Terrace Talk: It’s clock-watching, migraines, and ulcers from now on

“If we win the league, then getting beat by Wolves won’t matter. It won’t even be remembered.”

There’s that “if” again… In the new, ever so practical world of football the FA Cup is an irrelevance. It’s too much effort. It’s in the way.

Desperate types at the BBC (grateful for any live sport) still reliving their youth, wiping away a tear about Stanley Matthews and Ronnie Radford.

That can get on your nerves admittedly, but watching a Liverpool manager toss a trophy aside so breezily is something I’ll never be able to get used to. It certainly contributes to Klopp’s generally poor January record. It’s like he’s having his winter break, even if nobody else is.

Coming so soon after the first league loss, it started tongues a-wagging and heaped a whole pile of pressure on the Brighton game. At half time, there was some obvious concern: “You gave away the cup for this? Everybody was rested for this!”

Wily Chris Hughton knew that was how it would be and set his bar exceedingly low, for frustration and little else.

It kind of worked but was always running the risk of one moment ruining it. In another week where Sir Harold of Hotspur beat his personal best in the high jump, how is poor Mo the poster boy for simulation?

It was a pretty blatant foul, really it was, but the mounting vexation of Brighton supporters was hilarious.

Even if we don’t win the league, the thought of thousands of people vigorously committing to the notion Kevin Friend is a Scouser will give me a warm chuckle for years to come.

Two defeats certainly rattled a few cages. Coming after eight straight wins it felt like pure Klopp and the Nearly Man tag soon began to re-emerge. Well that’s okay. How many of these barren years have Liverpool even been a Nearly team? Too few for comfort.

Our main challengers got 100 points last year. They spend what they like, just thrashed two teams with a 16-0 aggregate scoreline and have clung to us despite (a) our greatest start ever (b) not having their best player available.

The challenge is all ours, but you’d hardly know it listening to some. Maybe this is rolling out the rationalisation way before it’s needed but face facts; when the season began, we had a 25-point gap to close.

That was always going to take a combination of our improvement and their decline. The abandonment of domestic cup football may be irksome, it’s certainly a gamble, but one with a potentially huge pay-off.

Injuries, Klopp’s real weakness, haven’t helped. And all of them in the same department, naturally; Matip and Gomez couldn’t be avoided, but everything else is what we’ve become used to in recent years.

Watching Lovren leave so early at Wolves, Alexander-Arnold getting through Saturday’s first half so hesitantly, it’s all a bit much to be honest.

It stockpiles much-needed evidence into the current narrative of reducing the workload, resting for a week, letting other clubs take the strain while our eyes remain on the prize. That’s how Rodgers almost won it five years ago. Outsiders can sneer puritanically at the cynicism of it all, even a few wrinkled reds who get misty-eyed about David Coleman commentaries, Norwich in the snow, two quid to get in, etc.

Well they (okay then, “we”!) can moan and splutter to their/our black heart’s content. Klopp’s got a title to win.

Brighton may have been slightly unnerving on the whole, the effortless pasting of Newcastle and Arsenal already a distant memory, but you’d better get used to it. There are 16 more of these desolate treks through mediocrity still to come.

You’ve had your entertainment for the season. It’s clock-watching, migraines, and ulcers from now on, with fraught prayers for unlikely results elsewhere thrown in.

Great, isn’t it?