were trying to stay in the cup? There are a number of fans who regularly make sneering remarks about Klopp not giving a shit about the FA Cup. I wouldn’t quite go that far, but I don’t think he’s arsed that we’re out and the fact he waited so long to introduce Salah is fairly damning. The thing is, I’m probably less arsed about the FA Cup than anyone. Hell, I’d have played the kids again if it were up to me. Klopp didn’t do that and you could argue that the selection of Van Dijk over Matip was proof as to how seriously he was taking the game. I don’t see it quite like that though. I think he went with a stronger side than he initially intended to because we’d lost two of our previous three and he didn’t want to suffer another loss. He wanted to win the game more than he wanted to progress in the cup, and when it became clear that we were probably going to lose, his substitutions spoke volumes to me. This one stings at the moment but in a few weeks it will long be forgotten. That’s why we need to keep our perspective here. The last two games have been shockers. In fact, the last four have really. So it’s easy to get down about it but the reality is that we’re going to win the title and we’re well on course for the highest points total EVER. That has us somewhat spoiled. We’re not used to losing and I think as fans we’re in danger of forgetting how to react to it. I’m not pointing fingers here, as I’m including myself in this. My reaction during and immediately after the Watford and Chelsea losses was completely over the top. Given what the lads have done this season and last (and the one before that for that matter) we don’t have the right to be as angry as some of us are. That being said, we’d better fucking beat Bournemouth this weekend because this slump could quickly become a crisis. Thank fuck we’re so far ahead otherwise the nerves would be jangling massively now. It’s not just a win we need though, it’s some form. We don’t have a fucking hope in hell of breaking down Atletico playing like this, so the quicker we snap out of this the better. We will snap to of it, of that I have no doubt. The question is how quickly. We have a spell like this every winter. It cost us the title last year when we had all those draws. Our dip always comes in the month or so after Christmas and then we get our second wind and end the season well. If we get past Atletico we’ve got a great chance of going all the way again. Will we get past Atletico though? Not playing like this we won’t, so Jurgen needs to figure this out quickly. Star man? Just like Saturday I’m not naming one as nobody deserved it. It would have been Adrian but for the howler on their first goal. The least shit was probably Williams (shite second half crossing notwithstanding) or Jones, but they didn’t do enough for me to justify giving either the star man, so no-one gets it. Team: Adrian; Williams, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Lallana (Salah), Jones (Milner); Mané, Minamino, Origi (Firmino)

So there it is then. It had to come eventually and I can’t say I’m massively surprised that it came away at Watford. I was certainly shocked at the manner of it, but this was always the type of game that we could easily lose if we weren’t at it. And we weren’t at it. Not one player was. The performance was just wretched from start to finish and Watford thoroughly deserved their win. We’ve had quite a few of these types of performances but usually we’ve turned it around in the second half. For once, the second half display was even worse than the first. Klopp said 3-0 was a bit harsh on us but I disagree. It could easily have been worse. There was nothing acceptable about the performance. Every player performed badly and when that happens you’ve basically got no chance. Most teams struggle when they have five or six off the pace but we've been able to overcome that. Eleven though? The only way you can survive that is if the other team are as bad as you. Unfortunately Watford's players were terrific. We had one shot on target, from Robbo in the first half. Other than that the only time we went close was a half volley from Lallana that hit the outside of the post. The defensive side of the game was just as bad. Watford scored three but could easily have had six, despite losing their best player to a horrible looking knee injury in the first half. It was just a proper shite performance at both ends of the pitch and it was an unfitting way for the run to end. Going through the entire season unbeaten was always unlikely, even at this advanced stage with on;y eleven games to negotiate. Between Champions League and possibly FA Cup commitments (if we can get past Chelsea this week) it was going to get harder and harder to stay unbeaten because with the title wrapped up Klopp was going to have to do much more rotating to ensure his strongest line up was fresh for the other competitions. So I thought going unbeaten was going to be a tall order, but equally I expected that if we did eventually lose it would be a blood and thunder, throwing everything at the opponent and just narrowly missing out type of loss. I didn’t imagine for one second that we’d get spanked, but spanked we were. This had nothing to do with bad luck, contentious refereeing or anything else. We were just well beaten and were second best all over the park. Watford won every single individual battle. Every one. Not one of our players can say he had the better of his opposite number. Of course on social media Lovren took the fall. He was the number one trend on Twitter on Saturday night. What a fucking joke that is. It didn’t help that my boy Troy said afterwards that Watford targeted him and that Dejan was distracted because he “just wanted to fight me”. I read all the headlines and thought Deeney must have savaged him, but what he actually said was completely fair. “Van Dijk is a class act, for me one of the top five defenders in the world, and it’s tough to get anything from him—he’s 6’6”, he’s fast, he’s strong—so you try and pick on the weaker of the two. I don’t want to be disrespectful to Lovren and say he was the weaker of the two, but I knew he wanted to fight me and that’s my game. If you want to try and fight me, you’re going to have to be in for a tough night. And I think he did that for the first goal, trying to fight me from the throw-in, and we obviously rolled him and we score.” Well that's mostly true, except you didn't "roll" him, you stayed wrapped in Lovren's arms and watched while your unmarked team-mates did the damage. That first goal isn’t on Lovren. He’s making sure Deeney doesn’t back him in and win the flick on. He stands his ground and the ball goes over both of them. It’s hardly Lovren’s fault that the rest of our players just stand there motionless and let Watford’s runners go. Virgil does fuck all, Fabinho does fuck all and Robbo reacts too late. So you have Doucoure running in unopposed to pick up the loose ball and Sarr running in to turn home the cross. When you watch it again you can see Will Hughes also running completely unchecked into the six yard box. But yeah, blame Lovren. While we’re at it, let’s blame him for the front three not mustering a single fucking shot between them too. That’s twice in three games and for the record, Lovren wasn’t even on the field for the first one. Don’t get me wrong, I was far more pissed off than I had a right to be during and after this game. So I get the emotional reactions because I was fuming as well. Really we have no right to be mad at all, but I think it was just the meek way the unbeaten record finally went that got people riled up. That being said, the scapegoating of Lovren annoyed the fuck out of me far more than the defeat did. Firstly, let me say right at the outset just to avoid any confusion here. Lovren was shite. His performance was nowhere near the level required or the level he’s set for himself. If anyone wants to point that out then it’s completely fair. He didn’t win his battle with Deeney and he had some ropey moments in possession too. Not a good day for him at all and pointing that out is fair. It’s the other shit that’s been flying around that is doing my head in. He is not the reason we lost. He’s one of MANY reasons why we lost and he’s far from being at the top of that list. Furthermore, he is not the reason everyone else played shite and the narrative that “he unsettled everyone” needs to stop. If you're peddling that line you're letting the others off the hook for no other reason that you don't like Lovren and would rather blame him. On the one hand everyone talks about the ‘Mentality Monsters’ and how they can overcome anything. On the other, you’re trying to tell me that they all fell to pieces because they had to play with Big Bad Dejan instead of Joe Gomez? Ok, sure. You know the funny thing? Lovren is actually the one player in that team who has a legitimate excuse for how he played. The fella has barely featured for months so he’s not in any kind of rhythm and he’s rusty as fuck. The last time we saw him he was stinking the place out along with Matip and Fabinho at Shrewsbury in the cup. In contrast, the rest of the lads are playing every week and are sharp. This makes the notion that “Lovren unsettled them” even more nonsensical. Instead of being unsettled by the fella struggling because he’s rusty as fuck, how about they step up their game to help him out? That’s what should be happening here. They should be helping him through the game because he isn't match sharp. Instead they all performed just as badly as he did, worse in some cases, yet it seems to me like it’s one man who is shouldering most of the blame. Of course the others have far more credit in the bank than he does but that shouldn’t really come into it when you’re assessing what went wrong in one particular game. They were all shite. Blame Lovren for him being shite, but don't pin the rest on him too. The other thing that has annoyed me is people latching on to what Deeney said about him being more interested in battling him than playing the game. Has it not occurred to anyone that Lovren was battling with Deeney because that’s what he was told to do? Criticise him for not winning enough of his battles with Deeney, but don’t criticise him for wanting to battle him because that’s the whole reason why he was selected ahead of Matip. Fun fact: Big Joel is the number three centre back, yet he was overlooked for the number four. Why would that be? Because it’s horses for courses. Had we been up against a different type of striker to Deeney then Matip would have played. Lovren was picked because he’s a more physical, aggressive type of defender and Klopp wanted him to go against Deeney. The problem is he’s hardly played and he’s not in any kind of rhythm. It’s not easy for players to come in cold and perform to the level required to stay in this team. Gomez had his struggles earlier in the season and only hit top form after a run of games. Same with Matip last season. Lovren and Matip both looked utterly abject against Shrewsbury. Over the last couple of years Lovren has played well when he’s had a run in the team but he’s not someone who can come in from the cold and immediately perform at his best. He’s not alone in that regard, but it does provide a problem when none of the centre backs who play alongside Virgil are any good unless they've got a run of half a dozen games behind them. It just saddened me seeing how people reacted to us losing a game. The first loss in 14 months and instead of just shrugging it off as “one of those days” there was a rush by many to get the pitchforks out. The truth is we’d have lost this game regardless of who partnered Van Dijk. Why am I so sure of that? Because literally every player in that team was fucking shite. Every one of them. Not a single player performed to an acceptable level. Why was that? There are a lot of possible explanations but none of us know for sure. One thing it isn't is the absence of Henderson. I've seen that theory tossed around quite a bit but that's just as simplistic as the "It's all Lovren's fault" hot take. Are we missing Hendo? Of course we are. He's important and we're a better team when he's in it. Is it his absence that caused everyone to stink it up at Watford? Nope. He may have helped with his leadership and drive, but we've won lots of games without Henderson before and we will do again. So what was the cause of this loss then? Probably a culmination of things, but biggest of all is just that we've not been playing very well lately and it caught up with us. Why are we not playing well? Complacency seems to be a popular theory. Maybe there's an element of that but I don’t think for one second the players went out there thinking “this is going to be easy”. Any complacency they felt will have been subconscious rather than conscious. Tiredness then? Klopp dismissed that but then he would do. He's hardly going to use that as an excuse, especially after campaigning so hard for the winter break we just had. I wouldn't completely rule it out. We certainly didn’t have the energy and spark you associate with this team, and Watford looked faster and stronger all over the park. It does concern me that the front three don’t get much rest and Trent and Robbo seem to play every single game these days. That’s bound to catch up with us at some point and all have been off the boil to varying degrees of late. The fatigue may be more mental than physical though. To me it just looked like Watford wanted it more, because they probably did. They were first to everything and it just looked as though we went to the well one too many times and this time it was dry. We’ve been digging deep and pulling results out, only this time we just couldn’t do it. I’m not saying our lads weren’t up for the game and didn’t want it enough but Watford just had more hunger about them than we did, which when you take everything into account is understandable. Watford are fighting for their lives. We were fighting to protect an unbeaten record. The game mattered more to them and it showed. This is not a criticism of our boys, if anything it’s a compliment as it shows just how remarkable their efforts have been so far. There have been so many occasions when it would have been easy for them to just say “not our day, never mind, onto the next game”. They never have though. They’ve fought for everything and shown incredible levels of mental resilience in games when they haven’t been playing well. There will always come a time when you try to dig deep and find there’s just nothing in the tank. That’s what happened. In every other game when we haven’t been playing well, they found a way. This time they couldn’t. Shit happens. Every great team loses games from time to time, and sometimes when they do it will be a spanking like this one. It happened to all of our great teams of the past at some point (the one that sticks with me is Terry Gibson and Coventry absolutely destroying Joe Fagan’s European Champions) and it happened to the great United teams under Ferguson too. Mourinho’s first Chelsea team were an absolute fucking machine but they suffered a heavy beating at Middlesbrough. Losing is just an occupational hazard. Thankfully it doesn’t happen to us very often these days but you can’t avoid it completely, even though often there’s no real logical explanation for it when it happens. Realistically, Watford should not have been able to do this to the best team in the country but that’s football. Even the greatest teams in history occasionally have an off day because it’s impossible to play well every single week, game after game. We’ve had loads of games where we haven’t played well and when you look back through history this is why almost every team that has won the league suffers four, five, six defeats along the way while often drawing between eight to twelve. What this team has done has bucked that trend. Those days when you’d normally draw or lose, they dug in and ensured it didn’t happen. You can’t do that indefinitely though. It must be mentally exhausting. Going out there every week trying to maintain a winning run even though there are no challengers to us at the top. It has to be tough to keep that intensity going but they’ve done an incredible job with it until now. What makes it even more difficult is they get the opponent’s best effort every week. There’s a huge bullseye on our back and everyone wanted to be the ones to take points off us or end the unbeaten run. The likes of Norwich and West Ham in recent weeks for example. Absolute shite before they played us and then all of a sudden they’re running through brick walls trying to knock us over. Watford hadn’t won in six games before this but they come out and put in a performance like THAT? This is how it is. We get everyone’s maximum effort and therefore we always have to be right at it mentally. Our lads have been playing under that pressure all season and it’s taken until now for someone to finally overcome us. I’ve often commented how it’s almost impossible to beat us because you need to be at your absolute best and you need us to be at our worst. Even then it’s not always enough, but it was for Watford. Credit to them, they performed brilliantly from front to back while we were wretched in every position. When that happens you don’t really have a chance but it was always going to happen at some point because that’s football. I had hoped (but not expected) that we could get through the entire season unbeaten just to take Arsenal’s record from them, but sadly that is not to be. What Arsenal did might never be beaten because it takes a staggering amount of luck to get through a season unbeaten. They were a fantastic side and I’m taking nothing away from them, but they drew 15 games or something, which means there were 15 occasions where they were one unlucky bounce or bad refereeing decision away from their run being ended. Going unbeaten was an incredible achievement but it doesn’t make them better than this Liverpool team because we’ll absolutely smash their points tally. With the possibility of matching Arsenal’s undefeated season now gone, for me it’s all about beating City’s record points total now. I badly want that, because with it comes the undisputed bragging rights to being the best ever, particularly if we could add another European Cup to it. As disappointed as the lads will be about losing, I bet subconsciously there’s an extra spring in their step now because they no longer have that unbeaten run to protect. Klopp himself said as much afterwards. We’ve been tight lately, we’re not playing free and loose and it’s all just been a massive grind. Has the record contributed to that? Who knows, but I expect they feel like a weight has been lifted now. I’ve been saying for weeks how stressed out I am watching these games even though we’re twenty odd points clear and the title is a formality. It shouldn’t be stressful but it is, because of that record. Despite everything they’ve said publicly it has to have been on the players’ minds too, and secretly they’re probably feeling a sense of relief in with the disappointment. I know I am, although I wasn’t on Saturday as I was in foul form. I was gutted the run had come to an end and even more gutted at the manner of it. But now, having had time to reflect, I’m not angry or upset about it. I’m grateful for the 14 months of Herculean effort put in by the players to ensure they didn’t lose any league games in that period. Losing a game like that happens to everyone at some point because despite the nonsense being spouted about the standard this season it’s really fucking hard winning games in the Premier League. If it was easy, you wouldn’t be seeing so many of the big name teams struggling. It’s as competitive as it’s ever been because the teams at the bottom are not pushovers. We’ve won virtually every game but how many would you describe as being easy? There have been loads of tough ones in there, because like I say, winning games in this league is not as easy as it’s being made out to be. Watford were in the bottom three both times they played against us yet they could easily have taken six points rather than just three. Only for some Benny Hill style comedy finishing at Anfield they could have ended our run that day. Sadly they were sharper in front of goal this time and made us pay. Of course they were helped by our kamikaze defending. The first goal was schoolboy stuff, the second wasn’t much better (the two centre backs should not be allowing Sarr to run in behind them so easily) and the third…. well the third was just sloppy as fuck, but summed up Trent’s entire evening. He needs a rest because he just wasn’t there. Mind you, I didn’t think that goal should have stood because Deeney blatantly fouled Lovren in the build up. He took him out while he was off the ground trying to head the ball away. Definite foul but I can’t say I’m particularly bothered