Hello good people… another week closer to the new season since we chatted and in-between a bunch of UEFA Nations League fixtures to keep us occupied, well, so I thought.
I don’t know about you but it just feels like the football isn’t at full pace? I mean, I was really looking forward to England against Germany but what a pile of boring rubbish that turned out to be! Germany were ok, England total sh!te. It wasn’t far off a training match and how lucky were the Three Lions to come away with a point after a 1-1 draw?
Off the back of a loss against Hungary the previous week, you’d have expected coach Gareth Southgate to stick something up their backsides to get them moving, especially against their old foes, but no, same old same old.
In particular, young talents like Mason “Mase’ Mount… Absolutely ineffective, and Jude Bellingham, wow, so much hype, he might as well have not been on the pitch. It was only after Jack Grealish came on that England looked slightly dangerous.
Then Italy… even worse! The only plus in the goalless draw was Mase putting in a good shift. It can be considered that players competing in the Nations League have come out of intense seasons and just don’t have the natural enthusiasm that pushed them through the last hurdles in May? Should much be read into it? Hard to tell. With the World Cup stupidly hitting us in November, the Nations League feels like the runt cousin. Similarly as the Conference League is to the Champions League, it just doesn’t motivate. But surely if you want to be part of the World Cup, you’d be out to impress?
Either way, hopefully it’ll pick up as it progresses. Onto domestic stuff and now that Liverpool fans have started crawling out of misery, they’re starting to find their voice again.
It’s alright lads, we understand, the process of dealing with severe loss takes you through a rollercoaster of emotions. Confusion, depression, awkwardness, anger and then a false sense of being ok. We’re at the anger/ok stage now where there’s a lot of self-justification by proxy on behalf of the club. “we’re not like Chelsea or City” “we ain’t a big money club” “we don’t buy success” yeah… you’ve heard it all.
And what a lot of bollox. With a wage bill north of £300m, there isn’t much that separates the ‘big’ boys, and bidding for another blockbuster signing (£80m) in Darwin Nunez, the spending is hardly letting up.
And let’s face it, the first team is hardly peppered with home-grown academy prospects! As the famous scouse saying goes… “calm down”.
I know that pain, you have to just swallow it and move along. On the flip side of the coin and away from the ‘banter’, I believe Liverpool DID have a really good season.
I don’t agree that campaigns are purely defined on silverware. Coming from a club (Chelsea) that for decades won very little, I remember great seasons. Seasons where we were entertained, took a couple of big scalps, had a decent cup run and maybe finished in the top eight, with a squad that wasn’t equipped to challenge, but gave 110 percent week-in-week-out.
Liverpool played fantastic football, they got themselves within two games of a possible quadruple and were a daunting opponent to whoever they played.
It’s going to be interesting to see where the Mo Salah/ Sadio Mane rumours go. Does Diogo Jota really fill a gap?
Luis Diaz has been a brilliant signing, but will that natural front three connection that terrorised over the last few years be reborn? There’s no doubt Jurgen Klopp is one of the very best and will continue to engineer success, but it must be slightly worrying for the Reds.
Now that the dream is over, the Holy Grail denied, players are looking for “new challenges”, is this the end of a mini-era or the beginning of freshen up and an even stronger push for ultimate glory? Chat next week… bye byeee.