European Football - UEFA Europa League - Round of 32 1st Leg - FC Augsburg v Liverpool FC“DO you fancy doing the numbers tonight, E?”

“Yeah, sound, go ‘ed, it’ll be a laugh.”

“Ok, all you’ve got to do is fill it with the wit and pith that Gibbo does and be prepared for the internet to hate you.”

“Yeah, cool, can handle that.”

“A sentence per player and a number.”

That’s 13 sentences then. Jesus, my introductions are longer than that. Still, it’ll be great because we’re unchanged and Dan’s playing so we’re going to score six and we can all have the night off next Thursday.

Yeah, right. On a scale of five means you’ve not pissed me off, 10 means I’ll worship you forever and one makes you Paul fucking Stewart then:

Simon Mignolet: 6

Well, he’s catching well and he makes that good save after Toure gets done for pace but then he nearly drops a major bollock from the cross. He recovers though. And doesn’t scare me once all night. Not really.

Nathaniel Clyne: 6

They’re doing their damnedest to expose the right-back position — obviously noticed we quite like pushing up from there. Gets back though, covers well, recovers well, moves forward nicely, threatens as much as anyone (not a great deal).

Kolo Toure: 5

I love Kolo. He’s a beautiful human being. Starts off nice and solid but gets really exposed for pace later on. Then does solid again and then does exposed.

Mamadou Sakho: 6

Does the ‘anti-Kolo’. Starts off looking dead shaky and has those, ‘Mamadou’s going to do something mad in a minute’ moments. Settles down after a damn fine headed clearance from a corner. Sure he was more confident with himself than I was.

Alberto Moreno: 7

That’s not a yellow. No way. Not having that. Just leans on him a bit, the lad falls over. Defensively diligent and still the fastest man in red whose name isn’t Brad Smith. Does some great recovery, flies into one of those ‘mad Albie Moreno, I’ll come from behind for this tackle and it’ll be sound’ challenges that he does but then does that mad header back to Migs. Cracking shot on 70.

Jordan Henderson: 6

We give them a pennant, they give us a puppet. A puppet. With strings and everything. Might have been a cat. The puppet perturbed Jordan, you could see it in his eyes during the handshake. Might have thrown him off for a bit there. Was the late recipient of one of these new weird corners we’re doing where we hit the deepest man and he doesn’t score. Like watching me play FIFA. Might go random soon, might invent numbers. Need to entertain myself here because that 90 minutes was cack.

Emre Can: 5

Shouted at the ref. Ran around a bit, didn’t really seem to ‘do’ anything. Twitter seemed to be hating him. I didn’t hate him, just kind of ‘meh’ as you young people say.

James Milner: 6

Did that James Milner thing again where he was everywhere and doing everything but none of it really seemed to matter. Put some nice crosses in and there’s this lovely switched pass through the box for Hendo’s DEFINITELY not offside shot. Gets fallen on. Gets a 6 for not being Albie Moreno.

Philippe Coutinho: 6

Starts off all inventive and sharp, ends up shooting from distance again because he’s decided these other lads aren’t doing what he wants. One of the two men on the pitch most likely to make something happen. But nothing happens so…..go on, guess the number. It’s somewhere between 5 and 7. Look, it’s not my fault, I’d love to be giving out eights and nines but the lads didn’t do eights or nine type things. If they did they’d be watching Britain’s Next Top Model next Thursday instead of doing all this again.

Roberto Firmino: 6

The other lad most likely to. Who also doesn’t. There’s a good break in the first half but he stumbles and then hits a weak, weak shot. There’s a gorgeous touch to Milner in the box in the second half and there’s some nice movement but there’s also some ‘where’s Bobby gone?’ moments in that half, too.

Daniel Sturridge: 5

He was great against Villa, wasn’t he? Yeah, not so much here. Second game back, what did you want? Miracles? Man-of-the-match performances? He’s on his toes, he’s getting in positions and then he’s snatching at things and REALLY upsetting Jürgen with long-distance efforts when there’s better placed lads.

SUBS

Divock Origi: 6

Comes closer to scoring than anyone else. Which isn’t saying much. Has the presence of mind to come for the ball from Ibe which isn’t really going where he thought it was.

Jordon Ibe: 6

Gives a bit of zip. Hard to quantify ‘a bit of zip’ numerically. So another sodding 6.