mike23

It really took some going to throw that game away against a completely disinterested team after going 2-1 up. The defence seems to concede under the slightest bit of pressure. They never got organized again after Alisson flapped at that cross. Every game recently we've had opposition players throwing themselves in the way of what look like certain goals for us and making great blocks. At the other end we're just leaving players completely unmarked in the box with no one even close enough to make the chances difficult. 

The second half was miles better, but again all you can do is ask why it always needs to wait until the second half - and usually going a goal down - for it to happen. If they'd started the game with that attitude then they'd have won comfortably. 

The finishing was generally terrible yet again. Just players either missing the target or hitting shots tamely straight at the keeper. Even the 2 goals we scored involved a shot the keeper should have saved and an own goal which deflected off about 3 of their players. There were plenty of opportunities to get a third goal to wrap it up after it went to 2-1. It was so predictable that if we didn't get it that we would end up paying the price as defensively we seem to be completely incapable of digging in and seeing a game out.

Elliot's shot hitting the bar at the end pretty much just sums up how things have been going for the last few weeks. When things are going well those go in.

Taylor was as shit as ever. Why is he blowing his whistle there before Gakpo puts it in? It clearly wasn't a freekick. The look of sheer relief on his face was genuinely comical in the first half when he realized it was offside when there was a penalty incident so blatant he couldn't possibly not give it. But it's clutching at straws blaming the ref today. Our players are far more to blame. They threw away 2 more points because they can't get the basics right at either end of the pitch and because they seem to be completely incapable of starting games properly. 

Hiring a decent psychologist might be more important than who they hire as the new manager. I can't imagine there will be wholesale squad changes. Like it or not, most of these players will be back next year, and someone has to try and get to the bottom of how the hell a team everyone was praising for their mentality has completely shit the bed game when it mattered most.

Pathetic again. I had low expectations for today and they've somehow managed to fail to even reach them. It will be a really impressive achievement to lose to a team who for 40 odd minutes looked like they just wanted the game to be over so they could get on with the rest of their weekend.

I feel stupid for ever having belief in this team. What a bunch of completely gutless cowardly losers. 

11 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

I think the squad needs a lot more work than people previously thought. Horrible end to the season, this long goodbye is pretty much the worst.

It's in danger of becoming as depressing as Gerrard's farewell tour. 

2 minutes ago, Anubis said:

Abysmal. I try not to go hard on any one player but I’m done with Nunez.
 

I don’t want to hear about how great he’d be if we can teach him to finish, because he’s shown no sign of improving.

 

I don’t want to hear about how he’s an agent of chaos because it profits us nothing when he can’t finish from 6 yards time after time after time.

 

I don’t want to see him picking injury time performative fights with opposition players when we’re two nil down, to try and curry favour with fans.

 

I don’t want to see him in a Liverpool shirt for the rest of the season. Gakpo, Danns and Jota, ta.

I've  desperately wanted to get on board the Nunez train. I hear how passionately some fans talk about him and I've really wanted to be a fellow believer, but the sheer number of terrible misses has just made it impossible to do so. I think him smashing the ball straight at Pickford tonight when he had all the time in the world and the entire goal to aim at was the moment when the train just entirely derailed for me. Enough is enough. Some of the misses this season have been genuinely staggering. 

No point bemoaning the decisions that went against us any more. If this team had held a bigger lead they'd have just had a bigger collapse. Complete and utter pretenders in the end. 

2 minutes ago, El Rojo said:

Even Alisson was human on the goals tonight. Kelleher may have done better.

 

 

I thought he should have saved the first one although there were far worse culprits on that goal. 

Thanks for all the happy memories, Jurgen. We've all been worried everything would fall apart as soon as he left. It seems the players have decided to make a head start on this and crumble before he's even out the door. The Palace game, the 2 games against Atalanta, and tonight have been as bad as anything we have ever seen under him. Diaz has been okay tonight. At least he's tried. Everyone else has been utter garbage. Well done to Mo for managing to stand out as being especially shit and producing the worst performance I have seen from a Liverpool forward since Balotelli away at QPR under Rodgers. 

This team can go fuck themselves. 

Were this team actually surprised that Everton were up for this game at the start? I've given up asking how they can keep starting games like they're half asleep. You'd think if it happened once or twice it would lead to adjustments and extra focus, but it's just the same half-assed crap at the start of every single game. 

The only thing more incompetent than the goal we conceded was the finishing from the forwards. The finishing since the trip to Old Trafford has been genuinely embarrassing. If they're not missing the target altogether it's just some tame shot straight at the keeper even when they have all the time in the world and the entire goal to aim at. I'm not sure I'd be confident in them scoring if they were faced with an open goal a yard out at present. It's a shame Jota is made of biscuits. I'm genuinely sick of watching Nunez now. I've really wanted to get on board the Darwin train, but that train is now completely derailed for me. Mo resembles someone who has won a competition to play for a premier league team now.

We may turn it around. Probably not. I'm pretty much past the point of caring now. This team seems to have suffered a collective lobotomy since the FA Cup loss at Old Trafford.

