FUNK; noun
- A strong musty smell of sweat or tobacco.
- A style of popular dance music of US black origin, ironically often requested to be played by white boys.
- What Liverpool Football Club have been well and truly stuck in since the start of 2017.
Yes, the week that made you want to stick fiery hot needles through your eyelids and dropkick the nearest dog decided it hadn’t quite done enough to ruin our lives.
Just eight days ago it didn’t seem all that bad. Very much in the title race, a decent if frustrating draw against Manchester United, a very scrappy win at Plymouth and three fairly easy looking home games on the horizon (sorry Southampton but I saw you play Spurs and Everton. That loss was entirely on us).
You may have realized by this point that I’m not Neil Atkinson. Taking inspiration from Jürgen Klopp, the lads at TAW Towers decided to rotate for the cup, keeping Neil fresh for the big one on Tuesday. So I stepped in, TAW’s answer to Ovie Ejaria and Ben Woodburn (just a fair bit older and with less promise), and like those lads, I watched on today while a load of senior Liverpool players made my job inexplicably more difficult.
I can’t imagine many people are going to read this, anyway. I would have thought you’d all be out trying to drink away one of the worst weeks in recent history, like I will be once I ping this to Josh. However, if you are a bit of a sadomasochist and have decided to read on, then here’s a review of one of the worst performances by a Liverpool team since Mr Hodgson finally pissed off.
Klopp said in his press conference yesterday that he wouldn’t make 10 changes and he was true to his word. He made nine.
There was more than enough there to win, and not that many youngsters who you’d begrudge a place in the side. OK, I doubt Conor Randall will be much of a part of Liverpool’s future but Nathaniel Clyne was still injured and Klopp said he might not make Tuesday either, so Trent Alexander-Arnold needed to be rested for that, just in case.
So the game started and Liverpool needed to get an early goal. Something they were incapable of in their last two games, and so this time… ah shit Wolves have scored.
For a team that is atrocious at defending set-pieces we don’t half seem casual about conceding them. The ball in was good, and the lad who scored may have been offside (fancy that), but why on Earth is one of their centre backs, a principal threat from these situations, being marked by our striker and not one of Joe Gomez or Ragnar Klavan.?
Never mind, almost 90 minutes to put it right. It was curious that Lucas Leiva was playing centre mid. As far as I can remember he hasn’t played there all season, and with Kev Stewart on the bench I wasn’t sure if that was the correct call, though a lack of leaders on the pitch probably meant Klopp wanted to have him on there in whatever capacity he could. He wasn’t to know that Lucas would spend the entire first half giving them the ball.
Wolves fans are happy, singing away, of course nothing about their own team as ever. Some points for their own re-working of ‘Sign On’ though. You’ll never work again, rather than You’ll never get a job. Creative types they are in Wolverhampton. More like Wool-verhampton, am I right?
Anyway, we continue our efforts to be as self-destructive as possible from set-pieces. As happened on Wednesday one of our corners becomes a great chance for them to score within eight seconds, and a great last ditch tackle from Woodburn keeps the dangerous Helder Costa from scoring. We’ve shown already by this point that not only are we likely to concede from opposition corners, but also our own ones.
Something occurred to me as the half went on and we were about as penetrative as a wet flannel trying to tickle it’s way through a pile of bricks. Why has Gini Wijnaldum not been utilised in wide areas in recent weeks? We seem to have tried everything else to replace Sadio Mane, but not use a lad who played there very successfully last season for Newcastle. And it’s not as if he’s working wonders in the middle at the moment. He was as poor as anyone on the first half. He doesn’t seem willing to take the responsibility himself. Ejaria was taking more risks than Gini was.
In fact, Ejaria was arguably our brightest spark in the first half. He started to at least try to make things happen, won free-kicks, played through balls and didn’t shy away from the challenge. The problem was that Roberto Firmino and Divock Origi were both stood out wide every time he picked up the ball, so he had very little to aim at.
