mike23

There wasn't really any reason for Southampton to be so negative at Anfield last week either as they also didn't really have anything much left to play for. This Middlesbrough side is one of the most negative teams I can remember being in the premier league too. I'm not sure they even know how to play any other way. Hopefully they do have a go as it would certainly be better for us but if they did but it would be a pleasant surprise if they did.

Bit annoyed with Sevilla as I had them in an accumulator to qualify and it was looking in great shape after Barcelona somehow qualified last week. They should have been out of sight after the first leg though and paid the price. We must be looking at some of their attacking players for the summer as they would fit right in here considering how spineless they all were tonight. They get a penalty to keep them in the competition and not one of them will step up and take it and it's left to a midfielder who I can't remember ever having much of a scoring record. Vardy certainly milked it to get Nasri sent off but it was just moronic from Nasri. He'd been lucky to get away with a few other challenges before that in truth. He seems to be a particularly dislikeable footballer even by modern standards and the fact he was getting caught up in something like that when play was still going on and his team desperately needed a goal showed what an immature and selfish player he is. They should fine him whatever the maximum amount is they can get away with and sell him if he has a problem with it. But this is modern football so they'll probably just blame Vardy and the referee. Fair play to Leicester although I must admit that while I was happy for them last year that team and their fans just irritate me now. I think and kind of hope they will get absolutely hammered in the next round. It kind of just puts shame on most of the supposed big teams that they've already gone further this year than most of our other teams in recent seasons.

This was probably the most alarming performance of the season so far for me. Other games you could say goals went against us at the worst possible times during the match, quite often against the run of play, but here we were fortunate to get through the opening stages without going behind and yet still couldn't settle down or wake up. Really just fed up with us right now. Was hopeful we could still salvage something from the season (albeit not what we all wanted a few months back) after the Spurs game but this just killed that hope completely. Yet again with months of the season still to go I'll be happy to just see it end and we can spend the last few months of the season watching other teams play important games while ours mean nothing.

Really don't think I can be bothered with this team any more. It's like they're on a mission to drop points against every single one of the shittest teams in the league. How do you go from playing like they did against Spurs to whatever the fuck this has supposed to be? They play with this little energy and effort after a 2 week break? Right from the very start it was obvious they just weren't up for it tonight.

Good report. Summed everything up perfectly. Can't believe how dramatically things have fallen apart since that win over City on New Year's Eve. It's been like being made to watch the second half of that Europa League final for an entire month. Have a lot of sympathy for Atlanta Falcons fans after the way their team completely choked in the Superbowl. They apparently have a lot of previous form for getting their fans hopes up and then spectacularly blowing it just like modern day Liverpool.

Yep feeling very down myself still even 2 days later. Some defeats you can shake off and just look forward to the next game to make up for it but not this time and I'm really struggling to care if we beat Southampton or not (certainly not optimistic on that front the way we're playing anyway). Football does seem a bit empty and pointless right now. Yeah we can maybe still make top 4 but so what? Great we're back in the champions league but it's not like we'd have any chance of winning it now. Back in the days of Rafa it always seemed a realistic possibility but now it just seems a closed shop with Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern in a different class to everyone else. It would generate more money to improve the squad? Hmm I remember thinking that last time we qualified but instead we sold our best player and bought a load of mediocre shite - not one single one of whom couldn't have been signed anyway without champions league football to offer. It does just seem like we're in an eternal loop of despair where occasional flashes of hope always seem to just be snuffed out in the most ridiculous ways possible.

Could have done with that league cup game being this midweek really just to have something virtually straight away to try and get that horrible second half out of the system instead of having a week to dwell over it. In theory West Ham should be a good team to take it out on at Anfield (they looked absolutely shambolic defensively against Arsenal) but football rarely seems to be that straightforward and I'm no longer sure if we're anywhere near as good as I thought we were. Time will tell if this was just a one off return to bad old habits or this sort of mental weakness is ingrained into the squad.

It seems to be pure luck whether or not you get penalties these days most of the time. Most of the ones that get given you'll see a virtually identical incident in another game that isn't given. Seems to almost depend what sort of mood the ref is in. It might not be in the rules exactly but if one team has 3 decent appeals then you would expect one of them to be given. Sadly not in this case. He was terrible in general as well. Hard for our pressing game to work when the ref blows his whistle for virtually every single challenge. Some of them were great challenges. He's probably a ref Villarreal would have loved to have had at Anfield as he'd have been stopping the game constantly and giving them freekicks. I doubt we'd have won that game so comfortably had he been in charge. We were awful in that second half and there was no response at all after going behind but one of the reasons we couldn't get anything going was that prick was blowing his whistle every 5 seconds for fuck all. Every time the ball went out of play and he didn't know who to give it to he just seemed to decide it was Sevilla's ball too. It always annoys me when I hear commentators say the ref will just add time on at the end of a game when one team is constantly timewasting as though it doesn't matter. Apart from the fact they often don't actually add on anywhere near as much time as they should it also makes it so much harder for a team chasing a game to get any momentum going when the play is constantly being stopped. I guess we'll never know what would have happened had we got one of those penalties and gone 2 goals up. With Liverpool teams in the past I'd have been in no doubt it would have been game over. But this lot have blown 2 goal leads 3 times recently so it hardly would have been safe if Sevilla had got one back and changed the momentum of the game. And that second half was so bad that it's hard to imagine any sort of lead would be safe. I still don't know how you can make that dozy a start to a second half in a cup final and basically completely undo everything you did right in the first half. Shit ref didn't help but just like when we lost that second final to Milan with the help of a really shit ref we also aided considerably in our own downfall. Just seems like a big opportunity missed against a not particularly good side. Ultimately we didn't kill them off when we were on top but killed us off when they were on top.

