DaveT

45. Millwall

Hope you’re all feeling better. (Hope you kept the lurgy in Aughton!) Looking forward to the first retro report

'For once the horror show involving Ederson had nothing to do with his face.' Love it. 'Diega Cosat, the Elephant Man' got a brief airing the other night. All a bit uglyist, I know, but you just can't help but crack a smile.

Care in the Community ?

Wow! I must have been at a different match!

Didn't realise it was that gormless twat Kavanagh that sent off Ancelotti. Before going on to confirm his complete and utter twatishness on Tuesday night. Absolutely no-one will be surprised to learn that he comes from......... Manchester.

I think Burton, Rotherham, Port Vale, Oxford, Preston, Bristol City and others will be mightily offended by this comment.

Starting line up >£450m against mid-table Championship team. Pep the Cheque strikes again, well done, you.

Pretty much captures my feelings. Not arsed too much that we're out of the cup, I've only really got eyes for the league. But I am arsed about losing to that lot and in that manner. People talking about the treble a few weeks ago, when we were just at the 5th round of the cup, at Chelsea, and last 16 of the CL, against Atletico - that was just barmy. Everything about last night was shit. I thought we were the better team, probably up until Barkley scored, especially first half when we played some nice stuff. But it felt from the moment Adrian let in that goal it wasn't going to be our night. We missed a good few clear chances, made more and more mistakes at the back, every mis-cued or hacked clearance seemed to land at their feet and set up a counter. And the ref, jeez. He didn't affect the outcome, but he certainly didn't help us establish any momentum or give us the free kicks we should have had. Mane got man-handled and kicked throughout, Rudiger, Alonso and that horrible little cunt Azpilicueta taking turns. Even the BBC coverage was shit (not just the commentary - I turned that off) but the camers kept missing bits of play. It felt like Klopp was caught in between two stools and went stronger than he intended .... but not strong enough. He shoe-horned people into the wrong positions - agree totally with Dave re Origi. And Curtis has been outstanding for the u23s as the left-hand side of the front three. Need to put this right, starting Saturday.

Lovren was crap. Everyone was crap. First goal..... could Lovren have done better? But - should there have been another player in front of deeney? Trent and Ox seemed to be marking each other. Virg was caught on his heels, Sarr made up best part of 5 yards on Robbo. They were quicker in mind and body all over the pitch all game. Third goal - again, should someone (Fabinho?) have been in front of Deeney for that long punt? I'm thinking back to a couple of years agao at OT, where Lukaku out-muscled Lovren, knocked on for Rashford to leave Trent for dead and score - no-one in front of Lukaku, the way Lucas always used to do. Their 2nd - massively lucky - how does that ball stay in play, rolling along the touchline, against the camber of the pitch? And how does Deeney's pass get through Robbo and become the perfect through ball. Good finish, though, that lad gave us major problems in both games. Having said all that, 3-0 didn't flatter them. We weren't going to score and there was more of a danger of a more severe beating. Almost wish we weren't playing tonight - they're likely to put out a stronger team than us, and another defeat would have lots of people going into hysterics. Much rather have the whole squad stewing over Saturday and going out determined to take it out on Bournemouth. But we do have a game, so, Come on you Reds - and you young reds in Portugal this afternoon.

From the presser, sounds like it'll be very similar to the team that started at Shrewsbury, hopefully Milner in there somewhere.

Great stuff, as usual. I decided to watch the United highlights on MotD mainly to take a look at Watford. The stats showed that Unted had lots of shots, but all the best early chances went to Watford who could easily have had a couple of goals before United scored. Also - Martial looked definitely offside for their 2nd on my freeze frame. I know all goals and key incidents are supposed to be going to VAR now - but I'm not so sure after Monday night when Moss was re-starting play without allowing much VAR time, for example when Antonio blocked that free-kick with his arms up. Of course, MotD didn't even question the possible offside in either the commentary or the analysis.

I've mentioned this myself once or twice - it's bizarre how much sympathy Chelsea have had in the media. The transfer ban has been portrayed like some unfortunate handicap they've had to bravely overcome. They were found guily of breaking the rules in the recruitment of young players - 29 times, I think I read!! It's no wonder they've had outstanding Academy teams for the years. And the irony the media have missed is that their early season good form was largely down to the younger players - who came through their Academy system! As for the transfer ban - they still managed to buy Kovacic for £40m despite the ban - how does that work?! And they got Pulisic for £60m in January. So, in 2019, they spent about £99.5 m more than us. Meanwhile, they generate a steady income from loaning and selling their Academy players - the same Academy system found guilty of dozens of breaches of the rules.

Watching on tv, froze the picture, no way was Harvey Elliot offside. Lads are playing some excellent football

I hope you're not suggesting that the ref's ineptitude and cowardice wasn't a factor in the way this game played out? We had to take arguably our greatest goal threat off at half time to make sure the ref didn't fall for their shithouse attempts to get Mane sent off. We may well have got a shot on target from the free-kick that should have been given for the blatant foul on Ox on the edge of the box. Maybe we could have created a chance from that move down the right which was halted by a deliberate handball, which, yet again, we didn't get a free-kick for. Klopp was the first to accept that we weren't as good as we should have been in the final third, but, ffs, it must be bloody hard playing in those circumstances when you know you're going to get fuck all from the ref, whilst he's giving a free-kick to them when you even just look sideways at them, or as Klopp said, so much as blow on them.