SHOULD have known. At 6.30am yesterday I should have known.
I woke up there with what felt like an undeserved hangover. One of them under the radar ones which don’t feel warranted but feel like you have been killed for no reason. Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Death by water extraction. Even when I realise that the hangover is not only fully warranted but also 100 per cent to be expected and probably even a little lenient, I should have fucking known.
One-one at half-time isn’t the end of the world, though. It’s recoverable. The day can get better. Then the theme tune to Neighbours plays and it becomes painfully obvious that we are going to get beat and we should all just go home. Why? You have got a captive audience of 55,000 people, a vocal majority of which need motivating to support their team a bit better in the second half and the choice of record is the Neighbours theme tune. To be honest, we deserved to get beat on the strength of it. I can’t think of any actual scenario within which the Neighbours theme song should be played in the ground. The best we could come up with is that Karl Kennedy was knocking about for the match which is absolutely mental. Why would a fella, who is off work, and probably on holiday want reminding of his job when he is at the match? There is a wider issue here. A lot of people in that ground were pissed off yesterday. Pissed off with the team, with Sam Allardyce, with Dan Sturridge for having wham bars as connective tissue. If I’ve got half a chance to influence supporter behaviour, I’m playing a track list of bangers, not some second-rate nostalgic bull shit.
Just when the Reds are trying to get their minds back on the game some overenthusiastic bizzie gives it the big one with the volume turned up to eye-watering levels.
“Operation Anfield exercise.”
Every year without fail, the same bizzie. Must be the highlight of his working life, trying to time it so he gets on Match Of The Day. He has a viewing party and everything. Why do they have to disrupt the match? Why can’t they do it on walkie-talkies? They are only setting the frigging fire alarms off and opening some doors? Why do we have to put up with this shit? If the crowd weren’t pissed off before Neighbours and this nonsense, they were after it.
Couple that with the Reds propensity to give teams a goal whenever they want one and it’s a miracle that people weren’t fighting in the stands. Say what you want about the Reds but we don’t half make it easy for teams every now and again, do we? Even when we are defending well. They make no sense. We attacked every corner and high ball into the box really well and then decide not to. The ball should not bounce off a corner and find it’s way into our box. It deffo should not bounce off a corner and find its way into our box and onto their big head of a centre forward unmarked five yards out. The fact that we gifted them the corner by Degsy Lovren passing it straight to them and then, in true Degsy style, diving in to win it back only adds to the frustration. In fairness though, he was probably chocker with the Neighbours theme tune ringing around his head, wondering whatever happened to Madge and that. Degsy, la. Good enough to play every now and again, but I can’t have it that his mentality is strong enough to allow you to build a side around a defence with him in it.
Imagine managing these. Jürgen Klopp must want to kill them. All the time. One week learning how to defend. Next week back to square one. The week after learning how to unlock any defence. Week after that devoid of ideas. The lack of a Liverpool chance after they scored the second was worrying, but when you are playing against a block of 10 with absolutely no ability to change it from the bench then you are going to struggle. Liverpool grafted, they tried their best but every now and again it isn’t good enough. The fight that the Reds showed last week against West Brom and Stoke the week before was still in evidence we just didn’t really play that well. Once Palace equalised the pressure from our own crowd and the lack of an alternative to pretty much any of the players on the pitch meant Klopp was trying to work with his hands tied behind his back. Hopefully the lessons will have been learned from this year and he will get the options he desperately needs to manage games better.
The only positive I suppose is that we don’t have to see or smell Allardyce and his massive big gravy jowls for another year or listen to him proclaim about how much of a tactical genius he is. If it was so easy to exploit Liverpool’s weaknesses, why did you only have two shots in the whole game then, stew head? Give the man his due, he isn’t shy when talking about himself, is he? Which leads you to wonder about other things he isn’t shy about discussing. Here is my guess at a top five:
5) Bodily functions
4) Not washing his hands when he carries out said functions
3) Brexit
2) Well done meat
1) Rafa
So, my day that started so poorly ended with me, still hungover, on the train home when three arl pissed Bluenoses got on and started singing Crystal Palace songs and saying how much they loved the Queen. I don’t know either. Should have known, though, I suppose.
