The
main news this week is that, in what came as a massive shock to no one, Jannik
Vestergaard’s red card against Leicester was overturned. However, with echoes
of the Super League six, the referee and VAR specialist Jon Moss, escape
without sanction.
Talking of the Super League six, tonight we play Liverpool, who
were one of the main movers in attempting to shit all over 150 years of English
football history, the football pyramid and everything else. Classy bunch as
always though I’m sure it was someone else’s fault. To be fair, Jurgen Klopp
was one of the first to come out and express that it was a load of bollocks and
I did actually feel sorry for him trying to say that it was bollocks without
offending his bosses too much. Liverpool were of course due to play Manchester
United in their last game and that got called off after United failed to stop a
load of fans occupying the pitch and smashing things up. Whilst the protest is
fine in my view, when it spills over into police and club staff getting hurt
and criminal damage, the weight of your message is lost and the headlines are
written with an entirely different slant. Still, it will be nice for the end of
the game if we’ve got a decent result because Jurgen will have to change his
tune from moaning about fixture congestion to moaning about not having had
enough games.
Anfield is never a fun place to go but will be better today
because it won’t have all the Scousers in it. The Liverpool team this year has
not been as intimidating as it has over the past couple of years and that’s
mainly down to that defender being missing, you know, the one who wasn’t
world-class until Liverpool paid a world record transfer fee for a defender to
buy him from Southampton. In Virgil‘s absence and the absence of Joel Matip and
Joe Gomez, I’m sure there have been times when Jürgen regrets selling Dejan
Lovren. I certainly regret them selling him as it would’ve been hilarious
seeing him be the big man and be a first team regular this season. Sadly, he’s
not here and now they seem to have settled on a defence which is basically Championship
standard in Kabak and Phillips, which leaves them much more open to the
counter-attack because the full-backs, Trent Alexander Arnold and Andy
Robertson spend all their time on the edge of the oppositions penalty area.
Trent has been a talking point recently as he this has been left out of the
England squad. It’s nice to see that just playing for one of the Super League
six and being English doesn’t guarantee you a place in the squad and that the
good old fashion drawbacks of being very average all season and never having
had a good game for England, still get you omitted.
To be fair, Liverpool been better of late, since Klopp has settled on this back
four and returned Fabinho to his rightful place in midfield. Further forward,
they are still positively scary even though Sadio Mane in particular has not
had the best of seasons. For some reason, apart from when they show that three
minute hat-trick against Villa, I sometimes find it hard to remember that Sadio
was another we signed from the football backwoods before the big boys decided
we weren’t allowed to have nice things.
Having got a positive result out of our last game against
Leicester, Saints will go into this one with renewed optimism and if we produce
a similar committed performance defensively and try to keep pressurizing their
defence and take the chances that inevitably come our way, we have a chance of
a decent result. If however, we give
them any easy goals by not defending properly and our commitment levels are FA
Cup semi-final level, then we will get battered.
The team news is kind of uninteresting with just the two
changes. Forster is back in for McCarthy
and of course, Minamino has to drop out so that brings Walcott back in. Liverpool have lost yet another centre back
with Kabak injured, so Rhys Williams comes in to partner Phillips, giving us
even more incentive to get at their defence.
Other than that, it’s a very strong side with Jota preferred to Firmino. No Liverpool matchday 18 would of course be
complete with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain on the bench, still on course to play his
entire Premier League career without having been a first team regular anywhere. They’re going to have to surgically remove
the bench from his arse when he leaves.
If the mission is not to make it easy for Liverpool to create chances then we don’t
make a good start as a cross is spammed into the box by Trent and finds Mane
unmarked and he leans back and puts it over the bar. Salah then finds himself free on the right
and luckily he is in full greedy bastard mode and tries to lash it through
Forster from a tight angle and fails.
More Liverpool pressure and Mane’s clever backheel puts Jota in space
and he works an opportunity and Forster again has to save well from a close
range blast. Another chance goes begging
as we allow Wijnaldum a free header from a corner and it flicks the bar on the way
over. Looks like we’re just waiting for
them to score but the key is that so far, we’ve survived.
We are playing out from the back through Vestergaard and when it works, we look
really good. Walcott puts Tella away down
the right in the big space where Robertson should be and he plays an
intelligent ball across to Adams who gets there first and tries to lift it over
the onrushing Alisson but it hits him and bounces out. Thiago and Phillips then piss about with it
and present the ball to Redmond, who drills it straight at the keeper. Two huge chances not taken – 30 seconds later
and Salah picks the ball up on our left and there is no way the greedy bastard
can shoot so he stands up a cross to the back stick to where Mane has got in
front of KWP and he heads it in easily from about 4 yards, whilst Fraser
spectates, neither coming for the cross or trying to save the header. Bollocks.
Redmond had started the game well, giving England’s 5th choice right
back Trent Alexander-Arnold a tough time, and we wakes up again to swing over a
decent cross which is met by Tella but his header is straight at the keeper who
catches it easily. Good chance though
and he maybe should have done better and we arrive at half time 1-0 down. We’ve been reasonable, without really looking
like scoring.
The second half starts with Liverpool trying to put the game to bed and Jota
proving that he hadn’t learned from Salah trying to same thing – Fraser is very
difficult to get past if you drill it at him from point bank range and a narrow
angle. Saints game plan of trying to
find space behind the full backs then works again and Tella has a run on goal
from the left but when he gets to the penalty area, it’s like someone presses
all the buttons at once on the controller and he ends up doing nothing and gets
run off the ball.
