HEY! Hey! Everyone! The Reds are impotent again.
Impotent.
All the ball. Endless ball. The Reds are mooching round the hill boys. They all laugh at us, they all mock at us, they all say our goals are numbered.
Our goals are numbered.
In the car on the way home. 212 is going off. Nearest anyone in a red shirt’s come to scoring. Tongue tongue deep in. Banks’ ode to cunnilingus the filthiest thing on display so far today. Go ‘ed. Is right.
The Reds turned up at the Hawthorns. Got it. Gave it. Probed. Got it. Gave it. Probed. The Reds turned up at the Hawthorns. Got it. Gave it. Probed. Got it. Gave it. Probed. The Reds turned up at the Hawthorns. Got it. Gave it. Probed. Got it. Gave it. Probed.
The Reds. The Reds turned up.
Football a funny thing. Lash that performance in during September and we all get to go, you know what, they are alright The Reds. They got it. Gave it. Probed. Alright The Reds. Kept working. Never looked too exposed. Alright The Reds. It’ll come. It’ll come.
It won’t come (unlike the girl with Azealia). It isn’t coming. It isn’t happening. Balo toiling away. Having a go. Henderson joining, joining, joining. Sterling off one flank, Ibe from the other. Having a go. No one isn’t having a go, including the manager. The only thing is this – give Balo a partner. Just give him a partner. What a player he could possibly be.
Pinging it about The Reds. Pulis prone. Happily prone. Consensually prone. Prone. Prone because nothing comes next. No one comes next.
The Reds. Lovren splendid against nowhere near enough. Gerrard in control against a puzzle which doesn’t want to be difficult. The Reds popping it off against a side in their own ground happy with a point.
I saw Peter Marshall before the game. We talked about the glory of goals. A ball you strike perfectly. A header you meet. The ball in the back of the net and the way your body feels thereafter. We talked about being Jermaine Defoe after that goal against Newcastle. Have any of us ever been that alive? Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps. Perhaps when watching last season’s glorious, flowing Reds. Perhaps then. I told him of a banal goal I scored playing five a side a fortnight ago. Passed it into the far corner. Got smashed into my ankle. Ankle still swollen. Marshall – “You scored though. Can’t have hurt.” Nope. It hurts now. Not then. Because Goals. Goals are everything.
Goals are everything. However I reckon a 3-3 today would lead to a greater fume. But in a 3-3 we get to celebrate three times. Go mental three times. Be in excelsis deo three times.
The Reds have taken that away from us this season. Someone has taken that away from us. Sense has taken it away from us. A collective sense that happens elsewhere. The sense of your broadsheets and quality tabloids. You can’t keep scoring and conceding – you have to be like anybody else.
I don’t want to be like anybody else. I want to be in excelsis deo. I want to be joyous. I want my tongue tongue deep in. I want that thing which made me feel. I want that. Why has that been taken from me? Who is responsible for that? Who decided they had sense with their talk of flaws at centre half against Crystal Palace? When does the whole being a flame thing come back.
They toiled The Reds. They were good at 90% of the football. But being good at the other 10% is all that matters.
The Reds. The foreplay rock solid. Nothing is going to go dreadfully wrong. But where is the climax? Tongue tongue not deep enough.
Buy goals. Be goals.
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Pics: David Rawcliffe-Propaganda-Photo
Like many people after last season I bought into the media narrative that we needed to sure up the defense and that was where our resources needed to be spent. However Neil it’s clear your were right. We should be buying goals and should always look to be buying goals because goals are in the end all that matter in football
Buy Goals! Buy Goals! Buy Goals!
Haha.
I think that’s a lot fairer than I’ve seen elsewhere.
I watched on a stream from the U.S and they correctly pointed out we need to buy strikers but said “with their budget and the difficulties of their geographic location”. Do people in the U.S think Liverpool is some kind of leper colony?
to be fair…they just mean that most players prefer to play in London. Which is true
The geographic location never put Torres,Alonso, Saurez etc. off coming and playing. And Manchester is no idyll. But those clubs attract quality. Plus 30 mins down the M53 in the Ferrari and you are in one of the richest areas of the country. The “geographic location” excuse is just another ruse to justify a the transfer policy and its attendant decision to appoint a youth coach as manager. This club is a franchise and profits rule.