Up the weary Reds.
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I know mate.
How do you solve a problem like Crystal Palace?
Watched this one on telly. In commentary Carra kept going on about Klopp making changes, but you looked at our bench and there sat Albie M with the under 14s!
Injuries at the sharp end of the season are always a problem but we are definitely looking a bit short handed right now.
Anyway, up the some things never change Reds!
It was inevitable, predictable and boring. I didn’t even react when Benteke scored his second because nothing has ever been more obvious. A returning striker sold by Klopp and now playing for a team of alehouses managed by Mike Bassett? Were we fuck going to win. I don’t think we’ve ever won in such conditions, or if we ever will.
What annoys me more than anything is listening to these players talk before games. They talk about having the desire and fight, how they will approach the last five games like cup finals and put everything on the line to secure champions league etc… Then they show up on match day and ‘play’ like it’s a bloody training match.
We did the hard part and scored a goal against a resolute defense. All they had to do was defend like men on the odd occasion Palace got the ball into our box, it’s basic stuff. Could they do it? Could they f*ck, different day, same old sh*t. Don’t know about you but my hangover was well earned after watching that crap yet again. I’m sick and tired of these players. People keep saying we’ll make top four because Utd and Arsenal have tougher remaining fixtures. However, I just don’t see us winning all of our games with this team.
I’m with you all the way Craig… mancs are on a roll, they’ll beat city with some “tactical master class” bullshit and we will struggle against Watford. i hate being negative but they just bleed any positivity out of me…#wearyanddemoralised
Hughes. Pulis. Allardyce. I’d rather see Liverpool succumb to relegation than have any of them manage the club. The managerial equivalent of the owner who says “Football clubs should be run as a business.” Joyless, passionless, colourless – is it any surprise our polar opposites get results against us so often? 6 out of 9 against them is not a bad result, especially when half our team is injured and the other half barely managed a training session. We’re missing Henderson, we’re missing Lallana, we’re missing Mane, we’re even missing Sturridge – if he was on the bench, he’d have come on at 60 minutes for Origi and they’d have taken two steps back.
A City win on Thursday and it’s all in our hands again (although it’s a near certainty that United will drop points between Friday and the end of the season). But god help us if we don’t learn the lesson from this in the summer transfer window – we need real quality in depth.
Good points there Ben, but I have to disagree with you saying Klopp has basically got his hands tied behind his back. He chose not to strengthen a small squad that was still in with a chance of winning the title in January. Injuries were always going to happen, it’s about having good enough back up to cover for these, which we don’t. As it stands the refusal to spend money in January could be the difference between finishing in the top 2/3 and finishing out of the top 4 entirely.
Spot on.
after the shame of lovren getting beat by someone waving at the ball (bolassie) we have him getting skinned by a really old, slow bloke and then for the second i have no idea what he was doing before the corner. Was part of fat sams master plan to hit a corner so weak it just about got into the box knowing it would terrify the defence who would then go onto play statues.
Ben, I don’t know if you read these comments at all, but not for the first time you’ve managed to put a smile on my face after a really shit 24 hours, so thank you very much for that! It also gave me the excuse to revisit the ‘what Allardyce smells of’ one from last season too, which is never a bad idea.
Ben 3 Palace 2 Libpool 1.
Cheers
Love the top 5 things fat head talks about..cheered me up after a day of depression..quality
Pissed off sums it up. I am ashamed to admit I left at 80 mins something I have never done before although I usually leave just before the end ( excuse 72 years old and 89 mile drive home). I was simply too angry and pissed off to watch anymore all so predictable. Things have to change and new players brought in although how we will attract real quality if we don’t finish top 4 I don’t know.
On a separate point how long will we continue to fill our ground and corporate seats when serving up this dross. Our history will not sustain us forever.