acrossthepond

Aye, Lloris. "Injured" my arse. He blatantly told Stellini he wasn't going back out there.

The VAR "officiating" over the past two matches has been so bent it's untrue. There's mistakes, and then there's confirmation bias, and then there's CARBON COPY handballs, one given and one not, depending on who's playing. And as HMHM pointed out, you then have to endure the disgusting, sycophantic excuses as to why what's handball for the goose isn't for the gander. "Ohhh there were a lot of players in the area and Maguire's not the only one with his arm up." Dermot fucking Gallagher actually spouted that shite with a straight face. THAT MAKES NO FUCKING DIFFERENCE, you have a series of cameras for the express purpose of catching the clear and obvious error made by the match ref, there's no way that they failed to capture the impact of the ball on Maguire's raised arm. PENALTY ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, ON EVERY PITCH ON THIS PLANET. Cargo cultists in Papua New Guinea knew that was a penalty. Aliens from fucking Alpha Centauri could've spotted that one, get stuffed you set of lying snakes. That's before even getting to the farce that was TAA's handball today. I say farce but farces are supposed to be funny. You could tell there was no way on earth they were going to overturn that goal despite the clear evidence that it was handball. You could also tell that they were about to come up with some BULLSHIT explanation for why the goal should stand, and they duly obliged, saying it was "too early in the move" to count. Right, so we can fucking dribble the goddamn thing like a basketball as long as we play another couple of passes before the eventual finish, is that it? Carragher sounded like he'd swallowed an armadillo when he saw the replay and realised how full of shit that call was, but he defended it anyway, because it's Liverpool Football Club, the greatest team in England and the natural inhabitants of the top 11. They couldn't lie straight in bed, not a one of them. Absolute disgrace.

More than that, they've played with an air of complacency that we never even attempted to disrupt. Once they started with the playacting we should've gone on with a proper reducer on one of the culprits - Moreno the chief diver, but Young and Buendia offering plenty in that department as well - and put them on notice that we weren't going to put up with that shite. They never looked like they knew they were in a game, they looked like they were on the training ground and we did nothing to disabuse them of that notion.

Something about the referroi or the hoi polloi, loike.

There's no excuse for this performance but we have had STONE NOTHING off the "officials" today. Nothing. Not a peep. One of the most one-eyed referees you'll see all season. Conned by every bit of amateur play-acting from these beige wankers.

That said they've made us look incredibly ordinary. Get into 'em Eddie lad, this lot need a wake-up call.

Is this the "game management" we keep hearing about? Bunch of cheats.

...The Den, Fratton Park, the Pirelli Stadium...

I don't understand. There must have been some mistake. Where's the magical home of European nights and glory, Anfield, the greatest stadium in the entire multiverse?

Absolutely, but then it couldn't be the cause celebre for the next week, taking the spotlight off how utterly dogshit Liverpool are. I loathe them so completely. Their fraud manager's fake teeth and fake humility, the deference with which they're treated by officials and the media, the constant wanking over Anfield, their ludicrous spending sprees that somehow are never questioned, their deification of a finished centre-half, Bobo the Clown, their rubbish keeper and his girl's name, and above all, their entitlement. Robertson SHOULD be allowed to pull on a lino's arm and give him dog's abuse, because he plays for Liverpool Football Club. VAR checks? Those don't apply to Liverpool Football Club, any contact and it's a penalty. Added time? Just part of that special Anfield experience. The world will be a better place when those no-account HMRC-dodgers are playing FC Bumfukovic in the European Conference League. Sky will have to find someone else to idolize. I hope it isn't us.

He's a tit. Here's a pair of much better ones, which are the only good things he's brought to the club so far.

How about the Palace one? Because that was the most egregious of the lot for me, and it turned 3 points into 1.

These London mackems have already been dug out once and now the VAR faeries come to their rescue again. But please do go on about how we get favourable decisions every week

Astonishing Fuck all the way off man, that's ludicrous. That might even be worse than the first awful call. If that's handball we may as well pack it in and start playing hockey.

Truly atrocious call. What's the point of VAR? To overturn the ref's on-field decision in cases of clear and obvious error, which that never was. Very, very poor. I can only hope that serves as a wake-up call because we've been as bad as that penalty award was.

The world's greatest striker scored another penalty against crap opposition. Did bugger-all for the rest of the match and went down like a five dollar whore as well.

I agree with you both. He has come on a lot as a player under Howe, matured you might say. I saw a great moment from him early in the second half where after having lost the ball in typical fashion, he dashed back and attempted a tackle from behind that, combined with Burn, somehow just about got the ball away from a Man U player, possibly Antony. No chance the Bruce-vintage ASM makes that tackle. But he'll never be good enough for what this team is trying to accomplish. He's too moody, too self-centered, and too lacking in discipline. After he's been sold we can remember the brilliant moments, much like with Ben Arfa, but not the absolutely dire performances where he spent half his time on his arse and the rest losing the ball running down blind alleys.

Rashford at CB for Wilson's header That's what happens when your manager is a fraud propped up by nearly a billion pounds' worth of signings.

I'm just going to say it. It's bothered me for years. I don't think Harry Kane is any good. At all. I think if he played for Southampton or Wolves or even West Ham, we'd never hear a word about him and there'd not even be a whisper of an England call-up. He's a slightly above average PL striker, hence why no bigger club than Spurs was ever willing to go in for him, also considering his injury record and the monumental price tag it would take to sign him. He just doesn't represent value for money because he's not actually going to improve your side. He can score loads against Panama and Everton (similar level of opposition quality) but in big games he goes missing, North London derbies excepted, and forget his record in big tournaments for England. It doesn't even bear mentioning. He's massively overrated, mentioning him in the same breath as Shearer and even Phillips is a joke.

We played very well considering the circumstances. Unfortunately we switched off three times and paid the price for each of them. ASM had one of his best games for us in a very long while, so that's a positive to take. None of us will want to lose this way but at the end of the day it was a good performance against a team worth hundreds of millions of pounds more than ours. If it'd been 0-5 or 0-6 (as could easily have happened if we'd gone into damage control) that would've weakened us greatly before the final, but as it is we didn't disgrace ourselves. After 15 minutes of the first half you'd have taken this result and so would Howe.

Catch yourself on man, let's not forget where we were 12 months ago. If anyone had told you we'd be looking down at Spurs, Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool on January 31st, and in a cup final, you'd have laughed them off the planet. This lot have made it clear they're not going to buy for the sake of buying, or get sucked into panic buys. Howe and co have a plan and they're executing it.

Plenty of dust in the air at the sounds of Que Sera, Sera...must've got something in me eye.

Really hope this isn't true. I trust in Howe and co of course but I fail to see how a wide player is the solution to our shortage up front, especially as Willock's been doing well there, Joelinton can play there, ASM is still available off the bench, Isak is even supposed to be able to play wide left. How does this player plug any sort of hole in our system? I saw a comment earlier about buying for potential - I don't think we're at the point where we can spend 40m on "potential." Now, if we sold ASM, I could see it maybe.

re: Gordon, I'm not sure I would even at 4m. He's a shit clogger who had three months of decent form. 40m for that clown is the sort of transfer Chelsea would do, not the shrewd business that Howe and co have made their trademark.

Imagine a timeline where we got Conte instead of Howe. How different would things be now?