Mo and Nabby are both muslim - so don’t drink.
Hendo and Milner are both known t-total so wouldn’t surprise me to find out most players limit their drinking - especially when the team is all together
I agree with everything you said.
On the note of the second goal standing I also agree it’s a very grey area. On a similar note, Palace’s goal has elements of that also. The taller player was off side but the ball went to the deeper player making the run behind him… One of our defenders was drawn to the off-side player which gave the deeper player making the run the room he needed and then to pass to the initially off-side player to score… In general I reckon teams are “gamining” the rules to an extent now as a matter of strategy (not our goal mind you). Almost every free kick has runners or stationary players that are off-side and in position for the second ball…
Yes, they benefit from the fact that they were offside in the first place by either having a head start or in a better position.
We should do that more often too. 
All teams do it. Watch any free kick from wide outside the area. After all the first line of the offside law states;
It is not an offence to be in an offside position.
If I am standing in an offside position and a defender chooses to be “distracted” by me just being there, that is tough. I haven’t committed an offence unless I physically obstruct an opponent or attempt to play the ball .
As regards our second goal the question remains is Firmino “clearly attempting to play a ball which is close”? Definitely.
Press going crazy over the pen; 1. it didn’t change the result, we were already winning and the pen was awarded at 89min ffs! 2. it’s not as bad as some of the decisions Man City have had go their way recently.
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If one liked to wear hats made of tinfoil, you could say Friend was instructed to give the penalty as it wouldn’t impact the game and then used as an excuse not to give us a key decision in a later game…
/runs…
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I think that tiredness is overstated as a factor. Not that it didn’t play a part but we’ve seen the same symptoms occur before when we were much fresher and fitter. And in any case, there would have been no point in rotating Van Dijk and Matip for Konate and Gomez. The former is third choice for a reason, the latter has hardly played for more than a year. It’s not as if the physical demands on them are as great as they are for other positions either. TAA falls under the same category as the midfielders; not many viable options to rotate him with to begin with.
I just don’t know what else could Klopp do. He put his faith into his tried and tested players and he managed to close the gap to City and qualify for a final after a difficult January with covid cases while missing some of his most important players. If anything, he’s navigated this period brilliantly.
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I only caught the last 20 of yesterday’s game and the immediate feeling I had was of a midfield unable to control the game.
It wasn’t the front 3 coughing up possession it was happening long before it got anywhere near them. It feels like we’re trying to be too intricate but also being completely unaware of where the space and time is. We were trying to play at the pace Palace dictated instead of us slowing it down and effectively killing the game.
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It’s an odd one the penalty as I am still 50/50, the goalkeeper is late and takes Jota out so it is a foul IF the ball in play, is the ball dead when Jota is fouled, or could Jota have got to it. I’m not sure on that. I probably wouldn’t give it because I’d have to make a judgement that’s hard to make. (It’s not reckless so that remains out of bounds and the likelihood of the ball being dead elsewhere on the pitch is unlikely, hence intriguingly it’s a very grey area).
However I would still give Firmino’s I would read it that he doesn’t impact on it. So hence I think that’s why its given, I just don’t think he has a chance of getting it and he doesn’t impact on it unlike say a player standing in eye sight of the goalie.
Do we want sensible offside’s given or not if we are ruling Firmino’s out we are ruling quite a few out. Including probably Palace.
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Not the same scenario though…the palace guy did not attempt to play the ball while in an offside position. Firmino did attempt to do so…or came back from offside to do so.
By the present laws of the game one is offending. The other isn’t…
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It wasn’t a penalty for me. In my mind Jota had lost control of the ball and wasn’t going to recover it.
But writing this I can appreciate the difficulty in articulating this. You can argue it’s a late challenge which it is, and that makes it a foul on paper. But it wasn’t, but it is, isn’t…
Madness of the game I guess.
The first 35 minutes were superb and Palace could not live with us. Then Matip made that horrendous pass that almost resulted in a goal and then, I think it was Jones, who lost the ball near our penalty area and from then on we seemed stuck at that level.
In my opinion, we miss the Gomez of 2 years ago. Him and Virgil were almost impregnable in defence. Both had pace and were strong in the air. Then our high line made sense and was not as easily exploited. I wonder what happened to Joe.
As for the so called offside and penalty decision, I regard that as the “evening out of decisions over a season” for the Spurs game injustice we suffered.
The more cynical would note that this decision was fairly irrelevant, while the Spurs match featured multiple ridiculous decisions that cost us points…
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Re: the pen
In an isolated, completely unbiased viewing, I say no, Jota knows what he’s doing and buys that penalty pretty cheaply.
However I’m also old enough to have seen this and countless others given against us, where the only consideration is - is there contact.
And in that context, yes, there was contact, so it’s a pen.
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You take the good, with the bad, with the outrageous, with the ridiculous.
That is sport.
3 points.
Watch out Shitty, ya cunts…we’re coming.
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Dermot G’s been on Ref Watch duty with SSN;
On Jota - they all said no penno - Jota moved in to the keeper.
I think he is moving towards the keeper, but not because he’s looking for contact, but that when he’s trying to toe the ball he anticipates contact with the ball and wants to go with the ball - he doesn’t make the contact with the ball but had already started going that way at which point he makes contact with the keeper. For me personally, if that’s given against us I’m not very happy. It’s not a foul, it’s a coming together, and the ball has gone.
On Bobby being offside in the build up to the second goal - Dermot says that VAR decided that he’s not interfering with the two opponents (keeper and defender) - and that it’s a subjective opinion. He doesn’t give his opinion (scummy). The panel says it should have been chalked off.
We do always say that things even out - we’ve been due a dodgy call in our favour for a while. Maybe we got two yesterday. Wouldn’t bet against VAR going the other way in a couple of weeks and Mo no being given a stonewaller against Leicester.
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Strange isn’t it? If that was Kane Rashford or Sterling awarded that penalty, the media would be praising them, saying it was clever or cute on their part.
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Who were our c/back pairing when we conceded 7 against villa?
Some of the reports in the press make me laugh. “The penalty to LFC came when Palace were pushing for an equaliser”.
Yeah they were pushing so hard that their keeper fouled Jota virtually on their own dead ball line.
Ali MOTM.
Shout outs to Robbo, Trent and Diogo. . 
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