Awful for Allison, especially with travel restrictions etc. Hope he gets to spend some time with his family back home. He comes across as a decent chap.
ECHO Comment: "Fears of Witch-hunt Against Liverpool FC" part 3
- Thread starter cronullasharks
- Start date
MrGrumpy
Player Valuation: £50m
They are the ONLY team that I would say could possibly turn a 1st leg defeat of 8-0 in to a 9-8 win. Never write them off in the CL
Take the other year 3-0 down vs Barca or 4 puts out a B team and they wiped the floor with them
would never happen to us
catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
Yes to this. I mean on two levels. The obvious point being they have a punchers chance of winning it. Annoyingly in spite of their whining about injuries it's only 1 position. Logically they don't have a chance of winning it, but cup competitions do stange thing (like having Barca collapse, having Ajax knock out Juventus, Real Madrid and Barcelona, bottle it against Spurs and thus ensure they get the easiest root to a trophy ever). That could happen. I don't think it will, and strangely a lot of red mates I have don't think it will, but it's a punchers chance. If they click in a game, there is stick attacking talent there.
More to the point though the longer they are in it, it holds the season together like a safety pin. I really do think the manager is on the brink of a complete implosion. It gives a focus and route back into the CL. You sense if they go out into the quarters, reality starts to dawn on them of the scale of mess they are in, and there is still 7 or 8 games to go. Thats a long time to try and hold things together. I would imagine you see full sale collapse.
So yes, one of the top teams in the quarters please, whereby they can just do their job. Very disappointing to see Atletico Madrid going out. There's something about Tuchel that says to me bottle job in the CL (though strangely I fancy Chelsea to win in the league there, strange old world hey).
On a final point though, the gap is the gap. It's just a measure of where they are in relation to the top team. I suspect it will be as wide as at any time in PL history and probably more so. It's a long way back to the top from where they have fallen too. Even look at United under Moyes, who had a similarly ageing squad (albeit not one beset with the long term injuries they've had) even they didn't bounce back to compete for the league following such a collapse, and in honesty 7 years on this is now the closest they've been to doing so. They are miles off competing over the next few years.
catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
The momentum both ways is astonishing to be honest. It's taken just over 12 months for Ancelotti to catch them. We've done really well, but they have collapsed.
The question really becomes, at what point are they hitting rock bottom. I mean it may be rock bottom now, but I would not lay odds on that.
duncs pigeon
Player Valuation: £35m
ASAP for me. Said it before, dont write them off, they were [Poor language removed] in 2005 and looked what happened
Seathestars
Player Valuation: £60m
Absolute ‘kin lunaticsEnjoy...
Liverpool will be defined by response to their most heartbreaking season
It wasn't meant to be this way.www.thisisanfield.com
We have lost over 100,000 people through Covid and these vermin call a football season heartbreaking.
But it means more to them..
Apparently....
Seathestars
Player Valuation: £60m
Proper loon ball him mate. Imagine coming in here pretending to support another team while throwing in passive aggressive digs at Everton.
He will actually live in a street somewhere with neighbours who have no idea that a potential threat lives within spitting distance.
I‘ll hazard a guess that he was cruel to animals as a child, ’kin freak
Seathestars
Player Valuation: £60m
Are you crazy!
I believe that DCL has more goals than anyone from open play.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Until they get knocked out. Then the whole season will be declared irrelevant due to COVID.
Seathestars
Player Valuation: £60m
Gutted for Allison, always appeared normal which is no mean feat being at Anfield.
Very religious Lad, as are most Brazilians, hope he finds some comfort in that.
Very religious Lad, as are most Brazilians, hope he finds some comfort in that.
catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
Enjoy...
Liverpool will be defined by response to their most heartbreaking season
It wasn't meant to be this way.
They've got no idea. You wonder if they are trying to convince themselves or others.
He lists a bunch of correct decisions as injustices. Essentially proving the point, that once you actually got some oversight on the baked in biases they have benefitted from, they would go slipping down the league, as they are not very good, it has come to pass.
As I put earlier, they are likely to be as far away from the 1st placed team as they've been in 8 years. There's even an outside chance they break their PL record. 3 crocked defenders, none of them fit for August- are going to change this. Teams are not fearful of Anfield or them anymore and their own players play with doubt that will take a long time to rid themselves of.
They've gone full cycle here. "Next year's our year" chat is basically out. To me this season feels like Benitez last, where they ended up about 8th and their fans hounded him out. They then got Hodgson, and it got much worse. Because H & G didn't do the basics (a mistake that won't be repeated by FSG) they were able to transfer their bad debt onto their owners and be bought out for a pittance as a result. Thats all it was that prevented a spiral into relegation for me. They were bottom 3 under Hodgson, no money, about to go into admin, no idea. This has a lot of the markers of that year for me (again the start of that season was all about how Robbie Keane, very much that generations Thiago was world world class and would take them to the league).
One question none of them answer, is they were top in December. Nobody could deny they've had some injuries, the same as every other team. The same as any other team, given the profile, age and injury proneness of their players, they are lucky it didn't come a year or 2 earlier. Yet Klopp has planned abysmally since then. Yes it would be difficult, but much as I don't personally like the plan, Benitez still kept them together when they struggled a bit. He didn't just let it all go to pot. Even if they didn't win the league, the top 4 should never have been in doubt.
The wider measures are also telling by the way as well. I did that thing we spoke about the other day, and tracked their domestic performances since last lockdown (I excluded the game at Villa as it was against children) and they have 58 points from 38 games. A huge portion of that is when they had no injuries. So there's clearly a lot more going on. They got hammered 7-2 by Villa before that. 3-0 at Watford, 4 or 5 at City, 3 from Madrid etc. Their wider form is poor and it's tracking downwards. But these 3 lads, who all have very serious injuries are all going to miracuously be back ahead of schedule and return even better than pre injury? Likely story that.