mike23

Think I might be done with watching our league games. What's the point? I just spent the entire second half shouting at the telly and getting increasingly angrier at just about everything that was going on, whether it was the ref or our impotence in front of goal. Finally turned it off after that farce with the penalty. Lockdown is miserable enough without watching this crap every week. Top 4 isn't happening. I'm not even sure top half is happening any more. Maybe we'll miss out on Europe altogether and can at least avoid the slog of the Europa League next year. It will be interesting to see if these refs dare carry on officiating our games like this when fans are back (hopefully that will be next season). Champions league? Who knows. At least we won't be up against the officials in that. It may be the only football I watch for the rest of the season. But in truth it seems ridiculous to imagine us beating City, Bayern or PSG in our present state, It's hard to have much belief in us beating anyone in our present state. I actually kinda have some sympathy for the null and void brigade from last season now because I'd be more than happy to just pretend this utter abortion of a season never happened.

Yeah they're all moaning about how they've had nothing since Klopp's comments. More like they've finally had a few matches that were refereed fairly. It's why I think Klopp needs to keep now just bringing up dodgy calls going against us in every press conference. Put the spotlight on the officials. Maybe eventually there will be proper scrutiny of their decisions in our games if they decide to carry on like they have with us all season.

Didn't see the interview. He wasn't actually moaning about the penalty not being given was he? I don't agree with VAR getting involved to overturn it for the foul as I suppose you could just about say there was enough there to justify the ref's on pitch decision (although as usual it was so soft that no one other than United would have got it), but more importantly it was just obviously offside and everything else should have been irrelevant after that. Absolutely incredible that the officials didn't seem to check the offside. Did they just forget about it like with the Pickford incident? Can they seriously not check more than one thing at any one time? Right decision somehow reached but for all the wrong reasons. The thread on Redcafe just gave me a much needed laugh. They'd be in the bottom half without all the help they've had from officials this year.

Bit harsh on Leeds. They just look like a very inconsistent team to me. They've looked really good in some matches and dreadful in others. Our game against them at the start of the season would be pretty low down on performances to be unhappy about this season.

You couldn't make it up, but there's actually a thread on Redcafe where they're moaning about United being hard done by with refereeing decisions this season.

Spot on with every word. If we weren't in lockdown with so little else to do, then I genuinely think I'd have given up on football this season by now. Football fans always tend to think the refs are against them but this year has been something else. The only hope is that we will at least get fair officials in the Champions League. I don't even care if Leipzig beat us - just as long as its on sporting merit.

No idea how this team have fallen so far so quickly but we've got certainly got real problems. There's only so much you can blame the injuries for and this has gone way beyond that. This group of players have been amazing for a couple of years, but they've been an absolute embarrassment since the West Brom game.

Both that incident and the Walcott foul on Milner took place right in front of the linesman. Absolutely unreal that neither was given. It wasn't just the ref last night. His assistants and whoever was working the VAR were every bit as bad.

Excellent report. Unreal how little was made of the handball in the box. That was a penalty even by the old interpretations of the rule, let alone the stricter new ones. I always think the reactions of players are pretty telling in those incidents. Sometimes you see half-assed appeals where it's clear a player is hoping the ref will view it as a penalty but doesn't really believe it will be given. Gini was going absolutely mad over this one because he knew it was absolutely blatant. For someone to look at that on VAR and say no penalty is just a complete disregard of the rules as far as I'm concerned and every bit as iffy as the disallowed goal at Everton. It wasn't given because they simply didn't want to give it and you have to ask why that is. I don't know why it is but we're just getting fuck all this season and I've given up believing it will even out at all. More likely it will just continue all season or we'll get a few token decisions at the end of the season when the league's already gone to try and make it look as though it was fair. You've mentioned narratives and I wonder if the bullshit narrative spun by jealous opposition fans all last season of us being helped by officials has got into the officials' heads and this year it's payback. Having to listen to Tyler's and Alan Smith's barely concealed glee all match made it even more of a frustrating watch. Can we just have every game on Amazon with Ally McCoist? (although even he might have struggled to find anything nice to say about our front 3 last night).

