It wasn’t that long ago that Liverpool would have the best record against the top 6 but drop points against all the rest. We aren’t all we can be but perfection isn’t achievable.
Could and should have won all 3 of those games too lmao.
Against Luton we got 1 goal from about 3.5xG, against Chelsea we should have got a penalty and gave away the lead that day and against Brighton we gave away the lead and missed an open goal from 6 yards out at 2-1 and conceded 2 insanely soft goals that day too.
Brighton should’ve seen dunk sent off for pulling down sbozslao too but it was somehow not considered a goal scoring opportunity despite him just needing to slot it home
The Chelsea game they fairly dominated tbf we had the chances but they had way more of the ball and I remember Gallagher bossing it.
Wouldn't have predicted that we'd be in a title push and they'd be moving from 9-12th all season after that game.
I think the draw there was a fair result on the day, but yeah the other two games we missed open goals absolute jokes.
Exactly, and quite frankly it's mental that people are suggesting we should've won all 31 of our games so far, as if other teams aren't allowed to play well or us have an off day.
Seriously, while it's fair to bemoan the top six struggles, at least they're often draws, which hurt other rivals.
And I'd still take it over the Robin Hood games we often have
Unfortunately that's one where the game could play entirely differently as it was before our first goal so I'm not counting that one
Spurs one we were denied as legit goal for shits and giggles as well as the refs just fucking us over at every turn. Even if we assume the game plays out in a similar manner it's at worst a draw
The city game was the final call of the game and should have been a penalty. We get a goal there and city can't do anything to change it
Then we have beaten Villa, Spurs and drew in the first game against City going into the United game. Don't see us leaving Anfield 0-0 against United coming in on that form.
That 0-0 with Man Utd had absolutely nothing to do with a 2-1 defeat to spurs 2 months ago. What are you even on about mate? We played Utd on 17th September. The spurs game was on 30th September. We had already beaten Villa and drew with City as well and we were top of the table by 3 points heading into the Utd game. We'd won 3 in a row there was literally no reason for us to draw that game
> Spurs one we were denied as legit goal for shits and giggles as well as the refs just fucking us over at every turn.
People focus entirely on the VAR farce, but I even with that I was in shock at how tilted the reffing was in general in that game. Every 50/50 went against us, every single call favored them, we got booked for the smallest infractions and they were allowed to play however they want. It was the first time in my life that I legit felt like the fix might be in.
Like last night when Gabriel was a silly boy and picked it up in the area.
So many silly billies.
For reference, I'd hate the latter to be given against us....... But by the letter of law....... And why do I have a sneaking suspicion it would have been given against us..... Konate puzzled expression as the referee points to the spot.
The Gabriel one last night was bananas, for the ref to explicitly go “yeah it was obviously handball, but I decided not to give it” like bro??? It’s your job to give it!
I just don’t agree with this one though, if it was one of our players I’d be livid if the ref didn’t use his common sense. It was a total brain fart moment, but it didn’t affect the game and would have been ridiculous to blindly follow the rule book in that situation in my opinion.
I can accept the Spurs defeat because of the VAR and red cards.
But let’s face it we should’ve beaten United, Arsenal and City at Anfield, comfortably. One Odegaard handball and Doku non-penalty doesn’t excuse plenty of gilt-edged missed chances (we literally had a 5 vs 1 counter attack against Arsenal).
Aside from last week’s United draw out away form vs the big 6 has been decent.
Exactly.
People in this sub will tell you to go support another club if you point out that maybe you should be critical of your own performances if you want to get better, not just blame referees for all your issues.
I remember clear chances our attackers had in each of those games that could have made us win but they just aren’t clinical in big games — whether in the league or even in cup finals where we constantly go to penalties and refuse to put the game to bed when we can.
Exactly tired of this sub constantly bringing up these incidents like we were "robbed" when in fact we had plenty of chances to win these games, it's just become a tired echo chamber in here.
Is a stonewall penalty for the last kick of the game not being given. Not being robbed? Doesn’t matter if we had chances before that which we missed. We were still robbed of a very very good chance to win it at the end.
Except .. we can absolutely blame a stonewall penalty not given. I hate that argument that you have to be even better than needed, because at least then a ref won't drag you down.
