Our Post Match Show after a very frustrating draw against Chelsea for The Reds. Criticism is out for Jurgen Klopp, Simon Mignolet, Jordan Henderson and Philippe Coutinho after a hard fought game.
The show is hosted by Neil Atkinson and he is joined Gareth Roberts, Ben Johnson and Ste Browne over from Dublin.
Lads you got this very very wrong. What about the other team who are champions
Lots of contradictory opinions.
Think you’ll see it differently after a kip.
This was really good.
It could be that Firmino and Mane would have had the same game they had during the second half against Sevilla. Maybe it’s not just rotation, maybe it’s that they didn’t give Klopp any indication during the week that they’ll be good in this match. Still expected them on 65 though.
This was a terrific podcast. Some really good and insightful observations – I don’t think I agree with Ben Johnson that often but agreed with pretty much everything in this.
As the guys said it just wasn’t the game to be rotating for the sake of it which is how it seemed. And if you do, then bring on the cavalry by the 60th minute rather than the 89th. I struggle to think of a manger we’ve had whose substitution decisions have been so poor.
There is a but… By the 65th min we were 1-0 up and I do understand as Neil said up to that stage it was pretty even. We sat tight and Chelsea had a defensive set up so we were comfortable until the lucky goal. Chelsea weren’t all over us up till then. On a positive we still have momentum, we haven’t lost sinced spurs and everyone is fit. We move on.
Sorry, lads, I’m sick of John Brown anger and cursing; reminds me of the worse of our supporters: it’s waiter won or heads need to roll. We would have 6 or 7 lads left in the team if he were the manager. Thanks god he is not. We are just not going to win every game. It was an even match and Chelsea is not Southampton. We could have won; we could have lost. Willian got lucky, but we could have lost without that. A tie is fair. Long term we need to strengthen the defense; Keita is much needed, and a couple of top, solid backs. It’s work on progress and I see progress. Can John Brown learn to be disappointed without cursing and throwing our players under the bus? Is he an adolescent? Go Reds Go! As long as your wearing the red shirt and work hard, I’ve got your backs lads!
Pssst. Lads talking about the match after having a bevy. Are you 14? Just dont listen if a swear work offends you. Dont sing the naughty songs at the game either. Once TAW start polishing themselves to cater for comments like that theyll become watered down shite like everyone else. Grow some balls mate.
Might be a good idea to get ‘Go Reds Go’ on a banner for the Thomas Cook section.
Klopp needs to be more objective with his in game management. WTF does the 89tb minute double swap achieve. Going 1 up front and taking off Sturbridge for an out of form midfielder. Is he for fuckin real, we have both Sevilla and Chelsea on the ropes, foot firmly squeezing throats, whichever cliche, and then his lack of tactical nous cost us comfortable wins in both games. Go back to Watford and he’s at it again changing Trent for big Joe costing us the win.
Look I’m not anti Klopp but he needs to sort his shit out before its too late and he begins to lose the crowd because he will if he carries in with this nonsense. He would do well to remember we have seen it all before going way back to Roy Evans. Jason Macateer made a very interesting point after the game when confessing that nearly team also not being able defend a lead also cost them the Title, and ultimately Roy his job.
We’re seeing that divide in the fanbase over yesterday again. There seems to be 2 views.
One is that LFC is in the top 10 clubs of the world in every sense, stature, financially and the fan base and should be striving to be the best constantly. And, another view is we should be supportive and sympathetic to the club at all times.
To use an analogy, some see us like a Goldman Sachs. It’s a ruthless approach where constant mistakes lead to you getting binned off but the result is they stay at the top of their game and some see us like home baked pies. Results aren’t everything, it’s about the community and being nice. If you burn a few pies you get an arm around you and faith that you can improve your oven skills
Ruthless in the pursuit of success v sympathetic, understanding and accepting of mediocrity. Both views are fine but only one brings tangible success.
I hope your point is that Home Baked Pies is the one that brings tangible success. Because the ruthless approach at Goldman Sachs destroys everything in its path, and when your employees fear for their jobs at every turn then they do things that lead to, say, the massive economic collapse of 2008. Not a great example of ‘tangible success’.
Back to the team though, I don’t think anyone is accepting mediocrity. I really don’t understand this accusation for anyone trying to back the players we have and trying to see things from various perspectives rather than a single one especially when we don’t have all the information the manager has as to what’s going on. Between the 0 and the 1 there is a situation where we want things to be better but also can see success and progress when it’s there. That’s not accepting mediocrity, it’s keeping an eye on the bigger picture and the long term objectives.
With you Amy.