Their second came straight from a computer game. You know when you’re on FIFA and you lose the ball, all of your players freeze or fall over and they start to break. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong. A last ditch tackle from Alberto Moreno doesn’t work, an attempted interception from Gomez doesn’t work, and Loris Karius’s attempt at putting off the attacker doesn’t work. They score because nothing worked.
Liverpool an utter shambles, yet again. Two down and fully deserve to be. Should be three really but for Woodburn putting Costa off. Even in that attack there were only three Reds trying to do any defending and that was Randall, Ejaria and Woodburn. Not a senior player to be found, and that was the story of the first half.
Some boos at half-time, which you’d like to think is something they instantly regretted. No team ever got better because the fans booed them. I would say we are Liverpool, we’re supposed to be better than that kind of shithouse behaviour, but I’m just not sure it’s true any more.
Big Phil Coutinho and his undying love for the Reds on for the second half. We go to three at the back, which was certainly one in the eye for those who can’t say ‘Klopp’ without saying ‘stubborn’ these days.
It’s slightly more promising. Origi gets the run on Kortney Hause, forces a foul and a booking. I was hoping that lad would have a bad game so I could call him ‘Shit Hause’. It was the first time there’d been any space to run into and we’d made use of it. Shame it never really happened again.
Paul Lambert had unsurprisingly set up his team to do exactly what Swansea and Southampton did. Sit very deep, force Liverpool into crosses and long shots, and hit on the counter. Why not? It works apparently. I do take issue with this idea that teams have ‘figured Liverpool out’ though. It’s not as if Leicester, Hull and Watford all came to Anfield and were vanquished because they played too open. We were just much much better on those days and scored early goals.
3 – Jurgen Klopp has suffered three consecutive home defeats as a manager for the first time since April 2007 (with Mainz). Tamed.
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) January 28, 2017
About eight minutes into the second half the tempo finally rises. Coutinho is having an effect, forcing the issue and causing Wolves to become a bit more stretched across the pitch. It results in a couple of chances, balls into the box that could go anywhere, but of course when you’re in this run of form it can’t just go anywhere. It can only fall kindly for the opposition.
Daniel Sturridge replaces Firmino on the hour, which weakens us if anything. For the next 20 we create nothing at all. Sturridge has taken far too much unfair flak since Wednesday, but this is hardly a situation for him to be getting lost again.
The final change saw Emre Can replace Ejaria. Another who has been treated far too much like a scapegoat in a time when no-one is playing well.
Wolves start to pressure again and look for a third. It’s made much easier by a referee who has decided shirt pulling isn’t a foul against the home side, and a linesman who has forgotten he has a flag to raise when a lad’s offside.
Finally, with five minutes left, pretty much from nowhere, we score, and from a corner of all things. Coutinho whips in a great ball, which finally breaks kindly for a Red, Sturridge heads brilliantly back across and Origi slams it in. The crowd also do their first worthwhile thing of the match and decide to support the team for the last five.
Moments later, almost an identical scenario. Again the ball comes to Origi at the far stick but his shot is tamer this time and some random youngster who apparently was playing for Telford last season makes his first proper save of the game.
You can tell that Wolves are worried as they resort to kicking our lads up in the air. Lee Evans looked even more frantic than his comedy namesake as he tried to clear Moreno over the Centenary Stand.
We get one final chance from a free-kick. There’s 55 seconds between it being awarded and Coutinho taking it, but they won’t be added on because time added on is a complete and utter farce. To sum the game up nicely, former Red Conor Coady is allowed to block it from about four yards away, and shortly after the whistle goes.
Out of the League Cup, out of the FA Cup, and if we don’t win on Tuesday out of the title race.
I tell you what, 2017 can fuck right off. Bring back the days of President-Elect Trump, celebrity deaths galore and the Reds being mustard.
Confidence is low. On the pitch, in the stands, everywhere. Believers are becoming doubters.
Credit to Wolves, but the way we’re playing we could have faced anyone at any level today and I’m pretty sure the same result would have occurred. As Plymouth showed, it doesn’t take much football ability to simply be organised, and it doesn’t take much organisation to flummox this Liverpool side at the moment.
Chelsea are the most organised of sides, so in theory Tuesday is an impossible ask. Then again, football innit?