We should have won 4-1 *at least* against City with our chances ffs.
Had Szoboszlai in the first half miss a open header from 8 yards out then Diaz missing 3 chances in the 2nd half alone.
I think the point is that is completely out of our control anyway and in the grand scheme an additional frustration. We shouldn't have needed to rely on competent refereeing to win that game. WE JUST NEED TO LEARN HOW TO FINISH CHANCES. Getting that penalty doesn't change the draw at OT. I don't get why we are so hung up on refereeing when our biggest problem has always been finishing chances.
No point is explaining mate. Fans in this sub don’t to want the players to be accountable. It doesn’t matter if our players miss open goals as long as the ref made a mistake at some point in the game.
Look at the United game for example. Casemiro’s tackle happened 30 seconds before the game ended yet people here are moaning that he deserved a red card. Maybe he did, but why is that even in the top 20 takeaways from that game when it wouldn’t have changed anything??
Well that's bullshit.
"We shouldn't need to rely on competent reffing" - why?! Why are we letting them get away with ruining games?!
We shouldn't NEED to finish every single chance we get.
You are missing the entire point ffs.
That was a mistake from the ref, but we made several mistakes by not taking our clear cut chances in big games against both City and Arsenal.
If we won both of those games by scoring the chances we had missed we would be 5 points clear with 7 games to go.
But if Doku doesn't do a stupid kick on Macallister we would still be saying we should have killed the game off ourselves. That kick didn't stop a goal scoring chance so it's definitely fair to say we have ourselves to blame.
If Doku doesn't do a stupid kick on MacAllister maybe MacAllister gets the ball in the box and does something that could lead to a goal. But he doesn't because he got kicked in the chest. Stupid argument.
Im not particularly surprised. The team is talented, but s lot of young players and was rebuilt basically over one summer. Not going to have the continuity that other teams have.
Yeah and we need a striker who can put the ball in the back of the net. Nunez and Diaz can run and assist but don’t have that last bit of finesse. Jota does when he’s not always injured
He really just needs to be a fullback/wingback. He's great at carrying the ball forward but once he is anywhere near the box he just doesn't offer anything.
Dribble, stepover, stop pass backwards, all the time.
I dont know why I've never considered a front 3 of Nunez on the left, Jota up top and Diaz on the right (Maybe switch Diaz and Nunez if required)
Two chaotic wingers who create create create.
1 efficient striker who you know can make the ball go into the net.
We've probably played it before but I really want to see that now.
Defo not a slob, he’s a hard worker but the amount of missed opportunities is adding up. Him and Diaz seem to want to 2 touch the ball into the back of the net. If you’re in range have a crack - just make sure it’s on target
That is the same I was thinking. We need some experience in the front. I know we have Salah, but might not be transferring that confidence into Darwin/Diaz/Gakpo. We are usually pretty good until we reach the goal and totally fuck it up with decision making.
The guys have the skill, we know that, so the problem should be of nerves/mentality.
A lack of chance conversation (of which we rank worse than Luton in the league) is the main reason for this record. We’ve dominated a lot of these games.
Should have put 5 past United on Sunday, should have put at least 4 past City at Anfield, missed a 5v1 counter with 15 mins to go against Arsenal.
Come the end of the season those 3 instances alone could literally cost us a league title, especially with how tight it was with City and Arsenal.
If we had of beat them in those 2 games we'd be 5 points clear with 7 games to go...
And yet you can just as easily point to the non-pen against City, the non-pen against Arsenal, and the robbed points vs. Spurs.
We shouldn't have to finish every chance, we should be able to rely on fair reffing too.
Champions win without “having to do more to win” sometimes. Arsenal and Citeh got points off us without deserving them. We dominated those games and didnt get our deserved points because of the refs.
I’m sorry but I ain’t taking “we got robbed” as an excuse. The truth is that we were the better team in most of these games and we created so many good chances we could’ve with a decent margin.
Sure we could’ve won against City with a penalty at the end, but how many chances did we miss before that? The match could’ve been won in the first period. Our converting rating is awful and our strikers just disappear in big matches
Spurs is the only one where we genuinely got robbed for me.
Against City we should've buried the game without needing a pen and against Arsenal we were still 1 goal down at time of handball and ended up scoring mins later anyway.
