When Fabinho plays in midfield he has a mean streek. Not like Kean but enough.
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They do it with a smile on their face, that’s how cocky and knowing the officials are.
I’ve even seen a few refs giving wide wild eyes to our players when they question them at about 1% of the intensity that City and United players do.
Can’t remember which match, but Marriner was almost saying ‘come on then’ to whichever of our lads was questioning him.
To be honest, I’m actually ashamed to have been born in a country that is like this. I’m embarrassed that fantastic world class footballers effectively put their careers at risk by playing for LFC.
Before they come to England, they clearly don’t appreciate just how much hate there is towards LFC and how it plays out in the tackles our players have to endure.
You can see Thiago bewildered by some of it.
It’s nothing to do with the Premier League being physical, it’s not just whoever is champions needing knocking down, it’s about hatred towards LFC, and it’s about LFC being champions.
No other club suffers this.
It goes beyond football, from the sneering when Capital of Culture was awarded, when anyone who has any knowledge of the city knows there’s more culture here than in most other English cities combined (including more listed buildings than anywhere outside London). It came through loud and clear in the attitude of the nation over Hillsborough. It’s been seen in negative portrayals of the city in multiple TV series and regularly in news pieces.
But it feeds into football, Everton get some of it, but we get most of it.
England is a disgusting and disgraceful country. Corrupt, biased, prejudiced and just plain nasty.
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Fabinho is mean/tough as a player. When I said Kean, I meant about those arguments, bordering on to abuse, with the match officials.
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I agree, love him or hate him, Roy Keane was only interested in winning the game, he wasn’t on the pitch to make friends. Remember the way he used to intimidate referees? That probably came from Ferguson and it worked in their favour in a lot of games.
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But the difference is that because he played for United, it was allowed.
If a Liverpool player did it, they’d be carded immediately, every time.
That said, to be honest, I think our lads are just too nice. How many times over the years have you seen nasty behaviour by England players of other clubs towards England LFC players, only to be all smiles after the match.
For me, our players should see all other clubs as bitter enemies, stick it up them, and see if they’re all smiles afterwards the way our lads have been.
It’s no surprise that our most successful era as a club was when we had a good few nasty bastards of our own.
I’d love to see Harry Kane trying his diving routine on Tommy Smith, or Sterling trying to be the hard man on Souness.
One of the reasons we fell away in the 90s was because we let the likes of Keane go to United, when we were still at the top and could have attracted them.
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I see a lot of this sentiment, that Origi is useless, we should bin him, etc. But then people will turn around and say someone like Minamino or Jota are still young, can be afforded time. When they are in reality around the same age.
Now, if Jürgen decides to sell him soon, then I will have nothing to say about it, but otherwise, he clearly has a role to play in our team.
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I think you contradict yourself too much in that post.
I don’t think it’s a matter of “our lads are just too nice”. The wild inconsistencies in refereeing makes it impossible for us to be anything but that. All the comments over the past few seasons saying that we should go in hard on one of opponent players to set the tone, or leave a sneaky one in, are plentifully ignoring the fact that there is one standard for Liverpool Football Club and a different set of standards for everyone else. What will get our players sent off, for other teams, is just “clever play” or “great physical performance”, or even a foul committed by us. I can guarantee for example, that what Maguire did to Salah would be a stonewall penalty if any of our defenders even came physically close to our opponents.
The game is rigged, and it’s not even funny. The frustration of losing because we’re shit is very different from the frustration of losing because the referees are shit. At least with one you know the manager would be able to fix that for sure.
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That’s fair enough.
I guess it’s just about finding a balance. Because at the moment we just let the refs and opponents walk all over us, and in the end that just starts to see players and the boss bemused and dispirited and that prevents us winning on talent alone.
Nobody is talking about a Rafa Facts speech, we’re talking about the club doing something to start the process of turning officialdom and media bias back to something more fair.
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Wasn’t it one of our players last season running back and hitting the ref really hard while running by? In my book Fabinho, VVD, Robbo are tough enough cookies, while Hendo has made progress over the past years in trying to influence refs.
