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On Liverpool and luck
Obviously if you’d told me before the games yesterday that we would increase our lead at the top of the league I would’ve bitten your hand off but the performance today was disappointing in so many areas. Certainly didn’t look like champions today.
Without Gomez/Lovren/Trent our defence looks very different. Those guys have all played a lot together but it really doesn’t excuse how sketchy we look now.
Keita wasn’t brilliant today and Shaqiri looked very poor. Shaq’s only purpose today seemed to be to hit the first man at every corner. I don’t recall him completing any positive action in the game. Was pleased to see both come off but then Lallana managed to look even more off the boil than either of the other two. Sturridge was horrendous off the bench too, felt sad watching him.
Do those muppets who wrote in insisting how lucky Liverpool are fancy writing back in to tell us how lucky we were that De Bruyne didn’t see red yesterday whilst we were denied a pretty clear penalty tonight? Or maybe those guys are too stupid to recognise that luck is something that tends to balance out over long periods of time.
We deployed this 4-2-3-1 a lot earlier in the season to great effect. I wonder if coaches are now managing to prepare better to defend against that. I remember in that nearly season under Brendan we switched to a 4-3-3 that became ridiculously effective around this time of year. Perhaps the change helped us find new momentum that year and also made it harder for teams to prepare to play us.
Minty, LFC
The Leicester perspective
Firstly I thought the boys in blue were excellent tonight. Apart from those first five minutes when we were utter toilet and gave the opposition our customary goal head start (very Corinthian of us this is) when I thought we would be slaughtered, we actually gave a very good account of ourselves. Pressed hard, tried to hit on the counter had the confidence to pass the ball even in tight spaces and defended excellently, especially Maguire and Chilwell. We must be vying with Wolves for best record v the ‘Top 6’ – if only we could do that against those around us and below us in the table.
As for Liverpool, yeah you were a bit flat and running out of ideas/tired. That is fine and part of football. But I really don’t get the doom and despondency amongst the fans in the crowd – where was the support to drive them forward? Look, you are 5 points clear at the top of the table. You gained a point on Man City in this midweek fixtures. Have a bit of fun for goodness sake. It was damned nerve-wracking during our title run in when it dawned on us that, fo sizzle, we were in this race and it suddenly became a lot more serious.
But a point at home and an extended lead at the top would bring joy to most teams. And, definitely, please don’t start saying things like ‘this will be looked back on as the point when our title bid started to unravel’ or other such guff. I imagine there will be such emails next to mine if I get published.
Rob (love Choudhury!), Leicester
Snowflakes
Liverpool groundsmen clearing the snow off one half of the pitch was a new low in football last night… only for Klopp to then blame the snow on his team drawing. Are these players such snowflakes that he feels he needs to protect them in public? If so, it doesn’t bode well for the title run in and squeaky bum time.
Rosie Poppins
Chelsea, bloody hell
Okay let’s be honest, Chelsea losing 4-0 to Bournemouth is actually hilarious and it made me laugh when I checked the result on my phone after a long night of studying. Will definitely have to take Azpilicueta out of my fantasy team for this weekend!
But in all seriousness, this goes to show that Chelsea made a huge mistake in sacking a World Class manager in Conte after he won the League and Cup in 2 seasons at the club, and considering he never managed in England before, that goes to show his world class status.
What makes matter worse is that the club could have sacked him in the summer, before or after the World Cup, but nope they waited until he came back to training after the World Cup and sacked him then. Karma if you ask me, and I hope they pay the price and miss out on Champions League for it.
I do like Sarri and his story is inspiring of how he was a banker to becoming a top manager through his time from the lower Italian Leagues to managing Empoli in Serie B and then to finally managing Napoli in Serie A. He truly has done it the hard way and he does try and play the right blend of football (Although they do pass it around a bit too much). I do think he is a great manager who deserves a top job, but in my eyes, he is not a winner and Chelsea were not the right club for him in the first place.
Why are Chelsea the wrong club for him? Well firstly, the players at Chelsea for the last 10-12 years have pretty much controlled the fate of the manager and arguably run the club. Mourinho should have never gotten the sack in 2007 during his first tenure at the club, as Ancelotti and Conte getting sacked was just as ridiculous. The manager’s job is the hardest by far at a football club, but this logic does not apply to Chelsea.
Secondly, Roman Abramovich is not going to give a manager time for a long term plan, especially when the club are floating around 4th and 5th place. He wants someone who can compete for the Premier League and Champions League instantly and rightly so, he is an ambitious man who gives the club a sh*tload of money on buying better players and improving (Although recently some of the player purchases have been shocking). Thirdly, Chelsea are the last club in the world that you can go and publicly criticise the players after poor results in the fashion Sarri did after losing 2-0 to Arsenal the other week. It would work and motivate a lot of players in looking for a reaction at a lot of different clubs, but the Chelsea players (aka SNAKES) will just stop playing for you and wait until the end of the season for another manager to come in.
If Chelsea get 4th place or not, I can see Hazard f***ing off to Real this summer. The guy is world class and I have never seen a player dribble as good as him when watching him live, but whenever his team is losing badly, he rarely steps up. Chelsea should cash in on him while they can and get a cheeky 150 Million for him, and spend it on rebuilding the team again. Some of the players need to go and they need to fix this awful striker problem they have.
Rami, London
Yay, Winty
We live in Cape Town, which currently has a 2 hour difference with the UK. Because of this my eldest – all my kids support Liverpool, the indoctrination project worked well – never sees the late games which is always a great sadness to him.