So here’s the positive crescendo. I’m not ending this article like that. Let’s do the Scooby Doo ending. Ah, the Scooby Doo ending, that’s do-able (yes, that is a Wayne’s World reference).
However shit you feel right now, just know this. We CAN beat Chelsea, and we CAN salvage our season. This is a funk, nothing more. We have not been ‘found out’, we’re just playing badly. Form will return, hopefully sooner rather than later.
We are also not ‘exhausted’. Klopp completely stole my opinion with his comments yesterday that this drop in form is nothing to do with being tired. It’s to do with playing poorly. The ‘tired’ excuse is, frankly, a tired excuse. The reason we’re not pressing as much is because we always have the ball. We’re not attacking any slower than we were, we’re just not being as brave or clever with our decisions or as deadly with our finishing.
It’s easy to say that it’ll all change when Sadio Mane returns, but it actually might. It looks like we won’t make a new signing, but (as the cliche goes) getting Mane back could be like a new signing. The boost that everyone needs to stop feeling sorry for themselves and kick on again.
With that in mind, I’m clocking off from Liverpool for now. For the next few hours I’m investing all my energy into supporting Cameroon, even if the knobheads did try to ruin Joel Matip’s season. They beat Senegal tonight and we might even get Sadio back for Tuesday.
Up the Indomitable Lions.
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Train wreck of a season. Not much to salvage from it now and top 4 even seems a stretch. Bettering 60 points anyone?
You stupid idiot.
Nothing over reactionary in your world then……
Behave lad. 60 points. We’ll get at least 75.
Wish neil could write good articles like this. Well done!
Ejario was trying to make things happen in the 1st half. Vertical passes, who’d have thought….
Good review. I like your points on playing poorly and we’re not pressing enough due to sides allowing us too much of the ball. The last 3 games sides have simply stifled our attack making it difficult to do anything.
Thought the crowd wasn’t too bad for first half an hour tbf, tried to get behind the team. But once again, we got nothing in return except misplaced passes and comedy defending.
An abomination. This Liverpool side is one of the weirdest football teams I have ever seen. Indescribably vibrant but a few months ago. A side that didn’t so much huff and puff to blow opposition side’s houses down, but simply tore through it like a hurricane.
Right now we look like we could lose home or away to any group of eleven men anywhere on earth that have the means to get eleven kits together. It’s not just down to losing Mane, this.
Anyway, we have surely reached the nadir of this season. We have nothing else to focus on but the league. Jurgen won’t say it but there will be a few of these who have played themselves out of his future plans during 2017 alone. He never says it in public, but he doesn’t forget.
It’s all in for Chelsea at home. We are a wounded animal stumbling timidly into the path of an apex predator. We need to sort ourselves the fuck out. If Klopp needs to punch some lads in training this week then so be it. Anfield can never witness such shithousery ever again.
Stoppage time. Seems to be the biggest scapegoat lately. What does a few minutes at the end of the game matter when you’re shit for the first 90?
Didn’t watch the derby then..
Had a chat with God after the game. He was sitting at the bar swirling whiskey around in his glass looking troubled. I asked him what’s up. He said it was nothing and told me not to worry about it, so I insisted.
“I don’t know..”, God puffed his cheeks and blew out a heavy, tired breath. “It’s just.. I don’t know what the point is anymore. I’ve lost my appetite for all of this.. This madness. The careful treading along the line between order and chaos but falling into a fiery pit every time. The unreasonable outcome of all and any random events. I can’t bare to watch it any longer. It is all my creation after all. Isn’t it? I don’t even know anymore.. This isn’t what I intended. Maybe I shouldn’t have rushed it. Six days to create the infinite is a bit of a joke if you think about it. A decent batch of beer takes longer than six bloody days to brew, for Christ sake. The hell was I thinking.” God shook his head in disgust and ordered another drink.
“Anyway”, God sipped on his fresh whiskey “Look at Sturridge. Just look at him. The lad is an absolute specimen. I created him for one purpose and one purpose alone. Yet I can’t remember the last time he wiggled those lovely arms and flashed them glorious teeth. Them glorious teeth.. I miss Suarez..”
