coachpotato

Wouldn’t be surprised to see Trent walked here.

Opened up far too easily after going into the lead. Getting between the man and the goal is a basic skill and too many of ours are being run past because they won’t adhere to that. There’s nobody exempted from that either, Virgil was turned completely the wrong way when Griezeman went past him to score the second. Alisson has prevented us from conceding another two, but there’s a need for more cover in midfield as they’re running through us because of a lack of pace from Milner and Hendo and apart from the goal, Keita hasn’t added much if anything. Since we scored our second we’ve hardly threatened, which is disappointing to say the least, and our usual build up play has been negated by their dropping and playing a back five, which is exactly how they have played against us previously. Some changes required to get out of this with a draw or, hopefully, a win but this is where Klopp earns his corn when presented with this kind of problem.

Just hope we get through tonight’s game against Atleti with no injuries. Simeone knows our game against United is big and they, and United, will try to stop Salah by any means necessary and not always within the laws of the game. The United game likely won’t be a cakewalk as they’ll line up not to get a pasting and hope for a break or two, they have enough to suffocate us and more than enough to nick a goal or two. Taylor could play a major part in how much United get away with or not. Probably find a draw would be the best we could expect, even though on form, we should twat them.

I recall back in the old Shanklygates days, when rival supporters could “banter” with each other on the same website, Toon and Ev fans used to go at each other about who was the biggest club out of the two, well, it was really who was the least unsuccessful. Our blue brethren would argue they’d won the Cup Winners Cup and FA cup more recently, the Toon would argue they had bigger support even though they hadn’t won anything since the Cities FairsCup in 1969. There was a young chap called Dave Kelly in the Blue corner who seemed to be right pissed that we had won anything. Happy days.

They are erratic, so for that reason alone I’m not going to crow too loudly at the moment. Just for once though, I’d love us to give them the good hiding they’ve avoided for so long.

Both he and Hansen were brilliant, ball playing centre backs, in my opinion and only Virgil and Joel Matip have come close to them for our club, and probably in the country. As a pundit, he’s not the best, but there’s not much to beat out there and so he’s tolerable and has the kudos of being an ex-Red in his favour. Pleased he’s recovering.

Jurgen’s press conference yesterday was a bit sobering I thought. When he was making references to Newcastle becoming a “superpower” and that he hoped FFP would be enforced ……”whatever that is these days” he looked like a man who was thinking “What’s the point of me trying my best when these cunts can ride roughshod over everything I’m trying to do?”. He was the only boss quoted saying that the Premier League bosses had been quiet until the deal was pretty much done, none of the other bosses criticised it directly, with Guardiola saying “Looks like the Newcastle fans I saw were happy. It's business, people took over a club and the people of Newcastle are happy. I'm far away from why the decision was made." What a cop out, but then, he’s hardly going to criticise, is he? Especially as that could be his next job, unlimited funds and an actual crowd in the ground.

First year I was going out with my missus, she got tickets from Les Silver, the Leeds Chairman for her, her mate and two relatives/friends to go and see us play there in 1975. She got them because the year before, she and her mate had gone there and were leaving the ground when a Leeds fan grabbed at her scarf, which she wouldn’t give up. She and her mate ended up in Leeds Infirmary after this brave Leeds fan and his mates decided to give them both a kicking. News of this reached Leeds United and Silver called into the hospital to apologise and promised the tickets would be sent. Never been back since, even though we won the year after.

Istanbul.

Dino Zoff Javier Zanetti Franco Baresi Franz Beckenbauer Paulo Maldini Johann Cruyff Zinedine Zidane Alfredo di Stefano Diego Maradona Edson Arantes do Nascimento Eusebio da Silva Ferreira 4-2-4 Can’t believe there’s no room for Gerd Muller, Garrincha, Ronaldo, Ferenc Puskas or Marco van Basten, and that’s just the strikers. Old enough to have seen them all, even di Stefano in the 1960 European Cup Final when I was a kid (not in Glasgow, on the tele!) No defensive midfielders as such, you wouldn’t need them with that defence, and in the unlikely event of you scoring 3, they’d score 6.

What price is Rafa to go back there?

They’ll no doubt be calling us bin dipping, serial underachievers as well in a few years, it goes with the territory when the cash genie lands.

Agree with much of the match report, to the point as usual. Noticed Guardiola called one of theirs over after about 15/20 minutes and after that Grealish moved inside, to become as anonymous there as he was out wide, and Foden went wide and that’s when they really started to target Milner. Also, as somebody said, their lack of a striker led to them overloading our 3 with 5 in midfield when we had the ball and their press stopped us getting meaningful balls to our front 3. We didn’t help as they looked much sharper than we did and there didn’t seem to be any decision making on, or off, the field to change anything. That could have led to them coming in with an unassailable lead at half time and we were fortunate they didn’t. Second half was a revelation compared to the first half, as we all saw. But whatever was said at half time should’ve been communicated earlier really, but without knowing what that was maybe I’m being unfair. Towards the end I felt all the players looked knackered, de Bruyne particularly for them, yet it was he who was left alone to take that shot and equalise, albeit fortuitously with a deflection. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that shithead Silva deliberately went over Milners trailing leg to get him walked, but Milners leg shouldn’t have been trailing given he was on a booking, so pretty lucky with that one, but again Silva was on a booking and did a couple of dodgy ones that could’ve seen him sent off too, and he knew it, throwing his hands up after one tackle protesting his “innocence”. So we remain unbeaten, but not really convincing in many ways. It’s like last season when we were top at Christmas, but really weren’t playing that well with the injuries we had, but at least we should improve on how we’ve been defensively when the defence get more games under their belt and, hopefully, the midfield balance improves and we don’t have to rely too heavily on Salah to pull rabbits out of his arse.