about it because we were well beaten anyway. It did annoy me the way Shearer sneered “Get up Lovren, you’ve been pushed around by Deeney all day”. That’s as maybe, Alan, but when you’ve got both feet off the ground jumping and you get shoved, you’re going to end up on the floor regardless of whether you’re shoved by Troy Deeney or a fucking ten year old. That’s why it’s normally a fucking free-kick, you baked bean headed tit. So yeah, having an off day and losing badly is completely normal. What isn’t normal is going 14 months without defeat. We may well see one or two more of these type of performances and results between now and the end of the season because players are only human and we’re so far ahead it’s going to be really hard to maintain the intensity that got us there. I’d be lying if I said I’m not a little worried. Not because we lost, but because we’re just not playing well. It seems to always happen at this time of year and any time we have an extended break we come back looking disjointed and stagnant. Usually it’s because we’ve been knocked out of the cup and had a week’s ‘warm weather training’. This time we actually had an official winter break, but the net result was the same. We’ve come back looking flat. We’ll snap out of it and regain our form, we always do, but we’ve got that Atletico game on the horizon and we need to be at our best for that otherwise they’ll just frustrate us and it will be a long night. What we do have going for us right now is that any wobble isn’t going to cost us in the league and we have Bournemouth at home coming up next. I’m not suggesting that will be easy or that it’s a certain three points, I’m just pointing out that if you had to hand pick our next fixture then Eddie Howe's men at Anfield would be pretty high on the list. It’s a perfect game for us to get back on track and for me the main thing is we need to see the front three looking sharp again. Their form is worrying me more than anything else right now as it’s just not looking right. As great as they are, there are always going to be spells in a season where they did, and unfortunately it seems like they’ve all dipped at the same time because they were shite against Atletico as well. It’s going to be interesting what happens in the cup now. A lot of fans will want to go full strength. I get that point of view but I don’t share it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, have you seen how our first eleven has been playing lately? Chelsea have problems of their own, but there’s no guarantee our regular line up goes there and wins. Secondly, if anything some of those players look like they need to play less games, not more. I don’t want Trent or Robbo playing another ninety minutes and I’d be wary about sending out the front three again too. This is a game for Lallana, Origi, Keita, Matip, Minamino etc. Maybe one or two regulars, plus the kids like Jones, Elliott and Williams who’ve gotten us this far in the cup. Winning the cup would be nice, but getting back on track and spanking Bournemouth is more important to me at this point because everything now needs to be geared towards being at our maximum when we face Atletico. There’s no star man as they were all shite. Robbo was probably the least shite, but he was still shite so I can’t give him the star man. If the award is ‘least shit man’ then I guess that would be Robbo. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Lovren, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Wijnaldum (Lallana), Oxlade-Chamberlain (Origi); Salah, Firmino (Minamno), Mané:

Saturday Feb 22: Hahaha Timo Werner is a case isn’t he? As if the interview the other night wasn’t enough of a hint he doubled down on it today in an interview with Sky Germany in which he hailed Klopp as the world’s best coach and then insisted that everyone knows he’s a perfect fit for how Klopp likes to play. What’s next? Breaking out in Allez Allez Allez maybe? This is even more blatant than Torres sending us a come and get me plea by wearing an armband with YNWA on it. More transfer speculation as Alex Bruce - son of Steve - reckons we’ll sign Todd Cantwell and he compared him to Jack Grealish and James Maddison. All three have something in common in that they look like massive twats. Where they differ is that in the case of Grealish looks can be deceiving, but the other two are exactly what it says on the tin. And the tin says ‘Twat’. Diving twats, although Cantwell is marginally less of a twat than Maddison. We’d better not fucking sign him though. Speaking of Grealish, he was asked about rumours linking him with us and United. “Of course it’s nice. Who doesn’t like to be talked about in a nice way? But, to be honest, I try and take everything with a pinch of salt. I had it all five years ago when I broke through and I was getting talked about a lot. I was 19 years old, going online reading about myself and I couldn’t believe it. “I was in the papers all the time and they were asking: ‘Is this the new big thing?’ Then just one thing goes wrong and it all comes down on you like a ton of bricks. It is nice to read and nice to listen to, but I don’t let it get to me too much, because I know how quickly it can change.” “I can’t help but think of playing for England because that is what I want to do. I hope I have done enough but I also think I can perform better and that is the God’s honest truth. People on the outside might say I am doing well, but I know for a fact I can do better and score more goals and get more assists.” “What will be hard at the moment is with the position I am playing in at the moment, people would probably say I am playing as a winger. If you look at England’s wingers, I doubt I would have much of a chance of starting in front of [Raheem] Sterling, [Jadon] Sancho and [Marcus] Rashford, who are all unbelievable players! “I’ve always said my favourite position would be playing in midfield. That is where I would love to play for England. It is where I would want to play for Villa, but it just so happens at the moment I am playing well in the position I am in and it is better for the team.” I really don’t want to like Grealish but it’s proving impossible not to. I love his attitude and he’s just not the wanker I always thought he was. I don’t think we have room for him as I wouldn’t want to impede the progress of Jones, but if another spot opened in midfield (if they decided to give up on Keita for example) then I’d be well up for us signing this lad. Who’s with me? Anyone? Sunday Feb 23: This Barcelona thing is mad. They’ve signed someone called Martin Braithwaite. I hear that name and immediately think “lower league Yorkshireman, probably plays for Rotherham” but this is Barcelona so obviously it’s not. So I assumed he must be one of those random South American lads with weird English sounding names. I assumed wrong. He’s actually Danish. He did play for Middlesbrough until fairly recently though, and he’s 28, so he may as well be some lower league chump. But Barcelona have signed him. And that isn’t even the maddest part. They signed him while the window was closed due to a loophole that allows you to sign players if you have injury problems. So the mighty Barcelona signed him from lowly Leganes by activating a release clause. And that still isn’t the maddest part. The maddest part is that Leganes are not allowed to sign a replacement. How fucked up is that? Barca have got Messi and Griezemann and that Fati kid who is meant to be the next big thing, but they’re allowed to take the best player from a relegation threatened club who aren’t allowed to sign a replacement because they don’t have an injury crisis. What a fucking joke. Just what the fuck has happened to Barca’s famed academy though if they can’t promote someone from there to sit on the bench? They must be in even worse shape than I thought they were. Monday Feb 24: L 3 West Ham 2. Fucking hell. With a 22 point lead it shouldn’t be stressful watching us but this winning run and unbeaten streak has really cranked up the pressure I’m feeling every game now. We can afford to lose but if it happens it’s going to really sting. At least the first one will. After that it won’t be anywhere near as bad as the record will have gone, but while we’re still going for it these games are not fun at all. We weren’t good tonight and there was a large slice of luck in all three goals. Yet there’s just something inevitable about this team. They’re going to find a way no matter what. Those two second half goals were just forced through sheer bloody mindedness. They refuse to accept anything other than wins. Bit worrying how shit we’ve been since the break though. It feels like the same thing happens to us every year at this time. I know there haven’t been any ‘official’ breaks before, but we usually get knocked out of the FA Cup and have a couple of weeks without a league game, and we always look way off it for a few games when we come back. Same thing has happened this time. Still, at least we didn’t let Moyes put a dent in our record as that would have been hard to swallow. Instead we kept him right in the relegation mire. Really hope they go down, just because of Moyes and the owners. Other than that, I’ve got no beef with West Ham and I do feel sorry for their fans. Other than Everton and United, I’d feel sorry for anyone who had Moyes forced upon them. Also today, the u23s beat Sunderland 6-0 as Curtis Jones bagged a hat-trick. I keep saying it, but he’s fucking fantastic. I have no doubt whatsoever he’s going to make it here and if I’m being honest I’m a little annoyed at how he’s being held back. When I see him playing at this level I just think it’s unfair on the opposition because no-one can get near him. I said last week he looks like Zidane when he plays in these games. Just strutting around with he ball glued to his foot. I regret saying that now as it’s overly flattering. To that over-rated bald turd. Yeah I said it. Come at me, I’ll take you all on because I’m right. Going back to Curtis though, to me it makes far more sense to have him on the bench for the first team and get him on whenever there’s an opportunity to do so. No disrespect to Lallana, but if he’s leaving this summer then why not have Jones in the squad instead of him, at least for run of the mill league games. I’m fine with going with Lallana in Europe in case he’s needed, but Jones is special and we need to bring him through. Tuesday Feb 25: I watched Napoli v Barca tonight. Well, I started to. Then I got bored. It was fucking dire. You could have thrown a coat over Napoli’s ten outfield players as they were so bunched together in the middle of the field. That’s not a criticism, being horrible to play against is their schtick and they do it well. It doesn’t make for much of a spectacle though, so I switched it off and put the Chelsea game on. I’m glad I did as Bayern were a joy to watch. Fuck me, they completely took Chelsea and Lampard to school. It was men against boys. Any time I see Gnabri (in other words, any time he plays us or another English side in the CL) he looks sensational. How was he so shite at Arsenal? I know he was just a kid, but if he had it in him to be this good why the fuck did they let him leave. He went on loan to West Brom too and Pulis didn’t want him. Probably failed the height test. Bayern just had pace all over the park and they made Chelsea look slow and ponderous. Speed kills and in the modern game I wouldn’t even entertain the idea of signing a player who isn’t quick. The young flying machine at left back was sensational. I’d never heard of him before tonight but he’s now officially my favourite non-LFC player after I saw a video he made where he recreated the ‘Backstreet Boys’ scene from Brooklyn Nine Nine. Tremendous stuff, he even changed his outfit for each of the different characters. I can’t even tell you how impressed I was with that. Lampard was asked afterwards if he learned anything from the game and he said along the lines of it was nothing to do with tactics, it was about the quality of the players and they are better than us. He’s not wrong, but that reeked of Mourinho. Bayern have better players than Chelsea but Lampard is a rookie coach at this level and that plays a part too. I’m surprised he absolved himself of all blame as he’s usually better than that. Maybe he’s feeling the pressure. Meanwhile, Pogba’s attempts to force his way out of Old Trafford plumbed new depths today as he went to the extreme of saying how boss the Reds are. If that doesn’t work nothing will. Also today, Man City’s players left for Madrid (a sign of things to come, if ‘Razza’ has his way) and they were wearing double denim. I have no idea what the fuck was going on there, but if that two year UEFA ban wasn’t enough to make their best players consider their future then surely this will. Klopp should have Divock on the blower to De Bruyne telling him we’d never make him wear shit like that. Wednesday Feb 26: Ok, Alphonso Davies’ run as my favourite non-LFC player didn’t last long. It’s now Patrick Bamford. Yes, the same Patrick Bamford I’ve been ripping for years in the PL Round Ups. Why the change of heart you ask? Jon Bon Jovi, that’s why. The great man was on Talksport this morning (no, I don’t know why either) and it turns out that Bamford is a massive fan and plays their songs to get himself up for games. I now feel like a massive turd for all the years of scorn I’ve had towards him for no real good reason. For those who’ve forgotten, my long standing beef with Bamford was down to him repeatedly refusing to sign for me on Footy Manager back in the day (and also because he looked like he could be the leader of the Young Conservatives. He was the original Todd Cantwell). Of course it’s completely irrational but in my defence I’ve hated players for much less over the years. I’m not the only one who irrationally hates players though. Do a twitter search for Mark Noble and check out the hate directed at him. Why? I don’t get it. What’s so loathsome about Mark Noble that so many people can’t stand him? Of course I see things to take the piss out of him for, and I can’t look at him without thinking “Gawd bless ‘im. He loves his dear old mum and the Queen”. He’s the ultimate Eastender, but he’s harmless enough and seems like a really good lad. I saw him today on the Inside Anfield video and it just reaffirmed what I thought of him. Great pro, sound lad, loves his club (and his dear old mum and obviously her Majesty). They always show the bit where the captains and managers go to meet the ref pre-game, and Noble fucking loves Klopp. I noticed it on the ‘Inside West Ham’ video LFCTV put out after the game at their place, and here he was again. He greeted Virg warmly and then he sees Klopp and says “Alright boss” and goes in for a big hug. Klopp loves him too, you can see it. There are some opposition players who you can tell Jurgen really has a lot of time for and Noble is one of them. Why? Because he’s just a good pro who’d do anything for his club. I like Mark Noble. There. I said it. Come at me if you like coz I don’t give a fuck. Noble > Zidane. It’s mad how much he’s hated though (by fans of all manner of clubs) considering how insignificant he and West Ham are in the grand scheme of things. You know who hates him the most though? West Ham fans. He is to them what Hendo was to our moronic element before he silenced most of them by captaining us to the European Cup. Poor old Mark isn’t going to be lifting Big Ears any time soon though so the criticism of him will continue. I don’t know why it bothers me but it does. West Ham are fucking shite and the reason for that is because they don’t have enough Mark Nobles. For years they’ve wasted money on shite players who are only there for a payday, but it’s the lad who bleeds claret and blue who gets most of the stick. Footy fans are proper weird. On the pitch tonight, City beat Madrid and have one foot in the next round now. I despise Real almost as much as I do City so I can’t say I cared too much who won this one. I started out just about rooting for Madrid but I didn’t feel good about it because I fucking hate them. That hatred intensified the longer this went on, because I was getting wound up by how shit they are. They’re absolute fucking garbage. If they played in the Premier League they’d be in the same sort of situation that Spurs, United and Arsenal are in. Floundering around with everyone wondering how the fuck they got so shit so quickly. It was obvious to me in the first half that City would win and the only surprise was that Madrid actually managed to score first. City deservedly came back and won it but now I’m fuming about it because we won’t get the chance to get revenge on Madrid for two years ago. If we were to play them, we’d murder them. Our FA Cup team would probably take them out. With our first eleven it wouldn’t even be a contest. They couldn’t live with us in any area of the pitch. They were pitiful tonight and it shows what a massive bald fraud Zidane is that Gareth Bale can’t get in his team when he’s by far the best player at the club. They’re a mixture of over the hill superstars (Modric, Ramos, Benzema etc), youngsters who might become top players but aren’t there yet (Vinicius, Rodrygo, Valverde), and bang average slapdicks who are massively over-rated because of who they play for (Carvajal, Casemiro, Vasquez). We’d have twatted them everywhere and it’s hugely frustrating that we won’t get the opportunity. Still, no point dwelling on what might have been. Knocking City out again would be just as satisfying. We just need to get past Atletico first. Thursday Feb 27: Vinicius Jr: "I hate to say it but the referee was against us last night. This is the sad reality, the referees are always against Real Madrid. I don't know why but we never get any decisions. It's a historic thing against Real Madrid." *checks date* It’s not April Fools day so what the fuck is this soft cunt on about? “A historic thing against Real Madrid”. Jesus Christ. I think I want City to put ten past them in that second leg now you know. Ok maybe, not, but it has annoyed the fuck out of me. I’m the first one to cry foul when City are getting dodgy decisions, but there was fuck all suspicious in that game last night. Madrid were just a big pile of sloppy shit. Friday Feb 28: Ok so you know that Standard Chartered ad with the CGI Bob Paisley was one of the worst things ever? Well just when I thought the club couldn’t possibly be anymore cringeworthy, they made half a dozen of the lads show off their ‘acting’ skills to promote the club’s new official coconut milk partner….. and totally redeemed themselves! It was great. Absolute gold. The acting from all of them was surprisingly good and it was genuinely funny. I knew Robbo would be great as he loves this shit and is an absolute natural, but who knew Hendo could pull off something like that? I’ll admit, I would have expected him to be almost as wooden as Rushy, but he wasn’t. Curtis Jones was well more comfortable than I’d have expected too. Great performance from him. The undisputed star though was Matip. You never normally see him doing anything like this, but he needs his own weekly slot now. “Fun facts with Joel”. Get it done. As soon as he started talking I just burst out laughing. I’ve heard him speak before so his voice didn’t surprise me, but it was still fucking hilarious the way he just chimed in with those random facts. It was too funny. On the outtake video that was released all of the lads reacted exactly the same way I did. Joel does his bit, there’s a split second’s pause and then every one of them creased up. Joel is baffled, he got his lines spot on and he’s throwing up his arms and asking “what?”. That just made it even funnier. Great job by all, well played. Meanwhile, there’s some scare mongering that this Corona Virus thing could cause the season to be cancelled before we’ve won the title. Won’t happen. The season can’t be cancelled, and it’s got nothing to do with us as I’m sure there are plenty who would be delighted to see us miss out. You know why the season can’t be cancelled? Because of promotion and relegation. The likes of Leeds and West Brom would be losing out on incredible amounts of money if they were denied promotion, while there’s no way, say Norwich for example, would be allowed to stay up for another season at the expense of Championship clubs. There’s too much money at stake and money always talks louder than anything else. So even if the games ended up being played behind closed doors, they’d still be played. It’s mad though that I’ve seen comments on social media hoping for a global epidemic that would kill millions, just to deny us a league title. Completely warped. And they complain that we’ll be unbearable when we win it. For thirty years we’ve had cunts being unbearable because we couldn’t win it. So yeah, it’s payback time. and that was the week that was….

