Terrace Talk - Liverpool: Enjoy the football while you can, please

Liverpool's Diogo Jota celebrates scoring their side's first goal of the new season. Picture: Joe Giddens

What price normality?

The last time we played in a full football ground there was a local spike in the virus that ended in lockdown. Football means so much to us, its absence felt so deeply, that anything seems worth the risk.

Yes, your peppy good news boy is back!

At least you won’t read incessant whining about (a lack of) transfer activity from me. It’s currently devouring all common sense on social media.

This season, if t’were possible, may turn out even weirder than the last, so nobody needs this constant screech about a, b, or c buying x, y, and z — and why aren’t Liverpool doing likewise?

It’s as though they’ve just landed from Planet Crackpot and witnessed nothing of how FSG or Klopp operate. It’s been over a decade, folks.

Maybe Konate won’t be enough, perhaps someone is needed to replace Wijnaldum at least, but whining about what others (City particularly) do is the height of futility.

Where’s the joy, the actual achievement, in what they do? If you want to line up in lane 5 of the 100m with a revved-up motorbike, feel free. If you can explain the point of that, I’d be happy to hear it. Scratch that; I wouldn’t.

I’m still scarred by 2010. By Texan hustlers, court cases and impending financial collapse. Covid economics is still a thing, even if you think it’s just monopoly money they play with.

After all this time, John Henry’s cut is always forgotten, isn’t it? The fact we focussed on locking up the fine players we already have is fine by me, someone who complains for what he laughably calls a living.

Nearly everybody’s fit again, although Robertson’s immediate collapse is unnerving when everyone thought he was indestructible.

Put bluntly, the modern Liverpool only competes for two trophies a year anyway, we don’t really need what everyone else has got.

So enjoy the football while you can, please, and the obviously good team we have. Time to gripe when the season goes off the rails.

Cheerleaders can be just as irritating, granted. Prolific use of that awful cliché “he’ll be like a new signing” will last only so long but there’s always been method in Klopp’s camouflage madness so no need to fret quite so soon.

Not that Norwich were going to threaten us. Whilst giggling at Arsenal being all Arsenal and losing on day one to a promoted team, the laughter caught in the throat when you remembered where we were headed.

But the Canaries have rarely pecked us in the Premiership, a tragic example of how the haves usually swat aside the have-nots nowadays.

Klopp’s midfield selection is often a good sign of whether he’s taking opponents seriously or not. Such complacency can sometimes creep into the overall performance.

We still won comfortably without the first choice three starting. They were much better with Fabinho on, though, so hopefully fewer liberties will be taken as the season progresses.

He used all his subs, even got a goal out of one, so if he intends to fully utilise the squad this time and not just gripe, then that’s a good sign.

You had to laugh at Salah’s ghost assist for Jota, one he clearly had no intention of making judging on his first half performance. Credit though for the pass to Firmino for the second, where you expected him to shoot even on his wrong foot. The reward for such unusual charity wasn’t long in coming, anyway. He’s obviously going to be vital for any chance of success we’ve got.

Games against such opponents can turn tricky. They rarely come out and play, they know what we can do. It was the grisliest aspect of last season’s awful middle section and is going to feature a lot this time too.

That’s the curse of our recent success, I suppose; nothing for nothing.