The Liverpool Thread

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Nice, crisp morning to go win a league.

Because that’s what’s at stake here. As much as Anfield will be off the charts feral wild, akin to a big European night, after what we’ve consistently told the rest of the Country ever since City were taken over was ‘officially’ confirmed, this is a massive game for so much more. And is back to ‘Klopp/ Pep, ‘us and them for ALL the marbles.’

Win the first massive occasion of the Iraola era, and the unbeaten momentum continues as we move to within a game of first. Lose, and you are suddenly looking at a 3-game swing to the cheats.

The past 3 weeks have been all about City. Today, make it ALL about you L’pool!

Straight into these cheating, plastic C Redmen!
 
Gravenberch 🤦🏻‍♂️
He was quietly having a decent game apart from anything that required passing the actual football. Escape the press, drive with the ball, and then lag like he's playing on Library wifi in the final third. Rinse and repeat. How can you be a midfielder and seriously struggle with anything apart from a 5-yard pass ffs.

Anyway, back to the game, which was a non-contest the second the ref ruined the game with BS calls. Like I said, this season will be stop-and-start until Iraola and the new board next summer can have a sense of direction put in place to help arrest the Frankenstein strategy we have had in squad building. Oh, and Wirtz, man, the less said the better; his confidence is clearly shot right now, and I think he needs some time out of the side.
 
I’ve slept on it and I still don’t know how to feel? 🤷‍♂️ As I still don’t know what it means? 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Yesterday’s admin-

Title Countdown:
2 wins down/ 25 to go.
9 points down/ 79 to go.

Let’s start with that right there. Just what are we playing for this season? Just what did yesterday’s result mean? Just what is the point for ANY club currently the longer this drags on? So many unanswered questions with this humongous mess the PL have self-created. That is completely destroying the game.

I’ve kept my own council to a large extent the past 3 weeks since the verdict came down. And the World caught up to what Liverpool have been telling them since City’s despicable ownership took over. Only to be told we were jealous as we didn’t have ambitious owners like City who would do anything to win. (No irony there.). And from many (alleged) L’pool fans too on-line who have now flipped to the opposite. 🙄🤦‍♂️ The range of emotions went from being made up the PL had finally grown a pair to uphold everything. To dismay when that cretin Burnham stuck his oar in at just how political intervention could very likely sway this back in the cheats favour. The single biggest reason why State ownership of football clubs needs to be outlawed. But at the end of the day, however uncertain the future, there was still a football game to play. And a massive one at that in terms of the title. With the first chance to tell them in NO uncertain terms what we’ve always known. So you psych yourself up to, at the very least, play your part in a wild, feral atmosphere …..

And then yesterday comes around and emotions flip 360 again …..

I walked out at 3 down yesterday. The earliest I’ve left Anfield since the Sunderland walk-out on 77 that every other football fan in this Country owes us a huge debt of gratitude over for the way away ticket prices now are. I didn’t walk out at the lost game. Or the L’pool side on the pitch who had been superb and the equal, at worst, to the cheats before yet another man on their widespread payroll, a Mancunian referee who should have been NOWHERE near this game, stepped forward and completely altered the course of the game and handed them the victory. Whey looked like achieving anything but that. With on-pitch cheating to just encapsulate what you are up against. I walked out, with a good few others, as my head couldn’t rationalise it all. I was, and still am, just totally fed up and lost with it all. ☹️

The Premier League are in a real mess if Anfield was the blueprint the longer this drags on. One set of supporters highlighting the absolute sham the game currently is every week. Another glorifying in cheating and celebrating the fact. Their product around the World is getting tarnished to S as the Premier League, and every club associated with it, gets dragged through the mud.

And that’s before the massive elephant in the room of do City’s results even count ultimately? 🤷‍♂️ So what’s the point in ANYONE going to the game under that cloud? What’s the point in ANY team playing out-there fixtures with things as uncertain as they currently are? And will be for 4 more months at least. 🤬

A PROPER mess they’ve created for themselves.

And I don’t even know if upholding the verdict will matter as City will just lawyer up, and take this the High Court. And once it goes there, it’s game over. City will drag it out before enough money and political influence weighs too much. That VERY questionable bleep Burnham has already started. The political influence will be immense. Heck, all of London runs on Arab money. The threat of that being pulled from the Country …..

There’s only one winner at that point. And it’s NOT football!!!!

