dave u

De Zerbi is not a Liverpool manager. He's a Chelsea manager. Absolutely nothing about the way he carries himself makes me look at him and think I could see him managing us. Stinks of Chelsea to me. I'd rather have Gary O'Neil than De Zerbi, and I don't want Gary O'Neil because it's not 2013 and that's not the market we should be shopping in given the current staus of the club and everything that is in place.

Agree with this. In an ideal world staying there another year and having a crack at the CL would be the best thing to do. Bayern and Real change manager every couple of years so those jobs will always be there for him at some point. Not sure ours will. If he wants to manage us (which he's always said he does) then now is the time. Irrespective of our situation, if he left Leverkusen for Bayern I'd think that's a proper shitty thing to do to Leverkusen. If he went to Real I'd think he's just an idiot looking for the easy win. If he stayed at Leverkusen I'd be gutted but would respect his integrity.

I'm a pretty forgiving type I think, so I can get past the whole joining Chelsea thing. Other players have done similar when we've been shit (and even when we've been good) and I've forgiven all of them. So Torres going to Chelsea no longer causes me to bear any grudge. I can't get past the whole "not giving a flying fuck and putting no effort in for six months before leaving" thing though. In fact, it may have been longer than six months, but whatever, he was absolutely not putting in a shift for a long time before he left and therefore he can get to fuck as far as I'm concerned. Owen, Suarez, Alonso, even Mascherano and Coutinho (who refused to play / feigned injury while they tried to force through a move), I can get past all of that because whenever they played they gave their all. There was no downing tools, so I still have respect and - in most cases - affection for them. When I think of Torres though, I don't think of the goals he scored. I think of him petulantly refusing to chase a ball played down the channel by Carragher in the early stages of a Goodison derby when we were under the cosh. And I think of him coming on against Arsenal for the last ten minutes for an exhausted Ngog who had ran himself to a standstill because we'd been playing with ten men since half time. I remember Torres came on and was walking about while Arsenal players passed it round him. I also remember the one time he looked like Torres during that spell was when Chelsea came to town and he was auditioning for a job. So yeah, that's what I remember about Torres, so he can fuck off with all of this "oh I love the Reds me" shite.

I mean, he could do worse than just send them out with that message for every game between now and the end of May.

Ok that's way better than mine, bravo!

No, I mean Alonso's people would have nothing to gain by it, so the story is bullshit. I know exactly why Bayern would be putting it out there, which is why I take no notice of anything coming from Sky Germany.

Exactly. When Chelsea are saying "too rich for our blood" you know it's pricey.

I'll add that if he does prefer Bayern then he's not the man for us anyway because he'd be taking the easy option and that would tell me he's not the man I thought he was. This job is perfect for someone with the ambition and balls to want to take it on. If Xabi doesn't take it this summer, he should never be offered it again.

I don't think they would. There's no benefit to doing that. The smart thing to do is keep all options open and see how things play out. Even if he did prefer Bayern, there's nothing to be gained by putting that out there at this point, especially when he's in a title race against them.

900k is the rumour.

Yeah i agree completely, that's kind of what I saying earlier in the thread. The two games we've had with them recently are an exception to that in the sense that we weren't dragged down to their level and they didn't raise their level to get close to ours. We were vastly superior in both games (first 20 mins and then last 5 of this latest one excluded, I'm not including extra time) but didn't make it count because we kept making terrible decisions or when we made the right ones we fucked up the pass. It's completely infuriating, because if we got it right we'd be looking at a similar scoreline to last season at Anfield or the season before at Old Trafford. Just stop being shit in the final third, you knobheads!!

The only people he's likely to have spoken about this with are his wife and his agent. Maybe his Dad too if he's still alive. Fairly sure none of them will have been running off to tell sky Germany about it.

Not clever, I thought that was how you spell it in that instance. Should it have been weather the storm?

Petty and ridiculous. Sounds just like something I'd say.

This deserved way more rep than it got.

Absolute hero for what he and Big Nat did for us. As already mentioned, doesn't have the pace to make it here but he stepped up and performed above and beyond what we could have expected from him and he can hold his head up high when he leaves.