The Formerly Fat One got the better of the Formerly Special One again as Chelsea thoroughly outplayed Spurs at Stamford Bridge. The 2-1 scoreline was a travesty really as Spurs were never in this game and their goal was a last minute fluke that went in off Rudiger. Chelsea completely dominated and played some lovely football at times. Mount was excellent and they looked a much better side with Giroud leading the line. There are some things he doesn’t do as well as Kevin Abraham, but big handsome Olly is a good player. He’s far too good for the bench role he seems to have occupied for most of his time in England anyway. He’d start regularly for at least 15 teams in this league and he’s one of those players who always seems to play well against us. He opened the scoring with a crisp finish and Alonso added a beautiful second. That was such a nice goal all round that. Alonso is such a contradiction as he seems to have two or three efforts on goal every game he plays but he’s an absolute liability at the other end. You can't say he's shit, but equally you can't say he's good either. He's both shit and good. You can’t really get away with playing him left back in a four against anyone decent, but you’d want him in the side because of the goal threat he poses. He scored one great goal in this game, he also hit the bar with a brilliant free-kick and was a yard too high with what would have been the goal of the season had it gone in. A right foot volley on the turn from 25 yards. Then three days later he got himself sent off against Bayern in the Champions League, and even before the red card he was getting the absolute run around from the Bayern forwards. Alonso might be the hardest player in the league to evaluate. I think the best way to sum him up is excellent footballer, terrible left back. The result keeps Chelsea’s grip on a top four spot still relatively tight but they’re losing so many games that you can’t be completely sure they’ll hold on. They should do, because in terms of squad talent they’ve definitely got more than anyone other than us and City, but they’re wildly inconsistent and we still don't know yet if Lampard knows what he's doing or if he's a complete chancer. The main talking point after this game had nothing to do with Chelsea’s nice football or Mourinho continuing to turn Spurs into everything they weren’t under Poch though. No, it was VAR. Again. You all know how I feel about VAR and I’d scrap it tomorrow if possible. That being said, VAR should not be criticised for what happened with Lo Celso. If anything, that incident shows exactly why VAR ‘should’ be a good thing. Michael Oliver didn’t see the incident clearly and that’s where the video should come into its own. Instead, we have some fucking clown watching the screen in Stockley Park and making a monumental fuck up. Cue everyone kicking off about VAR. The technology isn’t the problem, it’s the morons who are using it. Saturday was plagued with shite VAR decisions because the guy who was making those decisions must have been drunk or bribed. How else can you explain the Lo Celso non-red, or the disallowed Bournemouth goal (I’ll get to that later), or De Bruyne getting away with one of the most blatant handballs of the season? They don’t want the refs going to the screens themselves, but if they keep allowing the YTS ref to make it up as they go along on VAR then they deserve every bit of criticism that comes their way. They’re making a fucking mockery of the game with this shit. If you’re going to use VAR, then use it properly and if someone performs as badly as this David Coote jabroni (one just for you there Roger) did, don’t let them near it again. In fact, just ban them from even watching football altogether, let alone refereeing it. Mark Clattenberg was on the radio this week and he was talking about how on field refereeing and VAR requires a completely different skill set and that being good at one doesn’t mean you’ll be good at the other. Sorry, but that’s absolute fucking bollocks. Not everyone can referee a game. I’ll be the first to admit I couldn’t do it even if by some miracle I had the required fitness levels suddenly bestowed upon me. Refereeing is fucking hard. Really fucking hard. Not anybody can do it. I get that. VAR though? I could do that standing on my fucking head so any qualified ref should be able to do it too. Any one of us could look at that Lo Celso stamp and immediately know it’s a red card, yet because of this daft process they have where the on field ref explains his view and unless the VAR vehemently disagrees with it and can say it’s obviously wrong, they stay with the on field call. Except for the times when they don’t. And that’s the problem. That’s why you get Son sent off for kicking someone in the balls, and Harry Maguire allowed to get away with doing the exact same thing. They’re making this shit needlessly complicated. The VAR ref should have told Oliver that Lo Celso needs to go, or at the very least he should tell him “that looks quite bad, you might wanna take a look yourself and decide what you want to do”. Instead he did nothing. An absolute disgrace really. It didn’t impact the result because Chelsea won anyway, but that can’t be allowed to go unpunished. Lo Celso should be retrospectively banned and so should David Coote, the clueless twat. Apparently he’s a Championship referee. The Championship has my sympathy then, because if he can’t get easy decisions right with the benefit of numerous replay angles then what chance is there when he’s out there in the middle with no help? Of course Mourinho continues to moan about having no strikers and a tired squad. I don’t remember who said it, but I do recall a famous quote from a manager about how if you keep telling players they are tired they will believe it and it gives them a ready made excuse. In Mourinho’s case, the ready made excuse is for him. He’s a busted flush and instead of crying about not having any strikers, why not promote Troy Parrott, the talented kid who people are raving about? What have Spurs got to lose at this point? He says Parrott isn’t ready, and maybe he’s right. But how many times have we seen young strikers who have been thrown in and provided a spark to their team? Playing like this Spurs have no chance of finishing in the top four this season and while Mourinho will continue to deflect all blame away from himself, the fact is they look worse now than they were before he got there. Spurs were so close but they couldn’t take the final step and now they’re a million miles away with a manager who plays a prehistoric style of football. For a ‘shrewd businessman’ Daniel Levy sure does fuck a lot of things up. In the other big game on Saturday Leicester’s bad run continued as they slipped to a home defeat to Man City. They started brightly and Vardy was denied by the post. They had two strong penalty shouts turned down too, one when De Bruyne handled and the other when that Iheanacho cunt was punched in the head by that Ederson cunt. Penalties are never given for those, which is weird when you regularly see keepers concede penalties for the slightest contact with the feet of attacking players. Can’t do that but you can smash them in the head with both fists and knock them senseless without any recourse. Funny old game, Saint. The De Bruyne handball though. Fucking hell. It was as clear a penalty as there was all weekend, yet I heard them saying on the radio this morning that the reason it wasn’t given was because it wasn’t even looked at. Usually the ref will pause the game while they check but there was no delay on this and once play has restarted they can’t go back. So why wasn’t it looked at? Had Coote nipped out for a piss? Had he fallen asleep at his desk, Homer Simpson style? Was he playing Candy Crush? It’s amateurish as fuck that an incident like that can happen and nothing is done about it. To further rub salt in Leicester’s wounds they were penalised themselves later on when Praet handled in the box. Definitely a penalty but no more obvious than the De Bruyne one. Schmeichel saved it but City scored soon after anyway through Jesus and that was enough for the three points. Final one on this. Vardy hasn’t scored since his missus gave birth. He hasn’t found the net either. BOOM! That’s what you pay your money for right there. Moving on, and I’ve often mentioned before how Eddie Howe is too nice and that’s why he’s always on the wrong end of bad refereeing decisions. They seem to get screwed every week and he always comes out smiling and saying how difficult it is for refs. The angriest you ever see him is when he says meekly "I'd better be careful what I say" and then says virtually nothing. He can’t go on like that as it’s just not healthy. Neil Warnock managed into his seventies and he didn't get that far by bottling shit up. Sometimes you need to let it out because if you keep that rage and frustration locked away it’s dangerous. One day Nice Guy Eddie is going to completely snap and end up murdering a fourth official with his bare hands. With any luck it will be Martin Atkinson or Anthony Taylor. I don’t know how he kept it together after this fucking farce. The stakes are so high for Bournemouth at the moment as they’re in real relegation trouble and every point could be vital. The goal they had chalked off at 0-0 might be the most egregious disallowed goal of the season. That new attacking handball rule is terrible anyway, but even allowing for that there’s still no way that Josh King’s goal should have been disallowed. The ball flicks off the head of a Bournemouth player and strikes Billing who is directly behind him. It hits him on the shoulder and falls for King, who scores. It was almost all shoulder but there was also minimal contact with the very, very top part of Billing’s arm. The only way you disallow that goal is if you’re looking to disallow the goal. There’s a 1% margin on that where you could say “it’s hit his arm” and VAR (Coote again maybe? I don't know) took that 1%. Disallowing goals for that is just plain fucking wrong. Only Wolves should be on the receiving end of those calls just because it’s funny and because I like seeing Coady doing his nut. Worse was to come for poor old Eddie and his men. After Burnley had gone ahead through Vydra (no goals for years then two in as many weeks for him) Bournemouth thought they’d equalised after a sweeping counter attack went the length of the field and was finished off by our Harry. Joy soon turned to anger though as VAR pulled it back and not only disallowed the goal, but awarded Burnley a penalty. I’m not even sure they got this one right either, although it was more of a handball than the Billing one. Adam Smith puts his arm out and the ball hits his shoulder. It caught a piece of his arm too, although not much. Because he put his arm out though it probably looked worse than it was. Still, you can’t blame Bournemouth for being massively pissed off when you see some of the handballs that aren’t given, and they’ve been on the receiving end of those two. They fell apart after that. Rodriguez converted the penalty and McNeill lashed one in from distance to make it 3-0. It could easily have been more in the end, but this game was in the balance until those brutal decisions killed Bournemouth. Burnley fans once used to call Dyche the Ginger Mourinho. They might still do for all I know, but these days it’s far less of a compliment than it was originally. In fact, it’s fairly insulting. After all, Dyche is also without his two star strikers but unlike Mourinho he isn’t crying about it. He’s done what any manager worth his salt would do. He said “next man up” and just got on with it. And his ‘next man up’ isn’t anywhere near the calibre of Lucas Moura and Deli Alli. Elsewhere, Shane Long bagged his 7th of the season as Southampton beat Villa at St Mary’s. Is this Long’s most prolific campaign now? Must be close to it. Great play by Djnepo to create it. He’s a weird one that Djnepo. He can go from looking like the best player in the world one minute to the worst a minute later. There’s something about him though, I think he might turn out to be pretty good. Villa were awful, especially at the back, and Reina looked like a clown for most of the game. No idea what he was playing at. He went up for a stoppage time corner and Southampton broke and made it 2-0 when Armstrong finished into an empty net. Southampton had 28 shots to Villa’s four. That doesn’t bode well for Villa, who might let in eight against City again this weekend at Wembley. I hope not. I hope they win. But if they don’t….. well….. there’s always this. Down at Selhurst Park Newcastle took on Palace. Dubravka made a stunning save to deny Gary Cahill and then produced a similar one to deny Scott Dann. Palace were a threat from set plays all day and Benteke headed five yards wide from four yards out. Impressive that. The only goal of the game came via a set piece when Van Aanholt curled one in from 30 yards. Newcastle gave it a bit of a go and had a couple of efforts, but they were wide open on th break and could easily have conceded more. Lazaro was sent off in stoppage time for hauling down Zaha who would have been clean through. Bentaleb is playing for Newcastle now (wiki tells me he’s on loan from Schalke). Remember him? My main man Tim Sherwood loved him but when Timmy got the bullet I don’t think we heard from Bentaleb again until now, which is not a surprise as I always thought he looked like a bit of a crab. Timmy probably saw a lot of himself in Bentaleb actually, as when he was at Blackburn he made David Batty look like Michel Platini. Joelinton hasn’t scored in 32 hours of football. Dreadful that, but I bet when he finally breaks that duck he goes mental and doesn’t play it as cool as Benteke did. I still can’t get over that you know. I keep thinking about it. It takes some fucking balls to just give it the ‘business as usual’ calm celebration when you’re a £20m centre forward who hasn’t scored in about three fucking years. I think I was a Palace fan I'd be livid about it, as who the fuck does he think he is? Sheffield United’s top four hopes took a knock as they were held 1-1 at home by Brighton. Stephens lashed them in front with a beautiful half volley into the top corner but Brighton hit back with the most basic of goals. Long punt up field from a free-kick, headed on by the centre back and finished by the centre forward (Maupay). Chris Wilder will be seething with that one. He was talking some fucking bollocks afterwards though. “If anyone has anything to say about the way we play they should look at that today”. Has anyone said anything negative about how they play? All I’ve heard all season are people complimenting them and talking about the unique style they have. He’s swinging at ghosts there. Onto Sunday now. United beat Watford 3-0. I didn’t even bother watching the highlights as frankly I can’t be arsed with United at all. Complete non-entities and dull as fuck to watch. I'm not going to watch them win and most of the time I'm not even arsed when they lose anymore. They're just not on my radar. I hope they win enough to keep Solskjaer in a job and not enough to actually accomplish anything. Watford’s new manager bounce seems to have fallen flat now and they’re right back in the shit. We go there this weekend so I’m saying nothing further on them for now. Wolves had a comfortable win over Norwich, who now look as though they’ve given up and accepted their fate. Wolves are good and it’s a tough place to go but Norwich were really disappointing and on the MOTD highlights they didn't even have one effort on goal. Jota put Wolves ahead early but there was a VAR check for a possible handball. It didn’t touch the arm of Doherty but if I’m the VAR official I’m ruling that out just because it’s Wolves and it would therefore be funny. Jota made it 2-0 and again there was a VAR check. This time for offside. He wasn’t offside when the cross came in but he was well off before that, so again, I’d have disallowed it just for a laugh and had the ref tell Coady there was a new rule change he mustn't have paid attention to. Jota then thought he had a hat-trick but his shot came back off the post, straight into the path of Jimenez for a tap in. Not that he tapped it in, he absolutely leathered it from a few inches out. Big fan of that to be honest. Short of dropping to your knees and heading it in, that’s the best way to convert from that range. They said in commentary that Wolves had smashed Espanol 4-0 a few days earlier. I had no idea as I pay virtually no attention to the Europa League. That result suggests they’re growing more comfortable in Europa and they could probably win it if they’re only up against the likes of Arsenal and United. Hope they don’t, obviously. Ideally they’d get screwed by VAR in the final. As long as it's not against United. Finally, a weird game at the Emirates in which both teams scored in the opening seconds of a half. First it was Everton, who went ahead in the opening minute through a Calvert-Lewin volley that should not have counted because his foot was high and his follow through caught David Luiz on the head. For some reason it was allowed to stand (VAR ref asleep at his desk again?) but Arsenal hit back when Saka’s glorious cross was converted by Nketia. There have been reports that we’re interested in Saka as he only has one more year left on his contract. Not sure whether Arsenal would be up for that, but they do have a history of selling their best players to other English clubs so you never know. If the kid has any sense he’ll be pushing for it because he only needs to look at Ox to see how getting away from Arsenal is the only way to save a promising career. Walcott stayed too long and became the most pointless player in the world, especially because he then went to Everton. Iwobi got out early enough but also went to Everton, so that was like jumping out of the frying pan into the fiery chasm of Mount Doom. Any young player at Arsenal needs to be thinking long and hard about what direction they want their career to go. If we are interested in Saka then he needs to do all he can to make it happen before the Arsenal stench of mediocrity becomes too strong to wash off. Arsenal took the lead when Luiz split the defence and Aubamayeng ran clear to score, but they conceded four minutes into stoppage time at the end of the half when they failed abysmally to deal with a corner and Richarlison bundled in from close range. Shite from Leno that. Incredibly though, just 26 seconds after the restart they had the lead again though as Aubamayeng headed in a cross from Pepe. Everton probably should have taken something from the game but Calvert-Lewin missed three great chances because he’s shite. At the other end Nketiah hit the bar after yet more clown show play by Pickford. Tell you who I have a completely irrational dislike of. Dani Ceballos. Any time I see him on the screen I find myself unconsciously muttering ‘absolute state of that cunt’. Not even sure why. Ok, his new haircut is one good reason, but I felt like that even before he went with the pathetic tiny little top knot. I think he just sums up everything I dislike about Arsenal. Fancy dan, lightweight, overpaid fanny who people seem to think can play just because he was at Real Madrid. If Mesut Ozil is the living embodiment of modern day Arsenal, this fella is right there with him. What's worse right now, supporting Arsenal, Spurs or United? I'm gonna say Spurs I think, because at least the other two have some good young players whereas Spurs are stuck with Mourinho and his shit on a stick footy and excuse culture. Really you wouldn't want to be any of them though, the big shit bastards.