They were saying on MOTD last night that we'd dropped more points from winning positions this season than any other team - 15. Eleven of those since Klopp took over. Just a few more points and we'd be right in the mix for 4th place against West Ham, a Manchester City team who look absolutely terrible a the moment and United who have looked terrible pretty much all season. So frustrating. You can hardly expect a team to go a whole season without losing a lead a few times and to be fair we have also gained a fair few points from late goals too but 15 is way too many. This game and the Sunderland ones are the real stand out ones though as they really were in the bag and we just threw them away. It certainly feels like the league season is over now. Just the Europa League left to play for. Then hopefully a summer where we finally get our transfers right and sort ourselves out. I'm not entirely sure who will be leaving but it does certainly look like this game might have pretty much made up Klopp's mind to ship Skrtel out.

I still like Rafa so I hope he manages to keep them up. Rafa or Allardyce? It's a bit of a no brainer really. I don't really mind Newcastle either. They're the one team who are usually a bigger soap opera than us. The Newcastle fans seem to be absolutely made up with the appointment from looking at one of their forums. I remember Villa fans being against getting him a few years back. You've got to laugh when you consider the managers they've had instead since then.

It was a 0-0 draw at Reading when McCarhy was outstanding for them. Pleasing result and final 20 minutes but it did certainly mask another mostly disappointing performance. Have we even managed back to back impressive performances at any point this season? The win does keep our faint hopes of making the top 4 alive but it's hard to have much faith that a team who have been so infuriatingly inconsistent since Klopp arrived will suddenly put together the sort of winning streak required.

Anyone other than United would do me. We seem to be incapable of beating them at the moment no matter how bad they are and 2 defeats in one season is enough. Hopefully someone else can knock them out and we can avoid meeting them altogether in the competition.

I was completely fed up with Benteke last night but having had a bit of time to get over the loss I agree that at least he was getting into the right sort of positions to miss the chances and that's something he's not always been doing this season. Sadly he reminds me a bit of Heskey with his finishing. He'll bury the difficult chances instinctively but when he has time to think about it he'll panic and miss like he has done with every one on one he's had recently. I agree that Europa League should be the priority for us now. There's the league cup final of course but win or lose that's only one game and will soon be out of the way. Last week's results killed off any lingering hopes we might have had of making a run at the top 4. Although which players should be held back for the most important games is very debateable as most of the supposed backups have looked better than the first team players recently. We really do look a completely different team in attack with Sturridge on the pitch. It just seems to add to the torture of watching our incompetent displays usually though knowing we actually have this top quality forward who would change everything if he would just stay fit for a run of games for a change.

I read that about Sturridge. If he had anything about him he should be feeling guilty for being paid the last 2 seasons and feel like he owes the club and fans something but obviously not. Modern footballers eh?

Yeah what has happened to Jason Puncheon this year? Always used to be a solid cheap signing for me for fantasy league but hasn't scored all season. Even when Palace were banging them in every week I'd check the scorers and it seemed like everyone got a few other than him. I'm hanging on to him for the rest of the year now just because I'm convinced he's due to score a few at some point. Probably won't work as I thought the same about Downing and now Lallana for us.

I was thinking all the same things during the match. Newcastle were virtually begging to be beaten. It was obvious right from the start how nervous their players were and how edgy the crowd were. We didn't have to be awesome. Competent would have been more than enough. Instead we produce that sloppy, complacent crap and you can slowly sense Newcastle getting into the game and their fans getting behind them and the jammy deflected goal seemed like the perfect punishment to our players for that performance. Klopp seems to have been all smiles and pats on the back towards the players so far but I'm sure he has a far less pleasant side if he doesn't think a performance is acceptable. I imagine maybe the players maybe saw that side to him after the game yesterday.

Bacca for me. As bad as our performances were last season a lot of our troubles would have been solved with a decent striker. I liked the look of Bacca from what I saw of him in Sevilla's league and European games last season. Clyne would be the next priority after that as we don't seem to have much quality in that position at the moment.

