cuppatea

We have a better squad, better manager, better support and have already beaten better teams throughout the competition. 3-1 to us.

Sure you've got that right? We're firm favourites with every bookie I've checked, including Coral.

He's good at running fast and not a lot else.

Can Lovren Milner

I'd be astonished if Sturridge started Thursday after playing 90 today. It would go completely against the selection methods Klopp has been employing all season when we've been playing twice a week.

There was a much more comprehensive study done by Liverpool University which concluded that a 0-0 in the first leg is the closest to a neutral result between two evenly matched teams, leaving the tie in the balance. Here's a quote: Now a 0–0 draw is only marginally unfavourable for the home-first club, reflecting that single-match home advantage has been falling such that the tie is still relatively open when it travels for the second-leg with no goals yet on the board for either side. In fact, by the end of the period, 0–0 has become the result closest to leaving each side with the same chance of progression. What is a good result in the first leg of a two-legged football match? (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279211418_What_is_a_good_result_in_the_first_leg_of_a_two-legged_football_match [accessed Apr 30, 2016]. I suspect both teams would have been quite happy with a 0-0 before the game but I can't say, having seen what they had to offer, I was happy to see us abandon all attacking intent in order to try and grind out a neutral result against a team that would swap squads with us in a heartbeat if given half a chance.

The Spanish teams, outside of the top 3, are shite. I don't care how well they do in the Europa League. Celta Vigo are 5th with Iago Aspas as their top scorer and one of their absolute best players. A 20 year old Thiago Illori was one of the best players in a Granada team that finished 13th. Luis Alberto is a star for Deportivo in mid-table. Suso was Almeria's best player. Nabil El Zhar plays regularly for the team in 9th. I'm fairly certain Joao Texeira would waltz into the starting lineup of at least half the teams in La Liga. Sevilla probably have about the 4th best squad in Spain with a load of £5-10m rated French and Spanish lads who see about as much international football as I do. Alberto Moreno was one of their best players and one of the few they had who was actually getting anywhere near the Spain squad and he can't fucking defend to save his life. There are probably about 4 or 5 teams in La Liga that we couldn't buy the entire playing squad of with this summer's transfer budget alone. Stick Villarreal in the Premier League and they'd be pottering around mid-table with the likes of Everton and Stoke.

This lot aren't Barcelona or some other behemoth of European football, they're a bang average team largely comprised of poorly paid, inexpensive, non-international footballers who wouldn't make the bench at Liverpool, even with half our team out injured. They're not some lethal counter attacking outfit either. Their strikeforce consists of a past-his-prime Roberto Soldado and some £4m no-mark from the Turkish league. That's not even mentioning the poor form they're in at the moment. The irony of this "we can't attack and risk being countered" argument is that we've put ourselves in a position where we have to do exactly that or we're going out. We need 2 goals to go through and Villarreal, having been required to show at least some ambition last night can now just throw everyone behind the ball, soak up pressure and hope to nick the one goal they need to leave us with a mountain to climb. If trying to score a goal against this lot is so dangerous that we couldn't risk doing it in 90 minutes last night then fuck knows what we're going to do in the second leg.

0-0 would have been a decent result, not a great one, but in light of how average they looked, it feels a bit like 90 minutes in which our goals would have counted for more than theirs has been squandered and now we face a massive uphill struggle to go through against a team we should really have fancied ourselves to beat.

We play for a 0-0 for the entire game and then brainlessly charge at them one by one in the 91st minute, leaving ourselves wide open for the counter. Unbelievable.

Hard to say who's had the bigger impact in the second half out of Coutinho and Ibe.

Reckon there are/were away goals in this if we'd have gone looking for them. They look bang average.

Kolo and Allen impressive; Firmino struggling.

"We need a new club ambassador. Someone the fans really love. What's the name of that lad who came through the youth system? English. Scored loads of goals for the club. Won loads of caps. Had an FA Cup Final named after him. Left to go and play abroad. Been on BT Sport this season. What's his name?" "Michael Owen?" "That must be the fella. Sign him up!"

Can't see him still being here next season but for the money he's on and the performances he's delivered in the last few months, you could do a lot worse than Joe Allen for a squad player.

Great stuff from Origi and Sturridge but the weight on that ball from Coutinho was absolute perfection.

My stream is 5 mins behind. Get Coutinho off, he's having a 'mare.

Lallana Firmino Clyne

Cracking performance so far.

12 of our 20 home games this season (against the likes of Sion, Rubin, Carlisle, West Brom, Sunderland etc) ended in results that would put us out next week. The only team we've beaten by more than a goal at home is Exeter, the rest were draws, losses, or narrow wins agains the likes of Bournemouth and Villa.

We finished 7th, 6th, 8th and 7th in his last 4 seasons here and then 2nd in our first season without him. Of all the things to pin our decline on, putting it on getting rid of a massively underperforming keeper on enormous wages is a huge stretch (a far bigger stretch than he was capable of in his last few years in goal here). We might as well have given Glen Johnson another £100k+ a week contract if we're crying about letting Reina go, after all, there was a risk that his replacement could have been even worse than the appalling value for wages he was offering.

Just because Mignolet has turned out to be shite doesn't mean we should have kept paying Reina £110k a week to tamely fall over and watch shots roll past him. Anyone who thinks his performances here in his last 2 seasons justified him being one of the best paid keepers in the world needs their head checking.

The squad is imbalanced and decimated by injuries but it's better than the relegation form we're currently showing, as are most of the players.

Firstly, that list of Liverpool players isn't as good Barcelona's. Secondly, Rafa had to build that side himself. Imagine if that lot had already been here when he arrived, along with Messi and they were all Scouse lads who grew up playing the Liverpool way and dreamed of playing for no one else. Now imagine he had players like Eto'o, Thierry Henry and Yaya Toure already here too. And imagine he had a larger transfer budget and that rather than having to build an entire team with it, he merely had to supplement what was already the best squad in Europe with 1 or 2 quality additions. Guardiola did a fine job with what he had but what he had was the most talented squad in the history of the sport. Tito Vilanova led the same group of players to the club's highest ever league points total in his only season of top flight management a few years later and Luis Enrique, having achieved nothing in 5 years of management, led most of them to a treble at the first time of asking last season. Not to mention what that Spanish core achieved at international level under Aragones and Del Bosque.