Marcas

Great report in trying circumstances Dave, pretty much sums up what we’re all thinking at the minute. As I posted in the forum, I’m embarrassed to admit I hate watching us at the minute, I dread match day because I know my blood pressure will go through the roof and I feel like fucking the TV out the window! Personally I think we need two possibly 3 new players in, with a particular emphasis up front. I kinda think that Mané will come good again, but Bobby’s been getting progressively worse for nearly two years, that’s who he is now. The thing with Liverpool in our heyday was legend or not, if you were no longer doing it you got fucked out. You lifted the European Cup Thommo? Fuck you meet this young lad Hansen. That’s the way it should be

I posted this on Facebook to get a reaction: Let’s play Devil’s Advocate for a second. Here’s a quote from the Guardian back in 2016: “Liverpool’s demise – their relative demise – has some roots in off-field factors. Despite being at the forefront of shirt advertising in the late 1970s – Hitachi television sets, for the record – the club were woefully unprepared for the freewheeling capitalism of the Premier League, a bandwagon which set off in 1992 and left them choking on dust.” There’s a ton of articles with that slant all over the web. So just saying, what if this whole thing had taken flight and Liverpool weren’t onboard and sat by watching as Utd, City etc, etc raked in £300/400 million a year more in revenues, sucking up every decent player and leaving everyone else with nice memories and zero hope of competing. What then? Would we be reading articles in 2031 decrying Liverpool’s (FSG’s) lack of foresight and ambition for us trailing in the ‘Big 5’s’ wake. I don’t know the answer here, but like everything, this whole thing isn’t binary...” I must confess I’m sick of this ‘FSG OUT’ shite. Yeah they got us for cents on the dollar, but where would be right now without them? Did they deliver on their promises? Fuck yeah and then some. And to listen to those sanctimonious cunts Sky/BT/Neville criticise our club for having the gall to not want to fall behind the rest? We’re not owned by human rights abusers; Russian mafia; leveraged debt experts...sometimes I wonder what it is some people want. Standing with an FSG out banner, to be replaced by whom exactly?

Depressing times. Last June / July seem like light years ago. When you’re talking about the sums of money involved in ‘protecting’ the ECL and Premier League, then anything could happen in the next few days/weeks. VAR being operated by clowns, empty stadium football, pandemic, this...you could fall out of love with football very quickly.

Kudos to the lads, it really, really did look like everyone stepped up a notch because Fab was back playing where he should be. Agree on Phillips also, seems like a great guy with utterly no pretences whatsoever. And a line I never thought I’d write: the officials were like a breath of fresh air; zero bullshit, very, very few mistakes, no “look at me camera, look at me!!” crap and a common-sense approach. There were some tasty, and a few niggly, fouls last night which would have seen any of the fucktards in the Prem lavash a bucketful of yellows and reds (usually while having some contorted look on their face in the hope the camera’s on them), but the guy last night let the game go and it was a joy to see. Back on Fab playing MF, I actually think that will help us breakdown packed defences also, he makes the rest feel secure and can play a killer pass himself (or rifle the odd one in from 25yds which we’ve had none of this season).

Much as you hate it, if a club is to enjoy consistent long-term success there comes a time when fan’s favourites have to be eased-out and replaced by younger, hungrier and hopefully more talented players. This is my single, biggest criticism of the club - since 2018 we’ve wasted a golden opportunity to attract and recruit better players (and in fairness I don’t know if this is the fault of Jurgen or FSG, in truth it’s probably both). Instead we hit upon a first team that hasn’t really changed since the summer of 2018, despite a huge drop-off in quality in a few of them. Apart from odd glimpses Bobby’s been living off past glories for two seasons and everyone can see it. As you say Dave, Ox is finished and don’t get me started on Keita. Much as I love Milner if we’re relying on a 36yr old who was never quick to begin to change games against the likes of Chelsea’s ‘Road-Runners’ then god help us. But the biggest cock-up, and this is surely Klopp’s fault, was to leave us with only 3 quality CBs, two of which we know can wreck themselves opening a fucking bag of crisps! Hindsight’s great, but seriously, is there anyone out there who wouldn’t have broke the bank for Koulibaly as soon as VVD got crocked? Klopp should have been hammering the yanks’ door down to get a quality (not a fucking bargain basement stooge) replacement instead of trying to be really clever by fucking-over our midfield by taking the best defensive MF out of it. Without Hendo and Fab in MF we’re a one-dimensional lightweight, nice pretty passes, but create nothing shambles. I’m not suggesting that the owners / manager should have been doing a city and buying every player on the planet, but adding one or two absolute quality players per year who can impact the first team straight away is surely the least that can be expected for a club like Liverpool. Instead now look, where do you begin to change this and our chances of attracting players who can make a difference in our current state is deminishing by the week.

The whole VAR thing has been a disaster, but only because of the inept shitbags in charge of it. When you get down to millimetres everyone knows it’s all bollix and 100% subjective. But here’s the thing: if we play the way we can it doesn’t matter - we should have been two or three up. Yes, Mane was pushed, but bad officiating doesn’t make Allison charge out of his box and straight into Kabak like a fucking gobshite (or head the ball to a Leicester player when he could have, like, just fucking caught it!); bad officiating hasn’t made Bobby shite for the last year with increasingly few and far between glimpses of what he used to be. Bad officiating didn’t leave us with no recognised back-up striker (and I don’t consider Origi a back up anything), or any way of impacting from the bench, and it certainly didn’t force us into scrambling through a fucking bargain bucket on the last day of the transfer window for a decent centre back. I’ve no idea where the issue lies between FSG and Jurgen in terms of player recruitment, but the one thing I do know is that virtually every club who’s ever had sustained success over a period of time has used that success to attract better players to continually refresh and enhance the team. Judging on that basis we’ve pissed away two years of glorious opportunity.