I thought it was a foul for their goal as well. When you consider how long they looked at our winner against Spurs for and that penalty incident against Fulham the other week, it's pretty galling that it either wasn't even looked at at all or wasn't reviewed with anything like the same degree of scrutiny. It was the same with the foul on Mane. It at least warranted a proper review. I hate to be one of those people who moans about refereeing conspiracies against us, but it certainly feels like we have to win every game by at least 2 goals at the moment, because if there's a decision to be made in a close game then it goes against us every single time. But mostly we just have ourselves to blame for a very under par performance yesterday. Hopefully we get a big response at Newcastle on Wednesday. And then a tough game at Southampton, but maybe playing against a team who will actually attempt to play football may suit us more. It does feel like it's the anti football teams that we always seem to have the most trouble against.

I thought for a horrible moment that Alisson was going to have to go off when he seemed to hurt his shoulder in the second half. The idea of Adrian playing the final half hour of a game like that would be the stuff of nightmares. I'd forgotten about that penalty incident in the second half, but I remember being really pissed off at the time about it. For me it's not just the fact that they're ruining football with these bullshit interpretations of the offside law and handball rule, it's the fact that there's not even any consistency in how they're applied. Of course it shouldn't have been a penalty, but if you're giving the one in the first half where you're basically saying any incident where it hits the hand is a penalty no matter how close or unavoidable it is, then you have to give the second one as well. It was the same when Spurs drew at home to Newcastle the other week. Newcastle got a ridiculous late penalty, but it was made worst by the fact Spurs weren't awarded one for a virtually identical incident earlier on in the game. There's no consistency or accountability, and it's getting to the point where games seem more likely to be decided on the whim of the officials than how well a team plays.

On top of everything else, I'm blaming that prick on VAR for the fact I've managed to get virtually no work for university done this week. Been far too wound up to just sit down and concentrate on it ever since the full time whistle went yesterday. Worst possible news on van Dijk. It seemed inevitable after the way this weekend had gone. Big challenge ahead now but, as you say, it's not like he's the only world class player we have. A few people are talking as though the season is over. This squad deserves more trust than that. Things look bleak but this squad won't just throw the towel in. And even if this is a bleak moment, we can all take solace in the fact that we don't support Everton. Forget all the fawning over their start to the season. They looked no better yesterday than they have in any other derby in the last decade. Within a few months they'll have slipped down to 7th or 8th and be as irrelevant as they have been every other year for the past 2 and a half decades.

I was just looking at the draw for the next round. i noticed Spurs are playing Chelsea. I was a bit surprised by this as I remembered seeing that their game with Leyton Orient had been called off due to a number of Orient's squad testing positive for covid. I thought they'd have just rearranged it for a later date, but the tie has apparently just been awarded to Spurs. Seems incredibly harsh on Leyton Orient. But in doing so the organisers have surely now set a precedent for what will happen if the same event occurs in future rounds. They can't have one rule for the small clubs and one rule for the big clubs, so we could potentially hammer Arsenal and then have an outbreak of the virus in the squad just before the following round and end up out of the competition anyway. It does make it kinda hard to get excited by the domestic cups.

Yeah, it was for a shootout in the league cup final against City that Sarri tried to replace Kepa with Caballero. Kepa refused to come off and Sarri looked like he wanted to throttle him. It looked like it would have been a good decision as Kepa ended up somehow diving over a really saveable penalty and they ended up losing the shootout

I wish Alisson had tried to psyche a few of their takers out before they stepped up. It might not have made any difference, but he seemed to make it way too easy for them throughout the shootout.

The dropped points against Burnley actually frustrated me far more than the Arsenal loss. We could easily have been about 5 or 6 goals up before they equalised, and then there was the non-penalty when their defender just completely wiped Robertson out near the end. But nice to finish with 2 more wins and the performances in both games were decent. I missed the first couple of minutes so didn't see the Newcastle goal, but agree that I can't remember them even having a shot on goal in the rest of the game. They stayed up comfortably enough and Steve Bruce has done a decent job with what he's had to work with, but from what I've seen of them this season they've looked like possibly the most tedious team in the whole league. You could make a case that if they'd tried to play more expansively against a team like Liverpool that they'd have risked a hammering, but they haven't seemed much more adventurous even when I've seen them play other midtable teams or sides battling relegation. It must have been a real chore for their supporters to watch them week in week out.

Was I alone in thinking Kepa would have actually saved the freekick if he'd just bothered to actually dive properly? Instead he just did a weird sort of flop with his arms at his side. Anyway, agree that he doesn't seem to be very good. Remarkable how little has been made of just how much they paid for him. He cost more than Alisson. They had to do something quickly because they lost Courtois right near the end of the transfer window, but I bet Athletic Bilbao couldn't believe their luck when Chelsea actually agreed to pay his release clause.

