MANCHESTER.
A town centre so big that whenever you go out there you get a cob on because you forgot to pack Kendal mint cake and a compass just to get from pub to pub.
What’s with all the chop houses, Manchester? What the bleeding hell is a chop house anyway? Looks like a boozer as far as I can tell except it’s chocker.
Is there a secret room that only Mancs are allowed in where you all gorge on chops and then stick them on the side of your heads and strut about? Don’t get me started on your Christmas markets. Next year I’m going to pour myself a warm beer in a beaker and drink it in the shed, save the pissing about.
Anyway, enough about that sprawl of flats they call town — these matches against Manchester United at home are mad aren’t they?
The salt in the soup Kloppo reckons. Lovely analogy that, Kloppo, lovely.
Except sometimes, it feels more like Tommy Carcetti’s first mayoral “bowl of shit” rather than a well-seasoned pea whack.
I was in row four of the Kop for the John O’Shea last-minute winner, which made me physically wretch.
I grew up on Alex Ferguson’s sides turning up and battering us with pace and power and relentlessness and being everything we wanted to be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2gUyt-hCro
The highlight of those years speaks for itself in terms of how good we were — they scored at the Kop end (the one were David Beckham ran with his arms out in the white kit) and celebrated right in front of us.
The Kemlyn goes beserk and people are trying to get on the pitch. The fella behind me, who was half way through a Snickers, loses his mind and lashes said Snickers at Beckham but inadvertently hits Paul Scholes on the head.
After everyone calms down and is settled back into their seats the Snickers man spends the rest of the game fuming about not only having to watch us get beat but that those Manc bastards even take the food out of your mouth. That was as good as it got for years, that.
Yesterday was more of the same.
It was harder to take in a way because it seemed so unjust. A poor side, one shot on target and an absolute smash-and-grab of a victory achieved by launching the ball at the walking set of elbows to nod on and see what happens.
Their goal, as predictable as it was, was received like a kick to the stomach. A quick scan to the linesman for a reprieve and then head in hands and a little cry. Then a shout and then a cry.
The first goal was always going to be the winner and the Reds knew it. That we should have been two up by half time only served to underline the feeling that we might play for a week and not get back into it.
Liverpool are not a bad team. We are actually quite a good team. We are pretty good at all the things needed in a football match aside from: a) scoring goals and b) stopping goals.
I’d quite like to get one of them sorted; two would be the thing of dreams.
First half we played quite well but the amount of things that need to align perfectly in order for us to score is ridiculous.
We shouldn’t have to be perfect to score a goal. Mainly because being perfect is quite tricky as it turns out
The lack of goals in this team can’t be improved by coaching alone.
Roberto Firmino might end up being a 10 goals a year player but if he is starting up front on his own then he needs goals either side of him.
For all Adam Lallana’s industry and endless turns he doesn’t look to have any goals left. He took out a payday goal credit loan at Southampton apparently and now he’s just in an endless circle of goal debt. Perhaps that’s why he likes to turn all the time, who knows.
We can’t be going into tight matches with such a lack of goals that Jordan Henderson is classed as one of the most likely scorers. Until that changes we might not win many matches, which is a bit of a blow.
The other notable factor is the lack of pace. The game yesterday was crying out for someone, anyone, with pace to stretch their defence. They could play quite a high line because we had no one able to run away from them.
Christian Benteke, worryingly, is much slower than anyone knew. Was he always this slow or has he lost a yard after doing his Achilles?
I didn’t watch Brendan Rodgers yesterday on the telly but I hope someone asked him what he was thinking when he signed him. He looks as far removed from a Klopp player as he did a Rodgers one.
It is hard not to feel sorry for him as he is trying his best but he just isn’t what we need at the minute. That said, he can put the ball in the goal if he gets a chance so maybe we have to have a bit of a think about that and try to figure out a way of playing him that doesn’t piss everyone off.
If you aren’t scoring goals then conceding them becomes a pretty big deal and we seem to be adept at that at the minute.
I don’t want to get into the “the keeper is shite – no he isn’t” argument again but for everyone who keeps saying that he is a good shot-stopper please note that in his last two games he has conceded four goals without making a single save.