I’ll be honest, after an hour or so of this I was thinking that this might finally be the game where the streak ends. Not necessarily the unbeaten streak (although that did cross my mind), but the 17 game winning run felt as though it was in real danger. It just had the stench of ‘one of those games’ about it. We were below par, the opposition were performing well above themselves and it was a cold, windy horrible night. With the title already wrapped up barring the formalities, the stakes weren’t especially high and if we had dropped points it would have made no difference to the outcome of the title race. And yet it felt horrible. The idea of us dropping any points, let alone losing a game, was horrifying. Games shouldn’t be stressful when you’re this far ahead, but they are. It’s almost as stressful as watching us during us last year’s title run in. The feeling when watching our games is exactly the same. The only difference is this time we don’t have to suffer through City’s games as well. Doesn’t matter what they do now, they’re an irrelevance. It’s just about us now. Some of you reading this will say you’re not bothered about going unbeaten. Some will argue that once the title is won we should be resting players for Champions League games (assuming we get past Atletico) and even the FA Cup. My head can go along with that, but my heart is a different matter. I don’t just want to go unbeaten, I don’t even want to draw any games. It’s greedy, unreasonable, perhaps even unrealistic. But there it is. That’s how I feel. Irrational as it might sound, a draw would feel like the end of the world at the moment. You know whats great though? As much as I feel like that, it’s nothing to how the players themselves feel. Take how I feel about us dropping any points and magnify it by a hundred and you still won’t match how the players feel. None of them will say it of course, because it would sound cocky and be seen as disrespectful to the other teams we face. That’s how they feel though. They don’t have to say it because it shows in how they approach every game. So many times this season they could have settled for a draw or even accepted a defeat, knowing that it’s “not a big deal” given how far ahead they are. They never do though. They’re desperate to win every game and I bet you that in their quieter moments some of them look back at that draw at Old Trafford and fucking fume about it. It’s that relentless drive that keeps seeing us through when things get hairy. It’s a cliché but this is a game we’d have lost a few years ago. The last game we lost at Anfield was 2-1 against Palace and there were a lot of similarities with this game. The big difference was this time we found a way to win it. That’s what we do now. I actually feel a little guilty for doubting them. I sat there at 1-2 with mixed thoughts. The over-riding one was that this just had the feel of a game that wasn’t going to go our way, but then there was the voice inside telling me “show a little fucking faith in them you shithouse”. We’d come through much worse situations than this after all. So why did it feel like this was going to be the one that finally tripped us up? After all, it had started well enough and we’d taken an early lead through Wijnaldum’s header from a stunning cross by Trent. West Ham’s equaliser just seemed to knock everyone for six, not least because it came from a corner and they looked like scoring every time they had one. Defensively we looked unsettled all night while it wasn’t clicking at the other end. The law of averages suggests that we can’t just keep winning every single game regardless of performance, yet these lads keep finding a way to defy that law of averages. Klopp’s assessment afterwards was that West Ham’s best hope of troubling us was second balls and set-pieces and that we were not good enough on either. He’s right, but on the set-piece issue I think you have to look to what West Ham did well rather than what we were doing badly. The delivery from Snodgrass was sensational. It’s really hard to defend balls like that, especially when West Ham have so much height in there. I looked in the box and saw Diop, Ogbonna, Rice, Antonio and that Czech lad. All big bastards. We had only Virg and Fabinho who stood comparison. So it’s not easy. The main problem for me was we gave them so many corners. I didn’t think they’d be able to get forward as often as they did and with the numbers they did. I under-estimated them because Moyes is normally such a fucking coward. I expected them to come here and just try and keep the score down, like they did at City last week. Instead they had a go and it seemed to take us by surprise. I didn’t even feel like either of their goals came out of the blue. I wouldn’t say they had been coming but they weren’t a total shock either. Their equaliser came after a little flurry of corners. They went close with the second one and I think it was from the third that Diop scored. Alisson maybe could have done better on that, although I think he saw it late. They had a couple more corners after that and I had flashbacks to when my arse would be twitching any time the opponent had a set-piece. I don’t miss those days one little bit. So anyway, level at half time and I’m relaxed about the whole thing even though we didn’t look like ourselves. Let the analyst nerds do their thing and show the lads what they’re doing wrong and we’ll be fine. Then after ten minutes we go behind. That wasn’t part of the plan. Shitty goal to concede as well. Just a hopeful cross in, and Fornels had somehow found himself in a few yards of space. He scuffed his volley but it went right in the corner and Alisson had no chance. As soon as that went in Klopp signalled to Ox to get ready. I think we all knew who would be the one to make way. There were only two options really and it was never going to be Gini. So off went Keita and on came Ox, and immediately we began looking more like ourselves. Whether it was Ox that was the catalyst or merely the fact we’d fallen behind, it’s impossible to tell. The game changed from that moment though and the crowd came alive. West Ham had some incredible escapes and the thought was niggling away that this would be the night when nothing fell for us. We’ve made our own luck but we have had luck during this amazing run. You can’t have a run like this without catching some breaks along the way, and we undoubtedly have done. And we did again. It’s incredible really. We benefitted greatly from a rare, almost inexplicable off night from one of the league’s best goalkeepers, but even if Fabianksi hadn’t fumbled that one in from Mo I still think we’d have won the game. It’s almost force of will at times. The boys just pushed and pushed until eventually West Ham cracked. I keep saying it, but it must be an absolute nightmare to play against us. You need to be at your absolute best and you need several of our players to have an off night. And you need luck. Even then it isn’t always enough. Just ask West Ham. It was far from vintage from us but we still put together some great moves and created clear chances. The Hammers goal led a charmed life at times. I still don’t know how the ball didn’t go in when Salah’s shot deflected off Fabianski’s boot and Bobby headed against the post from about an inch out. It’s not happening for him at Anfield at all at the moment. He put a shot over at the beginning of the second half, he headed over from a corner, he had that one against the post and even on the winning goal for Mané the ball just went over Bobby’s head when he would have had an empty net to put it into. I thought the catalyst for the win was the two full backs. They made all three goals and they provided a stream of dangerous deliveries into the box. Trent especially seemed to be at the heart of everything. Not all of his crosses were perfect, but enough of them were. Robbo did brilliantly for the equaliser too. It was a great ball by Ox to hit him in stride, but the way Robbo surged past his man and then got his head up to pick out Mo was fantastic. I was a little surprised later on to hear Carra talking about how many world class players we have and not mention Robbo (or Fabinho for that matter). If Robbo isn’t a world class left back then who is? I’d say it was fairly obvious that we missed Hendo though. Not just because his replacement didn’t set the world alight, but you could just tell that Henderson wasn’t there. A lot of what he does is almost unnoticed, but it was noticeable in this game because he wasn’t there doing it. Teams can’t usually counter attack against us because he’s always there picking up second balls, covering spaces and generally just filling in whatever gaps appear. He does this regardless of whether he’s playing the ‘six’ or the ‘eight’. Without him, there were gaps everywhere and a better team than West Ham might have exploited them more. We missed him with the ball too. His passing is massively under-rated, especially those long diagonals in behind to Salah and (especially) Mané. Then there’s his leadership and the urgency he brings. I thought it was quite glaring how he missed all of the things he brings. Still, we should be able to beat teams like West Ham without him and in the end we did. It took the introduction of Ox to inject some life and urgency into us though. As I say, Keita wasn’t especially bad but he just didn’t do enough. He’s a nice little player, he floats around with his little give and go’s and he’s sneakily good at winning the ball back when we lose it. Not with crunching tackles, but he seems to be able to just get a toe in here and there and nick the ball away. So I’m not bashing Keita, but this was a chance for him to stake a claim with Hendo out for a little while, and he didn’t do it. The difference when Ox replaced him was immediate. We’ve seen that before from Ox. Sometimes he’ll just come on and he’s immediately like “give me the fucking ball and I’ll show you how it’s done”. I love that about him. He brings instant tempo and he gets the crowd going too. Sometimes that’s all it needs. Just one player to show some thrust and urgency, and all of a sudden the fans are like “yeah, that’s more like it, let’s fucking do these”. Ox came on, he picked the ball up and he ran forward at pace and had a shot. And that changed everything. It led to a spell of relentless pressure where it felt like we forced a dozen corners in about five minutes. West Ham were hanging on desperately but you knew they were eventually going to crack because the pressure being applied to them was relentless. They did eventually crack. Well, Fabianksi did anyway. He will probably never do that again for the rest of his career. That’s how it goes sometimes. Mo had a brilliant effort in the first half that deserved a goal but was brilliantly saved by Fabianski. And then he lets one in like that from the same player. It’s a tough life being a keeper. There was loads of time left for us to get the winner and at that stage I was fairly confident that we’d do it. In the back of my mind though I always felt that West Ham had another goal in them. We just didn’t look secure and the threat of Antonio loomed almost as large as the shadow he cast. I swear that lad gets wider every time I see him. He’s fucking massive. We’d gotten lucky with the equaliser and the winning goal was somewhat fortunate too. Trent did very well to loft the ball in for Sadio at the back post but he was only able to get in behind in the first place because a speculative shot by Gomez looped up off a defender into his path. What Joe thought he was doing shooting with his left foot from 30 yards only he knows, but it paid off. Shades of Big Virg there on the Origi derby winner. You can understand why fans of rival clubs are doing they nuts and calling us all the spawn twats under the sun. Shit, we did it with United for years. It is luck, but it’s also sheer force of will and a refusal to accept anything less than a victory. United had that for years and we’ve got it now. If you keep pushing, and keep believing, eventually you’ll make something happen. And because of that it’s a self fulfilling prophesy. It’s not a co-incidence that rival players (especially keepers) are making errors. It’s the psychological pressure of playing against an opponent this relentless. Normally you’d think “game over” once we’d turned it around like that. Not this time. Not me anyway. I still thought West Ham had another goal in them. Moyes had introduced Haller up front and switched Antonio to the left. And after that, literally the only thing they did was play the ball to him and hope he could make something happen. I like him. He’s a good player and if he could stay fit for an entire season West Ham wouldn’t ever be in relegation trouble. He’s so important to them and they’re a completely different proposition when he plays. Take him away and what do they have? Seriously, just imagine if he hadn’t played in this game. I don’t think they’d have even been able to get out of their own half. He’s such a handful that any hopeful ball played up the pitch has a chance of finding him (and not just because he takes up half the width of the field). He chases everything, he’s lightning quick and he’s hard to shake off the ball. Don’t get me wrong, he’s nowhere near as terrifying as Adama Traore, but you always have to be wary of him. There is nobody else at West Ham who would have posed us any threat, even though I thought they played well as a team. I’ve watched a fair bit of them this season and they’re usually fucking terrible. The defence is a joke and going forward they’re not much better. So I didn’t think they had a performance like this in them. They defended really well and they were intelligent in how they broke. And when they did break they got plenty of men forward. Fair play to them, they were miles better than I expected them to be and if they’d gotten a draw I couldn’t have begrudged them it. That’s not to say we didn’t deserve to win, as we clearly did. If we hadn’t won though we could have had no complaints as the Hammers gave it all they had, and they’d have snatched a point late on but for the brilliance of Alisson. What was the five minutes of stoppage time all about by the way? You never get five minutes unless something out of the ordinary happens, and nothing out of the ordinary happened so how did they get five minutes? Of course, Jon Moss actually played even more than five minutes, the bum. He was poor, as usual. I thought we had two good penalty shouts for handball waved away by him but VAR wasn’t interested either. The worst decision of