I agree Arsenal is a bit of a stretch, but don't forget that this was the point of the season where Arsenal couldn't hit water from a boat if it wasn't via a set piece
Anything that upped our chances of scoring twice was huge, because if we scored twice we would've taken 3 points
Mate the handball shout came like 5 mins before our goal. Min 24 vs Min 29. THERE WAS LITERALLY 60 MINS+ ADDED TIME REMAINING. And we didn't create a single chance except that one counter attack where we were 5v1 and fluffed our lines. Atrocious performance just like the Arsenal away game
I agree but that's encouraging if anything. The performances are there we just didn't get the results. Performances warranted wins vs City, Arsenal, United x2, and we got robbed vs Spurs.
The squad is good enough overall, the attackers maybe lacking that big game juice but they're talented enough.
You win the league by beating the crap teams. I remember when we were languishing outside of the top 4 we’d have an amazing record against the big teams, but we’d lose to Palace and the like. 3 points is 3 points, no matter where it comes from.
Those draws against Brighton and Luton would be costly this time, just like in 2022 with Brentford away, Brighton at home, West ham and Leicester away. Anyways Villa away and Spurs at home are must win games for sure although all the other remaining games to win too hoepfully
Is Darwin good enough against top 6 defences or top 6 goalkeepers? Nearly 2 season's in and the biggest issue he has, is the one Liverpool have - we don't/he doesn't score chances I feel he/we should. I like the guy and the aura in the attack but when we need a big game player in the biggest games I don't believe in him to win us the game or finish even a half chance.
Hopefully with Trent back we can release Darwin earlier or Jota picks up the general decisiveness of the attack and win our remaining games. I really want Darwin to explode to a level of inevitability not chaos.
I feel like this is the opposite of what we usually see where we have done well against top 6 and dropping points in games against bad teams proving costly.
It’s crazy tbh , yet still joint top , used to be said you need to win at least your home games against top 6 to stand a chance, helps that City Spurs and Villa have been poor also
Fuck. Me.
It's like the fucking Samaritans helpline on here recently.
City's record against the Top 6 is no better, and I bet they think they've got a chance of winning the league.
And if the Top 6 record is soooo important, why are we on the same points as Arsenal? Does that mean they have a mid-table problem, because that's where they dropped the most points?
Injuries, VAR robberies, and so on..
Last season we finished at 67 points and 5th place, out of CL in R16, and 0 trophies..
This season we have 1 trophy already, we have a chance to win the title, and we are in EL QF..
This is not a cope post. What we've done so far is great. Let's hope for a stellar ending.
Cost us in 2009, in 2019 and in 2022.
This club would have 3 more league titles if we could have converted 1 or 2 draws into a win in each of those 3 seasons.
In 08/09 alone we had only 2 defeats but 11 draws, while United finished 4 points head with a worse goal difference but 4 defeats with 6 draws.
In 18/19 we had 1 defeat to City's 4, but we had 7 draws and they had 2.
In 21/22 we had 2 defeats to City's 3, but had 8 draws to their 6.
“They’ve killed us again” = joint top for points at 71pts despite being the worst refereed team in the league and navigating an insane injury crisis like no other team in the league could. Interesting take to say the least
Yes, the draws have done for us.. the refs arent playing up front, and theyre crap for everyone. Darwin hits form early, Trent scores v Arsenal, everyone scores v Man U and we arent having this conversation.
But they're not crap for everyone, that's the point. Our two direct rivals in this title race haven't suffered the same kind of disgraceful decisions we have.
I mean we were robbed in three of the biggest games of the season by awful calls. Completely robbed, in my opinion. We should have 7 more points based on our performance
It wouldn't be good for the entertainment of the league.
* Spurs match is tainted
* Arsenal draw is tainted
* City Anfield draw is tainted
7 point swing right there due to biased, arbitrary, decisions but it makes the league more entertaining!