It was a weird atmosphere yesterday in so much as, as much as you tried to turn it hostile, the uncertainty and sheer farce of it just left most numb. It was fun to call them what they are. To tell them they hadn’t won a trophy since 1976. That Manchester was full of cheats et al. But then you are stood looking at the disgraceful scenes the Road End with City fans mocking every last football fan and club in the Country, as they know what power and unlimited money brings, and you were just left questioning just what is the point of it all? Lads around you having the same conversations. Just deflated and unlike any other L’pool- City crowd I’ve ever experienced. Certainly since Jurgen and Pep’s all-time rivalry took this fixture to another level. Yesterday’s crowd was NOTHING like those times.

What does this all mean for Liverpool and the community I’ve reaidedd in for 52-years if it all, ultimately, means nothing? I love our worldwide fanbase. I love the sacrifices they make and the passion they show. I love the many millions of visitors who love coming to my City every year and have a brilliant time down to their love of LFC. But lest we NEVER lose sight of who this football club represents first and foremost. The City and community it represents above all others. For all everyone is attracted to Anfield and our unique atmosphere. For all everyone on-line has been telling us to give City everything the past 3 weeks, that doesn’t happen without the passion and unique dentity of the local support. Anyone who doubts the importance of a local heartbeat, the clue is in the name. LIVERPOOL Football Club. And once that is lost, once that has no hope for the game, this club is completely done for as you know it. I’ve been all over this World following the Reds. And I’ve yet to come across ANYWHERE that has the same passion for football as this City does. And Manchester come to that. Our little corner of the North West is unparalleled for me when it comes to the beautiful game and the all-encompassing, every-day talk and support for their reapective clubs. Except one part of one of those City’s has, and continues to, drag the game we live for into the absolute depths. And if they come out without the most serious of punishments here, I don’t honestly know what the point of football, and my football club, is any more? And I shudder to think how it will rip apart and destroy my City if future generations have that taken from them.

I mean we’ll still go the games. Most of us don’t know anything else. As down as I currently am with the whole game and it’s VERY unceertain future, I’ll still be on a flight out of Manny to Vienna tomorrow morning. I’ll still be getting the train up to Linz Wednesday to support the mighty Reds. I’ll still come back, do a days work Friday where I’m in until half 9 at night, then turn around and get the rattler to Brentford at the crack of dawn Sat’day. But, ultimately, for just what now? 🤷‍♂️

A mate has been saying for ages that the game is totally gone as it’s that corrupt on all levels. And all football support is now is the social aspect around it of routine and doing what you’ve always done with your mates. Maybe he was right all along as we are watching a S, corrupt sport that is just in the lowest depths it’s EVER been thanks to the most corrupt participants that’s dragged it to these levels?

So I aren’t annoyed at L’pool losing the game to them. That was always going to be a struggle given the number of absent players. Before corrupt officiating nailed that down. I aren’t mad that we are 9 points behind them as I honestly don’t have a clue if yesterdays result means anything or not when this is all said and done? 🤷‍♂️

I’m just utterly lost on the sport I love and have dedicated the majority of my life to. To levels no rationale human being ever should, to watch grown men kick a bag of wind around.

Tell me how to feel? As I honestly still have no answer to that and what this all means. 😐🤷‍♂️

Let’s go have a good bevvy and a boss time in Austria. At least they can’t take THAT away from us!

Up the honest, if totally lost, Reds!
 
Yep nail meets head scouse honestly felt the same way wth does it all mean if City can continue to play the season away with this cloud over the entire PL. I wasn't even fuming at the result yesterday as the lads played well till the ref decided he wanted to influence the game but forget about all that its kinda hit home the game that we love which we already knew no longer belongs to the fans.
 
Yep nail meets head scouse honestly felt the same way wth does it all mean if City can continue to play the season away with this cloud over the entire PL. I wasn't even fuming at the result yesterday as the lads played well till the ref decided he wanted to influence the game but forget about all that its kinda hit home the game that we love which we already knew no longer belongs to the fans.


Something has to happen after that sham yesterday. They can’t be allowed to continue playing and make a complete mockery of the season. Whilst the product gets damaged beyond repair.

City are reveling in it and laughing at everyone else. Absolutely disgraceful what went on yesterday.

If the authorities won’t act, then we need to band together. Supporters groups need to get together and put tribal nonsense aside, and boycott all away games at the Etihad.
 
What an absolutely brilliant way, to end a brilliant 4 days out of 5 on the road, with another superb win and 6 points out of 6.

Yesterday’s admin-

Title Countdown:
3 wins down/ 24 to go.
12 points down/ 76 to go.

Current unbeaten away PL run:
P 4 W 3 D 1 F 7 A 3
3 Straight Wins.