Klopp is the man we all wanted (for the first time in years we were pretty unanimous in thinking he was the right guy). Remember that for all his “flaws”, he’s won stuff before. Remember that Liverpool with Lovren/Henderson/Mignolet/insert name of person you don’t think is good enough, we finished above Arsenal & United last season. I’ve no idea whether Klopp’s reign will bring us success or not but this trend of moaning after every set-back (if you count a draw away at a team that has won European trophies & haven’t lost at home for a year or a draw at home to the reigning champions and a team flying on current form as set-backs) is sickening.
Can Liverpool do better? Yes. Can we as supporters do better? Christ, I hope so.
Have a word Robbo – get some positivity back into a few of your colleagues.
“the ruthless approach at Goldman Sachs destroys everything in its path, and when your employees fear for their jobs at every turn then they do things that lead to, say, the massive economic collapse of 2008”
Amazing. Yea, I bet Goldman Sachs, whose turnover is 38 billion dollars, who have 900 billion in assets and who employ 34,000 people paid on average about 300,000 per year (providing a lot of tax revenue in the process), who have been in existence for 150 years and have produced numerous distinguished government officials and prime ministers, not to mention Presidents and Governors of other major banks, whose reputation is one of success and prestige and who are seen as constantly on top of their game, (all of this the result of what you would call “tangible success” in the real world – somehow I doubt this would be the case if they “destroyed everything in their path”) are gutted not to have the Home Baked Pies attitude.
Most workplaces (those in the private sector anyway) are ruthless. If you aren’t producing, you’re out the door. If I become unable to perform to a certain level and make recruitment deals for the next 6 months, you think my company is going to be fine with that? No. I’ll be sacked, and rightly so. Why should they continue to pay me when I’m not only offering them no reason to keep me, but am actively hurting them by drawing a wage and getting no commission for them, thus being detrimental to their goal of becoming more successful? Do you see where I’m going with this?
Klopp rewarded Mignolet and Lovren with extended contracts and pay rises despite the fact they have shown consistently they aren’t good enough if we are to become more successful. What has happened since he showed that faith? Have they rewarded Klopp or the football club we all support? No, they haven’t. They continue to hurt us. They continue to be not good enough. They continue to hinder us in our efforts to become more successful. That Home Baked Pies strategy you’re advocating is a proven failure. If they performed like that at Goldman Sachs, or at Manchester Utd/City (Shaw/Bravo), they’d have been at the least demoted, or out the door. But then, they are successful organisations, and we aren’t.
All I did was point out that Goldman Sachs’s strategy is not my idea of how to run a workplace. Not sure why you’re so angry about that. Their workplace culture and the way they incentivize their employees played a huge part in the economic collapse and the destruction of the lives of millions of people – this is not my opinion, this is fact. And what was their bailout that American taxpayers paid for? $10 billion? That’s your idea of a sound management strategy? You want us to aim for that level of greed and incompetence in how we run the club and our businesses?
Do keep sharing your views and values on here though. I’m genuinely learning so much.
I don’t think you need to look too much into GS as a company. My point was only that football is a multi billion pound industry and LFC are at the top of that industry.
I don’t want to particularly talk about LFC in terms of a business but the reality is it is. If we want success then we have to stop being so forgiving with people making mistake after mistake. I don’t necessarily mean mistakes in the Chelsea game, though they were there, I refer more to this rebuttal of any criticism we see on social media. If we want to talk in business terms, then the fans are the customers and we have a right to a voice. Whatever you think, LFC haven’t won anything since 2006 except for a cup no one respects due to sides playing their reserves. There’s a new breed of fan who defend everything the club do and by doing that it facilitates it continuing. It shows in the ground too. We don’t get vocal supporters with emotions fired up, we get people who are content regardless of how the match is going. Liverpool need to be more ruthless on and off the pitch. What the Chelsea game clearly showed me was we have too many weak players who are barely good enough for a top 4 finish hence our finishing position since they’ve been here. I want more. I’m not going to defend everything these players do because they play for us. Even a half hearted comment about GS gets a defensive reply. I’m sick to death of Liverpool fans and the standards they accept. This team is 60% towards being a great team but 40% is mid table quality. It just needs an injection of ruthlessness.
Klopp was right to be criticised because his substitutions haven’t changed games and overall have had a more negative impact than positive. The only game that’s had a positive impact this season was Palace when he made them at 0-0 and 2 mins later we scored. We added an extra goal v Arsenal when 3-0 up but that game was won.
Overall though, my point was we need to be ruthless and get better players in. Plus, for those who don’t accept mistake after mistake we don’t need our own fans slating us like we’re not proper fans. Some of us think we’re underachieving still while some are accepting of our circumstances regardless because they feel being a supporter is supporting like a social or care worker. I believe we’re at an elite level and we need to act as other elites do. The spine of our team is horrendous.
