by Neil Atkinson | Jan 21, 2017 | Footie, Match Review
I’M 36 today. Liverpool last won the league when I was nine. It’s hard to escape the crippling feeling that, at best, it next happens when I am 37. At best. Without sounding overly dramatic it is difficult to put into words how that second half felt. When...
by Neil Atkinson | Jan 18, 2017 | Footie, Match Review
WHERE’S the balance for this? Where is the tone? Because it is the rhetoric which tends to let these affairs down. For all the talk of the magic of the cup, and while acknowledging that tonight was a significant game for Plymouth Argyle and for two or three...
by Neil Atkinson | Jan 15, 2017 | Footie, Match Review
CAN I tell your congregation how a resurrection almost feels? There was something about that little cup run combined with Sunderland combined with everyone else winning football matches for what felt like forever which hurt. Which dented. Which made you wake nights...
by Neil Atkinson | Jan 11, 2017 | Footie, Match Review
THAT should probably be all over bar the shouting. Liverpool were dreadful for the first hour of that game and they were poor for the last half an hour, but they remain in the tie. Had you offered Claude Puel and his side a one goal lead before a ball was kicked, I...
by Neil Atkinson | Jan 8, 2017 | Footie, Match Review
GOOD lord. #PrayForGibbo. As ever a long season finds a way to get longer. At least this wasn’t heart-renderingly intense. The third round of the cup rarely is. I have no issues with the selection. Maybe Daniel Sturridge ahead of Divock Origi or Ben Woodburn,...
by Neil Atkinson | Dec 20, 2016 | Footie, Match Review
SECOND half Liverpool remembered they were Liverpool. Everton were left with the stark reality of being Everton. Redshite that sentence? Perhaps. But this is what happened. One football side expressed superiority over the other and that superiority drained and drained...
by Neil Atkinson | Dec 14, 2016 | Footie, Match Review
BOUNCING. Absolutely bouncing. Everyone around me, bouncing out of the Riverside after Liverpool scored three goals against Middlesbrough and conceded none. Afterwards, the Liverpool squad came over and showed their appreciation and had that appreciation returned to...
by Neil Atkinson | Dec 4, 2016 | Footie, Match Review
THERE are nights when I am jealous of those who can come to massive conclusions. I just don’t have it in me after that. If you want big bold criticisms, I probably have this one: Liverpool aren’t aggressive enough at 0-2 and 1-3. They don’t do enough...
by Neil Atkinson | Nov 30, 2016 | Footie, Match Review
ONE of my favourite Liverpool stories — and it really does come up over and over again — is the number of people whose dad said that Ian Rush wouldn’t make it at Liverpool. No-one is saying that about Ben Woodburn. Nor though, and the Liverpool...
by Neil Atkinson | Nov 26, 2016 | Footie, Match Review
HUNG on at the whistle. Hung on to give one more ‘is right’ and one more ‘cop for that’ and one more ‘up the Reds’. Hung on to see the manager and the captain in the middle of the pitch and to see them give it the big one, and I...