In my book to be a good shot-stopper you have to start with stopping some shots. That might seem a slightly harsh viewpoint but there is an element of truth in there somewhere.
It was also the coldest day at Anfield since Reading at home in the cup when everyone’s feet fell off with frostbite, which is a lovely preview of what we have got to look forward to on Wednesday.
As Kloppo said these derby games are the salt in the soup. Cold soup yesterday, wasn’t it?
A nice refreshing bowl of Gazpacho? No, lad, it was oxtail and it’s freezing and, oh look, the oxtail has jumped out of the bowl and whacked me round the side of the face.
Lovely stuff.
A mate sent me this….
Imagine being told when the fixtures came out in June that for that double header against Arsenal and the Mancs at home in Jan that we’d be sticking Steven Caulker on up front to try and rescue a point.
Liverpool are not a bad team. We are actually quite a good team. We are pretty good at all the things needed in a football match aside from: a) scoring goals and b) stopping goals.
Has to be the best couple of sentences I’ve read in a long time, completely sums us up!
Great piece!
Hard to believe we spent £80m on lallana, benteke and Lovren
Benteke just sits up top like a wet teabag, lallana just floats around like a plastic carrier bag not really doing anything and Lovren….
I agree about benteke though, he looks a completely different player than the one at villa, almost like he can’t be arsed. Whenever I saw him for villa he looked a bit of a beast with a bit of pace
It’s hard to know were to start, as a club we always seem to be in transition. Carling Cup win would be a plus for this season but the league seems to be a write off this year. Can’t score and concede too easily. Thought someone said we bought goals this season!?!
Lallana is as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike. He’s like a crazy dog who can’t stop chasing its own tail. I think he’s been a worse signing than Andy Carroll; he has been atrocious since we bought him. And it’s about time we stopped praising players’ workrate. I say that’s a given, they are all professional athletes, that’s the least they should be doing. 1 league goal in 2015 for Lallana, 2 assists in the same time period, this is from a guy who’s been playing in a front 3. A nothing return from a nothing player. Back when we were linked with him I thought, no thanks; nothing but a poor man’s Benayoun….Nope, I was wrong, very wrong. He’s nothing but a poor man’s Downing, with pace.
Lallana should get a new 5 year deal then (based on Migs’ lead :)
…and Enrique?
Monday with Ben Johnson is the best thing ever. He should be on the pods more often.
The answer has to be to find a way to integrate Benteke until the end of this season. No way is he as useless as he looks in this team. By all means next season we have to get in players who can play Klopp’s way, but for now, this is what we’ve got to work with. Somehow, get the best out of him.
Agreed, needs must and he knows where the back of the net is
That is the funniest piece of writing I have seen in awhile (sorry Neil & Robbo) The real shame is that none of us are laughing today but it has given me a bit of a lift. There is very little to argue about with what Ben has highlighted, I wish someone would transport me to mid August and we can start all over again with fit and better players.
Great read, this. A brilliant description of Lallana.
Great Piece as always.
Watching Liverpool at the moment is like playing Championship manager 01/02 (The best) Unless we have one of THOSE players, we can’t score for shit.
This is the correct opinion regarding 01/02 champ man. Get Recoba in. We’ll be sound.
Problem seems to be two-fold.
First, the coaching is clearly not what it should be. The fact we still can’t defend corners (or, indeed, any type of ball that is crossed into the box) after 4 months of Klopp and his coaching staff is very worrying. Set-piece defending should be easy to get right. As an example when Rafa went to Chelsea they had massive issues with set-piece defending; Rafa sorted it out within a few weeks. They went from porous to water-tight within 2-3 games. Klopp’s had 20 games to sort it but it’s as bad as ever.
Also, what does a Klopp-era Liverpool goal look like? There doesn’t seem to be a strategy yet for creating/scoring, especially when teams sit deep and get numbers back. Relying on Coutinho/Firminho to ping one in from 25 yards isn’t a viable strategy. Yes, Klopp likes to counter-attack at speed but that only works against teams who attack us, which means the tactic becomes obsolete against the vast majority of sides we face.