I disagree Robin. I don’t think fans don’t see the problems you describe in the team – that’s my point (plus the point that GS is a terrible analogy for how to run a business let alone LFC). The difference is you get angry at a 1-1 draw with Chelsea and see it as a general failure of everything, whereas others are just as disappointed but they still see the team is on the trajectory we want the team to be on. An injection of the ruthlessness you speak of can also see the destruction of motivation of the players who remain. It’s also dependent on what the club can do in the transfer market to replace the subpar players. It’s not as simple as you describe, but there is plenty of indication that the club is recruiting better players, though at a slower pace than what we want.
And if you want LFC to be run as a ruthless business, where does that stop? Should FSG price tickets like a ruthless business too? And your point about fans at the ground – my biggest worry right now isn’t the fans who sit still and aren’t vocal, it’s the increasing number of stories about fans who shout abuse at our own players on the pitch, and I see this encouraged and facilitated by irrational angry abuse starting on social media. If LFC don’t win anything this season it has as much to do with the toxic fanbase as it has to do with the players and the manager, because the gap between where we are with the team and where the team could be, that can be filled by supporters supporting the team, isn’t being filled. Completely disagree that the fans are just like customers in a business.
And no one is slating anyone as far as I can tell, we’re all just having a chat. The comments section is often just as interesting as the articles and pods themselves, and it would make a terrible read if all there was on here were comments abusing the manager and the players.
Sorry to break this to you but the fans aren’t the reason LFC don’t win trophies. Our home form hasn’t been too bad, it’s our away form that’s killed us and away fans are a pretty decent bunch. So, it doesn’t add up that the fans are the issue.
Regarding demotivating the players there’s also another side to that. We have a few players who want to leave and numerous ones who have left in the past. The reason? They felt we weren’t matching their ambitions. If a few lightweights want to sulk because we don’t think they’re good enough then let them. Let’s try to cater to the needs of the best players in the team and make them happy. This is what I refer to by our fans being soft. It’s these attitudes that keep us with a squad of poor players.
Regarding the Chelsea game my mate who’s a City fan text me and asked what I thought the result would be. I said a score draw so he then replied with ‘So you’d be happy with a draw’? I replied absolutely not. Not at home. But, the result was much more disappointing than had you told me pre match we’d draw 1-1. We were 1-0 up with 5 minutes to go and whereas Chelsea changed to go more attacking we didn’t respond when we had some of our better players on the bench. We were too deep and Mane could have provided an outlet for us and made them more wary of pushing up. The same thing happened v Sevilla. Last season we were 3-1 up v Bournemouth and lost 4-3. In the home game we were ahead with 3 minutes to play and drew. Watford on the opening day and we concede an equaliser in the last minute of injury time. In fact, no top 6 side has a worst record of not being able to hold a lead and it’s that which frustrates fans, not the fact it was 1-1 with Chelsea. Again though, there’s no questioning why. All we get us, they’re the current champions, it’s a good result blah, blah, blah. The worst one is Klopp does well against the top sides. We’ve played the others in the top six and in the 2 aways we conceded 9 and could only manage a draw in 2 of our home games. Again, the conceding late and not beating the top sides is not down to the fans. It’s down to the weak mentality of 40% of players plus a system that rarely changes due to the circumstances of the game. I’m not hugely angry with our players or Klopp. I’d like better players and I’d like Klopp to at least try to be more sensible when in the lead but as I keep saying, my issue is with the fans that won’t allow these points to be raised without 1001 excuses.
Finally, regarding where does it stop? Higher ticket prices? Well, no it doesn’t. You may not see fans as customers (and I get that as it’s not how I see it myself) but for the owners of the club that’s what we are. We have to be treated with respect. Don’t forget, that’s exactly what the owners tried to do. Luckily, we have a good supporters club who look after our rights and are fairly ruthless in the protection of the fans. Ruthlessness is good. It brings results. Being accepting of everything is isn’t and doesn’t. Some fans are so warped towards their protection of everything the club does that they don’t blame the people at the top of the club, they blame the fans. It’s like RBS saying it wasn’t mismanagement that led to the issues it was our customers fault for not putting enough of their savings in the bank.
I agree that the fans aren’t the reason LFC aren’t winning trophies – nowhere did I say they were, and I agreed with you that the players we have are not all at the level they should be, so you’re not breaking anything to me! My point there was the fans can help fill the gap in quality through supporting the players we have while they play for the club. This isn’t a revolutionary concept and supporting players in the past has been shown to improve their performance. If you can’t see the difference between the two statements then there’s no point with this conversation. But if the home support is so great and is not affecting performance, why did you bring it up in the first place? I was only countering your point about how there is no emotion, when my perception is there is emotion, but it’s the negative detrimental type, influenced by the increasing volume of criticism on social media.
Again, if you read the comments on here these past few days, you’ll notice that a lot of us were confused by the subs and disappointed with the result of this match and the Sevilla match. Not sure why you’re feeling alone in your point of view.