That's amazing.

In the first 20 minutes and then in the last five. There wasn't much effort in between that when our lads were in acres of space every time they got the ball.

They'll know how we're feeling, absolutely they will. I don't think these lads are insulated from that at all, they get it. My question would be what I said in the report. Do they know just how fucking embarrassing and inexcusable that was to lose that second half given how easy it was and how many opportunities they had to slice them apart? I hope they do, and they don't look at it as "it's away at Old Trafford, it's a tough game" because it fucking wasn't.

Ok I'm not explaining this properly. It isn't about under-estimating them. For the most part they were as shit as I expected them to be. Yes, they scored four. Two of those came when we were absolutely fucked in extra time and I'm completely discounting extra time from this. Some of the other chances were offside and wouldn't have counted (so ignore the laughably distorted XG nonsense), but it distorts how we view the balance of the game. What happened was they came out all guns blazing and caused us problems early on. They were good in that spell, no question. It's to be expected though. I could even see Everton doing that to us at home because they have to come out with fire in their belly but these plucky underdog sides just can't sustain that level of manic effort for very long. They punch themselves out and then rely on having a good shape, making it as difficult as possible and then hoping for counter attacks. United had counter attacks, but they did not make it difficult at all and their shape was hilarious. The better side just has to wether the early storm then take control, which we did. That second half was complete and utter dominance, because they are - and I can't stress this enough - proper shite tactically. There were gaps everywhere, it was like playing a kids team. At times Szoboszlai was in 20 yards of space between their midfield and defence, it was laughable. We beat them 7-0 last year and most of the failings they had then were there this time too. We were just sloppy and far too lacking in focus when it came to exploiting them. Us not scoring in that second half had nothing to do with them and everything to do with us. They did their best to let us batter them. Of course they still have players who can hurt you, and occasionally there were flashes of that (especially when we got tired), but this was not a game where the opposition played well above their usual level and we didn't show up. That's what usually happens in this fixture when a heavy favourite doesn't win, but this wasn't that. We drew here 1-1 when we won the league, it can happen when they raise their game and we don't. We've done it to them loads of times too when they were much better than us. I'm saying that didn't happen this time and the reasons we were so confident about this game were there for all to see. They were fucking awful from around 20-85 minutes and for us to not have put them away in that second half is scandalous really. We won't have more space in a game all season than we had in that second half. How many attacking overloads do you need to get a fucking goal? We had 5v2, at least twice we had 4v2 and there were probably half a dozen more where it was essentially 5v5 with a ball carrier running at them with passing options. That doesn't happen against a team that has played well and made it difficult for us. It didn't happen at Luton. Shit, it didn't happen at Palace or Sheffield United either. Even Burnley were more difficult to play through, and they're naive as fuck. Tactically this is the worst team we've faced all season and it's embarrassing that we didn't exploit it. We lost that second half 1-0. That's fucking incredible when you think about it. That's why we got beat, not because of extra time when half the team were out on their feet, our game management went to shit and they got their tails up. It should never have got that point because they were genuinely hopeless in that second half and they'd basically given up. They were beaten and they knew it, until it gets to 85 minutes and they're somehow only a goal down and they suddenly have hope. So Mark, you didn't under-estimate United and neither did I. United are exactly who we thought they were. This defeat is 100% on us.

But they were shit in this game, that's the point. None of this "form book goes out of the window". It has done in the past, for both sides. We've won games we had no right to based on the league table, but we did it by raising our game. That's not what happened here. They were shite and were really easy to play against. Not winning that game is all about us, nothing to do with anything they did.

We're getting City in the final. Nailed on.

Darwin and Mo to run wild and at full time me and Code will be like...

Very, very rare in your long lifetime that they've been as shit as this (and injury ravaged too) though. We have to do more than turn up to win, but not too much more.We'd have to be pretty shit to not win this. Which is possible of course, I just think it's unlikely.

Him sayING Slobozlai all the time is incredibly irritatING.