The second issue is the personnel – we simply do not have the players. Yes, they are capable of the odd great performance (City) but great players flourish against all types of opponents and on a consistent basis, which is something not one of our players does. We have midtable players all over the pitch, hence our league position. Compare yesterday’s XI with the XI that won at OT in 09/10: Reina, Carragher, Skrtel, Hyypia, Aurelio, Mascherano, Lucas, Kuyt, Gerrard, Riera, Torres.
From yesterday’s line-up, only Firminho ahead of Reira (arguably) would get a game. So, in effect, we’ve spunked half a billion in five years to make our team worse! Heads should fuckin roll for this! Not all the transfer committee’s fault but they certainly have to take lions share of blame.
I don’t see the recruitment getting better anytime soon considering a) the same people are making the transfer decisions and b) our rigid wage-structure means we can’t attract the same caliber of players as the clubs we’re trying to catch up with. This latter point is inexcusable considering the increased tv money fsg are sitting on.
As for the coaching side, clearly this can be improved and hopefully after getting to terms with English football and a pre-season, Klopp will have us playing with a clear vision and unity of purpose.
Great post
Your first argument about it being Klopp’s fault for two main reasons:
1. Klopp came in two months into the season and thus didn’t have time to work with the team for an extended period.
2. Because of #1, he didn’t pick these guys. Rodgers either picked then or was a Yes man and allowed them. Either way, this isn’t a Klopp team made in his way and as such can’t do much.
1. Rafa joined Chelsea midway through the season and sorted out their set-piece defending within weeks, if not days
2. I never said the signings were Klopps fault??
This Snickers Man tale has cheered me up so ta for that, Ben.
That killed me off yesterday. Worse than Athens. Worse than Chelsea at home to lose the league. That game was everything wrong with us this season and last and seemingly no lessons are being learnt.
The players working as hard as they have done (and the manager setting them up as well as he did) against both Arsenal and United to only get 1 point from 6 available is a quality issue upfront and in goal. It’s no great secret; everyone’s been banging on about it for the past 18 bastard months.
I can’t believe this transfer committee wasn’t shown the door at the same time as or probably even before Rodgers was. If you look at the money spent since they came in for this little return these fellas whoever they are, are the worst failures in world football. Possibly ever if you really think about it which I have been doing since yesterday.
And just on Benteke’s slowness that offside at the very end was obscene. The shit salt in the shit soup.
So much work to be done. Has there ever been a team with certain aspirations that has started a game in the Premier League with only 6 goals between them? That is frightening.
We can’t shoot, we can’t cross, players are still dawdling on the ball, decision making remains a huge problem and our lack of overall pace has been apparent for years.
And as for the defending….
I back Jurgen to get it right with a massive summer overhaul with some big transfer losses (take note FSG/Transfer Commitee) and over the past 6 weeks or so Herr Klopp is realising what a huge job he has taken on. All the best….
Also, have felt sorry for Benteke a bit and thought he could have given Blind nightmares but when he came on what frustrated me wasn’t his lack of physical sharpness but a couple of times he seemed to be in his own little dreamland when we were attacking.
Not helping himself…
If Mignolet was signed for any purpose other than to extract a fee this summer, I am going to be sick in my mouth.
Lallana is useless. I never thought Benteke made sense — and I still don’t — he must put something on display in the next few months to show why he is here.
I know Klopp said we’d be quiet in January, and while I typically think that prices are inflated this time of year, our summer prospects aren’t likely to be any better as a result of the Euros – not to mention shorter pre-season. Moreover, it seems so obvious we need a striker, and while Vardy deserves his kudos this season, are we really willing to lay out an alleged 28 M for a 29 y/o who has spent such a large portion of his career in the lower leagues? (Can’t recall where I saw this, but its more of an indictment on how bad our scoring record is than an actual player transfer). I can see 6-9 players going this summer, why not start some of that now?
If we were only giving Mignolet a contract to protect his value then we’d simply tag a year or 2 on to the remains 2.5yrs of his contract.
Not give him a 5 yr deal and a pay rise.