At this point the TV was showing scenes of Walcott bagging a hat-trick against Southampton. “This is exactly what I mean! I came up with the idea of Theo Walcott during a drunken night spent with the 72 virgins. I had them describe the perfect man for me and it was all the predictable bushy beard and bulky muscles. So as a joke I answered by creating Theo. And there he is, getting revenge on his very existence. Unbelievable.”
He took another sip.
“No. I’m not having this. This needs sorting out!”, God said with gusto, gulped the last of his whiskey and threw the glass at the wall, missing, and finding the back of the head of the bartender instead. “Sorry mate, I’ll send you a blessing”. He got up off his stool and wobbled out uttering something about plastic flags and condemning John Terry to eternal suffering.
Tuesday should be interesting.
The lull just became a massive slump. Last chance of silverware and he puts a half arsed side out… His tactics, training or players attitude are not working in this moment… If they’re knackered playing just league games and the odd cup game God help them if they do actually qualify for Europe. At this rate the race for 4th ain’t going to happen.
When we get all of Humpty Dumpty’s pieces back together again (Matip, Mane, Lallana in the midfield), can we please go back to being boss?
Honestly, I am so sick of thinking about what transfers we need after every result.
There’s a famous quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where Thompson looks back on the sixties. It seems to perfectly sum up our lot since the moment Suarez took the bus to Barcelona:
“You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
Had we just splashed ridiculous cash on Alexis Sanchez, the rest of the squad would have functioned perfectly. Instead, we’ve spent the past few years trying to figure out who we are and how can we plug gaps to adjust, only to create new gaps with the adjustments.
Let’s just be boss again.
Sanchez didn’t want to live in Liverpool. Would have been a great fit in the void left by Suarez but his missus wanted the bright lights of the Smoke.
It was said in the wake of the Southampton defeat that their introduction of Shane Long as opposed to our bringing on of Origi was indicative of a lack of strength off the bench which I have to say I completely agreed with. At the heart of this weakness is the seemingly forgotten net transfer ‘profit’ which, after another transfer window whereby we ‘bide our time for the right player’ we find ourselves with an absolute threadbare squad. I admire Klopp and his determination to build the team and his performance up to this slump has been nothing short of remarkable but we are the 8th richest football club in the world!! It is not unreasonable to expect a squad that at least aspires to be worthy of that status. Biggest tv deal in history, more revenue than ever before = net transfer profit = where we are as a squad! Enormous credit to Klopp for his achievements but it’s bloody scandalous!
In other news… Mane missed his penalty and is on his way back to Anfield.
Not that I’m happy or anything for this terrible miss, but welcome back Mane, we need all the help we can get.
Up the Reds!!!
Hi Sash, Mane penalty miss is my biggest ‘joy’ for this week :). I was cheering for Cameroon to win during normal time. Hope Mane makes it to the bench (at least) for Tuesday.
Hiya Josh, yeah I know what you’re saying. Isn’t it weird that LFC and Mane seem like they’re just having a really bad day/week? I hope it doesn’t dent his confidence, I mean it must mean a lot to the guy you know.
Anyways we need all the Redmen focused and ready for the Blue onslaught. Catch on the TAW then mate.
The past week has been absurd. Shit team selections, shit performances, shit et al.
We’ll beat Chelsea on Tuesday, that doesn’t worry me. It’s Hull away that worries me.
Wish we had more.
Booed off at h/t because they were shite. Again. Can’t keep serving that up and expect people to lap it up. Entirely deserved.
A proper match review, thanks David! And really good writing to boot.
Hopefully someone whispered “Get the fuck back to your club ASAP or you are finished. Remember who pays your fucking huge wages. A jet is on its way. Fucking be on it.”
Every time there’s a Liverpool loss, two things inevitably happen: the TV companies are happy and the fans go off on one and it comes across as a competition as to who can go off on one the best! To be frank it’s boring and it’s about time this reaction changed. I’m fed up with opposition supporters and pundits having a pop and and a laugh at our expense. It’s still only January, we’ve got so much to play for! We’ve a proper manager and decent coaches. We knew this journey would’ve its ups and downs so let’s stick with these Reds and get behind everyone of them on Tuesday. It’s about development.