Last season, all this worked a treat. This one, it’s not. We can’t get a break from wrong/awful decisions against us. I can’t really work out why that is so, but it’s a fact.
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I think it was Kolo Toure, few seasons back.
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The referee’s are lapping up the fact they are not getting stick and abuse from the fans. Didn’t think they could be any more snide than they have been, but not having 55,000 sets of eyes watching your every move, allows them to be even more of a cnut.
Anyone else notice Jon Moss getting distracted when that little sausage dog gets displayed running along the hoardings…
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I get the point about fan influence on refs being absent just now, but it never stopped Martin Atkinson and a few others being a cunt.
There could be many reasons for it becoming as it has become this season, but basically we have suffered from poor officialdom for decades.
I don’t remember the early 80s being so bad for it, and am trying to think back as to how bad it was in the 90s. It would make some sense after Heysel, as that got English football banned from Europe, but I don’t remember too many issues in the late 80s.I guess that was because it was mainly just between us and Everton, and we weren’t taking trophies directly from Manchester and London competitors as we are now.
Did it became noticeable after Hillsborough?
I really started to notice it the past decade or so, which is when City came into the mix. A club whose owners have their own secret police, and also when many media companies made Manchester their UK base.
But basically we’re seeing a mix of things at play, regional bias, the national media turning a blind eye to things that go against us but being all over things that go for us, VAR finally giving a more level playing field last season, followed by media hysteria about it, and now this season what we’ve seen.
It sickens me, and to be honest it kind of sickens me to see our English players go off and represent a governing body and nation that’s behind it.
Personally, I couldn’t pull on an England shirt without vomitting.
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Does Burnley have fast attackers? Can we use Nat/Rhys for this game?
If Matip is back and considering who we’re playing we should be more adventurous.
Alisson
TAA
Matip
Phillips
Robertson
Fabinho
Henderson
Thiago
Mane
Minamino
Salah
Get 3 of our best midfielders starting and have Gini and Shaq on the bench. Bobby dropped not rested. No shame in being out of form, it happens. But a view from the bench might be nor harm.
Phillips is big enough to cope with the physical aspect Burnley bring. With Matip beside him he should be more than fine allowing us to strengthen midfield.
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It was Marriner to Trent at Southampton. Up there with the Goodison derby as the most corrupt football match I’ve ever watched. That was the game where I finally decided I’d had enough and I’ve barely looked at the PL since, I’ve no interest in their contrived title race. I genuinely believe it’s reached a stage where John Henry should get involved and we should seriously consider walking off the pitch next time a ludicrous offside is given against us or one of our lads is the victim of a potential leg-breaker. Call the cunts out on it once and for all. Reading this forum and others there are plenty of life-long Reds considering spewing it altogether, that just can’t be allowed to happen.
The worrying thing is if we miss out on top 4 altogether and all the misery Europa League qualification brings.
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The Southampton one gets my goat even more when comparing the Walcot GBH on Milner then the Fulham kid who gets sent off against Chelsea.
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Against busparkers I wouldn’t like to see Thiago as a holding midfielder. If Matip is fit Hendo could play that position.
For me Thiago is more useful further up the pitch to break down two banks of five.
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Allisson
TAA-Fabinho-Phillips-Robertson
Thiago
Henderson-Shaq
Salah-Mane-Taki
Revert to something similar to our lineup against Palace with Mane in the middle. I think he is the most clinical and unpredictable of our forwards right now. Taki deserves a chance, though I think he is pencilled to start the FA Cup match. Shaq for his set piece delivery.
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How is Mane the most clinical right now. His current goal return and assists is dreadful 3 goals in his last 14 Premier league games with 1 assist not exactly clinical.
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Strangely, I feel its for the good that we stay slightly off the pace, a few points behind the leaders, get the spotlight off our backs as we regroup. I thought it worked well for Man City when they were struggling and they have crept up the top without the focus being on them. Let the Manures lap up their minutes of glory while we do what we always do best, quietly but surely.
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