the game was when a raking pass by Trent to Robbo was headed into touch by a West Ham player and Moss gave them the throw in. I don’t blame him for that though as he wouldn’t have seen that clearly. The linesman on the Main Stand side saw it though. I know he saw it because he had the same sight line as me and it was glaringly obvious. I hate that. So many times you see it now, where the linesman has a clear view of something but gives nothing because presumably he’s under instructions from the ref not to. Winds me right up. Also, can I just say that I hated the Matip for Mané substitution in stoppage time. I understand the logic behind it, but I hated it. I always hate it when Klopp does that because I always fear it’s going to backfire. It nearly did, as Matip gave away a late free-kick that might have cost us. It’s really hard to come into a game that late and immediately pick up the intensity of the game. Matip comes on cold and is immediately having to deal with a rampaging Antonio. That’s a tough task. Like I say, I understand the thinking behind it as it’s an insurance policy against set-pieces and long balls. West Ham had half a dozen really big lads in the side so it makes sense to get Matip on, but I just never feel confident when we do things like that. It’s a minor gripe though. That’s all we have these days though isn’t it? It’s hard finding anything to moan about. I commented on that before the game to a couple of the lads when I caught myself having a right old fucking whinge about us having two centre backs on the bench while Curtis Jones is banging in a hat-trick for the u23s earlier in the day. I stand by my gripe. Jones is so fucking good and his current form is sensational. He should be on the bench and we should be looking to get him on the field any time we’re a few goals up. We don’t need Lovren and Matip on the bench, especially when Fabinho is on the field to provide extra cover at centre back if needed. It smacks to me of just picking the senior players regardless of position, simply because it’s easier to overlook the kids as they won’t see their arse over it. Even if we disregard Jones for a second, Neco Williams would have been a more sensible choice than having two centre halves on there. So I went off about that big time while walking up to the ground, and that’s when it suddenly hit me. We’re so fucking amazing these days, that THIS is the only thing I have to moan about?? We’ve come such a long way. We might be living through the greatest time in the club’s history depending on how the next couple of years play out. The debate on Sky afterwards was who are the greatest team in English football history. They went with Paisley’s great side of the late 70s. I can’t really be arsed going into it too deeply here as that’s probably an entire article on it’s own for another time (maybe this summer). What I would say though is this current team is doing something nobody else ever has. They’ve taken 109 points from the last 111 available. Over the last two years they’re going to be averaging over a hundred points a season and will have played in two (possibly three) Champions League finals. They’ve matched the record for the most consecutive wins and are closing in on Arsenal’s record for the longest ever unbeaten run. What we’re seeing at the moment hasn’t ever been done before and this team is nowhere near peaking yet either. As I say, what we’re living through right now is something that will be talked about for generations to come. Final word is on the atmosphere. It’s a weird one this because everyone who wasn’t at the game seemed to commenting on how terrible it was. Most seemed to say it was flat, quiet and reeked of complacency. Yet Trent and Klopp both spoke glowingly afterwards about how the fans played their part in getting us over the line and the atmosphere was great. I can’t speak for how it came across on telly but it just felt like a normal league game to me. It wasn’t great in the first half, but it was no quieter than normal either. After we went behind the crowd responded and did what was needed. In an ideal world Anfield would be rocking for ninety minutes every game, but that’s just not realistic. We’re twenty odd points clear so of course there’s going to be an element of complacency there from the crowd. It’s not even complacency so much, it’s just that everyone feels relaxed now. It was only when it looked like we were in danger that the fans showed up, but the same can be said of the team. West Ham fans had some fucking balls on them singing “where’s your famous atmosphere” though. These are the only fans I can ever remember who didn’t even cheer the names of their players when the teams were read out before kick off. I couldn’t believe it. Peter McDowell is reading out the teams and there was utter silence as he went through the Hammers line up. No cheers at all. I’ve never, ever experienced that before. Then it gets to 1-1 and they start singing. Granted, it was funny when they mimicked us with “we’re gonna win the league” (we’d sung that after going 1-0 up) but sorry lads, you don’t get to mock the Anfield atmosphere when you can’t even be arsed cheering the names of your team as they’re read out. I’m a little conflicted when it comes to West Ham. On the one hand I want them to go down because I fucking despise their Tory owners and David Moyes deserves nothing but misery. On the other, I respect Mark Noble for the loyalty and love he’s got for his club (and obviously for his mum, his queen and his country, Gawd bless ‘im), and I feel quite sorry for their fans as they’ve been given a right shitty deal. They lost their home and they’ve been saddled with Moyes so I feel bad wishing any more misery on them, especially as in terms of the London teams they’re probably the least offensive (I don’t mind Palace either), but I’m not gonna lie, if Moyes gets relegated and Sullivan, Gold and Brady all end up massively out of pocket then I’ll enjoy it. Star man is Trent, with honourable mentions to Gini (who stepped it up massively when we needed to up the pace), Robbo and Ox. Also to Alisson for being there when we really needed him at the end. What a fucking man he is. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Keita (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Wijnaldum; Salah, Firmino, Mané (Matip):

Saturday Feb 15: Norwich 0 L 1 Another win churned out. Wasn’t pretty, we weren’t anywhere near our best, but the result was never really in doubt. It took us 78 minutes to score and yet I always knew it was coming eventually. That’s the mark of how great this team is. You can keep us at bay for a while, but you can’t do it indefinitely as eventually we’ll find a way. Not sure we would have if Mané hadn’t come on mind, but we’ll never know. Sadio is fucking incredible these days isn’t he? That goal was stunning, but we’re so good and we score so many great goals that ones like this are almost run of the mill now. Norwich played like a team who knew they hd no chance and just wanted to keep the score down. Stark contrast to the fresh faced, enthusiastic, innocent side who came to Anfield on opening night and went down swinging. It’s a better league with them (and Daniel Farke) in it, but unfortunately their days are numbered. Meanwhile, on this day 19 years ago we beat Roma 2-0 in the Stadio Olimpico. I know this because the excellent LFC History website tweeted it out. Nothing from the club though, which goes back to what I was saying last week. It’s ridiculous. You can’t airbrush Michael Owen from our history, not unless you want to remove those trophies from the trophy wall that he helped us win. That night in Rome is something he doesn’t get anywhere near enough credit for. I remember interviewing Carra a few years after it and he was saying how Owen wasn’t supposed to play because his ankle was fucked. Heskey was meant to lead the line but was complaining about some minor knock and to everyone’s astonishment (and in some cases disgust) he ruled himself out. Houllier had to then to turn to Owen and he played through the pain to win the game for us. We went on to win the trophy that year, and no-one contributed more to the cause than Owen. For the club to completely ignore all that is just fucking weird to me. Sunday Feb 16: Todd Cantwell? Fuck off, not on my watch. Firstly he’s not that good. He’s not bad, but he’s no Curtis Jones. Secondly, I can’t stand even looking at him. His face winds me up and I don’t like the fact his hairband is white. I also don’t like how he wears his socks, how he runs, how he talks, I don’t like how he’s called ‘Todd’ because outside of America nobody called Todd has ever been famous for anything. Most of all, I don’t like his diving. If we sign him then all the titles and Champions League in the world won’t be enough to spare Jurgen from my wrath. Tory looking Jack Grealish. Steer clear. Meanwhile, Tim Sherwood, my guy, went full on yer Da when talking about Klopp and his use of a specialist throw in coach. Wednesday Feb 19: Timo Werner scores the winner against Spurs and then all but confirms he’s coming here. Of course he didn’t say it exactly, but it wasn’t your typical bog standard response to being asked about speculation of Liverpool being interested. There’s defo something afoot here. I’ve said countless times I want Mbappe, but from an FFP perspective signing Werner is a no brainer. He’s got a £50m release clause which is less than half a Sancho and probably a quarter of an Mbappe, especially when you factor in salary. The possibility of coming to some kind of arrangement with Nike to help finance it is probably a non-starter now that City are ‘keeping a detailed dossier’ on their rivals financial activity as even if that was done above board they’d kick up such a stink about it. So I’m resigned to it being Werner. And he’ll probably be sensational because Jurgen doesn’t get these things wrong. Thursday Feb 20 Some 10 year old Manc is in the news after getting a letter from Klopp. The spoilt little fucker wrote to Jurgen asking him to stop winning as it’s upsetting him. Jurgen wrote back with a charming letter and now everyone is talking about it like it’s this wonderful story. Just me who thinks he either should have ignored it or replied telling him to fuck off then? Ok ok I know, it was a nice touch. Ignore me. I’m just pissed that I’ve never had a reply from him even though I write to him once a week asking him if he wants to come round for tea and watch Rocky movies with me. Actually I did get a reply once, from the club’s legal team threatening me with a restraining order. Yet this little fucking manc gets a reply???? Pfffft. Friday Feb 21: The u23s beat Huddersfield 3-0 in some cup competition. No idea what it is, there seem to be loads of these random competitions now. The Melwood lads didn’t play tonight but Hoever was in the side, which seems a little odd. Is he not part of that group with Williams, Jones, Elliott etc now? The goals were scored by Millar, Van den Berg and Hardy. Hendo is out for three weeks, meaning he’ll almost certainly miss the second leg. He’ll be missed, but that might be a game when we need a little more invention than the favoured trio of Hendo, Gini and Fab give us. Time for Keita to make his mark I think. Hilarious cryarsing from Sterling today about City players being overlooked in Player of the Year awards. ”Especially in the last year where we have won the domestic quadruple including the league, to not have a player winning PFA Player of the Year kind of speaks for itself really.” Quadruple!!! Hahahaha he’s counting the Charity Shield, the bad whopper. Also, ‘including the league’. You won by a fucking point, and the team in second lace had by far the best player in the league. You didn’t vote for him because you’re a cunt. He voted for you because he’s not. "The award was given to a Liverpool player who had a fantastic season but I look at previous seasons as well when Yaya Touré scored 20 goals from midfield and he didn't win Player of the Year. Also, Sergio Agüero has been at the club for more than seven years and has scored unbelievable goals during this time, yet none of City’s players have won it.” Sergio Aguero misses around two months of every season through injury. That’s why he’s never won it, great player though he undoubtedly is. "I think that certain players are not treated in the same way when they are from different football clubs across the country and across the world over the past few seasons. The first year we won the league, De Bruyne was unbelievable and they gave it to another player.” You signed for a little club mate, that’s just how it is. Do you think if Eibar were taken over by some oil cunts and cheated their way to a load of titles that they’d be treated the same way as Barca and Madrid players? No, because they’re still a small club. "Every year we win a major trophy and it's given to an opposition player. It's that sort of thing that doesn’t depend on us, but we keep going." Yeah you keep soldiering on little Raheem, don’t let the bastards get you down. Soft cunt. "It is impossible to win the league for four or five times and none of the players were Player of the Year. Every team which wins the league has a player who wins Player of the Year, for sure. So, this year Liverpool win the league and a Liverpool player will win the Player of the Year for sure. We win the league for five times and we were not treated with the same respect." You haven’t won the league five times. Clearly counting isn’t your strong suit. Thankfully you’ve Aidy for that, eh? What a disloyal little fuck he is though. In one breath he’s bemoaning the lack of respect Man City get, while in the other he’s disrespecting Man City by talking up Real Madrid and refusing to rule out a move there. Not only that, he’s on the front of AS with a City shirt on one shoulder and a Madrid one on the other! And he talks about a lack of respect!! Fuck me, he’s the absolute worst isn’t he? Gonna be funny when he drops City like a bad habit and their fans realise what we’ve known all along. Also today, the regular monthly “Karius headed back to Liverpool / Karius to join Besiktas” story. So bored of this, wish they’d make their fucking minds up. All his “he loves he loves me not” shit is pathetic. Turkish clubs are a fucking nightmare aren’t they? Even worse than dealing with Italian clubs. Just a massive pain in the arse. Karius is defo running down his contract and leaving on a free, because no-one is going to buy him. Unless…. quick, someone get Eddie Howe on the phone. ...and that was the week that was.