Apologies for the misunderstanding Amy. I was reacting to your comment “If LFC don’t win anything this season it has as much to do with the toxic fanbase as it has to do with the players and the manager”. I think it has to do with the quality of players and some of Klopp’s decisions but not really the fans. Chelsea won the league last year and City probably will this year. Neither are renowned for a good atmosphere.
I want a good atmosphere because it’s the only thing I enjoy about watching football at that price. It does help the team but one thing that’s definite is, they need to help themselves. If they don’t the crowd goes flat. Human nature. We need a lift to get behind them.
GS, making billions of dollars in profit, is not your idea of a way to run a business? Incredible.
Also, GS repaid the US tax payer plus interest in only a few years after their bailout. The ordinary man made money on bailing them out. That you’d focus on 1 year of their existance, out of 150 years, speaks volumes about the quality of your argument. And then you speak of values. As always with your ilk, it can’t just be a disagreement – you always have to claim moral superiority. Even after Trump & Brexit, you still haven’t learnt.
Sadly, your politics shines through on here, a football forum. And it’s the type of politics that has shown to constantly fail, decade after decade. How’s Venezuela doing Amy?
Robin has butchered you in this conversation, and done it in the most polite way possible. Bottom line is this football team is too nice & more ruthlessness, particularly in winning positions, and in general, would go a long way to us being more successful. That anyone would argue against this is strange. Still, we live in a free society – you’re entitled to be wrong.
That was great Grae. Thanks for the laugh.
Fucking hell! I didn’t realise that we played the 1970 Brazil team with a bunch of Sunday League scrubs last night. That’s the impression that I got listening to that show.
No question, that is by far the worst Pink since I started to subscribe.
I can live the whole of the rest of my life without having to hear that Irish bloke’s opinion on anything ever again, thank you very much. The moaning dickhead down at the pub has more optimistic opinions than him. Whoever thought that he was a good option for the show needs to reevaluate themselves.
Bring it on TAW Ultras.
Having spent years defending Henderson on a daily basis I’ve finally accepted (in my own head) what I think of him. He’s well good enough for 30 games a season and is a good asset to the squad. Against the top teams in the PL and Europe he clearly falls short. I’ve heard the position mentioned and the difficulty of it but he’s quite limited as a footballer. One could argue a number 6 role doesn’t need to be good at shooting but all good footballers have the ability to an extent. His set pieces are always poor too. Mostly his crossing is as well. He floats everything which gives the defenders time to win it. Needs to whip them more. In the 6 role his tackling and heading isn’t great. He has Superb vision sometimes but overall if he’s going to be preferred to start our big games then we may not take the step to the next level of winning the big trophies. He’s not alone but good players win things. He may get away with it if we improve our other weak areas but currently we have 4 or 5 players who are below what is required. It’s too many to win the league.
Listeners need to remember that the Pinks are instant reactions and not in-depth thoughtful analysis.
Conte always goes for the win without being gung-ho (his record since joining chelsea shows only 6 draws in 51 league games. It’s clear from the start that Chelsea thought they could win by defending in numbers and breaking quickly and exploiting some defensive frailties (some of Klavern’s mad clearances were pub team quality) I expected Liverpool to start quicker but at times they looked like the team that had played half way round the world on Wednesday night. Chelsea looked stronger and fitter in the last half hour; did Klopp think chelsea would fade? Giving Mane 2 minutes at the end was bizarre.
A word for the ref; kept the match going got all the big decisions right. No bookings in the whole game, although he could easily booked Matip and Drinkwater .
Confused by the comments here- in particular about the Irish guy Ste Brown. He cursed no more than anyone ( infact your cursing ratio was quite low for such a game lads- must improve :) and was very perceptive with his views. Had and excellent take on Chelsea set up – their players, formations and contributions along with a reasoned view of ourselves.
Overall, I don’t know if we should be losing our rag over this. That’s a good Chelsea team improving by the week and they weren’t up for killing us until they conceded. After that-they got lucky.
Player wise I thought we did well- defence iin particular. Ox impressed me hugely too and I think ye’re right about Hendo- he seems to be trying to please the Haters and driving further upfield than before rather than sticking to the role of the 6.
Sturridge in was a repeat of his last start vs Newcastle- a non-event and I only hope Firmino and Mane had knocks/fatigue keeping them out as DS offers us nothing except shows us how to upset a system that works when he’s not in. Can’t understand it.
Subs and Match management wise Klopp did ok. It’s not a repeat of the ridiculous Watford subbing. He was working to reenforce midfield and defence and was unfortunate not to get Lallana in and move to the 5 at the back he wanted before their fluke mis-cross goal.
I saw it differently. I thought they came to be defensive but in the times they decided to come forward they walked through us at will. When they made the changes to attack more not only did they score but my feeling at the time was they may well go on to win it.