I think I’m right in saying that there’s been studies done regarding home advantage with and without supporters, as in during the lockdown periods, and they showed there was home advantage when crowds were there for all teams. So perhaps someone should ask Crooks whether he actually meant ALL home advantage should end or if it’s just Anfield. Be nice for some clarification from the impartial BBC.

Since that poll started, you have to say Mo has been the most consistent, I thought Firmino was the most important to the team at the time, Mane has matched Mo but fell away particularly last season, but appears to be gaining some momentum recently and his “spat” with Mo looks over. Be great if Bobby could recapture some form, but now Jota is here I doubt he’ll get a run to do that.

I had a knee replaced a while ago by an Orthopaedic surgeon who, coincidentally, has had links with professional football clubs, this was well before Virgil’s injury. During my questions about how good my knee might be afterwards, he mentioned that after any serious surgery to the knee joint, you almost always are never back to100%, and he stated this was the case for anyone, professional players included, who had ACL or similar injuries as there’s always some weakness due to the intensity their joints are put under playing at the level they do. At least mine would appear to be back to normal after a couple of years, but I’m not playing centre back for LFC thankfully!

I think you’re missing my point. This allegation has been made official by a complaint from Manchester City FC, whereas the Smith Ambulance incident was, at best, hearsay. The Holgate one was investigated and there was “insufficient evidence” to prove he was, or wasn’t racially abused by Firmino. That doesn’t mean it did happen, but also doesn’t mean it didn’t. As has been pointed out, there are camera’s everywhere in grounds these days and to believe an allegation such as City’s could be made, with no basis for truth, would be them risking a severe backlash to the name they’re trying to create for themselves as “ good guys”, even though they only got away with the FFP charges on a technicality.

£100m Hazard-lite.

Regarding the alleged spitting at City’s bench. That there’s been an accusation requires any supporters who saw the alleged incident to speak up, because we can’t allow idiots to continue to tarnish the clubs name. The work that Klopp and his back room team and the players do to promote the club, the work that the various fans bodies do to promote the club, the support that the great majority of fans give to the club, all get quickly overtaken by the actions of a few idiots and it takes a long time for those actions to be negated by good actions. It’s easy to say “why should we care what City/Everton/United think” but I suspect we all think “not again” when these incidents happen. Unfortunately, I can’t believe that an allegation of this nature would be made falsely. If it’s proven that there was no incident however, then the club should push for the harshest penalty possible to be levelled at whoever claimed it happened in the first place.

I really don’t get what it is that Crooks brings to the table when it comes to punditry? He’s disappeared from the screen on MOTD pretty much, and occasionally is on the BBC results and scores show, where he’s just mundane and obvious. There’s his Team of the Week spot on the website which features the players who have played well in a particular weekend, (well, that takes a lot of thought doesn’t it!). He was a bang average striker in a bang average Spurs team that was the epitome of “Spursy”. Yet he comments on our club like he’s some kind of “expert”, with that condescending, fake gravitas in his voice to try and convince everyone he’s relevant.

“Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola suggested in his post-match interview that he wasn't surprised by the referee's decision, after all it was Anfield. It's true and it used to happen in my day and it's time it stopped.” Garth Crooks. Another unbiased, no agenda based BBC pundit.

Blue mate at work refused to get into the palaver surrounding Rafa when he was appointed. Said to me “ If he can get a team including Djimi Traore into the European Cup final and win it, he’ll do for me, we haven’t had a manager who can set a team up tactically since Moysie”. They’re not all thick myopic fume merchants obviously.

Let them beat the other top 10 teams, except us obviously, which will give them an aura of credibility, but drop points to the dross. That way they stay just enough in it to keep the Troll in a job, far enough away from us, and doing us a favour by keeping Chelsea, City etc., at bay also.

Thought even though we had the usual more possession they bullied us a fair bit. Our defence picked a bad team to have an off day against, it’s true Curtis Jones was asleep on the first goal, but then that was compounded by Robertson not stopping the cross and Fabinho not realising how close the guy who scored was to him. Both the second and third goals came from crosses being put in from the right side unopposed and them overloading us on the back post to win the ball and create the two scoring chances. Ordinarily I would say that surely Robertson, Mane and one of the DM’s might have stopped the crosses coming in, but I also think Alisson should boss his 6 yard box more given his size and agility and get a punch to crosses like the one that led to their second goal. We did enough pressing from midfield, especially in the second half, and played some slick stuff to create opportunities, but not for the first time we missed so many score-able chances and I’ve banged on about this in the past, we score shitloads, but we also miss shitloads. However, overall it was an exciting game, Brentford showed a lot of guts and, probably deserved something, but really we shouldn’t be dropping two points against them. Let’s hope we don’t regret those two points at the end of the season.

Fucking put another couple in, these are tiring and our finishing is poor, they could steal a point here.