The weekend kicked off with a controversial game at Molineux as Wolves found themselves on the wrong end of another bizarre VAR decision as they were held to a goalless draw by Leicester. When Willy Boli headed in there was not a soul inside the stadium (or watching on TV) thought for a second there was anything wrong with it. Usually you have an inkling that VAR is going to take a look. It doesn’t always mean the goal will be ruled out but usually you have an inkling if something might be looked at and it's enough to make you hold off on the celebrations. Sadio’s winner at Norwich for example. I didn’t think it was a foul but I knew they’d be looking at it. This one though, there was hint of anything and not even the Leicester players appealed for a possible offside. For all the cryarsing about it though, technically it was the correct decision. You can argue all day about whether goals morally should be disallowed for that, but by the current laws of the game that was offside and Wolves don’t have a leg to stand on. Nuno Holy Spirit handled it with his usual good grace, and Conor Coady handled it with his usual arrogance and bitching. He remonstrated with Mike Dean as they left the field at half time and the ref admitted he didn’t know who was offside or why, he was just going by what he was told in the headset. Seeing Coady continually whining about VAR decisions this season has been a guilty pleasure of mine. He’s arguing about black and white shit. Offside is offside, regardless of whether he likes it or not. He was crying about the one that was disallowed at Anfield, and also wanting a handball when there wasn’t one. I’m sick of him spouting off when the officials have gotten the decisions right. What does he want them to do, ignore the rules just to suit him and his team? The disallowed Boli goal was a bizarre one but when VAR looks at it and puts their little lines in and the player is offside, there is no other option than to disallow the goal. Do we want to see goals disallowed for THAT? No, of course not. It’s ridiculous and there are probably at least 20 goals this season that have been disallowed that would never have been ruled out in the past. That’s a problem but haranguing referees over it is stupid as it’s not their fault. I'm all for giving them shit over their own mistakes, but this isn't that. The law definitely needs to change but until then VAR can only enforce it as it is, and like it or not (and I don’t think anyone does), Neto was offside. What does Coady want them to do, ignore the laws of the game just to make him happy? Fair play to him though, being in a shot with Mike Dean where you’re the one who is more arrogant and full of yourself is pretty much impossible for most people, but Conor pulled it off. Ronaldo might be the only man on the planet who can beat him on that front. Not gonna lie, if I had my way then Wolves would be on the wrong on VAR every week as I find it funny as fuck, albeit I do have sympathy for Nuno as he’s a top fella. Anyway, in summary Wolves had the better chances but couldn't score, and Choudhury finally got a red card that’s been months in the making. Reckless bastard him. Onto Saturday now and Southampton were surprisingly beaten at home by Burnley. I didn’t see that coming, but Burnley are fucking weird aren't they? They’re even more Bournemouth than Bournemouth. Seven games unbeaten, eight losses on the bounce, six game unbeaten run, seven games winless and rinse and repeat every season. I heard someone on the radio describe Burnley as a team that loses every game it’s expected to lose and wins every game it’s expected to win. That’s pretty accurate, although winning away at Southampton isn’t something I’d have expected them to do. Generally though that's what they do. They took the lead direct from a corner when Ings inexplicably moved out of the way of Westwood’s inswinger. No idea what he was thinking there but it was an embarrassing moment for him against his old club. Naturally he soon made amends with a thumping equaliser from 20 yards. 18 goals for the season now, great stuff from him. Southampton were doing all the attacking but they couldn’t make it count and out of nowhere Vydra blasted in a superb winner. That was his first goal since September 2018, which makes Benteke seem like Gerd Muller. In fairness he hardly ever plays. He plays more for the Czech Republic than he does Burnley, which is about as damning an indictment of the current state of Czech football as you’ll find. Onto Sunday now where both North London clubs were in action against relegation threatened sides. At Villa Park Toby Alderweireld put through his own net to give Villa the lead but then scored at the other end to cancel it out. Spurs were (correctly) awarded a pen by VAR. Reina saved from Son but was beaten by the rebound. Dean Smith wasn’t happy about it and he repeated an argument I’ve heard a few times lately but makes no sense to me. He said “forty thousand people in the stadium didn’t think it was a penalty, but it goes to a sterile environment and two minutes later a penalty is given”. What does the environment have to do with it? A foul is a foul, and that was a foul. Smith said it wasn’t a clear and obvious error, but it was. Refs can’t always see fouls clearly (especially when they’re registered blind, like Martin Atkinson) but it’s precisely for incidents like this that VAR was introduced. Fat Jon Moss was the VAR and he got it right, no doubt while saying “it’s not VAR’s fault you’re in a relegation battle”. (see what I did there? Gold that is. That’s why you pay your money). The one point Smith made that I agree with is that Atkinson should have taken a look at the monitor himself as that decision should really be made by the ref on the field. All VAR should be for in that situation is to tell him he might want to have a look as there’s a reasonable case that it was a foul. And it was a foul. It took a replay to show it as you can’t possibly tell in real time, but a foul is a foul. No point crying about it, but I do think it’s probably easier to take if it’s the referee on the field who makes the decision. Maybe that was the point he was trying to make, but as I say, I’ve heard it said a few times lately that it’s not right that someone who isn’t involved in the ebb and flow of the game is making decisions. I don’t really see how it makes any difference to the decision itself but I’m in total agreement that I’d rather the on field referee look at the monitor for any ‘judgement’ calls and leave the black and white issues to VAR. Engels (who had conceded the pen) headed the equaliser from a Grealish corner, but Villa’s hearts were broken in stoppage time when Engels missed the ball and Son ran through to win it. Mad how Spurs have had so many 3-2 wins since Mourinho came in. I don’t see them getting too many more though, not now that Son has joined Kane in the treatment room. That bus of Jose's won't be clocking up much mileage between now and May. As for Villa, the more I watch them the more I have to confess that Jack Grealish wins me over. I know I know, you’re disappointed in me but I can’t help it. I’m doing my best to fight it, as I’ve been ripping him for years and he looks like such a bad knobhead. The hair, the tan, the shinnies…. the fact he plays for Villa… all of that goes against him and it’s why I’ve always slated him. Yet it’s really hard to keep disliking him as he’s fucking brilliant and he gives everything he’s got every time he steps onto the field. I love his commitment and attitude. At the end of this game he went over to console Engels and it was just a genuine, heartfelt gesture. He’s been an inspiration to that team and if they stay up it’s entirely because of him. I feel as though this new found respect and grudging admiration I have will be short lived though, as come the end of the season he’ll be on the move and unless we buy him (unlikely, as we don’t need any more midfielders) then he’s going to be playing for the likes of United or Spurs and normal service will be resumed. He’ll be back to being a Poundland Lee Hendrie again. The other game on Sunday saw Arsenal wallop Newcastle at the Emirates. I watched the first half and Arsenal looked abysmal, so I was shocked when I checked back in later with a couple of minutes to go and they led 3-0. Even Ozil scored. That's how bad Newcastle must have been. Lacazette added a fourth in stoppage time and the celebrations for that were, shall we say, a little excessive. You’d have thought it was a winner in a cup final. Stuff like that really annoys me. That’s the problem with Arsenal’s players. They have zero self awareness. So often I find myself squirming at their lack of awareness of their reality. Look at where you are in the table lads. You have nothing to celebrate, you fucking bums. Arsenal’s squad is jam packed with fucking losers who just don’t get it. They’re genuinely embarrassing and it angers me far more than it should. Monday night was a fucking farce. I have no love for Chelsea but what a stitch up that was. A referee from Manchester and a VAR ref from Manchester. Seriously, how is that allowed to happen? Chelsea had two goals disallowed by VAR (one correctly, one not) but the main issue was that neither Anthony Taylor nor Neil Swarbrick felt that Slabhead Maguire should have been sent off for kicking Batshuayi in the balls. I’ll give Taylor a pass on that one because he might not have seen it and also because at least his shitness is consistent. He didn’t give a red card to Son the other week for more or less the exact same thing so at least there are no double standards there. He missed the Son one on Rudiger but VAR corrected his mistake. When that happened, virtually everyone other than Mourinho said it was the right call. So how come Maguire got away with it, especially as if anything the intent was even more clear in this one? Of course Maguire would later score, as he tends to do. The cunt did the same thing at Anfield last season when he also escaped a clear red card. What is it with this big fucking dope, has he got diplomatic immunity on red cards because he plays for England? Chelsea should be kicking up all manner of stink over this as what happened just wasn’t right. Their first disallowed goal was a scandal too. Fred pushed Azpilacueta into Williams. Yes, Azpilacueta then shoves the United defender in the back, but he couldn’t stop himself after being shoved by Fred. I don’t understand how you can give a foul against Azpilacueta there. I’ve seen it justified on the basis that Fred’s push isn’t enough to justify a penalty, so that has to be ignored and it’s the foul by Azpilacueta that has to be given. Bollocks. One foul only takes place as a result of the other. If Fred doesn’t push him then Azpilacueta can stop himself from running into Williams. I had missed the start of this game but I tuned in seconds before Chelsea 'scored' to make it 1-1. I was watching the replay as they did the VAR check and it seemed so obvious to me that I didn’t think there was anyway they’d disallow that goal. I was genuinely shocked but at that point I had no idea the VAR was a manc. I actually felt sorry for Chelsea and it takes a lot for that to happen. I want to hate Lampard but he’s made it really difficult as he’s been such a good guy all season, and even their team these days doesn’t really have any villains. Under Mourinho the first time around I hated every single one of the fuckers, but now? There’s no-one I actively dislike. They really can’t beat shite teams at home though and they seem to come unstuck in the same way all the time. Shit teams sit back and frustrate them, and then take advantage of set-pieces or counter attacks. That’s exactly what happened again. United are fucking shit and it seems like the only gameplan Solskjaer has it to sit back and try and play on the break. He’s had some decent results playing that way, especially against Chelsea, and it’s a black mark against Lampard that he hasn’t been able to figure out how to overcome that. In fairness to him though it’s not easy when you’re up against twelve men as well as the VAR official. Until someone actually lodges a formal complaint about manc refs being allowed to referee manc teams though this will continue. Mike Dean isn’t allowed anywhere near Liverpool or Everton unless we’re playing each other, and he isn’t even from Liverpool, he’s a Tranmere fan from the Wirral. So how come mancs are allowed to do City and United games? That’s the question other clubs should be asking, as Chelsea aren’t the only ones to have been on the receiving end of the manc mafia. Staying with the dishonesty amongst mancs theme, City had a predictably comfortable time against sorry West Ham at the Etihad on Wednesday. They won 2-0 without breaking sweat and Moyes seemed content to just not get battered. I often joke about Phil Foden and his token ‘eight minutes at the end of a game’ appearance stat padding, but it’s amazing how often it happens. He got six minutes at the end of this one. I mean, if the kid is as good as they’re trying to tell us he is, why don’t they ever let the little scrote play? There were more seats than fans on view, although obviously it’ll be listed as a full house on City’s books as the Sheikh buys up any unsold tickets. Apparently that's ok though. After the week they'd had I thought there'd be a show of defiance and the fans would show up in force to back their team. Maybe they stayed away in disgust at the cheating? What? It could be that. Ok ok I'm taking the piss. I'd actually respect any of them who did stay away on those grounds. The reality is they didn't show because it was West Ham in midweek in a re-arranged game. The ones who did show up sang “Fuck off UEFA, we’ll see you in court”. Always the victims, eh? Laughable that they think they’re being hard done to. Their own club hasn’t even denied any of the allegations, they’ve just launched a scorched earth campaign about how everyone has it in for them (and some are even playing the ‘islamophobia card’). Firstly, they’ve cheated. For years. They’re still cheating now in fact and the only reason nobody is talking about that (or investigating) is because the leaked emails only go up to 2016 or something. I read something about how they’ve been operating within FFP parameters these past couple of years but based on what? The fact there are no leaked emails to prove otherwise. Don’t believe for one second that they aren’t still paying people off the books, over inflating the value of sponsorship deals and having their owners subsidise the payment of those deals. Had it not been for their emails being hacked though they’d still be getting away with it. Secondly, not only are they cheating, but they’ve repeatedly lied to try and cover it up. And that’s what UEFA are getting them on. They cheated and they tried to deceive the authorities to cover it up. They haven’t denied it because they’re bang to rights. Yet their sportswashed fans think UEFA are the bad guys in all this and it’s a conspiracy to hold them back and protect the ‘big club cartel’. Fucking idiots. Looking at all those empty seats against West Ham I can’t help but wonder what some of the players must be thinking. Sergio Aguero and Kevin De Bruyne for example. They must be getting even more money than anyone realises, as these are players who could grace any club in the world, yet they’re playing in front of 25,000 morons for a club that nobody outside of Manchester gives a shit about. We got a full house for an u23 side playing League One opposition. If you’re a player at a top side you must look at that and then compare it to your own fanbase. Same with the trophy parades. I saw a quip made on Twitter that the difference between us and City is that the video of their trophy parade has a third of the views that one of Robbo and Milner talking about biscuits had. I’m sure our players know how good they have it here, but I reckon City players have to have noticed it too. It’s human nature. We know they’re well paid but I’d be willing to bet they’re making well more money than anybody ever suspected. If the ban is upheld and there isn’t a mass exodus, then we’ll know for sure, because realistically there’s no way ANY of those top stars (or Guardiola) would stay there without Champions League football. Still, maybe the ban will be a good thing for them. Those fans who were there in League One but have mysteriously fucked off might return, and who knows, maybe if all the rats flee the sinking ship then Foden might finally get to start some games.

