*A fairly lengthy read, but there are a few things to address.
Ok. Having slept on that carnage from last night, I'm in a whole lot more rational place to comment than I would have been if I'd just fumed in the moment last night.
Let's preface this by applauding Brighton and Potter. There was a lot of absolute bunkum flying around yesterday, before and after the game, about how they'd
'park the bus' and how L'pool would struggle given our bizarre record against the bottom 6 sides this year. Patently from folk who haven't watched any Brighton games to see Graham Potter is the
POLAR opposite of that. Does he have his back-line well organised and disciplined? No question. But he's never just 'sat in deep' and played for a draw. He sticks to his principles and try's to play an open, expansive passing-attacking game. As we witnessed in glorious technicolor last night with a goal reminiscent of this L'pool side in its pomp. Such was the quality of the back to front wonderful passing team move from out to in. With a super cross to the finish at the end of it. And they tried to play football all game as they always do. The previous 5 home games against Wolves, Tottenham, West Brom, Utd and Burnley ...... THEY were all against bus parkers. In some cases double-decker parkers! Brighton last night was nottin like that and deserve
MASSIVE props for how they approached and played the game. Fully deserved victors and I totally tip my hat to them. If Potter had more resources to add that bit higher quality, I have NO doubt they'd be mid-table pushing the top 10.
But that still doesn't take away just how horrid L'pool was. Outside of Kelleher, who had another really solid game in nets, Phillips, again, and the ever consistent captain, I'm struggling to make a case for ANY player. And that starts with the manager who for once completely and utterly got it wrong. From his team selection, his tactics, to woeful substitutions that were never going to change anything. I mean I know our options are
severely limited to change things around, but there's absolutely
NO way James Milner should be starting his 4th game in 11 days. And all in our mad crazy midfield with all we ask of that group. Curtis, who's looked great after his recent rest, should have been in from the start to run and commit Brighton and give them something different. I like Shaqiri, but he should never be on the wing. And certainly not the left one at that. He never had any pace when he was younger. Never mind now. And I swear if I see Divock Origi come on again and just stand there, not moving, grinning like he's as much interested in playing togger as Gareth F Bale .....
Taking NOTHING away from Brighton it was just a horrific ____show all around.
But, and it's a
BIG BUT, we need to add realism and context into the current situation .....
Why are things currently as they are form-wise?
A mate text me last night and one of his lines was
' I just can't get my head around the inconsistency? We go to Tottenham and West Ham and look back to our best. Then tip up against Brighton like we'd never played football together. I just don't get it?' .....
An unprecedented injury list, plain and simple.
Now we should have had enough to beat Brighton personnel-wise last night. This doesn't excuse that. But yet again, we are down half a team of key players. No G/k. None of the top 3 CH's. No Fabinho or Keita from the midfield. And Henderson not in there having to play at the back down to those CH injuries. No Sadio. No Jota to replace him. We had 8 players missing last night. ANd key ones at that. I defy ANY side to overcome that. Heck, Southampton were down 8 first-teamers and lost to Utd 9 the previous night. Stat man Andrew Beasley put out a great tweet that summed everything up-
Again, we aren't talking bit-part players here. The majority of those have been key starters. NO team is overcoming that consistently. Heck, the narrative on City last year was Laporte cost them the league. ONE player. If anything, this season Liverpool has MASSIVELY overachieved to still be where we are in the league and with Europe to look forward to in the coming weeks. That's the only perspective anyone needs to understand the up and down results.
The rest of the season.
As for the rest of the season, I don't think you give up on the league at all as many reactionary folks have suggested. Not with 48 points still on board. But that is hanging by a thread now make no mistake. This is City's to lose. So I think we have to slightly adjust expectations and, whilst still not sacking off the title, look to secure second and anything above and beyond that is a massive bonus from this position. You can't just sack the league off and go all-in on Europe as 1) There's absolutely NO guarantee we'll win #7. Straight knock-out two-legged European football is the purest test of any and with no fans negating the Anfield advantage, it's a completely level playing field now. And 2) This league is so mad, with SO many mediocre teams taking advantage of this perfect storm to position themselves in, or around, the top 4 currently, that if you slacken off in the league, you could well slide down to 6/7th would be calamitous. Not to mention if you gave up on the title in February, you go
TOTALLY against the ethos and character Klopp has worked SO hard to instill here. We are justifiably
'Mantality Monsters' for a reason. And they
DON'T sack things off early and end up a Country mile behind the leaders like City last year! If you did that, you'd
seriously risk losing the dressing room as you'd be going against
EVERYTHING you'd sold them on the past 5 years.
So a slight readjustment of what we now expect, whilst still not ruling out a title fight. As precarious as that one now is. Attack each and every game and what will be will be.
It really has been one of the maddest seasons where pretty much everything has conspired against us. But whilst the games are still to be played, we regroup and go again.
Up the down, but FAR from out, Reds!