The ref has been an utter joke as well. Soft foul after soft foul for them, including a joke of a decision for the freekick that led to the goal. I can understand why Klopp is so livid, particularly as it's a completely different story whenever they commit fouls. But if we drop points here it's on us. These are absolutely shit, and to approach a derby at this point of the season with the title still on the line and to not be right at it right from the first whistle is absolutely unforgiveable. 

Genuinely sick of watching this team. Just the same old shit every game in what is rapidly becoming the most pathetic title charge in history.

Forward missing a sitter -check.

Slow tempo and constant aimless passing about at the back - check.

Making an utter mess of an attack with an overload of attackers where everyone just gets in each others way and we don't even get a shot on goal let alone score from it - check.

Failure to do even the basics defensively and yet again failing to keep a clean sheet - check.

It was all set up for us to go and get a second and have an easy win. Instead we somehow concede to a team who barely even looked interested. Arsenal go a goal up and you know that's it. We go a goal up and it never is. 

Trent has been decent. No one else has. Endo looks like he's lost the ability to move let alone run. Someone in the team needs to start showing some leadership and taking some responsibility because otherwise the title challenge is done today. 

Decentish first half. Utterly pitiful second half. Maybe if Mo hadn't missed that complete sitter it might have been completely different, but it seems too much to ask of our forwards to score even easy chances at the moment. This team just looks to be completely shot physically and mentally. 

As soul destroying as the last week has been, at least we can console ourselves that we're not Everton fans. Pretty much every week seems to be like this for them. No wonder so many of them are mental.

Dave's talk of this all being part of the narrative is a lovely idea. If this was a Hollywood movie this would definitely be the part where everything looks bleak and hopeless for the protagonists. In the movie Klopp and the players would at about this point learn some important life lesson which would help them finish the movie triumphant.. There would be a joyful final scene in which they paraded the premier league trophy through the streets of Liverpool in front of millions of happy fans and then one final still of Klopp rising his fist in triumph to the crowd (with maybe a brief cut scene to chief antagonist Pep Guardiola miserably watching the scenes on TV at City's training ground  and then turning his fury on Howard Webb who stands quivering in front of his desk, demanding to know how Webb's PGMOL gimps allowed this to happen). 

Unfortunately, as we've seen before, the Premier League doesn't seem to do happy Hollywood endings. The only lessons ever learned are bleak ones. The bad guys always win and never face any consequences for their actions. This all just seems to be shaping up to be another really shitty ending in which, even if we somehow sort ourselves out again and win all our remaining games,  City just mechanically tick off win after win while friendly officials step in to help out if things are ever in danger of getting a bit dicey for them  

Football is really shit sometimes. 

Thanks for the pod. I feel pretty much the same. Not angry, just disappointed. This hasn't happened through lack of effort or desire, but the pressure has definitely got to most of the players. Sometimes strengths become weaknesses if not used wisely, and passion and desire just seem to have turned into desperation in the past week for this club. 

57 minutes ago, niallers said:

If you're old enough, and i am, to remember the 96/97 season. It was ourselves and united going for the league and united lost at home to Derby 2.3 and we had Coventry, similar level to Palace today, at home and we went 1 up through fowler but lost 2 from corners and lost the game.

Very similar feeling i have now better arsenals loss today.

However, the cheating cunts are the real winners.

Who said crime doesn't pay.

This last week has just felt like the sort of week that happened at the business end of seasons under Roy Evans. Didn't we also have a 0-3 first leg defeat in Europe against PSG in the same season you're talking about? I seem to recall David James having a couple of screw ups in that game as well as multiple errors in important league games. 

If we're not going to win it then it might as well be another tainted title for the cheats. I do feel for Arsenal though when you consider that this is the same Villa team who rested most of their starters less than 2 weeks ago when they faced City.

Imagine how great this would result would be if we hadn't fucked up 2 weeks in a row. Just makes me feel worse now.

3 minutes ago, Funkasy said:

21 times behind in 32 games.

I was actually defending our resilience on here for all the times we'd managed to come back last week. But at some point you've got to actually learn from the bad starts. It shouldn't need half time virtually every single game to sort ourselves out.

It was an issue at the end of the season we challenged for the quadruple as well. It seemed like we conceded first in virtually every game during the run-in at the end of that season. 

It turns out this team were never a serious title challenger after all. This last week was the sort of shit we would have seen at the business end of the season under Roy Evans. They want stringing up for starting another game the way they did. After all the other slow starts, how can they possibly not be focused on making absolutely certain that doesn't happen again? How can they come out slowly passing the ball about with no intensity whatsoever?

But Jesus Christ, the absolute fucking state of our finishing in the past week. Six times in this game I was just waiting for the net to bulge. Endo miskicks in the first half and somehow hits the bar from a few yards out right in front of the goal. Nunez has the entire goal to aim at from a few yards out and somehow manages to smash it straight at the keeper - the only place where it wouldn't have gone in. Jones lets the ball slide right underneath his foot when he's completely unmarked in the box. Jota far too casual with a seeming open goal, allowing the defender to get a block in. Jones clean through and he somehow puts it wide (it felt like that was the miss that killed us off; the air just seemed to completely go out of the ground after that and there was a feeling that even if we created more chances that we'd just miss them). And then Mo, like Jota, far too casual when he just has to smash it in from a few yards out, allowing a defender to get a block in.