Hey I’m with you, I’d happily have the lad from the reserves on the bench ahead of Origi as at least you’d get some effort. Hindsight is 20:20 but apart from JK did anyone think playing Jota in a meaningless away game against fired-up defenders was a good idea? And virtually everyone has mentioned how slow we are all of a sudden, surely that shit needs a total reset starting at Leicester. Personally I think moving Fab and Hendo into MF will have an immediate impact, assuming one of the two new lads at CB can actually kick a ball to someone in the same coloured shirt. Start Gini with them and let Thiago come on when the pace drops (that would also stop him from getting a yellow in the first minute and being a passenger). Do what we’ve been doing for 3yrs and inject pace back into things. Have a fucking go and see what happens

Tough love Dave, can’t disagree with any of it. There’s no part of the team is operating at anything like what it can.I think Bobby is now a one game in 5 (if we’re lucky) player, nothing is working for him and he just looks slow. Surely JK recognises that? Then there’s midfield. We have no drive, zero creativity. We need to get fab and Hendo back in there immediately to try and get momentum before the end of the season (which I agree is a write-off at this stage). We have zero strength in depth - I’ve been a big critic of Jones but speak fair he was the best of the MF’s, but he got hooked for a guy staring 36 in the face who was never the quickest to begin with. I love Milner but just what was Jurgen hoping for with that one? We have a list of sick-note players who can’t play 3 games in a row and even if they do, how many are 1st team certs? We utterly wasted £52m on Keita; we won the ECL and totally failed to capitalise by strengthening the squad. Likewise with the Prem - Jotta and Thiago may make a difference but would you bet on it at this point? Everyone could see we needed back-up at CB but we did nothing until sick-note Joel did a sick note Joel and even then we leave it to the last day and end buying two guys who no-one has ever heard of, one of whom we gazumped Celtic for! Yeah I know VVD played there, but at this stage if we’re in the market for the same players Celtic are chasing something has gone seriously fucking wrong. No doubt we’ve had an appalling run of luck, but there’s been bad decisions along the way no no-one is exempt from that, not even the boss unfortunately. Christ what a start to the fucking week...

It utterly amazing to think this is the same team we’ve been watching (yeah, I know it’s not the ‘same team’, but you know what I mean). There was zero passion, no tempo, no ideas. Everything was slow, slow, get the ball forward, slow, slow, lose the ball, repeat. I get there’s players out, but to collectively forget your football DNA is unforgivable, I mean, what the fuck? Robbo trying to dribble past 3 defenders and losing possession? Wha?! The signs have been there since last summer, but it still amazes me that a team can go from hitting 7 at Palace to having zero confidence / ideas in anything they’re doing. And please God will someone just put an end to Origi - yeah, cult hero/legend status for a few moments in key games, I get it. But he’s been fucking useless. And last night, ugh, my god when he just kicked the ball straight out of play...I literally don’t even know what to say.

I know it’s easy to be wise after the fact, but I never, not for one nano second, thought that Div would score that. The only surprise was that he didn’t hit the 5th row back. Agree with the rest of the report, especially on Ox (who let’s face it has never been the same since Roma) and Taki. And let’s be honest, Thiago has yet to be the player who was supposed to take us to a new attacking level. BUT, just as our form collapsed in a second, so it can turn the other way also. We’re going to be 7 back in City, can that be pulled back in half a season? If we get our shit together absolutely...

Agree with all of that Dave, our defence has been ripped up so we’ve had no option but to rip up CM to try and compensate. But it’s the old adage two wrongs don’t make a right. Williams and Phillips have done ok, but the truth is you could take Oscar Pistorius’ blades away from him and he’d still smoke those two over ten yards. So unless cheese-legs Joel gets his shit together last night’s back 4 will start against the scum as the one thing they have up-front is pace - imagine Rashford one v one against Williams/Phillips? Shivers!

Total shitshow. 3 points from WBA, Fulham and Brighton. Granted we got fucked by VAR against Brighton but apart from that...total complacency and really Div (legend for what he did in the ECL) needs to be somewhere else. Fuck me playing Jota in a meaningless match makes my blood boil and Matip/Keita can do one. Doesn’t matter how good they are they’re both worth fuck all in the treatment room. And what an utter waste Naby has been...

Was it just me or was Taylor getting in the way of passes all night long...? I’ve seen a few of them at it but nothing close to that fucker last night...

Totally agree about Wijnaldum, just get it done!

Good report on a horrible game (and one a bit overshadowed by events earlier in the day), but one part I’d disagree on with Dave, I thought Neco had an awful game. Did he make tackles, yeah, but that’s the bear minimum to expect. He’s often ponderous on the ball, his decision making isn’t there yet and he has an infuriating habit of cutting in-field, trying some of dummy before tuning back to the throw-in line by which time any forward (who’s watched 5 minutes of Neco’s previous games) will be all over him like a cheap suit. Agree on mane though, the bit were he just fell over his own feet summed it up