They have finished above us 3 times this century.
2004/5, 2011/12 and 2012/13
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Can we play Arsenal every week, for the rest of the season?
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I’ve just finished a bottle. Back to the Warsteiner as a soft drink alternative…
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There comes a point where it’s not worth discussing team selection, tactics, substitutions or any in-game positional changes.
When you’re watching the same fucking bullshit over and over again and everyone else can see the same thing apart from the manager then it’s time to pull the trigger.
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…I wasn’t serious about 1986. I’m just annoyed that shower might be above us.
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Yes, but Stockley Park is well guarded and arson is a felony.
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Neil Atkinson’s reaction email.
IT’S AGONISING.
And it isn’t good enough.
It isn’t good enough to have every setback lead to a collapse. Isn’t good enough to see a Liverpool side see adversity and cower in the corner.
Because that is what they did. One thing went wrong and one refereeing decision was harsh and from there they had little left to give.
What makes all this difficult is that it had been good enough. They were more than worthy of opening the scoring. Mo Salah was scintillating for 40 minutes and constantly on the ball. Alexis Mac Allister had a fabulous picture of the whole pitch. Milos Kerkez looked like the player we bought. Over and over Liverpool went at Nottingham Forest and Forest were hanging on, begging for any relief.
The right hand side had Salah, Curtis Jones and Dom Szoboszlai working well. Liverpool could build out. One moment where Salah was found by Ibou Konate was exceptional and set the tone. Liverpool banged on the door. But.
They are so poor once the goal is conceded. Konate is so poor the goal is conceded. But it spreads and it shows and it isn’t the first time. It isn’t the second time. It is, instead, the seventh time. The eighth time this season Liverpool have been a mess when they have gone behind.
They have gone behind eight times.
Liverpool had to score first. This is the essence of this moment. I have seen football matches down the years for many sides but I have never seen one for which was more the case. Liverpool, this Liverpool right now have to score first. If they do they will win. If they don’t they will lose.
That is how you end up P12 W6 L6. This is a remarkable moment, presumably unique in the club’s history. This can only be the case if it is essentially decided by the destination of the opening goal.
Nottingham Forest do a great job of managing this particular coin toss. They show loads of spirit defending their own goal and just know they need to hang in for dear life. Know they need to get their chance.
Dyche manages the emotions of a game very well. It is not a surprise looking back that Dyche wins two significant games against Klopp’s Reds. One at home in 2016 and the one that ended the run in 2021.
But the truth isn’t that Nottingham Forest or Sean Dyche are in heads of The Reds - everything else is. The score, the league table, the pressure of being champions, the pressure of performing in the context of their price tags and wages, feeling hard done by from every referee.
And:
What Andy Robertson made clear in the week. And when he did, I just thought “Ah Jesus. Ah these lads.”
You see, the above, all the above that particular “And:”, I go “fuck you”. I say this is the ideal. The dream. I quote Shankly on pressure.
“Pressure is working down the pit. Pressure is having no work at all. Pressure is trying to escape relegation on 50 shillings a week. Pressure is not the European Cup or the Championship or the Cup Final. That’s the reward.”
But what Robertson made clear in the week is that is all isn’t just that. It could be that. It could be solely that for one or two. Footballers aren’t homogeneous. They don’t think with one mind. Great management means great squads think with one mind but Alex Ferguson once said he didn’t like a dressing room where he didn’t think it was just about to kick off. He knew dressing rooms.
Arne Slot’s current dressing room is much, much, much more complicated than that.
And while I’d love to feel the energy someone is about to kick off, in the pub post match I have just been told from someone in the Main who stayed, that Mac Allister was amongst the last off the pitch, that Mac Allister was in tears.
That I go:
Does this feel like the reward?
Well, does it?
It ought to have been months of “Bring on the Champions” whatever the league table is saying. Us giving it the big one. It ought to have been always about to be a party one way or another but since the parade that has been so hard and I’m saying this - just a gobshite with an office, a few podcasts and videos. Not playing, just living, pushing through, being asked to talk.
But I’m so angry they can’t pull themselves together when something goes wrong on the football field, maybe because I just want them to rage against the dying of the light, be livid and devil may care because it is only a game, find some pot of “fuck you, fuck you, and especially fuck you” energy when they are busy trying to be serious, trying to be Champions, feeling every blow precisely because they don’t want to snarl.
Well I want to snarl. I want to see them snarl. I want to see them rage. I want to see them play like it doesn’t matter in the right way, not the way that makes them and us meek. I hate meek. I hate it when I see it in myself and I hate it when I see it in the people I love and I love them because they are the Champions. They gave us the gift of the 27th April and nobody ever, my whole life gave me a better gift. Nobody.
Fuck off Liverpool. Say “fuck off”, Liverpool. Get mad as hell and back yourselves and one another and get backed by us. Set fire to something, get sent off, call the referee a cunt.
