Terrace Talk: Liverpool - Our anger can’t get through to them because we’re not there, but all this will be remembered
Liverpool’s Xherdan Shaqiri reacts during their Premier League match against Fulham at Anfield, Liverpool. Yesterday’s loss against the London club was Liverpool’s sixth consecutive defeat at home.
Your dependency on football for happiness is an archaic conceit. If anything, Liverpool should be congratulated for leading the charge and exposing this falsehood.
Only the Champions League farce to strap in for now. For three days, anyway. Away leg, Budapest. Home leg, ditto. Ludicrous.
Klopp claimed he wouldn’t prioritise Europe, then chose that XI. His mouth works independently from his brain, or he’s taken a course in corporate-speak supposed to rally morale.
He’s flailing now. It’s a pitiful sight. If you must have a sensationally bad season, do it when no-one’s looking. You can always deny it.
How do homophobes rationalize their hideousness? “It’s no business of mine what you do in your own homes, just don’t do it in front of me”.
While six home defeats in a row (after a four-year unbeaten streak) may well be hideous, merely ‘coinciding’ with the 21st different centre-back partnership, we should flat out deny everything. We did what? Where? Got proof?
Oh, it was on television? I live in England, pal, we stopped believing the magic rectangle decades ago.
I’ll admit the footage looks convincing, but so did the moon landings — and everyone knows Kubrick filmed those.
Chelsea wasn’t even a contest. VAR bailed us out, like it did at Tottenham and Sheffield, but Tuchel’s side aren’t as mentally fragile as those teams, or we are.
Werner had been discounted as an expensive busted flush, but he ran us ragged. So did Fulham’s Lookman. It’s embarrassing just watching us right now.
They both wanted it more, that was the worst part of it. Injuries, fitness, blame what you like; other teams shouldn’t come to Anfield and outfight us.
I know it’s clichéd to regard Guardiola as head and Klopp as heart. It diminishes the former’s leadership and the latter’s knowhow, but when the German’s team doesn’t even do battle, we are through the looking glass. What else can you call it but surrender?
We could be snarky and sparky with our banter; which team treated empty stadiums as an irrelevance, while another looks utterly lost without support? All banter is ground-floor thought, but it won’t stop idiots from trying it anyway.
Physicality and adrenalin were vital to our success, as well as extremely good players. Lose all that and you’re bound to suffer, but you don’t just capitulate.
In a week when we lost Ian St John, a man who literally fought for our cause sometimes, it’s hard to stomach.
I’m still chuckling over Klopp’s hissy fit about substitutions all those months ago while calculating the irony levels for a man so bad at them.
We’d witnessed the usual half-arsed complacency from the usual suspects. Yes, Trent, yes ‘Bobby’, you. Both were bounced out after Chelsea. A cynic might believe the latter’s “minor knock” was cover for being awful. Mane was just dropped.
It’s convenient and apt to call Trent ‘AA’ for short, since that’s where we’ll be spending most of our nights if he keeps this up. You can use youth as an excuse for most things, but not for someone in the first team player for four years.
The low bar of top 10 now also looks unlikely. There’s been some sarcasm in my annual celebration of that particular ‘milestone’, especially in seasons where we got over 90 points.
But yes, I’m proud of the fact we’d achieved that for every year since our St John-inspired promotion of 1962. I won’t be happy if it’s casually discarded now. In fact, several grapes will be crushed.
Speaking of low bars, I’ve read on social media that at least we’re not as bad as Ranieri’s Leicester. Wow, clear a space in the trophy cabinet for that little bauble.
As much as anyone I’ve closed ranks around the manager. Any FSG support would be the least he should expect, but he wanted centre halves as soon as the transfer window opened and got dubious solutions just as it closed.
Davies and Kabak were the supporter equivalent of a child’s puppet at the doctor’s. Why we took that lad from Preston in the first place, God alone knows.
Finance, in the face of this foul pandemic, won’t be coming to the manager’s rescue. He put Fabinho straight back into defence though his absence from midfield has been keenly felt. That was supposed to be for short-term emergencies, surely? Not whole seasons.
Casual flippancy in the face of results not seen in 130 years’ existence isn’t sustainable. The word ‘champions’ isn’t the panacea for everything.
Our anger can’t get through to them because we’re not there, but all this will be remembered.
Count on it.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