Tella has easily been the best out of himself, Walcott and Redmond but he’s off
on 65 minutes to be replaced by a boxer in a football kit called Obafemi. Maybe it’s a consolation to Tella that Walcott
has been dragged as well in favour of Diallo.
It has to be said that Walcott has been a cross between invisible and
dreadful. Diallo is once again stationed
out on the right but as we’re needing a goal, I find this a bit odd.
Obafemi show real pace in a short burst to latch onto a ball in the box but
Alison reacts well to win the ball.
There’s not even a half appeal for a penalty. Obafemi has looked quite lively, as all
boxers do when they first appear (before gassing horribly in the later rounds)
and he heads a KWP cross down nicely for Diallo and he shows good technique to
drill the high bouncing ball goalwards but unfortunately, it’s straight down
Alisson’s throat and he easily pushes it over.
With a 1-0 lead and not a lot of pressure on, Alisson decides it’s time employ
a high risk strategy to get the Man of the Match award by playing a couple of
wall passes to his defenders before passing it straight to Adams. Che of course just drills it straight back at
him and he saves easily. Fucks sake –
not good enough.
Whether it was planned or whether it was done in a moment of ‘for fucks sake’ -
Ralph responds to the miss straight away by hauling Adams off and putting Djenepo
on. More strangeness afoot as now Moussa
is up front, forming a deadly strike force with Obafemi. Nothing happens.
91, 92 and we aren’t going to score… but we can give another one away as KWP
gives it away on the right. One pass
later and Thiago is dribbling across the top of the penalty area, shoots, it
flicks of Vestergaard and that takes it into the corner giving Fraser no
chance. Might have gone in anyway but
the nick off the defender made sure.
Bollocks. The End.
Overall, this feels like a very frustrating defeat. We played
alright, we defended alright but ultimately, we have the cutting edge of a
fucking wooden spoon. We created chances and had chances gifted to us by
Liverpool but failed to take them. The harsh reality is that without Danny Ings.
we do not have a clinical goalscorer on the pitch. If you give Ings a chance,
there is a decent chance he will take it. If you look at any of the other forward going
players in Redmond, Adams, Djenepo, Walcott... there is no end product. They’ll
do the occasional good thing but when it comes to the final ball or shot, they
might do something decent but the chances are that they won’t. Even though
Nathan Tella is clearly an exciting talent, he has also shown that he can miss
chances like the best of them.
There were two key moments in the game today, one being the glorious
chance that Adams had just before Liverpool scored the first goal and the
second being a dreadful miss by Adams when Alisson gave him the ball on the
edge of the box. You have to be better than that. Both of those should’ve ended
up in the net and even if only one does, we probably take something from the
game.
In all but the front third, we weren’t that bad. Part of the
problem is that Stuart Armstrong is playing deeper and whilst he had a superb
game, we lose his threat from the right hand side. With Armstrong you always
feel like you’ve got a chance of there being an end product. Defensively we
were mainly ok but you could possibly point a finger at KWP on both the goals
and I’m really not sure what Fraser was doing on the first goal – neither coming
for the cross, nor trying to save the header. Sounds ridiculous but goals
aside, those two had decent enough games. KWP was carrying the majority of our
attacking threat as well but he looks knackered and could maybe do with a break. Bednarek and Vestergaard were solid enough
and Stevo Roberto Carlos did a defensively sound job at left back.
Losing at Anfield is never the reason to start throwing your
toys out of the pram but we really should’ve got something today. That
was a far from vintage Liverpool side and they shouldn’t have been able to keep
a clean sheet against us. I found it quite amusing that Sky (Carragher) made Alisson
man of the match when basically all he did was standard goalkeeper stuff –
saved a few shots straight at him. It
was somehow amusing to see Thiago get the second goal in the end. If ever there
is a team do you wanna play against to break a duck then it’s Southampton.
Thiago arrived at Liverpool with much hype and has failed to deliver but today
he look decent and today he scored his first goal. What a fucking surprise.
Sadio Mane has had a pretty threadbare season with regards to goalscoring but
then up rock Southampton. What a fucking surprise. It was interesting to note that there was
very little talk of the Super League throughout. Let’s just forget that ever happened lads.
Last week against Leicester, Ralph was largely praised for his management of the game and substitutions that were made, which caused as little disruption as possible to the game plan. It was weird being in a different situation today (needing to score) and see him do the same thing again with Diallo coming on, on the right hand side in one of our main attacking positions, when the guy has never scored a goal for us or anyone else. On the left we had Redmond who after a very good open in 20 minutes testing out Trent’s poor defending, had gone into full reverse backwards mode and upfront we ended up with Djenepo (who has been largely awful the last few months) and Obafemi (who has hardly played this season). I don’t get it. Put it this way, I felt more confident of winning the Euromillions jackpot last week than I did of those four coming up with a goal.
To be honest, it was always a long shot that we were going to get anything tonight it’s just annoying that Liverpool were quite average and we weren’t good enough to take advantage of it. The bottom line is you cannot miss chances like we missed and expect to win a game at Anfield. With any luck, by the time you read this, Fulham would’ve dropped more points and we will mathematically be safe. That’s all we can really hope for this season. We were saying ‘stop the count’ in a tongue in cheek way at the start of the season, once we hit 17th place we will be saying it again.
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