TERRACE TALK: Liverpool - Mercy killing early end to our hopeless dreams
You think it’s easy being cynical? It’s not. It’s lonely, desperately lonely.
Your cold, dribbling nose pressed against a window with warm, vibrant people inside who never seem to get depressed and always have an answer for everything — even for this.
Get behind the manager, Chelsea next, we do well against better teams, others have squandered big leads before…
Despite your brain telling you not to fall for the same pitiful gibberish yet again, you usually succumb.
Not anymore.
Not after this club made an actual profit in last summer’s transfer window. Not after they let one of their best players wander off to Africa for a month without one thought about cover.
Not after they didn’t get it nailed down in writing that the central defender who has improved things could refuse to go to Africa.
Not after they raise their game for the giants, then lose to Burnley, Bournemouth, and now Swansea (at home!).
Not after the manager moans about being pestered for transfer news and actually wishes the window was already shut.
Not after the first sign of a fixture overload creates calamity. That’s your football club right there and until all that changes, the inevitable keeps happening.
For the record we’ve dropped seven of the last nine points; five of them against the worst two teams in the division.
To be fair it was looking good until January, and Matip appears to have been the victim of a country and a governing body spoiling for a fight.
Any sign that clubs and individuals want freedom from their aggravating yet extremely lucrative charades and they’ll make you pay in sweat.
All this downbeat stuff might just be personal. Liverpool fans sang YNWA for a Plymouth fan who’d died just before the original tie and got booed for it. Booed. The state of the world in one moment.
Klopp rested all his best players for Saturday and what did they do? They commenced to making a complete arse of themselves against a team that’s now conceded 51 goals in 22 matches.
It’s almost like our defence treated it as a dare; “are you saying you’re more incompetent than us?”
It’s clear that Klopp needs the atmosphere for his full throttle football to thrive and we’re now beginning to look like the aliens dying at the end of War of the Worlds.
You wonder why people pay so much, travel such distances, just to sit there and gawp, chat to their friends or play with their phones.
Without winning the title for 27 years (make it 28, might as well), Liverpool fans never actually suffered that much, certainly not compared to our 1950s predecessors. Ah, maybe we’re getting to the root cause. There’s been more death in my family and that always sends me scurrying toward thoughts of my dad.
Someone like Shankly was a god to him because there was so little before him and so much after.
Now? Well, it’s generally incompetent. Every so often Liverpool stir themselves and look good but they’ll always let you down. Always.
A few players go missing or aren’t as fit as they were and it crumbles. A little adversity and out seep the excuses as well as the points.
It’s best to treat it like a hobby. They win; great. They lose; fine, you didn’t expect much anyway.
Then you keep looking through that window, at the optimists who enjoy their lives and smile perpetually.
It looks tempting — but not today.
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