The Echo are already reporting that our club officials are “concerned” that Memphis Depay will choose United because of the lure of CL football.
Sounds to me like we’re getting our excuses in early. When it was reported earlier in the week that United were also interested I thought to myself “there’s no way we’re signing this fella if this report is true”. Not because they can offer CL football, or however good his relationship with Van Gaal may be, but because we won’t match his demands or ambition and dick about over negotiations that much he’ll get fed up.
But at least they can tell us supporters that they tried and we’ll have to settle for second best again. It’s as embarrassing as the phantom bids Everton used to throw in for players they knew they’d never sign just to appease the fans.
It goes without saying, I hope I’m proved wrong.
Spot on. There’s about as much chance of Memphis joining us as of Brad Pitt taking the title role in a biopic of Colin Pascoe (naturally it would be a short film). (Sorry). Ex pros talk as much shite as the rest of us, but on the new 5 Times podcast, Jan Molby says LFC can’t sign top players whilst penny pinching. If you want them, you go with an open chequebook & meet their demands.
Yeah, I agree with both of you. I’ve lived in London when I was working at the BBC and it is a good place. There’s no denying it. I find it genuinely exciting. It’s rarely an issue though for players.
Paul – by 30 mins down the M53 you obviously mean Chester. I wish it was one of the richest places in the country but it’s not true. Ok, Stuart Maconie refers to it as the Jewel of the North in his book Pies and Prejudice, which I’d agree with and the Duke of Westminster lives here (Britain’s richest man for years until the Russian oligarchs moved here) but it’s very middle class and that’s it. In the industrial times if you’re successful in Liverpool you moved to Chester. But it’s like Liverpool in that the centre has seen all the investment and has a strong history (even if ours pre-dates Liverpool’s by over one and a half millennia) but I grew up in a right shit hole and our estate makes up 20% of Chester’s population (15k of 75k). I was trying to think of how many houses there are in Chester worth over £1m. There’s an area overlooking the racecourse and up near Rick Parry’s but that’s about it. You certainly don’t see posh cars on the road. Sorry mate, irrelevant to anything but I felt a bit gutted we were being falsely labelled as one of the richest places in the country, haha. I’m just a bit sensitive about this wool thing I think.
Fair play Robin. That comment about being a leper colony has creased me up laughing. Those f’ing yanks…comical.
Got a twitch reading that Neil.
Nice one.
Brilliantly written piece
A match so dreadful it can only inspire apathy. Even with a goalscorer I struggle to understand what this team is about. Our build up play is slow, lethargic and ordinary. It’s not like there were chances for a striker to miss.
And with Ings and Milner seemingly nailed on to be here next year, I’m wondering where the fans are supposed to draw optimism from.
“You’re the boy that talks but says nothin’
A big game to the ones that you think will believe you
But you don’t know how to read
The look on my face when it says, yeah I’ve read that book too
And who the hell’s impressed by you?
I want names of the people that we know that are fallin’ for this”
Jack White said it best, Brendan…
I’ll tell you what these performances remind me of:
Swansea under Brendan Rodgers. Notwithstanding BR’s own description of how they played, there was more of this boring, useless possession with no end product than ‘death by football’ that actually produced good results.
A manager who cannot use the available personnel to put together a workable 4231 or even 442, with people playing in their natural positions will have problems.
Explain BR’s substitutions today, given what had gone on earlier and the score when he effected them. I am at a loss.
Sooo slow and sooo risk free as soon as we enter the final third
No one’s willing to make some movement ahead, trying to get in scoring positions. All of them were neatly positioned to receive a pass though, just keep passing it around, don’t have to score
True dat. Great football last season, great for the players, great for the fans. This season? Meh.
I would’ve just loved more urgency for the first 80 mins, we were too happy to cruise. Tempo was too slow. We look a million bucks until we get to the final third.
Last 15 was better, players were getting in the box but if you actually do that for the first 80 then we probably would’ve scored
Everyone on Lovren as MoM train? Yeah, he was Carra and Hyypia in one player incarnate fellas, up until Pulis put someone with actual talent on for Anichebe on about 80 to do some like, attacking and that. West Brom immediately looked like they might nick it.