This Basque fella’ is REALLY special yanno’. Bournemouth and Brentford are two of the hardest places to go the entire league. Neither had lost at home since January and February respectfully. Last year, Iraola’s Bournemouth only lost 2 games at home. Brentford 3. Yet in back-to-back aways, Andoni’s fast-developing Liverpool side has gone and ended both those long unbeaten runs. When the majority of people, and madly many L’pool fans among them, were predicting they’d get beat. Liverpool have, by any metric, in their last two away league games, beaten sides that take some serious beating at their own ground.

And they fully earned the right, and deserved all 3 points, from both encounters. You could legit argue that Yarmoliuk losing his head, literally, in first-half stoppage time turns a game that was a really good, even contest Brentford were just edging at the time. But then Liverpool were the far better side against City in between these two mammoth away victories, until Gravenberch was madly, and wrongly, sent off. So yanno’. Swings and roundabouts. Football is frustrating like that and moments change games that you oft deserve far more from.

What I loved again, and what is becoming a trait of this side once more, the longer Iraola has had to work with them, is that L’pool were up for the fight all over the park. Bar a ropey last 10, where Brentford naturally threw everything forward to try nick an equaliser, they were pretty much first to everything and grafted their collective backsides off for the three points. Which makes the win even more remarkable as it comes after an away game in Europe through which their work rate was phenomenal. Whilst Brentford had a week off to solely prepare for Andoni’s Reds.

First half, up until losing big Dom, L’pool are the better side in every aspect. Battling. First to everything. And very controlling with the football. They should be in front but for a shocking Barcola miss when clean through on a mixed day for him. Assists the winner with a cute, smart header. Hits the bar with a belter that deserved better. But then messes up two or three gilt edged chances that would, and should, have left the final scoreline 4 or 5- 1. But he was a constant menace which is the key thing. When he’s not getting in those positions to massively affect games of football is the time to start worrying. Now, not so much. But I digress …..

Our shakiest period of the game happens the 15 up to HT following the change. Aided by good adjustments from Andrews. (Side note: I had him as the first manager to be binned last season. I was badly wrong. He’s proved to be a wonderfully astute, tactical manager. Kudos to and apologies to Keith.). Brentford, second best for much of the half, take the lead with a splendid header. But L’pool’s heads don’t drop. They continue fighting and playing. And they get the boost just before the break with the sending off. But that isn’t the key deciding moment of a game the Reds were on top on throughout. And that was where Iraola again came into his own …..

His substitutions were front-foot superb. He took the risks to win, not just come back and draw, the game. Which is absolutely massive when you think of it in the context of his situation early at a new club. First, a forward-thinking change bringing Frimpong on to add more pace and directness wide. Then doubling down on that, when the massively unfortunate Dutchman went down injured again, to move the brilliant Munoz to right full, and put the equally brilliant on the day Rio ahead of him. And it paid off in spades for him. MASSIVE props to a really, really special manager for taking the risks, and gambling the house, to make sure he won the game at one of the hardest grounds in the league to win at.

For all the mad, and in many cases, WAY OTT criticism, it’s super satisfying to see the three £100 million plus difference makers starting to come into their own recently and show just why the money was paid. Alex scores a ridiculous winner very, VERY few strikers in World football have the ability, both in quickness of thought, and speed of touch and finish, to execute. Barcola, as mentioned, was a constant menace and game-changer with the winning assist when many would have gone for goal. And Florian Wirtz, along with the equally excellent AllyMac behind him, absolutely ran the game. Doing exactly what your main playmaker should. On a different day, with better finishing off his creation, he’s walking away with at least three assists. Instead of just the one from the sumptuous ball he played through for the equally excellent Munoz finish for the equaliser.

An excellent game of togger. Between two excellent sides. Brentford played some superb, one-touch football and contributed a lot. But Liverpool’s overall desire to not settle and take all three points was the deciding factor in a thoroughly deserved win. Another massive away victory and another massive, early building block that is laying the foundations for what could well be a really special season. It’s at least really fun at the match finding that out as this develops game-on-game.

And a belter new boozer discovered right on the Thames. The Steam Packet is definitely now on the agenda that side of the bridge. The food in there almost stopped us partaking in the best in-ground food anywhere. Brentford’s legendary sausage rolls. Almost …..

Brilliant day out at my favourite away in the league. To round out a brilliant week following the Reds home and abroad. (If you’ve not spent time in Vienna. DO!!!!! Lived up to, and surpassed, all expectations.).

Positives everywhere as Andoni’s Reds begin to gain serious momentum ….,

Up the unbeaten, travelling Reds!
 
All I can say is last season we would've lost that game even against 10 men. Still worried about Isak im ngl yes he is an elite marksman in front of goal but I cant help but think if he doesn't adapt to what Iraola wants from his forwards then he wont be here long term if Ekitike picks up where he left off.
 
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