Liverpool - I’m enjoying what I’m seeing but waiting for the inevitable jolt to come

So how are we all doing then? Good? I should hope so.

As a chap who’d think a lottery win was a tax nightmare, I’m normally not one for flying flags or throwing hats into the air singing hallelujah.

I’m just enjoying what I’m seeing and waiting for the inevitable jolt to come. There will be one; just don’t sweat it.

Internationals and a Monday Night Classic have kept me from you. Sorry about that. Television will never figure out how Liverpool-United has never been a football feast.

It’s all about the numbers watching, the only thing they care about, and this last match was as bad as they come. Never mind the quality, count the subscriptions.

Of course Mourinho was Mourinho; before, during, and after. Impish if you’re leaning his way, petty if you’re not.

He’ll benefit from the lack of scrutiny the media gives any United manager’s behaviour — for a while. All that was left for us in the end was to moan about David De Gea. Again.

It takes you back to a time when Schmeichel was their goalie and James was ours and you wondered “if only…” We had a couple of players missing so didn’t fire on even a few cylinders, never mind all.

Two years ago if you’d claimed the absence of Adam Lallana would have killed us, you’d have been escorted to a local hospital and locked in the janitor’s room as a hopeless case.

His return against Albion worked wonders and came just as a few doubters began to ask if Klopp’s team really was all it’s cracked up to be; “the last wonder of the world”, as King of the Snides put it.

Lallana amazingly knits it all together in a way Sturridge just can’t. Without him Firmino seems to merely amble around and Sadio Mane looks more like the headless chicken we’d been warned about.

It felt especially good to finally put one over on Tony Pulis. The nonsense about him “not losing” to Liverpool in five years sums up his kind of football; where avoiding defeat is a pretence of achievement.

So for 80 minutes we played really well, looking the best team in the country without running up the cricket score it all deserved.

Then old Liverpool popped up, winks a bloodshot eye at the crowd and whispers “hey, still here” as the final moments became a fright-fest nine days before Halloween.

Look, maybe it’s for the best people don’t get too carried away. Remember the last time we were title favourites? It was so scary, Steven Gerrard’s legs turned to mush.

If people insist on thinking that way, why not wait for April? That’s if we’re still there or thereabouts… So let’s be realistic and say there’s a long way to go and a lot more still to do. As Pulis pointed out, without European football, the Reds do have a chance to focus on one thing.

Even Henderson’s yellow card looked like deliberately taking a ban for the cup match on Tuesday. It may be against Tottenham but there’s a priority now. Improve in the league, see where that takes us.

Going top would have meant checking all the other results. Stay second and Sunday’s one big chill. Who cares what City did, even less Chelsea-United. Watch a bit of NFL and try to figure out once and for all what the hell’s going on.

Always remember this. If we’d put the Arsenal game to bed at 4-1, we’d have hit top spot. If we’d put Albion to sleep at 2-0, we’d have hit top spot.

No one will be saying “but we won, didn’t we?” at the end of the season when this obvious flaw has cost us big-time, like in 2014.

Whenever and wherever the banana skin comes, it will come. Fixing the obvious flaw after that will be the hard part.