Unless you have been
living under a rock for the last couple of months, you will know that this is
Jürgen Klopp’s last season as Liverpool manager. If you have just emerged from
under that rock and you tuned into any sports media anywhere in the world for
longer than about 30 seconds, you will know that it’s Jürgen Klopp‘s last
season as Liverpool manager. The media coverage is endless.
You will also know that Liverpool have lots of injuries and
have a fixture pile up. You will also know as they have been playing a lot of
their academy products in recent games, including the Carabao Cup final which
they won 1-0 against Chelsea, with a goal by a defender who was average before
they paid a world record fee for a defender to sign him from… who was it again?…
Oh yes, Celtic. Oh no, hang on, that was Southampton. Southampton signed him from Celtic for a reasonable fee, developed him into one of the worlds best
central defenders and then Jürgen tapped him up by inviting him to Blackpool
and the rest is history. As for the fixture pile-up, yes Liverpool have had
quite a few games recently but they’ve had less than Saints but I would expect
that to be overlooked by anyone in mainstream sports media talking about the
game tonight.
Liverpool, as you’d expect from a club of their stature, are
still in the running for all four major trophies and having won the smallest
one of those, the dream narrative would be for them to win the quadruple in Klopp’s
last season. Last year, Pep Guardiola and Manchester City were on for the
quadruple until they came across Nathan Jones at St Mary’s. In one of the more ‘strange
but true’ episodes from last season, Nathan Jones stopped Pep winning the
quadruple. Is it Russell Martin’s turn today?
Russell has done his usual and alluded to the fact that we
have so many games coming up in the build-up, which means that there will be a
fair few rested today. Liverpool will doubtless do the same and this is a sad
indictment of the fixture planning and the decrease in importance of the FA Cup.
Talking of which, the teams are in and Liverpool only have
van Dijk and Gakpo from their first team with Gomez and Tsimikas being the
other senior players. Saints have
Bednarek and Manning from the first team – Aribo and Edozie from there or there
abouts and all the squad players – Lumley, Bree, Stephens, Rothwell, Charles, Mara,
Sulemana. It’s a weird felling as the
game kicks off – I of course want us to win but don’t feel that I’ll really
give too much of a shit if we don’t.
Saints start really well and show that we want to pop the
ball about, easily breaking the Liverpool press. There are less than 30 seconds on the clock
as Aribo puts Mara through and he looks miles offside but strides on and
finishes low past Kelleher. A brief visit
to Stockleigh Park because we have VAR tonight..
Craig: Hello from Anfield – Craig Pawson here
SP: What do you want?
Craig: Just checking that offside
SP: Why? I switched off when I saw who
it was – shit!
Craig: What Sekou Mara?
SP: No, Southampton – they haven’t paid their VAR subscription with Sky this year Craig
Craig: Well they’re in the Championship – where the refs are shit but honestly
shit
SP: Less scope to get the result we want though Craig, if you know what I mean?
Craig: Offside it is then.
SP: Hail Jurgen
Craig: Hail Jurgen
Liverpool overplay in midfield and Aribo gets a tackle in and
tees up Sulemana on the left and he takes his time and his low right-footed
effort comes across Kelleher and flicks off the far post and wide. Shit. A decent effort but has to score really.
Liverpool or not looking any more comfortable as we go on
with van Dijk and Gomez combining to play Bradley into trouble and he gets binned
by Mara and Mara ends up dead centre, edge of the penalty area with the whole goal
to aim at and with a swing of his left foot and visions in his head of the net
bulging and being a hero - he puts it straight at the fucking keeper.
We decide to keep attacking until we score and Sulemana wins
a corner off of Quansah. In it comes
from Rothwell and Aribo has a header blocked before we recycle it back out to
Rothwell and he cuts in onto his right foot and then sharts it wide of the far
post. I am reminded of that Roy Hodgson
meme where he gets his hopes up before seeing them smashed to pieces and
slumping back into his chair. Another
break and once again it’s Sulemana taking on Quansah and bursts past him before
once again shooting straight at the fucking goalkeeper.
Aribo puts Mara away on the right and he’s 1v1 against van Dijk, with Edozie in
support. Mara’s brain is thinking ‘take
on best defender in world or pass it to the unmarked team mate?’ and his
decision making is predictably terrible and doesn't end well.
Approaching half-time and Liverpool‘s first real attack sees a corner headed out as far as Elliot and his low shot is well saved by Lumley. Liverpool come again though with the next attack with Clark (son of Lee) feeding Tsimikas (son of some Greek bloke) out on the left and he finds Koumas (son of Jason) on the edge of the box and he cuts across Jack Stephens (son of Russell Martin) and gets a shot away and it flicks off Bednarek (son of Poland) and gives Lumley (son of Joanna) no fucking chance at all. For fuck‘s sake.
Once everyone calms down, we do our best to kill the game off before half-time when Bree runs into traffic and gives the ball away in our half and eventually it falls to Gakpo who drags his shot wide. Half time and overall we’ve played well, broken the press, created chances, missed them and paid for it due to a bit of bad fortune. The bad fortune wouldn’t be so much of an issue if we’d been two goals ahead like we should have been. Interestingly, because it is a Premier League side after all, we’ve sat a bit deeper and the shape in midfield has been good.
