Terrace Talk: Liverpool - Nothing feels right, but let’s cling onto Man City’s coattails

By Steven Kelly

Liverpool are in predictably unpredictable mode, making it harder to maintain a cerebral even keel. Things weren’t helped by a muted atmosphere which indicated how many (hardly any) wanted to be there at all.

Midday on Sunday? For Fulham? “Siri, show me complete contempt for football fans”.

They weren’t as bad as Cardiff, even carving out a couple of chances they should’ve taken. Those 30 seconds when we went from one-down alarm bells to one-up relief is typical of what happens to struggling clubs.

We were better in the second, with Shaqiri making you wonder why he ever gets dropped. Bit sly to sing Robertson’s name for his goal, though; good cross obviously but we need something better for the Swiss Popeye than the humdrum mumble the Kop came up with.

Nothing feels quite right still, but winning matches will camouflage that for the moment. Klopp made some comment in the week about us being criticised for not playing like City.

Is that really bothering anyone? Surely the problem is we’re not playing like us, but points have disguised it well.

That game against Red Star though, good Lord. How do we become so complacent and arrogant so quickly? Is it the history?

A misguided belief that clambering back into a challenging position is easy and already complete, while everyone (including the manager) starts to look down on other teams as a minor inconvenience rather than a challenge because you can’t pronounce their name properly.

It began with leaving Shaqiri behind. Like that was going to silence their fans anyway; it was first blood to them before an ankle was kicked. The way he’s playing we can’t afford diplomacy/cowardice.

I know I’ve a tendency to go all “old man shouting at cloud” but imagine Joe Fagan telling Souness in 1984 this Dinamo Bucharest lot look a bit angry; mind if you don’t come, Graeme?

To compound that, there was only Lallana and Sturridge and Matip to ahem ‘compensate’. The message was clear; we don’t even need our best to beat these - and boy did that blow up in our face.

We’re especially weak in midfield, where Milner and Wijnaldum (after a fashion) need to play most of the time because there’s little confidence in the rest.

Fitness or form, doesn’t matter which, both lacking.

Do you think it’s a coincidence we always do well in the Champions League when we’ve had a qualifying round first?

There’s something about that which breeds caution, that we’re obviously not as good as we used to be so everyone needed to stay focussed.

This is the fourth time we’ve gone straight into the group and the fourth time we’ve struggled.

A toothless defeat heaped more scorn on all that Super League bilge, and there’s been excessive bleating about City’s ‘revelations’.

Pep’s lot are a toxic cherry on the very nasty cake, but if you think emphasising their sins washes everyone else’s away you’re deluded.

The weakened are routinely pounded by the powerful. Now we’re resorting to desperately awaiting favours from Everton and United, of all people.

Fans howl for a level playing field, but that’s not what you want is it? Not really.

Clinging to some financial requirement where it’s okay to bully everyone else as long as you actually earned the money to do so. Given it as a gift? Awful cheats who should be thrown out etc.

That doesn’t make much sense. I appreciate where and how City might damage the English game irreparably, but they’ve boarded a gravy train begun by others long ago and improved upon it much to those others’ obvious chagrin.

If the Reds were to be sold, as a New York paper suggested this week, what are the odds everyone rationalises any human rights awkwardness away? Pretty low, I’d imagine.

But let’s cling onto City’s coattails while we still can, anyway.