If we'd have got 1 with any sort of time left on the clock then we'd have probably gone on to get 2. But we never should have been in that position again in the first place. There's only so many times you can get away with bad starts before it comes back to bite you. If we'd just come flying out of the traps right from the first whistle we'd have won. We can moan about the Palace players seeming to put in far more effort than they did in the Arsenal and City games, but the simple fact of the matter is that they played like that because we allowed them to build up belief and have something to cling to. Maybe our own defenders could start taking a leaf out of their book as well and actually start putting some proper effort in rather than letting teams slice through us without as much as a challenge at the start of games. 

Alisson was blameless today. Every other player needs to have a long hard look at themselves after the past week. 

And why the hell wasn't Elliot on much earlier? He's been one of the few attacking players in the past week who's actually at least not shit himself every single time he gets near the box.

What a genuinely pathetic end to the Klopp era. If the new manager doesn't fancy any of these players next season then they can't really complain.

They've got a title to play for, they're coming off the back of an absolute embarrassment of a midweek performance, and they produce a first half like that? 

11 minutes ago, Mark M said:

Atlanta deserved it with how hard they worked & clinical they were.

 

Even though we were shite absolute shite we had chances to put 2 / 3 chances away Nunez is killing us not being more clinical & us not being able to keep a clean sheet. 

I'm genuinely sick of our dreadful finishing and poor decision making in the final third. It's been an issue throughout the season despite all the goals we've scored, but it seems to have been ramped up to 11 ever since the first trip to Old Trafford. The Brighton game should have been so much more comfortable than it was. Sunday's league game at Old Trafford was an absolute joke. As bad as we were tonight, we had more than enough chances to end the game with a very different score line. It's infuriating that just as we hit the business end of the season and need players to step up, instead the forwards seem to be suffering a collective confidence crisis. 

We looked like we approached the game thinking we just had to turn up to win and then couldn't get out of that mindset. Everything was way too slow. Constant misplaced passes. Second to every challenge. Our finishing and decision making in the final third was abysmal (what's new?) The defending was embarrassing and the number of goals we are conceding is becoming a problem. Not one player comes out of it with any credit tonight. The performance of every player who was on the pitch for any length of time varied between poor and absolutely abysmal. 

I don't know if it's worth even bothering trying to turn it around in the second leg. We might as well just play the kids and save the legs of the senior players for the league matches. I certainly had my doubts that we would get the fairytale ending we all want for Klopp with us celebrating winning the league at Anfield on the final day of the season, but I did think we would give him a happy send off of sorts by winning the Europa League in his final match, righting a wrong from his very first season when we lost the Europa league final in Sevilla. Maybe this team just isn't anything special after all. It's starting to look like Klopp's glorious reign here is going to end with the quietest of whimpers rather than the loudest of bangs. 

Mcmanaman can go fuck himself as well. Embarrassing that a former player of ours always sounds so happy whenever we're losing.

Guess we didn't want to win the Europa League either. Genuinely pathetic from every single player.

I'm not feeling any better about it today either. I don't think I've found a game of ours as frustrating to watch since the home defeat to Chelsea that effectively blew our title chances under Rodgers. Two very different games - we looked like we could have played all week in that one and not created any chances let alone score - but both infuriating in their own ways. I've never really stopped being pissed off at how that Chelsea game unfolded. Time will tell whether that ends up being the case with this one. If we just lose out on the league because of the dropped points here then I can imagine it will be. Who knows, maybe we win out, Arsenal slip up, and the point we rescued late on here is the one that sees us finish just ahead of City in a close race for once, but right now it feels more like we'll be ruing the 2 points dropped here for the rest of this season and whenever we reflect back on it in years to come.

It's weird isn't it? We've scored so many goals this season, but it's felt for a while as though this team is nowhere near clinical enough. And as you discussed on the Pod last night, the missed chances don't even tell the full story as in too many cases we don't even end up creating chances from great looking situations due to playing the wrong pass. I still can't believe we never even managed a shot on goal from the 5 on 2 break we had in the cup game a few weeks back. I genuinely don't know how it can be fixed either, as making the right decisions in those situations is surely something players either can or can't do and no amount of coaching can fix that. It feels like there's almost too many options at times and then the player on the ball just ends up panicking and picking the wrong option virtually every time. 

11 minutes ago, Dapower said:

Then again isn’t it a refreshing change come next Sunday at 4.30 we’re hoping Arsenal slip up to keep us top 

Just win our games and see what happens. Sunday they're at home to Villa so I've not much hope things are going to turn back around next week. Unfortunately, 'never ever rely on Villa for anything' has always been a very sound mantra for life if you want to avoid disappointment. I'm not sure relying on Spurs is a much sounder prospect, but the North London derby really does look like the best hope for Arsenal dropping points. They're the best team they play and at least the one team and fanbase they'll face who won't actually prefer them winning the title over us.