It’s been so long I’d forgotten what a defeat felt like. It’s not nice. I don’t like it and I’m not taking it too well. I actually started writing this immediately after the game, which is not my usual approach as I normally like time to reflect before I do the report. I need to get stuck into this just because it’s cathartic. There’s a lot to get off my chest here and a shitload of things I need to vent about. Currently I’m trying to decide who I’m most angry with. Is it the ref? Their shithouse players? Simeone and his jack in the box shite on the touchline? Maybe it’s Steve McManaman. Yeah it’s Steve McManaman. He did my fucking head in all night, completely buzzing off Atletico, Simeone, Diego Costa… you name it he was kissing the arse of it. I see loads of Reds ripping him after our games but until now he’d never really bothered me (other than the ridiculous over pronunciation of any word ending with ‘ing’). Tonight though, Jesus Christ I wanted to strangle him. But if we’d played the way we can then I doubt I’d have even noticed how massively irritating he was. That’s the main thing here really. We didn’t play well enough and despite all the other things that got right under my skin, none of it excuses our lack of goal threat. We sometimes have games like this away in Europe. I can’t explain it but it’s definitely a ‘thing’. We’ve lost six of our last ten or something, which shows you it’s a ‘thing’ because domestically we’ve lost one game in the last hundred or something mental. I don’t know, I’ve lost count. This wasn’t one of those horror shows like we saw last season in Naples and Belgrade though. The performance wasn’t bad in a lot of areas but we just never looked like scoring. No shots on target apparently, although I’m not sure how they work that out when Mo had a goal bound shot headed away by a defender? I guess it only counts as a shot on target if the keeper saves it. They defended well and they’re probably the best in the business at that sitting deep and frustrating approach. That’s the reason they were the last team in the draw I wanted. I still expected us to go through comfortably enough and nothing has changed, but they are fucking horrible to play against and them scoring so early was the worst thing that could have happened. Proper fucking spawny goal it was too. I thought it was offside until about the fourth replay when I finally saw that it had come off Fabinho. Things like that can happen though. All it takes is one lucky ricochet or fortunate bounce and any team can concede, no matter how strong they are defensively. We responded well and took control of the game, but equally you can say they were happy for us to have the ball as they had their goal and were happy to keep what they had. It was all out defence for them from that moment on. I’ll be honest, after about 15 minutes I couldn’t have been more confident. There was no way they could keep us out for an entire game playing like that, surely? They did though. And I can’t even say they rode their luck either. They were as comfortable as it’s possible to be when the other team has virtually all of the possession. We did a great job of preventing them getting out and their counter attacking opportunities were extremely limited. That side of our game was good but we had no cutting edge at all, especially after Origi came on for Mané. Taking Sadio off at half time was a risk but I agreed with it. I’d have 100% done the same thing. He’d been booked for catching the right back with a stray arm and then he caught him again soon after. He was a proper fucking shithouse that right back and he was desperate to get Sadio another yellow. Scruffy twat. Bet Sadio can’t wait to tear him a new one in a few weeks. He was skating on thin ice here though. There wasn’t much in the second foul but the Atletico players were doing all they could to get him sent off. Sadio can get wound up on occasion and this was a bit like that Club World Cup final when Flamengo targeted him. Would he have got through the second half unscathed? I doubt it. Klopp was having none of it and subbed him to keep him for the second leg. Unfortunately Origi came on and looked like he’d never played football before in his life. The first 15 minutes he was on the field he was so bad that I’d genuinely have subbed him off. He was absolutely killing us. Every attack ended up with him either running the ball straight out of play or just passing it one of their players. In his defence, he’s looked fucking awful on the left wing all season. At centre forward he makes things happen but on the left he stinks. The problem is so does Ox. In fact, other than Sadio there’s no-one who looks good out there. I’m being deadly serious here when I say Curtis Jones needs some game time in the Premier League now to see if he can be a viable back up for Mané, because none of Ox, Minamino (early days I know) or Origi look like they can do it. Anyway, Origi was brutal but over on the other side Trent wasn’t much better. We were never going to get through the middle as they’re too strong and had too many bodies in there. The space was out wide, but we didn’t use it enough and when we did the quality wasn’t there. I’m trying to think of any real chances we had but I’m struggling. Mo fucked one up in the first half when the keeper kicked it straight to him. If he meant to pass to Bobby then it was a braindead decision as Firmino was ten yards offside. If he didn’t mean to (and I don’t think he did) then it was as heavy a first touch as you’ll ever see. He also had a shot headed away by a defender and missed with a header that went narrowly wide from a Gomez cross (showing Trent how it’s done), while Hendo had a couple of efforts that narrowly missed the target. We had two or three penalty appeals for handball but I didn’t think there was anything in any of them and I have no complaints on that score. So basically, we created fuck all really. We had loads of the ball but we did virtually nothing with it. The delivery from out wide wasn’t good enough, the passing from the midfield was too safe (did Gini or Fabinho play a ball forward all night?) and the forwards never really got into it. It was just complete and utter frustration. You could see our lads getting annoyed by the antics of Simeone and his players, but because it was only the first leg I also felt as though there was also a sense of calm. We didn’t get desperate and try to force things and that’s a good sign of the maturity in the squad. The attitude from the players is that it’s only half time and there’s an awful lot of football still be played in this one. Clop’s approach to substitutions also showed his mindset. In a one off game there’s no way he’d have taken off Mané and Salah when we were losing. No way. But he was able to do that because of the second leg. The ref though. Fucking hell. So, so bad. There were so many things he got wrong but two really stand out to me. The foul on Ox on the edge of the box, and the handball out wide by their defender which he inexplicably didn’t give and resulted in Klopp getting a yellow card for finally snapping and yelling abuse at him. The ref also stopped the game in the first half at one point because one of their defenders decided he needed to get his breath back after a sprint with Hendo. He wasn’t even injured, he was just out of puff and sat down for a breather! I couldn’t believe the ref stopped the game for that. It wasn’t the only time he did it either. As soon as Atletico’s players realised what they could get away with, they just became insufferable. Every single time we went near them they hit the deck, and 90% of the time the ref blew for a foul. In fairness, it really is a fucking hard job. Take the free kick he gave against Mo early on in the corner, when he dragged the ball away from the left back who just hurled himself to the floor and screamed. On first viewing I thought it was a dive but I wasn’t sure. It’s only when you see the replays that the magnitude of the cheating is really laid bare. That was fucking scandalous, but I find it hard to blame the ref for that because they make it look so convincing. Trying to determine what’s a foul and what’s a dive isn’t easy, and when there are sixty thousand fans screaming for free-kicks the pressure is enormous. So I can accept a lot of the mistakes he made, but the two I mentioned above are just inexcusable. You can’t get them wrong as they’re as clear as fucking day. Hopefully that inept cunt is nowhere near the second leg. I wish we were playing that game today. Having to wait so long is frustrating because I’m itching to see the lads tear into the cunts at Anfield. They are too, you can tell. The interviews with Robbo and Klopp were bristling with needle. They can’t wait to get them back to Anfield and nor can I. Let’s see if they can defend like that and shithouse their way through 90 minutes under the lights at Anfield. I can’t see it myself, I reckon the lads will be so up for that game they’ll just trample them underfoot and we’ll have to peel Simeone and his players off the turf, but we’ll find out in a few weeks. The praise they got from BT was way over the top. Don’t get me wrong, they defended brilliantly and their organisation and resolute, dogged, determination is to be admired. I have no problem with them being so defensive because you play to your strengths and that is theirs. I’ll be fucked if I give them any credit though because of all the other shit that goes with it. This reminded me of playing Mourinho’s Chelsea in 2014. The Gerrard slip game. It felt really similar. The great defending, the time wasting, the shithousery. The frustration I felt watching it. The big difference this time is we get another chance to put it right. And we will. Star man is Robbo. He didn’t have much competition to be fair. Hendo was decent, Gomez was good, and everyone else was below par (other than Alisson who did what he had to do well). Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Henderson (Milner), Wijnaldum; Salah (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Firmino, Mané (Origi):

Not the most convincing of scorelines but at no point did I ever feel that this result was in doubt. It always felt like just a matter of time before we eventually broke through their eleven man defence and it never looked like they were going to score. It was top versus bottom and the it was the biggest points difference ever at this stage. That says more about how great we are than it does about Norwich being weak in my opinion. They’re probably the best bottom placed club I can remember in years. They deserve credit for making us have to work for the result but I was a little surprised at how they played. I’ve enjoyed watching them this season and I thought they were boss at Anfield. They got hammered though so presumably Daniel Farke decided that all out defence was the way forward this time. They only lost 1-0 so I guess he’ll view that as being worth it. I did think they might have seen this as a free swing and thrown everything they had at us, but it was clear from the first minute that wasn’t going to be the case. It’s not like that approach works against us anyway, but defending doesn’t work either. It’s a case of pick your poison I suppose. If they’d attacked us it wouldn’t have ended well either, but that’s how they play and I expected them to play their football and go down swinging, like Southampton a couple of weeks ago. It was a good time for them to play us though as it feels as though we’re never any good when we come back from a break. I don’t have the stats to back that up and it might not be true, but the impression I have is that we’re always lacking sharpness when we’ve had a week off. The performance against Norwich was fine for the most part, but there was a distinct lack of sharpness in the final third. We dominated the game, looked strong at the back, passed it around well, but the clinical edge just wasn’t there until Sadio came on and transformed the game. The first half wasn’t that good as I don’t think we adjusted well enough to the weather conditions. You can’t hit those long passes over the top of defenders when the wind is as strong as that, but we kept trying it anyway. Klopp said the problem was that the midfielders weren’t expecting the defenders to hit it long and as a result they couldn’t get in position for the second ball. That changed after the break and we looked much more cohesive as a result. I’ve said before that’s one of the least talked about impressive things about us. The ability to analyse what isn’t working and how to fix it during the game is massive. It literally is a huge game changer because it’s changed countless games. We always seem to play better in the second half of games and this is a big reason why. It’s also because we just wear teams down. It’s hard to keep us at bay for ninety minutes as eventually the tiredness keeps in and the pressure we exert usually pays off. Norwich looked relatively comfortable in the first half but the longer the second half went the more you could sense a goal coming. I was getting impatient and frustrated but I always believed we’d score. It felt like we were just waiting for Mané to come on and win it for us, and that’s what happened. We could have scored prior to him coming on but we just weren’t sharp enough. Tim Krul didn’t have too much to do really. He tipped a shot over the bar from Keita, made a decent stop to deny Salah after some magic footwork from him, and he produced a great follow up stop to deny Keita from the rebound. Naby has to score there though. At the other end Norwich were rarely able to even get near our goal but they did hit the post through Tettey. Alison had that covered though, you can see he has his hands behind the post and was there if he needed to save it. It was only after Sadio replaced the ineffective Ox (love him as a midfielder but really not a fan of his on the wing) that we really looked like we had Norwich on the ropes. After that we were always going to win and we should have scored more than one. Bobby missed a sitter after an absolute killer cross by Trent. It came at him pretty quick but he’d expect to score that. I’m just glad he wasn’t looking the other way like he usually does with tap ins! Norwich managed to create one chance when Pukki shot straight at Alisson, but overall it was comfortable for us defensively. The only criticism of the performance would be the amount of times we got in or around the box and played a poor pass or cross. Norwich had so many players in there at all times though that it was like trying to thread needle with a shoelace. Bottom line is we found a way. Again. We’re so good now that it’s boring to everyone else. That explains the way commentators and pundits are clinging to irrelevant little things as talking points. Take the Alisson save in the first half for example. Great save, but anyone talking about that as being an important moment and proof that Norwich could have taken something from the game are missing one, pretty important detail. IT WAS OFFSIDE!! I’m fairly sure that wouldn’t have counted even if they’d scored as the replay made him look a fraction off, and if you add the VAR lines to it then he’d defo have been off. I guess they didn’t want it to be seen as offside as it would have taken away one of their few talking points. It’s barely been mentioned that it was offside by anyone other than Klopp. Why? Because otherwise there are no real talking points other than us winning yet another game. It’s understandable really, and it’s a backhanded compliment. It is boring for everyone else, I completely get that. Same reason there was hardly any mention of the stonewall penalty we didn’t get when Virgil was wrestled to the floor. I just don’t know how anyone can look at that and not give a pen. Fair enough that the ref may not have seen it as he can’t be looking at every player in the box, but VAR saw it and did nothing. Apparently there has not been a single penalty awarded by VAR in that scenario so it must be an agreement between the refs that they don’t over-rule on those incidents. It’s bizarre though isn’t it? No-one is arsed about the Virgil pen but there are some crying ‘foul’ about Sadio’s goal. “LiVARpool” again, eh? Thing is, Sadio’s goal was not given by VAR. It was given by the referee and VAR saw no reason to overturn it. Norwich didn’t complain, it’s just the mental element of fanbases like Everton, City and United. The theatrics from the Norwich defender when he misjudged the ball and felt a hand on him was just embarrassing. But they were doing that all day, especially that Cantwell cunt. We’ve been linked with him today. Fuck that, I don’t want that massive fucking fanny anywhere near us. I’ve been telling you in the round ups that I don’t like him. “Eton educated Jack Grealish” I’ve been calling him. Except Grealish is miles better and far less of a twat. This lad has that James Maddison vibe about him, and that’s not a good thing. He was throwing himself to the floor any time one of our lads went near him. I like this Norwich team (Buendia and Pukki especially) and I’d love for them to stay up, but Cantwell is just a shithouse and I have no time for him at all. It was hard for the referee and it seemed to me that he was falling for their gamesmanship constantly in the first half. After the break he let a lot more go and their fans started getting on his case. Overall he did ok but some of the jobsworth shit he was pulling on free-kicks and corners was irritating. Trent was booked for fuck all too. Cantwell again. Cuntwell. The finish from Sadio though. Wow. This fella has just come back from a hamstring injury, and here he is leaping high into the air, stretching his right leg to control the ball, and then immediately landing and lashing the ball in with his left. He’s ridiculous. Mind you, Bobby almost did something similar in the first half when he too plucked a Hendo pass out of the sky but before he could finish it a defender took it off his toe. The ability and agility of players these days is something else. I don’t remember many players back in the day being able to do shit like that as a matter of routine. Some could, but they stood out a mile because of it. The ability we see nowadays is off the scale, and not just from the top players. Which kind of brings me to another point that has been heavily discussed recently. How good (or bad) is the league this year? I think it can be best summed up like this. There is only one great team in the league, but the bottom teams are probably stronger than ever. Norwich are bottom but they’d have survived most years because they’re decent. The teams at the bottom are all packed with full internationals. The league as a whole isn’t weak, it’s probably as competitive this year as it’s ever been. The one outlier is that we’re the greatest side to have ever played on these shores and that is skewing things in the eyes of many. Take us out of the equation and the narrative would be totally different. The talk would be about what an exciting season it is and what a strong league it is. But because there is one team beating everyone and breaking records, some see it the other way. I just think that instead of bemoaning the poor standard of the league they should just laud what Klopp has done in turning this team into the greatest side in English football history. In terms of how we played, most were ok and some were very good. Not everyone will agree, but I thought Keita had a good game even though it was masked somewhat by the amount of times he gave the ball away in the final third. I agree some of his passing was sloppy but he is the one taking responsibility to try to play those difficult eye of the needle through balls in and around the box, so the success rate of those is always going to be low. He also missed a sitter which will is something else that will be held against him. I was pleased with him though, he did a lot of great work without the ball, he seemed to be popping up all over the pitch and I like that he’s taking responsibility. On another day a couple of those passes find their target and he has two assists and people are raving about him. I’ve just got a sneaky feeling that he’s going to do be a really significant player over the next few months. Hendo was the star man though. He was brilliant once again. His passing was sensational considering the conditions and he was always there picking up the pieces and winning the ball back. Even in the final seconds when Norwich were trying to force an equaliser it was Hendo back there on the edge of the box making the all important tackle. His standards are so fucking high this season. I could easily have given it to Mané though as he transformed the game and from the moment he came on I knew we’d find a winning goal. He’s just so good and so confident these days. It took him a while to go from very good to great, but he’s there now and you can tell that he knows it himself. There’s not an arrogant bone in his body, but he just looks so relaxed and comfortable in his greatness now. So on we go. The title was all but wrapped up long ago so now we turn our attention back to Europe. I know nothing about Atletico these days as from what I can gather half of the team has changed over the last year or two. I fully expect massive levels of shithousing from them though and therefore it’s going to be tough. I’d back us to beat anyone though so I’m looking forward to it. Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson; Henderson, Wijnaldum (Fabinho), Keita; Salah, Firmino, Oxlade-Chamberlain (Mané):