The clubs near the bottom need to be careful. Whether they want to admit it or not, the tv and other contracts they get from being in the premier league are so lucrative entirely because of teams like us, United and Arsenal. They might see this as a get out of jail card to remain on the premier league gravy train for another season, but such short-term opportunism might lead to there not being a gravy train for much longer. The big clubs seem to all want to finish the season because they have the most to lose financially if it doesn't happen, and if they see the other teams going out of their way to deliberately hinder any chance of that happening then they're likely to remember that next time sorting out things like tv deals come up. Perhaps they'll decide that it's time to look at independent tv deals. What sort of money would Sky and BT be offering if a Premier league package only included options like Watford vs Bournemouth? This is of course if most clubs haven't gone bankrupt if they don't find a way resume. I still don't see how next season can happen if this one can't be concluded. Conditions aren't going to be any different by the end of the year, let alone this fabled August all the null and voiders seem to be dreaming of a new season starting in. It may be unpalatable to be talking of football resuming whilst all this is going on, but like it or not it is a business, and I don't see how making plans to try and rescue it is any different from what other businesses are doing at the moment.

European games will be harder because of all the travelling between countries. Personally I'm starting to think it's going to be incredibly difficult to get a full league season in next year, though. None of the logistical problems they keep mentioning that may hinder finishing this season are just going to go away. There's plenty of talk about second and third waves of the virus and how lockdown and social distancing measures may be relaxed but then need to be tightened again at points. I think the leagues seriously need to look at alternatives to playing a full 38 game season next year regardless of when and if this season actually gets completed. Otherwise there's every chance that they'll just end up with 2 incomplete seasons.

If Ajax and Alkmaar were level on points then surely the fairest way to decide it would have been a straight playoff between the two for the title. That could have taken place just before whenever the new season starts. How can abstaining votes be counted one way or the other for promotion and relegation? It sounds like the Dutch authorities really wanted to just effectively void the season (let's be honest, they're doing it in all but name) and did everything they could to make it happen. I feel sorry for the clubs who were having good seasons who missed out, just as I did with all the non-league teams. There have been some really braindead decisions made in football since this all started. Voiding any league at this point in the season is by far the most unjust thing any league at any level could do. The need to decide European places is an irrelevant pipe dream. There's no way the European competitions are going to go ahead as normal next season.

Perhaps the fairest thing would be to just finish the season. Leave everything as it stands but no relegation - apart from West Ham. It's going to be hard enough to get a regular 20 team premier league season played next year, let alone one that would be expanded if they honoured promotions and had no relegation. I'm sure all their complaints about ending the season are from a purely humanitarian perspective and all they care about is the greater good, so in an act of pure altruism they'll be more than happy to make things a bit easier and give up their premier league place.

Lots of logistical problems - none of which will just go away if they start a new season. On the basis of everything in that article, then we might as well just say, 'right, that's it then. No football at all until a vaccine is found.' Except that's not what all the pricks being quoted in that article want because there would only be about half a dozen clubs left who hadn't gone bankrupt by the time that happens. It's about time someone actually asked these people how exactly they envision a full season being played out around this virus when they dismiss every suggestion that is made to try and get 9 or 10 games played.

Yeah, I keep thinking way too much is being made about the impact of out of contract players. The simple truth is that if any of these players were that important to these sides, they'd have long since extended their contracts or sold them before losing them for nothing. We all have different views, but I really don't understand the view of any Liverpool fan who wouldn't want the title being given to us if they didn't finish the season. We're an unprecedented 25 points clear with 9 games to play. We've waited 30 years for a league title. Even if the season isn't played to a conclusion that's the one issue that shouldn't even be up for debate when they're deciding how to finalise everything. It's everything else which would be the issue as I really couldn't see teams who are in the relegation zone only on goal difference accepting just being relegated.

There's a line in that article about how curtailing this season will allow them to plan for ticket sales for next season. Are they honestly expecting big crowds to be allowed in football stadiums if they start in August?

With the early freekick against Mo in the corner, the linesman was stood a few yards away and didn't give it. Whilst some of the other occasions the ref fell for blatant dives may have been excusable considering the extent of the theatrics, surely the ref should be going with the linesman in that instance. Hopefully we get a stronger referee in the second leg. It's hard to imagine they'll get away with even a fraction of the theatrics at Anfield.