So when he walks into the bedroom asking about the result, it becomes a full on blow by blow account. Who scored first? What minute? Then what? Etc. After we dissected the Leicester game I then went off to read the reaction and read Sarah Winterburn’s excellent piece. It echoed a key message I shared with my boy: definitely a point gained. Leicester at many points looked dangerous and had plenty of chances to score more than they did.
A lot is being made of our shoddy defence right now, and Winterburn also highlighted the fact we are missing TAA and Gomez. I think this detail however needs labouring; last night Hendo was right back, the other day Milner, the time before that I think it was my Mum. We have totally underestimated the damage done to unsettle what has been to date the best defence in the league. The fact that we have done a pretty good damage limitation job to get through January is something the best pragmatists would enjoy.
To have an actual right back playing at right back is going to be like striking gold. The most important point made to my boy this morning.
Barry, LFC
Boo, Winty
So according to Sarah Liverpool should be happy with a point at home to Leicester after taking the lead in the first few minutes yet United fighting back from 2 nil down in the last 5 minutes to draw are losers?
Now I’m not one to throw accusations of bias around but coupled with the sarcastic comments about Ole being the second coming and pouring cold water on every little bit of enthusiasm regarding the great start he has made you are starting to drop into a worrying habit at F365.
United fans are happy at the moment and even though we only drew with Burnley it felt very different than the same result from a Jose managed team the 2017 season. For a start Tom Heaton was man of the match on Tuesday making a string of wonderful saves to keep United at bay, the same fixture in 2017 United huffed and puffed to a draw.
So forgive us for being a little giddy with us looking like an actual team again and forgive us for loving the fact a United legend is currently at the helm and just sit back and enjoy some decent football from a team on the up.
Paul Murphy, Manchester
Foursight
Wow, so we’re now just a win away from fourth! When we beat Bournemouth and Newcastle in the last month or so, the prevailing (correct) opinion of Premier League fans everywhere was that Solskjaer “hadn’t been tested yet”. The results of the past few nights have proven yet again just how unpredictable the PL can be. And that’s why we love it.
Chelsea’s loss last night makes our draw with Burnley even more frustrating – but that in itself speaks volumes. A few months ago, under Mourinho, we’d resigned ourselves to not being anywhere close to the top 4, and the season had been pretty much written off. Now however, we expect to win every game, and any failure to capitalise on an opponent’s slip-up is seen as annoying rather than inevitable. It’s a wonderful feeling, to be honest.
Also, for all the talk of Spurs being in crisis, with all their injuries, they’re now just 2 points off City, and 7 points off the top. Maybe Poch had the right idea binning the FA Cup after all…
DJ, MUFC India
Mata of fact
I totally agree with what has been written about the lovely Juan yesterday in the mailbox…
Mata has never really quite fit into our system maybe bar the LVG era and that was because we were playing slow, tedious football where everyone had a little more thinking time on the ball, for God’s sake even Smalling looked good in that system.
When Mata was brought in initially I thought it was really a panic buy cos the spaces he loved to operate from and drop into was usually occupied by Wazza. I don’t think he has been consistently as good as he was for Chelsea before Mourinho came and did what Mourinho does to that Chelsea team.
He’s a great option to have from the bench but I think that would be a disservice to him because he could still rediscover his best form if he was in a team that played to his strengths. I still think he’s a great player and all but I believe for the sake of both his career and United, there has to be a parting of ways.
Kayode Ajaja (Jones > Smalling FACT), MUFC
Referees and sh*thousery
First of all Martin Atkinson, quite correct on the Maguire yellow card, the ball had rolled into a position on the field where, no matter the pace of Mane or the space in behind, the situation could not be deemed a clear goalscoring opportunity.
However, the Keita incident, absolutely scandalous. The replays show he’s looking straight at it with an unobstructed view. Ricardo treads on Keita twice with no attempt at playing the ball. What, in his mind, does Atkinson think has gone on there? Surely he has to book Keita for a dive if he thinks there was no contact? The sheepish look on Ricardo’s face said everything, and Schmeichel’s friendly arm up to Keita were in stark contrast to Palace players snarling around Salah. Ricardo was on a yellow, so Leicester should have been down to 10 and facing a penalty. A game changing, mystifying, bottling decision from Atkinson.
Having said that, after a torrid opening 10 mins when they could have been swept away Leicester were the rare case this season of a team’s performance meriting and getting some points v Liverpool – I say that as there has been some tosh written thus far this campaign based on, I can only assume from watching selective MOTD highlights, about how unlucky some teams were against a ‘not firing on all cylinders’ LFC. Anyway if you’d have told me Liverpool would have extended their lead over City by any margin going into this week’s fixtures i’d have said you’re mad, so hey-ho.
On a separate note, I just saw the Zaha incident, and as a neutral, it made me laugh and get angry all in the space of a few seconds. Now Zaha maybe does have a bit of a victim complex, a la Ronaldo when he was in the Premier League – if you have a lot of skill and can go past players, you’ll get fouled, but frequently it isn’t deliberate. But the foul that led to his red card was blatant, yes he’s going over the sideline, but look at the ball when Ward-Prowse shoves him, it’s still clearly in play and there for Zaha to run onto.
So initially it’s lazy, unfocused refereeing from Marriner. That said, Zaha doesn’t need to approach Ward-Prowse and give him verbals, but then the Saints man’s fake ball in the face and cheek tap is experienced, wind up sh*thousery beyond his years. Then when Zaha is sent off you see on the replays Ward-Prowse celebrate and turn to the crowd and give it the old fist pump with them! Amusing, but it’s incredible how from the ‘foul’ onwards to the end of the whole incident WP doesn’t even get a booking. But then again it’s not a fair world is it?
Bobby