In a poor season with each bad performance deepened by the next, Liverpool fans can take defeat but will never accept a lack of fight…
I SAW Hamlet last weekend. It’s probably Shakespeare’s most quotable play and this line really stood out.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
You’re not kidding.
It’s been a sorrowful season with each bad performance deepened by the next. There have been so many lows that it’s easy to forget a few of them. Nottingham Forest at home, the first-half away and the Brentford mess stand out for me as the biggest lows, and I’ve faced all of them with a glum expression and a reminder that this is a competitive sport where luck isn’t always on your side.
With each passing debacle I’ve remembered my place in all this – I’m a fan and fans support. You pay for the good times by sticking with them through the bad and given what happened in the summer I’ve tried to deal with all of this philosophically.
Not after Tottenham though. After that all I had was fury: an all-consuming rage.
There are only so many times you can look at the obvious and excuse it. A clearly done Alexis Mac Allister starting over Curtis Jones, our best player at right-back – that sort of thing.
And we went a goal up. Again. We thought it was enough but we were also scared of one – just one – player as he doesn’t like us and heads went. That doubt and concern was enough to throw another game away as the season draws to a close.
Not a single ounce of courage between them. Not a scrap. Scared of everything. Cowards, all. Inexcusable.
Then came Galatasaray and everyone was comfortable and at home and we enjoy it and you kid yourself that there’s enough there to sort it out. It’s dead simple now: Just beat Brighton and we start over.
Nah. We lose the keeper and Mo, and then Hugo happens and then the goal, and even then we get back in with some quick thinking. We get a reprieve. Second-half and the captain knocks off and lets his runner go. 2-1. We feel all sorry for ourselves and not one player had the balls to say enough is enough. There was nothing.
And, yes, the manager will carry the can. I’ve moved from defending him (that winning the league thing) to indifference about his future, but the players get off Scott free again. As will the lads who didn’t buy defenders – or in fact anybody – in January because it’s not what we do for some reason.
Yeah, I’m sick of the manager. We lose a forward at 0-0 and he brings on a central midfielder instead of a forward to shore up a game we’re not even leading. Talk to me about that.
But more than anything I’m sick of them. The captain knocks off and shouts at everyone else while Konate brings another circus into town and you can sort of excuse that because their midfield offers the square root of fuck all in protection and support. They’re too busy not running.
Brighton ran 5km more than Liverpool on Saturday. They ran an extra parkrun. Spurs 8km. Five miles. They’d just been humiliated in Europe and ran five miles more at Anfield. Running isn’t everything but when there is nothing else it is something.
In what world is that okay? That would be Item 1 on my agenda on the way home.
Look, it’s hard following the Jürgen years. They changed the game and our expectation of what a season should be and this lot are being measured against it. I get that, but no one won games by doing less.
I’m sick of it. Sick of them.
Sick of them feeling sorry for themselves, sick of all this talk about frustration, sick of individual errors compounded by further individual errors. Sick of teams scared of being in the lead and lacking the gumption to finish sides off.
You’re either up for the fight or you’re not. They can issue rallying cries in the week all they want but it’s seldom backed up on matchday. It’s Charlie Brown being surprised when Lucy pulls the ball away as he’s about to kick it – What? It happened again??? and I’m sick of it, sick of them.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
They should be angry. They should be storming off the pitch. There should be rows and straighteners in the dressing room because it should matter. This shouldn’t just be a job. This shouldn’t be piteous.
I can take losing. I can stand weak draws against sides who were mocked in the week. That’s the game, but lack of heart, lack of fire and lack of energy? No. Never.
Today I don’t care who goes, don’t care who does or doesn’t sign a contract because what are we getting from them?
I just need them to remember who they play for. I wouldn’t mind them winning the odd second-ball too. I wouldn’t mind them kicking James Milner in the air because you don’t do what he did to our lads. Instead we practically apologised for being on his pitch.
I just want some element of courage and fight rather than seeing them sulking like Hamlet wandering the battlements.
There’s something rotten in the state of Anfield.
Can’t agree more. It was the great Bill Shankly who instilled into the players the pride they should have wearing the shirt and playing in front of us. ‘This is Anfield’ means something, forget the ‘This means more’ guff and or the rest of FSG marketing. The players and Slot should be made to watch Bill’s ‘Chairman Mao’ speech when we returned from Wembley in 1971. I was in that crowd and the reaction to Bill and the players said it all – we are united in victory and defeat because we give everything. The current management and players need to accept that playing for Liverpool is, as Bill said “a privilege”, and leave absolutely nothing on the field win, lose or draw. I am not seeing that since Jurgen left.