Terrace Talk: Another escape to victory for our lucky general

I’m not getting through this season mentally unscathed, by the looks of things.

Seen this club win league titles on the last day and lose them in the last minute.

Seen us 3-0 down in a European Cup final, but level it in six minutes and win on penalties.

At some point shouldn’t you learn to shrug your shoulders at every calamity and accept whatever it is Liverpool throw your way?

It doesn’t look like it. So much for age and experience; there’s an actual regression going on here, like a boozed-up Benjamin Button.

Probably serves me right for all the gloating after the derby. I looked at last week’s column about Everton and knew it’d blow up in our faces.

Throwing away two points against Bournemouth is bad enough. When you’ve scored five goals in two games and get one point against that kind of team, maybe you need a drawing board to go back to?

Through physical necessity, Klopp tried to defend deep with his walking wounded and shore up a win with three centre-halves. It failed abjectly, so what does he do? Picks three centre-halves again. He won’t be the last manager to keep pushing on a door marked ‘pull’.

Off to Stoke, for what might be the worst team selection anyone’s ever seen. Virtually everyone was a square peg in a round hole, and played like it. Even Hodgson wasn’t this bewildered.

Ben Woodburn might well be a burgeoning superstar for all anyone can tell but you don’t teach a kid to swim by throwing them into a vat of treacle with an anchor on his ankle.

Jonathan Walters is a bad, bitter blue and had already scored against Liverpool this season by just standing in the six-yard box with no one near him.

Yeah, pay no attention to him; he’s not going to do that again, is he?

By half-time I’d had enough. I’ve written before about this club always letting you down while you try to affect a disinterested calm about it all. A few wins later, it’s like you’ve had a lobotomy. Suckered again.

Stoke were in the bottom ten at the start and we did what we usually do against the weaker teams — fell flat on our faces. The 1-0 lead briefly put them in the top ten. Was that why Liverpool suddenly woke up? What a weird team we are.

Make way for the Brazilian charge. Do Brazilians ever ‘charge’?

Anyway, sticking a few decent players in the side certainly made a difference. No wonder they call Klopp a genius.

Coutinho gets all the plaudits as well as links with moves to bigger clubs, but Firmino does a lot on the quiet. The ersatz samurai with the dayglo teeth may be the last player you’d ever compare to Suarez but that’s double figures for the season again without ever really getting into his full stride. Even Luis never hit a ball sweeter than that.

After an amazing comeback, trust Liverpool to go giddy again and almost throw it away a minute later. That would have been a mortal blow; Mignolet had already saved our skins once. The block at 2-1 was a season changer but any team worth its top-three salt wouldn’t allow that chance in the first place.

In the settling dust you had to admit we’d got away with one of the worst halves of the decade, never mind the season.

As bad as the 1-6 two years ago? Maybe not, but it was still bloody awful. The bizarre cult that always emerges when you spawn any win had their say again. Signs, wonders, blah and blah.

It’s understandable that points trump style at this juncture but Saturday was something else. The manager virtually handed it to the opposition and got away with it.

To drop another cliche, Napoleon-style, give me a lucky general any day of the week.