I hear you Michael, that’s why I said “sick in my mouth.” I just can’t begin to understand this decision.
6-9 hopefully a few more. We NEED a captain not a boy.
We are a set of golf clubs, with no drivers, no putters and we don’t have any balls either. See you all in the 19th hole!
Worst Man U team I’ve seen at Anfield for quite a few years. Walking away from the ground, the only thing that cheered me up is the thought that LVG has re-built that team (he’s bought ten players is 18 months) and that’s all they have to show for it. Klopp hasn’t signed anyone yet (except Caulker for a laugh and some young Serbian kid who’ll not play til next year)
If only we could play on round pitches…can’t score from corners, can’t stop conceding from corners.
This is ManU.Get used to it! I’ve watched this stuff for more years than I care to remember.Now? I just laugh about it.
They’ve had the sign on us for quite a few years .And nobody can tell me that we shouldn’t have been at least 3 goals up before they got a sniff.
We can blame anybody and everybody but the reality is that this script has been played out time and again with a lot more accomplished players than we have at the moment.
I can’t explain it,but I’ve seen it with my own eyes time after time.
There were times when we couldn’t beat Norwich,Middlesbro’ or Leicester.In the end it changed.At some point it will change with ManU.
In the meantime I just roll my eyes and have a quiet chuckle to myself.
“Is this the real life…is this just fantasy.”
Brendan Rodgers has shed some light on the transfer committee and the transfer policy and he is not so full of praise as he used to be while managing the club.
It seems to me that this has left Klopp in a tight spot as he has proclaimed – as Brendan Rodgers did – that he has the first and final say on transfers. Now, the fans are left asking if this is just a pr-move and that there will continue to be competing agendas in the transfer committee.
The recent news from the transfer market do anything but suggest that Klopp has set about to rebuild his squad.
Caulker signed and now rumors of his fellow Championship keeper Greene? Mignolet’s contract reflects that our ambition is to be where we are on the table at the moment.
The question is : Can we see Klopp’s hand in these dealings or the transfer committee?
I’ve read some of the quotes from the weekend where Brendan was shooting the shit on Sanchez/Balotelli and the blatant difference between signing a Suarez replacement who presses from the front to someone more static and all’s it did was beg the more pertinent follow up question of why he/they/whoever was so keen on spending £30m+ on making Benteke our centre forward signing a year after the initial mistake and after the season we had. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get my head round the thinking there.
Klopp just reiterated that he has indeed the final say in all transfers and that he only has budget restraints.
I am still scratching my head as to Mignolet and Caulker, but I have to assume that Klopp sees them as squad players for the future.
Nothing was said about the infamous profile of a player (age, wages) that was part of FSG’s “model”. Rodgers reportedly could not buy Ashley Williams because of it, which was a shame.
It seems to me that this is a change under Klopp, that this is less of an obligation for him.
good piece, shit game.
if we cant score and we put our leading goalscorer on the bench we are less than likely to score. surely there needs to be some compromise to get us winning games until the cavalry finally turns up (Sturridge) Cant we just play 4.4.2 with benteke and a.n other up front with some of us defending some of us attacking some of us doing both, we all do it properly and go home winners.
still fed up and going on Wednesday i expect a ten nil win (to us)
The game reminded me a lot of Italy v Brazil in 1982 World Cup. Not saying Bob is Zico though.
Going back a few games now – I think our shoot on sight policy is retarded. Our shots on goal stat that keeps on appearing is lame. Shots on goal does not mean chances or clear cut chances. The best chance in the game actually fell to Rooney.
We had Phil shooting from distance every time he touched the ball. Then Moreno was doing the same. In this game I was hoping one of our shooters would turn inside and play in a team mate coming in from behind in a better position. I keep thinking “be cool” like Klopp says. Carve out the clear chance. I think if our players did that we would me much higher in the table. Milner and Henderson were woeful.
The team though worked hard and ran for each other. No lack of effort. Just play smart football.
Bob – beginning to think he is a wonderful player. He can both score and assist.
Lallana should not start ahead of Allen or Ibe. Until he can Johan Cryuff a turn into a goal or assist.