Now is the time for rage. The only way out is through. If the light at the end of the tunnel is a flamethrower then get a bigger flamethrower.
The problem is that this doesn’t see what grief does to your soul. You can be angry, but it’s the wrong kind of anger. Its guilt anger. It’s ‘do I deserve to be alive when they are dead’ distress. It’s a fury that robs you of your sense of right and wrong. Because everything is wrong and you don’t know if it will ever be right again.
If I could say one thing to them it would be: the pain won’t go but your judgement will come back. Your heart won’t recover but your brain will. You’ll never not think about how unfair this is and you’ll never stop worrying about his kids. But one day, your brain won’t feel so wild and so angry and be so fraught. Grief won’t leave you, but you will learn how to put it to better use.
Use.
Right now Liverpool, be anything, show anything, find anything. Find something useful. Fight for each other. Fight for each other and know that even if the fight feels pointless now, one day you will look back and be proud that you made it through this together.
Fight for each other and fight for us. Because the alternative isn’t helping us and it is battering you.
Neil
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Sorry, I’m just not having that. I know I’m all over the refs and corruption and that wont change but this goes beyond all that.
A group of us were trying to remember a period when we looked as bad as we do right now and one lad said under Souness and he’s probably right. Even Hodgson wasn’t this bad.
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Fucking hell mate, it was a joke.
And yes, Hodgson was this bad and worse. He was a clueless cunt, who didn’t understand the club and whose intention was to drag Liverpool down to a level he was comfortable working at.
Slot won a league title and never described a draw against Everton as utopia.
People have fucking short memories.
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A collapse like this is rarely player oriented, it is usually something happening in the background. Something is very wrong in management or manager.
.
When teams fall apart like this, and remember we were cantering in the league up to game 6, it tends to be a management issue.
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what a mess of a post, had to re read certain lines and still its a nonsense. a word salad.
hope that doesnt represent paid journalism in UK
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You’ll have to excuse me because I’m not seeing the funny side in anything after that.
Hodgson’s team was full of journeyman footballers who clearly didn’t have the ability to reach the heights expected of them.
I don’t recall many games under Hodgson where our 2 best midfielders ended up in the back 4 while specialist RB’s and CB’s stayed rooted to the bench.
Hodgson was a useless cunt with mitigating circumstances. Slot had 2 RB’s unavailable today and shit the bed because of it.
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Totally agree re Gravenberch. He should revert to a sitting DM. I hate seeing him dragged out wide.
Playing a flat two in midfield is not working. I’m sure that was the plan to accomodate Wirtz further forward but it’s destroyed our structure.
The strange thing is it was Slothimself who identified Grav to play this role last season. And it’s Slot who’s changed it.
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That’s his style, and as a successful broadcaster and author, he is entitled to it.
And his points are sound.
There is no fight in this team - it looks like a bunch of lads who have had the shit kicked out of them. And they have - by games of football and, most importantly, and most easily forgotten, by life itself.
They are good until the goal goes in and then they simply accept their fate. This isn’t good enough at all. I’m not sure how much to blame the players and I’m not sure how much to blame Slot. I don’t know what the answer is to a bunch of players who just wilt at adversity when it rears its head.
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So much for the ‘mentality monsters’…
Many of these players still form the core of our first team. Yet, they look like the ghosts of their former selves. Go figure…
What’s sure though is that the new players are anything but that. Kerkez, Isak et al have no excuses whatsoever for not showing any kind of fight or energy on the pitch.
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…may as well laugh at something tonight instead of crying :0)
‘Not cutting my hair until Liverpool win 3 games in a row’…
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The whole argument about mentality is spot on. Until we can recover some fight, systems and personnel are secondary.
As it happens I thought we played fairly well for the first half hour, and on another day we would have scored and kicked on for the three points. Instead Forest got the first goal - and here’s where the current mentality kicks in - we fell apart. The game was still there to be won, but all of a sudden we looked like we had the weight of the world on our shoulders and our play regressed. Seeing this emboldened Forest all the more and they ran out as comfortable winners in the end.
I don’t know what the answer is to the mentality thing. It might be sessions with a sports psychologist. It might just be a case of continuing to work until something starts to click and we get a result or two to get a little foothold.
At some point if something doesn’t start to turn it will be a new manager to come in and see if that sparks them to life.
But I’d like to think there is still a bit to go before we get to that point, and Slot will find some answers.
What I am certain of is we have a fantastic squad and what we are seeing is much, much less than what I know they can do. We still need a couple of players, but even with that acknowledged, the group is much better than what it is showing.
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Brilliant needs to be read by every player
Sorry, that’s drivel from Neil Atkinson.
He has that nauseating, ShowMeTheMoney style of writing. Staccato. Dramatic. Poetic. Inspiring.
Blah. Absolute guff.
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Each to their own but I agree with the philosophy of what he wrote