Can’t really be happy Mane missed his penalty. We don’t know what effect that will have on him. Perhaps no effect, but I would have liked him to return having won the tournament.
I hate international football but the guy was inconsolable last night after missing his pen. I can’t cheer that.
That write-up was actually better than the game itself – a proper, factual and funny match report as opposed to the petulant streams of consciousnesses and flights of fancy (with added swear words) that often appear on here. Hats off David. More please.
Knocks Atko’s ( everyones has schoolboy names on here) self indulgent ramblings in to a cocked hat. Well written that scribe
Maybe it’s time to try something different? Sit back and let teams come onto us for the first 60 minutes and look to counter-attack with the few quick players we have. The game might be horrendous, if the opposition is trying to do the same thing, but getting to 60 at 0-0 would be a step-up for us at the moment.
Then switch to intense pressing, for the last half hour, if the game is still deadlocked. Even with our current fatigue, we should be able to do it for that long and not finish the game too exhausted to face the next match. The crowd wouldn’t like it and it would take strong minds from our players not to let that affect them, but what we are doing now just leads to defeats and then then fatigue is even worse for the next game.
It’s obviously not what we want, but I can’t think of anything better. Just screaming at a bunch of tired players that they need to play better is not going to help. Sturridge and Origi are not tired, obviously. They are just out of form and unsuited to a pressing game. I still think Origi could contribute, during times that we were playing a counter-attack style and we could give him balls to run onto. Sturridge just needs to be moved on, before he gets injured again.
Glad to have Mane back but I suspect that he will not be enough. He’s not exactly been on vacation and his penalty miss is something he didn’t take lightly. Actually wished he had scored and someone else missed then.
Trying to think about this team’s performance over the season so far and it struck me that maybe the problem was wide open for all to see in the pre-season. I mean we won against Barcelona 4-0 who came in with their full strength side, and then we lose to Mainz 0-4. Even if we rested some players for the Mainz match, I fear it offered a glimpse of the level of inconsistency. Maybe Klopp thought it was a joke and laughed it off.
So beating Chelsea, as many of the Reds fans think it is likely to happen and I’d like to think that as well, will not mean much if we cannot beat Hull in the same week.
I was of the mindset that winning against Chelsea was the way towards closing the gap, etc, but I’ve realized that the Hull game is more likely the important game in terms of seeing whether or not Jurgen and the team have learned from their mistakes and, (like not3bad above me posted) maybe employ a similar park-bus-and-counter tactic or some other more conservative tactic to undo the doubledeckers, and make up points.
Winning against both teams would be great, but we have 4 games against the top 6 sides, and 8 games against the bottom 14 sides. If we lose to Chelsea it would not be such a bad thing considering their form, etc, but if we lose to Hull, then what does that say of our chances of staying in the top 4, the team’s capabilities and Jurgen’s ability to adapt?
Klopp has a lot to do before and on Tuesday and the rest of the week (with or without Mane). I hope he’s got something to work with, and that the Redmen are recouperating as best as they can. This see-saw mindset needs to be culled.
So my Klopp glasses are off now and realize that it’s not Marilyn Monroe but more like Marilyn Manson that I am seeing.
Up the Reds!!!
Brilliant David. Dead on. Crisp, righteous, collapsing the wave envelope to Red. If our boys play with the passion you write with, the title remains well in sight. Let us all believe. Also the comment about Neil’s articles was massively off base. Neil’s writing is dope. Fantastic. How great to have two of the best sportswriters dedicated to LFC. C’mon boys, let us all help. Wretched Neil (like wretched me and wretched you) is in purgatory, his ability to report is clearly suffering from concrete damages to the cranium. That is well documented. Help him. Help LFC, YNWA (tis the meaning, really.)
One match at a time Sash. Win each and every. Let everyone else match that. Still possible and stranger things have happened. Dilly ding, dilly dong.