Very hard to pick just one from that list. Balotelli probably infuriated me more than any other player we've ever had in the first half of last season (he wasn't any better in the second half but I'd just given up on him by that point), Diouf was crap and seemed like a terrible human being too, but Aspas just looked completely lost whenever he was on the pitch for us so the vote has to go to him. Jesus that bloody corner against Chelsea but he was absolutely terrible the whole time he was on the pitch. I'm not sure he managed to touch it once without giving it away. Rodgers could have just brought anyone on from the crowd and it would not have been possible for them to be any worst than Aspas was in those 20 minutes or so.

Just been checking on Google to make sure I remember it right and we actually bought Poulsen from Juventus a couple of weeks before loaning them Aqualini. We didn't think it might be sensible to do what they did and loan him first with an option to buy or try to tie signing him in as part of the Aqualini deal. Instead we actually bought Poulsen and tied him up to a 3 year contract and then a couple of weeks later let them plead poverty over signing Aqualini and loan him there for a season with an option to buy that they had no obligation to actually go through with. The fee for Poulsen was reported as 4.5 million. Maybe Juventus paid some sort of loan fee for Aqualini but even if they had it wouldn't have been that much (and knowing us we probably cheerfully paid half his wages for them too) so we effectively ended up paying them money to take a past his best player they no longer wanted off their hands and giving them a much younger player whose stock in Italy was still high at the time in return. We really have been laughably bad at this transfer business for years haven't we? Anyway I went for Poulsen and Diao. Poulsen was certainly the easiest pick as I don't remember him having even one half decent game for us whereas the others all at least had the very occasional good game. Diao then just taking second place for being a bit of a donkey but there wasn't really much in it. All very disappointing signings.

Cole was probably the biggest disappointment overall but I've gone for Moses just because he failed to add anything positive at all when we came so close to winning the league. Our first 11 did so well but we got absolutely nothing positive from any of the attacking squad players that season. United always seemed to have some squad player who would come up with the odd important goal or assist when the main players weren't producing but instead we got Moses missing sitters and generally not looking arsed and Aspas doing an impression of a sunday league player who had won a competition to be part of the Liverpool squad.

If we were offered anything even close to what we paid for him then it would definitely make sense to sell but that won' be the case. It will be a loan offer and eventually a few million in a year or two if we're lucky. So might as well keep him and see if he can do better in his second season. There was one little spell last year where he looked like he had something about him so try and get more out of him. Just another baffling signing last summer who was signed for a big fee without us really knowing where to fit him into the team.

Dudek was excellent in his first season here. He lost his confidence though after some high profile errors the following season (particularly that one against United) and never really looked the same again. Maybe it even started with the world cup as after his first season here I remember him being absolutely awful in the world cup with Poland and even being dropped for their final game. But he did go out with a real bang with his big contribution in Instanbul. Reina wins by a comfortable distance. He was excellent here for a while. Probably the only really reliable keeper we've had in the premier league era. His distribution was brilliant too. I used to love it when he'd come and catch a cross and while most keepers would be happy just to hang on to it for a while and calm things down, Reina was always instantly looking up the pitch to see if someone was available to start a quick counter attack. I've no idea why his game deteriorated so badly in his final few seasons here at a relatively young age for a keeper and it seems a bit sad that last season he was content to just sit on the bench at Bayern. I never understand keepers who are happy with that role - particularly if they're as good as Reina.

I seem to remember Arsenal and Spurs being heavily linked with Cole at the time and it being touted as a major coup that we managed to sign him ahead of them. Might have all just been media speculation though or possibly they were interested but not insane enough to offer him the sort of wages we did. Agree that Milner seems to be a very different player though in terms of personality or will to succeed. If people can't get excited by his signing fair enough as he's not exactly the most exciting signing ever but I can't imagine we'll ever have any problems with his fitness or professionalism.

Proving the fans of all the other teams near the top right could be added to the list. I saw numerous comments the year before from fans of City, Chelsea, Arsenal and United saying we only challenged for the title because we had Suarez and only had to play one game a week because we weren't in Europe. I thought that was disrespectful towards the contributions of a lot of the other players. Turns out they were right though and we ended up being even shitter than they predicted. I bet they're all really smug about it now too and after one year where United were the league's laughing stock for a change we instantly won back our crown. About the only thing we will win any time soon.

I'm sure the club has been sounding out other teams to see if anyone is interested in him. His sudden bizarre reintroduction to the team for such a big game after not even being able to make the bench in the last few weeks suggests to me that there wasn't a great deal of interest out there and that it's been accepted by the club that we're stuck with him at least until the summer. When we signed him a lot of people in the media suggested it was his last chance to do something at a big club and if that's the case then he is failing spectacularly and clearly doesn't seem to be too bothered about it. The problem for us could be finding a buyer even in the summer and I hope this doesn't turn into another situation like we've had with a number of other players in recent years where he just ends up being sent out on loan to clubs who won't even pay his wages in full.