Saints start the second half relatively well with Charles and Aribo combining to send Edozie away on the right and his low cross is touched away from Mara by Konate and then Sulemana can only hit the fucking keeper again. Rothwell’s corner is there met by Aribo, who flicks it narrowly over the bar. Another attack, another corner on the other side this time. In it comes from Manning and it drops to Charles at the back post and he takes the touch has all the time to shoot and shits himself and produces an awful effort to shag it into the side netting. Groan!!!
KWP and Adam Armstrong are on for Bree and Sulemana on the hour mark. I’d have left Kamaldeen on to be honest as he was still looking dangerous. Ten minutes go by and Edozie is off for Adams and Rothwell for Smallbone.
Here's Their Player Chipping the Keeper : Goal
Manning brings the ball forward and feeds into Smallbone for
his first touch and he passes it directly behind where Manning was and straight
to Harvey Elliott, who feeds it into Jayden Danns and the young substitute chips
it easily over the onrushing Lumley. Game
over. In the aftermath of the goal, KWP
has worryingly gone off to be replaced by THB.
The tempo of the game has completely changed as well. Alexis Mac Allister is on for Liverpool and
they are now dominating and we can’t get out.
Aribo gives the ball away in blowing out of his arse fashion and the
cross comes in from the left, headed out by Bednarek as far as Bradley and his improvised
effort with the outside of his boot is pushed out by Lumley and Danns follows
it in for a simple second goal.
Please let it end… and eventually it does.
Oh well, lost 3-0, fuck it.
On the positive side, we played pretty well for the first
hour and showed a lot of bravery to play out from the back the way that we did
and it should have brought reward as we beat the press regularly and created a
load of chances. However, miss them all
and you don’t go in ahead at half-time, you go in 1-0 down to a spawny
deflected effort from Liverpool’s first attack of note.
We started off the second half reasonably well but in the last half an hour,
Liverpool took over and our substitutes just made the team worse. Liverpool bringing on Mac Allister made their
team much more difficult to play through as well. When we had Edozie and Sulemana on the wings,
we always had the prospect of breaking and causing them trouble in wide areas
but when we replaced those with Adam Armstrong and pushing Mara out wide, you
haven’t got that out ball or anyone carrying the ball forward, especially when
you combine that with the slowest midfield three in history with Charles, Aribo
(who played pretty well but was blowing out of his arse by this point) and Smallbone,
who is the very definition of what you don’t want in an impact substitute. Minor gripes however from a game where the
expected happened. The only real setback
that matters is the injury to KWP and at time of writing there was no news on
how serious that is.
I thought the back four and goalkeeper all played relatively
well. Bree did ok in his first game back
but in hindsight, 45 minutes would have been enough. Joe Lumley acquitted himself well in goal and
didn’t have much chance with any of the goals. As said, Joe Aribo had a really
good first half and Shea Charles did a good job defensively and just makes me
wonder even more, why he’s not been in the side of late with Flynn Downes
injured. He did have his usual quota of flaky
passing and giving the ball away but he was no worse than Rothwell who gave the
ball away just as many times from a lot less possession.
The reason we didn’t have a decent go at winning this was
down to the profligacy up front. Out of our misses, the only one that I would
call unlucky was the one where Sulemana side footed that effort onto the post.
Other than that, further misses by Sulemana and Mara were just shit. Shea Charles, Aribo, Bednarek and Edozie all
missed presentable chances. Mara – bloody hell.
Not only was it funny that he got 95 minutes, he also provided the
funniest moment of that game was when he had a choice of playing a simple five
yard ball to put Edozie clean through or taking on Virgil van Dijk, probably
the best one on one defender in the world. I mean, full marks for confidence or
stupidity, one of the two. Needless to
say, he became a trailing speck of dust as Virgil moved upfield with it.
Our aim this year is of course to get promoted and play
against Liverpool and all the others next season. Even though it was Liverpool kids today in
the main, the increase in speed and intensity showed up a few of ours today and
is a bit of a reminder of how much work would need to be done on the squad in
the event of us going up. Though he wasn’t
alone, Adam Armstrong proved once again that against slightly better opponents
then you get in the Championship, not being able to control the football when
it is passed to you is a bit of a disadvantage.
We lost again because we didn’t take our chances, end of
story. We had so many chances in the first half whilst Liverpool‘s scratch team
was growing into the game but didn’t take them and once Liverpool upped their
game a little bit, helped admittedly by the slightly fortunate first goal, we
didn’t really have an answer. The
five and a half thousand travelling fans were magnificent however.
Personally, I watched it on ITV and the coverage was a Klopp-centric as you’d
expect it to be - very ITVomit. It was all about him
and his teeth and hair and the Liverpool youngsters and it was a great opportunity
to shut them up but we blew it in that first half. Sam Matterface can get in the bin as a
commentator. Absolutely shite and he’s
bailed out by Ally McCoist, though he was a bit difficult to understand at the
start of the game before the beers had worn off and he becomes less ‘Glasgow’.
So, we lost and in the scheme of things, it doesn’t really
matter and it would’ve been Manchester United away in the next round anyway. It would have been interesting as we might have
done well against a side not known for pressing particularly well. We’ve gone
to Anfield, we've played pretty well in patches, we’ve got knocked out and now we
move on.
Being out of the FA Cup doesn’t matter is shit in the context of this season
and all we can do is take the positives from this game and take them in to the
rest of the league campaign where have very little margin for error, starting
with Birmingham City away on Saturday. Win that and I will not give a toss
about this game.
Up the Fucking Saints.
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