Saturday Feb 8: The wives of Hendo and Mo both gave birth in the last day or so, pretty much exactly nine months since we beat Barca at Anfield. The first thing that came to my mind was fair play to Hendo considering the absolute state he was in at the end of that game. Mo had the night off so obviously he was full of beans, but Hendo collapsed in a heap at full time, his knee was in bits and he’d been pumped full of pain killers, so that’s a proper captain’s knock that. Milner took to social media to congratulate Hendo and quipped “assist by Origi” and hash tagged it #cornertakenquickly. What a man. Meanwhile, the investigation into our supposed ‘hacking’ of Man City’s scouting database has been closed. City will be livid but there’s fuck all they can say, publicly at least, because they accepted a £1m pay off with a legal binding agreement on both sides to make no comment on it. City weren’t arsed at the time because we were shite and posed no threat. Then, a few days after a meeting of the PL clubs in which some, including us, asked the PL just what they were doing about City’s blatant breaching of FFP rules, this story resurfaced in the Times, six years after the actual incident. Some co-incidence that, eh? The investigation was dropped by the FA because of the amount of time that has passed and because City had already accepted a settlement. Liverpool admitted no wrong doing, but because they coughed up a million quid that sort of implies guilt. From what I’ve been told, there was no ‘hacking’ and that’s a proper disingenuous way of putting it. The way these scouting systems are set up, the higher up the chain you are the more access you have. So, if you’re Michael Edwards for example, you’d be able to log in and you’d have access to all the scouting reports from everyone beneath you. If you’re one of the scouts on the lower rung of the ladder, you only have your own reports. Dave Fallows left City but he never ‘hacked’ anything to get back in. If he could still see the reports from the scouts who worked under him, it’s clearly because they never revoked his access. It’s claimed that he was looking at the reports for players they were scouting, and I’m sure he was because why the fuck wouldn’t you? It’s unethical and you can argue it’s poor form, but it’s not exactly crime of the century is it? Which is why we gave them a million quid by way of apology. The only reason it even reared it’s head again is because we became dead good and also because City were wanting to deflect from their own cheating. Classic case of ‘whataboutery’. Sunday Feb 9: Man City’s game is postponed due to the weather, meaning we might have to wait a bit longer to wrap up the title, depending on when that game is rescheduled for. Be funny if they stick in the middle of their winter break. It’d be even funnier if they were actually in a title race and could cry ‘conspiracy’. Difficult to do that from 22 points behind, although I’m sure that won’t stop the loons on Blue Moon. Saw a tweet today from Pedro Chirivella in response to something the clubs official account had put out about him. I had a little look at the replies and saw some fella saying he’s not going to make it here because he doesn’t have the physicality and he’s a yard slower than the other midfielders. That’s probably true, but what possesses someone to be tagging the player in on something like that? If I ruled the world, I’d find out who he was and I’d send the boys around to give him a kicking. It winds me right up. If he wants to tweet his opinion on Pedro and say he won’t make it here that’s fine. No problem at all as we all have opinions and social media gives us a platform to express them. When you tag the player in though, seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? Not just any player either. A young lad who has been sensational for us when he’s been drafted in for these cup games. I had a look through his account and Pedro often replies to fans who message him, so that tells me he reads his mentions and will have seen what this goon was saying. I’m sure it won’t have bothered him, but it bothers me as there’s just no need for it. So many people in this world are just fucking turds. Monday Feb 10: Bernardo Silva says Man City gave up on the title too soon. "I think we got to a point one month ago where we gave up a bit too soon and that's why we're twenty-something points behind now. We shouldn't have done that and it was not on purpose. It was in our head, everyone was disappointed to be already ten or 15 points behind and our heads went a bit down. It's difficult because we're a team used to winning and last season we won everything in England.” First thing I thought when reading that was “Mentality Midgets”. "In the important moments we’ve not been as lucky as in past seasons,” he said. “We always concede in the last minute, Liverpool always score in the last minute. These little details in football make the difference." They’ve let in a couple of late ones and we’ve scored a few late ones, but it doesn’t account for 22 points worth of difference. You keep telling yourself it’s just bad luck though. Another day, another bullshit transfer rumour. Bayern want to sign Bobby for £75m. That would barely even pay for his teeth. Even if they doubled that I reckon Klopp would tell them to fuck off. Tuesday Feb 11: Published an article from my mate Chris on the site last night. It was a piece inspired by the Owen interview on Carra’s podcast last week and it was very much pro-Owen. As soon as I tweeted out the link for it I decided I wasn’t going to look at my mentions as I knew what to expect, especially when Carra and Owen both put it on their Twitter too, which always attracts way more of the lunatic fringe. Not liking him is fine, but it always makes me squirm when I see the words “Judas” and “Rat” thrown around. It’s what I expect from United fans. It’s the same mentality that has them booing anyone who has had any connection to us, no matter how small. If you don’t like Owen, that’s your prerogative, but the whole “once a manc never a red” thing just makes me cringe. Leave that bitterness to them. I said my piece on all of that last week so I’m not going to go over it again, but there was one point made by Chris that I hadn’t really thought too much about and now that I have it’s really pissed me off. How come the club’s social media account acts as though Michael Owen doesn’t exist? As I say, it’s not something I’d paid any attention to but Chris took issue that they’re more than happy to tweet Happy Birthday to Suarez or Torres or do one of those “on this day (insert number) years ago (insert player) scored this incredible goal” posts, but they never do anything like that for Owen. It’s actually fucking weird when you think about it. I mean look at today for example. They were posting “Happy Birthday to Steve McManaman” which is fine, as whatever people think of Macca and how he left, he was a great player for us and gave us some great memories. He also won two trophies for us, almost single handedly. Just like Michael Owen in fact, but where were his birthday wishes from the club? I’ve heard people saying Owen is a bit of a whiner and seems to feel sorry for himself. I agree, he is occasionally coming across like that when he talks about Liverpool and his legacy, but can you really blame him when he’s seeing the club try to airbrush him out of their history? Why not go the whole hog and remove some of those trophies he won for us from the trophy wall they’re so keen to keep showing us all? I get why some people don’t like him. I get why a lot of people are completely indifferent to him. What I don’t get is why the club are treating him differently to other ex players who left. If it’s because he played for Manchester United then that’s utterly embarrassing, smalltime, manc behaviour. We should be better than that. Wednesday Feb 12: Timo Werner rumours are really gathering pace. He’s been lighting it up in Germany this year apparently, averaging a goal a game and looking like a superstar. He’s a good age (24) and by all accounts is seen as a good fit for how we play. So why am I not excited by this in the least? Mbappe, that’s why. I’m setting myself up for one big disappointment this summer when he ends up going to fucking Chelsea or somewhere. Still, you just know Jurgen will end up bringing someone in who ends up being fucking incredible. It might even be Werner. Thursday Feb 13: Or maybe it will be Sancho? We’re said to be one of the teams to have contacted Dortmund to express an interest. I think I’ve written before that I’ve seen virtually nothing of him as I don’t watch England or Dortmund. I can’t actually remember ever watching him play at all in fact, although I’ve seen some highlights posted on social media. The price for him seems like something we wouldn’t pay. I could see us pushing the boat out for Mbappe, but going over £100m for Sancho when Werner is available at half that isn’t really our style. We’ll go big when it’s a hole that desperately needs filling (Virg and Alisson) but when you’ve got the best front three in the world it seems a bit silly spending that much on a player who isn’t better than what we have. Of course Sancho is really young and might soon become better than what we have, which is why I wouldn’t rule it out entirely. Friday Feb 14: Oh my God, this season is just too good to be true. City being banned from Europe for two years would be the biggest game changer I can ever remember. It would finish them. They’d lose Guardiola, half the players would fuck off, no top stars would want to join them and they’d just be damaged goods. And it would be 100% deserved, the arrogant cheating cunts. Still, it’s not all bad for them, as when everyone fucks off then at least boy wonder Phil Foden might actually get to start the occasional league game. And of course Raheem will still be there, as he’s always shown such incredible loyalty to his previous clubs. Seriously, as soon as this news broke I bet Aidy Ward was on the phone to potential new clubs. You know where I reckon Sterling is going to eventually end up? Old Trafford. Don’t ask me why, I just have a gut feeling. He’d have no qualms about going there and I don’t think anyone else would pay the asking price. A two year ban from the CL would be fucking catastrophic for City. They’d lose around £150m, which is a problem when you’re already struggling to comply with FFP rules. If they’re £150m down, they have to make that up somehow, and they can’t just concoct some fake sponsorship that comes out of the Sheikh’s pockets. And that’s even without the PL and FA getting involved. They may have sanctions of their own yet. I’ve said all along that it’s up to the clubs really. If everyone puts pressure on the PL to do something about it, they’ll have to. The thing that’s done my head in is that City’s cheating is seen by many as being ok because it only impacts the other big clubs. It doesn’t though, it’s fucked it for everyone. City have hoovered up all the domestic cups, meaning no-one else has had a chance. Look at what happened to Watford in the cup final. They were humiliated. Or Burton Albion in the League Cup semi. Had City played by the same rules everyone else is playing by then maybe some of the smaller teams would have stood a chance at winning a cup. This shit affects every club, not just the ones like us and United that have missed out on titles because of their cheating. It’s hard to shake the feeling that they’ll somehow wriggle out of it because money and power always wins. It wouldn’t shock me but then I think if UEFA didn’t believe they had a watertight case why would they come down so hard on City? If this decision isn’t upheld, then FFP may as well be fucked off completely as it’s utterly pointless. And if that happens, City will spend double, treble, what they did before because there’ll be nothing to stop them. The funny thing is though we’ll still be better than them as long as Klopp is here. and that was the week that was….

This Saturday sees top play bottom as the Reds make the trip to East Anglia to take on Norwich City. Despite their current position on the table, the Canaries have held their own against some of the big hitters in the division. Video producer for Total Football NR @ben_ambrose23 gives a detailed rundown of their season to date and explains why Daniel Farke is still seen by the fans as the man to lead them up the table. It has been six months since the two teams opened the Premier League season, so how have assessed your campaign and what has been the high and low point so far? As crazy as it sounds, I have been genuinely impressed with Norwich this season. If you look at the table you’d naturally assume that I’d be slightly more negative, but for me to assess the campaign so far you have to look deeper than that. The performances of the pitch have, in the majority, been excellent from Norwich. You look at games such as Newcastle at home, Man City, Spurs, Chelsea, Wolves and a few more and our performances have been superb. We’ve played with confidence, created some free flowing attacking moves that are very easy on the eye and scored some fantastic goals. But sadly not enough, which I’m sure I’ll speak about more later on. Beating Manchester City at home has got to be the highest moment of the season for me. How could it not be? This was a Norwich City team plagued with injuries, most noticeably with only one fully fit centre back. But, very fittingly, Norwich showed no fear and took the game to a Manchester City side that had just dominated England for two seasons, and quite comfortably might I add. The game was the best atmosphere I’ve ever been a part of at Carrow Road. Norwich set-up to play on the counter, but with style, and they absolutely nailed the plan. Obviously there was some luck in Man City wasting a couple of decent chances, but it was a fantastic and deserved win. For me, the lowest point was losing by a goal to nil away at Aston Villa. The game came towards the climax of what was a really unlucky spell for Norwich where we would take the lead in games, but not see it out. Of course, in that game we created some fantastic chances in the first half, some of which leaving me scratching my head as to how we didn’t lead by three or four at the break; again, much like the games prior and a few following. Given where Villa were at the time, it made it hurt more as it was a sign that we couldn’t even beat the teams around us. Fans closely dissect decisions made by their manager on a game to game basis, so how would you view Daniel Farke's performance across this season and has he maintained the faith of the supporters? If there’s one thing 99% of City fans agree on, it’s that we love Daniel Farke. The guy has come into this club, and worked absolute wonders with his colleagues on and off the pitch. His style of football, for me, is the way every team should strive to play, consisting of being brave with the ball and playing through the opposition, rather than over. That said, he’s not immune to criticism, of which there’s one piece I and a few others continue to give which is his substitutions. For me, he leaves them too late. If you look at the context of some of our defeats this season you’ll notice that we concede in similar periods within the second half, which has been costly this season. To address this I think Daniel needs to be looking to make more proactive substitutes to prevent this from happening, rather than reactive subs in the 80th minute and sometimes even later. You could argue it’s because of a lack of depth due to our financial situation, as well as the injury crisis that I’ve already alluded to. But every manager is open to criticism. Overall, Farke has our full support and will continue to for a very long time.. Can you talk about some of your players, which have greatly impressed the Canary fanbase in adapting to Premier League Football, and perhaps a couple who you need a lift from? There’s a handful of players that have impressed. You’ve got the likes of Emi Buendia, Teemu Pukki, Tim Krul, Ben Godfrey, Todd Cantwell and Max Aarons. I’ll pick out Buendia & Pukki as the two for me, for the same reason. That being they're two fantastic footballing minds. They might play in different positions, but the way they read the game is something that I haven’t seen with my yellow glasses on for a while. Their movement on and off the ball is what has been fundamental to the scoring of goals both this season and last season. Buendia is definitely up there as one of the best dribblers in the league, when you see him with the ball at his feet you get the sense that the man is destined for greatness. It’s almost crazy to think that he’s still only 23 years old. If he could add finishing to his game a little more, he’d be one of the best attackers in the league. Players who I think need a lift? That’s a tough one. Onel Hernandez would be one, and also Marco Stiepermann. It’s tough to say that as they’re both players who were so important last season and two of my favourite players coming into this season. But that said, it’s just not really worked out for them this season. Both play with little confidence, which shows on the pitch as they don’t look to offer the team much at this point. However, it can be argued that neither have had a fair run in the team, as well as enough time to be able to adapt to what is the biggest step up in football. Is there an opposition team that have impressed you more than anyone else this season and if so, what made them stand out? Well, I could take the easy road and say you boys; that I shall not and will instead opt for Sheffield United. Chris Wilder has done an unbelievable job and it’s important to stress that it’s no fluke either. For the past two or three years they’ve been knocking on the Premier League’s door and they finally find themselves here and my God they are taking advantage of it. Some of the business has been key this season, but it’s worth noting that before the season started most would’ve called Wilder crazy for some of it! You look at £15m on Mousset, who’d never scored in the Premier League and Oli McBurnie who was bought for £22m after a decent season in the Championship. But they’ve proven to be decent signings. Although, the most impressive aspect of their team has to be the players who’ve been kept in the team from the championship and done so well. John Fleck, Dean Henderson, Ollie Norwood, John Egan, George Baldock. It’s a credit to both themselves and the manager for finding a way to, not only adapt, but to thrive in the Premier League and I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised to see them finish in the top six by the end of the season. Any promoted team will testify to how difficult life can be in the top league. So in saying that, how do you view the performance of Sheffield United and do you think they can be the template for teams coming from the Championship on a seemingly low budget compared to their rivals? I wouldn’t say Sheff Utd have a low budget, as they have splashed out on a few aforementioned names, but they’re definitely a team to study and to learn from. I’d look at the way they play instead, in that their speciality is not conceding which at any standard is vital; especially in the Premier League. Wilder quite clearly focused on that in the season, which saw them promoted, and they are reaping the rewards of it now. They have a clear no-nonsense approach to defending, which is as simple as the fine balance between clearing the ball and playing your way out. It’s as simple as that. It was then a matter of if they could add goals and with a few decent signings, they have. Currently seven points from safety, is there a belief among your fans that Norwich can produce the great escape? ‘The great escape’ is a phrase ringing around Carrow Road both in the mouths of those with genuine belief and those who mock the idea. Football is a funny old game and it would be naive to just write Norwich City off, despite no team ever coming back from this position before. Although it’s worth mentioning back in the 04/05 season Norwich almost pulled off the unlikely in the PL until we got battered on the final day of the season at Craven Cottage. However, given our consistent conceding of cheap goals I think it’s fairly unlikely, although that said if we were to take a few more of our chances, which is easier said than done, then I couldn’t see why we wouldn’t have a good go. What are the games left on your fixture list that you have earmarked as potential 'six pointers? Every single game for the rest of the season is a must win, given our position. It’s as simple as that. While many would see this fixture as an insurmountable challenge for Norwich, it can also raise a team to inspirational heights. What you you like to see from your team and from those supporters wearing yellow and green colours inside Carrow Road on Saturday evening? From the team, I would love to see bravery on the ball, much like we saw at Anfield, back when the sky was more blue than grey. From the fans, I’d like to see relentless support through a fantastic atmosphere. Of which is a given. Norwich’s support at Carrow Road over the past two seasons has been the best it ever has. I genuinely believe we’ll see another fine display from the fans in the ground, as well as a performance to match it on the pitch. Best of luck to you guys for the rest of the season, you deserve everything that you’re going to win this season.