Terrace Talk - Liverpool: We oldies never felt comfortable with the idea of a New Leeds

Harvey Elliott’s nightmare has almost put our world back on its axis, in a gruesome sort of way. Dirty Leeds will never be anything else to us

Liverpool's Harvey Elliott receives treatment after picking up a bad injury following a challenge by Leeds United's Pascal Struijk. Picture: Mike Egerton

“We don’t need to buy anybody — we’ve got Harvey Elliott.” How’s that one working out?

Klopp was slaughtered for his comments about Burnley, but he was right. Somebody will get badly hurt one day, and now somebody has.

The traditional red dread of international week took on a bizarre new twist with a coup d’état in Guinea. Cruel people may quip “it’s only Keita”, just as they responded to the usual fitness curse with “it’s only Minamino”.

But sooner or later (yesterday, in fact) fate’s fickle finger taps the shoulder of someone you do care about, and all that transfer window whining starts again— if it ever stopped.

True, announcing Jordan’s new contract on deadline day was undiluted gaslighting on their part. There was an intriguing defence of FSG on Twitter, from a respected independent account, so accusations of cheerleading or suspicious timing were pointless.

This whole debate about how Liverpool’s ‘business model’ is regarded? Like the poor, it’ll always be with us. The manager says he wants to avoid any transfer “circus”. He can be a disingenuous sod at times.

Elliot was being used, picked constantly to disguise the club’s frugality. Had they really forgotten that lethal weapons like Pickford, Richarlison, and now Strujik can derail an entire season?

But, unless you know any other profiteer who can pay FSG their €2bn+ (and they’ve always said they’d reject it) and afford to bankroll Klopp, what people really seem to want is a sugar daddy.

That’s City, that’s Chelsea, that’s “you get what you pay for”. Include Count me out.

So we’re stuck with sell-to-buy for a good long while, then. Maybe that explains the ludicrous stories of Salah wanting 500 grand a week. Planted there by LFC sympathisers to excuse an eventual sale? Perish the thought, like we can function without him anyway.

But we’re running ahead of ourselves.

To intensify international-itis, we had a bizarre threat from Brazil to ban our players from club football. I’d never loved their whole arrogant uniqueness — they’re the United of countries. I cracked a rib laughing at that Germany 7-1. This new nonsense wasn’t a surprise.

Fabinho and Alisson were presented with an odd choice; 10 days’ isolation if they go, five-day ban if they stay (which their club and league told them to do!). Common sense prevailed, but as always in football, it took the scenic route. Just when you think the game’s capacity for foot-shooting must be exhausted, they learn something new to antagonise us.

Fans are just coming back, and so, incidentally, are high death tolls from Covid, but can we watch the game without having our nerves plucked every second of the day? A World Cup every two years? Enough, already.

The day before we travelled to Leeds, one man dominated the headlines. Previous flippancy about Ronaldo’s return perhaps have masked deeper concerns that United had given themselves an extra edge which Liverpool don’t have.

It doesn’t always follow. We brought a prime-condition Rush back from Italy after already walking the league. Everyone thought we’d stroll it again, but Michael Thomas had something to say about that.

We still have a good team, so a lot of the current bedwetting is premature to say the least. Now that we’re back on the two-games-a-week treadmill, it might be unavoidable later.

Result aside, we made Leeds a bit of a chore. City would’ve killed this game early, but we never finish teams off.

Mané was the main culprit. I’m glad he finally scored, but there were some excruciating moments beforehand.

We oldies never felt comfortable with the idea of a New Leeds, so Elliott’s nightmare has almost put our world back on its axis, in a gruesome sort of way. Dirty Leeds will never be anything else to us.

For a club whose owners often seem to be under constant siege, we’re not doing so badly. Early days, obviously.