The biggest nothing games (have you seen City’s games? We were never catching them), one of which already also happens to be the most obvious draw that ever drew as well as all the footy accountants who say 5th is where LFC should always expect to come for the foreseeable seasons ahead are slowly but surely killing me.
Didn’t even go out to watch it because the result (and decent but blunt performance, to be fair) was just *that* predictable. Still haven’t seen Ibe allegedly hit the bar such was the shitness of my stream.
“I’m gonna ruin you cunt. I’m gonna ruin you cunt…” Takes me back to a time when I thought Gerrard might have lifted the title before calling it, with Kenny as manager. Ideals are well better than real life. Speaking of which, I remember thinking Borini and Lambo might very well cut the mustard as squad players last summer… Villa away is my season, lads!
To quote Nick Hornby “A nothing game, played by two nothing sides…”
It’s a Tony Pulis team.
A draw was all it was ever going to be.
Never mind if it’s Stoke or Palace or West Brom, it’s a Tony Pulis team, and that nice Mr. Pulis told his players “We only need a point to guarantee safety lads!” so a point was all they played for.
8 men behind the ball at all times, circle the wagons, park the buses.
Like Mourinho at Anfield but without the counter.
A draw was all it was ever going to be.
It’s a Tony Pulis team.
To all those who want to call time on Brendan after our dismal Wemberley (no-)show, & apparent outbreak of big-game bottling, I ask a simple question: when exactly have we played well in any cup final (including Wembley semis) this millennium?
We had Suarez but still stunk it up all 3 times under Kenny in 2011-12. Cardiff – Cardiff! – Cardiff Of The Championship! – took us to pens. The Ev mercifully bottled it. Chelsea had it easy for, what, 80 mins (I’m asking, it’s not a game I’ve ever rewatched)?
We rode our luck just a little in Istanbul.
In 2001, Owen was the dandy highwayman as we robbed Arsenal. We needed four normal goals and one golden one in the UEFA final that year. I can’t remember who saved us in 2006 against West Ham in The Gerrard Final.
We should’ve won the CL in 2007, and but for Inzaghi we would’ve.
And there you have it. We have rarely, if ever, played well in any final in the past 15 years. We have never played well at the new Wembley. The reason we won despite all the choking (sometimes from players, almost always by managers), all the tactical ineptitude & baffling team selections, is the reason we lost in Athens 2007, & the reason we are in the mire now: goals.
Managers often get it wrong in big games. They bottle it or they overthink it. Players often get it wrong in big and small games, but the smaller the game the less chance they get punished, or anyone notices or remembers.
But all this would be irrelevant if we had a fit and functioning goal scorer. Without a goal threat, you are nowhere. Goals dig you out of holes. That’s just the way it works. Right?
As to where the blame lies for our lack of goals post-Suarez…
To claim we didn’t play well in Istanbul is a little far fetched, I think..
anyway, League Cup final 2003 where we dispatched the Mancs with ease?
and two years later we would have shut out and beaten Chelsea 1-0 if it wasn;t for a classic Gerrard OG from, I think, outside his own box.
Ok, I was trying to stick to the facts, as if that were possible, to help contextualise the Villa semi in the face of media brainwashing and knee jerk reaction (of which I was briefly guilty, m’lud). It hurts, we lash out, the media amplifies it, it gets deafening.
I’d completely forgotten about 2003. Selective recall? But that’s the exception that supports the thesis: it’s extraordinarily hard to perform well in a big game. We haven’t generally done it since the 1980s, when we were kings.
Finals and (Wembley) semis are generally won by clinical finishing, the odd heroic performance, defensive errors, and/or massive slices of luck (Istanbul is the only final Ive watched back in full, repeatedly, and aside from THAT 20 mins in the second half, surely, we were nothing if not lucky?). Like every game. But with more emphasis.
It’s not the biggest surprise, therefore, that we might lose to Villa, (wage bill is 7th in the league I think, compared to our 5th), given our injury problems, lack of goals and confidence, & them with a resurgent Benteke.
What I find really interesting is that this site us just about the only place that supporters of Brendan Rodgers can be found. Contrary to comments on other threads, he is a generally a figure of fun and is probably the first Liverpool manager to be widely ridiculed. Hodgson was a bit, but more out if pity. RAFA was the fat Soanish waiter only because he got up the noses of fans whose managers he bested.