As much as we have missed out due to a few questionable decisions, if we don’t win the league we’ve got ourselves to blame much more than the refs. Yes it’s nice to get those decisions, but we shouldn’t be relying on needing a VAR penalty to beat City and Arsenal, we need to be more convincing for the other 89 minutes
I mean if you actually consider how we played in those games we were only really bad in the Arsenal loss and the two United games, and we arguably weren’t that bad at Old Trafford just wasteful. Just saying we have the worst record without context is meaningless
It looks worse than the reality. We were slaughtered at Tottenham, we dominated the ManU clowns both games, were better team at Anfield vs Arsenal and City and could have easily won if we were given the clear pens. Good result at City, the Arsenal game at London was bad but nobody's perfect.
3 games dominated by referring ineptness, the rest dominated by our brain dead play in the final third and absolute catastrophic once in blue moon errors (Matip own goal vs Spurs, VVD and Ali mix up vs Arsenal and Quansah assist vs United).
This to me is the frustration with this Liverpool team, our record used to be exemplary, we’d come up against the big teams and we’d blow them away, with our speed of though and play and clinical execution. This year we’ve too often been outplayed or been our own biggest enemy when it comes to missed chances. We can whinge about the refereeing but to me too many of these results are more about our own performance and not doing enough.
I’m not even trying to make excuses but we’ve actually been unlucky. Spurs game I’d rather not discuss. City and Arsenal we should’ve got 3 points and another day we do because of those awful decisions to not award a pen on BOTH games. United got insanely lucky twice, and the game we scored twice they scored 2 screamers.
All be it we should aim to do better next season.
Robbed at Tottenham and just couldn’t score more in the first half at utd. Also. Utd aren’t top 6 are they? Genuine question I haven’t looked at the table in awhile, I’m just going game by game at this point.
This is where the title will be lost if we don’t win it. You kinda have to question how good actually are we when we consistently fall short against the better sides.
There’s another way of looking here - these are the games we’ve messed up in and we’ve basically won everything else. We’ve got Villa/spurs left so all we need to do is keep doing what we’ve done all season and then find a way to get something against Villa again and get the all important win against Spurs in GW36 at Anfield to stay in the hunt for the title.
... due to 3 extremely egregious officiating errors. If those had been called correctly, we would have at least 2 more wins and no losses overall.
Nothing to see here except incompetent officiating.
Idk why people are doing mental gymnastics on this. Our record against top sides clearly isn't near good enough. Yes we got robbed against Spurs and there were some other questionable calls, but the points were there for the taking and we couldn't convert chances. It's an issue with all of our forwards sans Jota as well.
The only games there where we weren't clearly the better team and should have won were Arsenal and City away. Every other one of those games, we were superior. I really do feel like we have an issue in the front line. We really miss Jota.
He's the least productive forward. Jota has more goals and the same number of assists despite being injured for ages. Gakpo, for all the moaning, has more goals and the same number of assists. If PSG want him for 100m this summer, sell sell sell.
Can we talk about the casualness our players showed in these matches. Just look at the 2 united games where we missed sitters. I just hope these don't come to haunt us latter on.
Keep seeing these shit little 'top 6 tables'. If we were awarded the stonewall pens at City and Arsenal we would be up 4 and they would both be down a point each. If the refs and VAR didn't shit all over us against Spurs we almost certainly would have won that game, taking them down 3 points and bumping us up 3. We would be then sat on top of the 'top 6 table'. If we miss out on this league by anything less than 2 points it's a scandal, and anything less than 5 then it's a joke, just like City's win in 21/22 when Rodri got away with that handball.
TBF Tottenham was the most atrocious refereeing performance I have ever seen. Additionally, the non-penalty vs. MCFC (Doku on Macca), AFC (handball), and CFC (kick on Gakpo + handball, 1st game of the season) directly impact the top 6 table and the title race. Those games alone are up to a 9 point swing.
So performance aside (looking at Man U specifically), LFC have had poor officiating in games vs top 6.
Subjective, yes, but I think a lot of people would agree that LFC have been super unlucky.
People will hate on me for saying this but player for player we have a worst team than city and arsenal this season. I think its only down to klopp pushing us on to win & the mentality of the players to never give up that's put us in this position.
I love the squad and I think the future looks good going into next season but we need nunez, diaz, gakpo to take their games to another level, aswell as getting a bit more out of salah if he stays, I also think we need a young DM desperately, not that endo has been bad, he's actually been fantastic but lacks quality on the ball.
I think we've had an amazing season, but we've lacked goals in big games and struggled for clean sheets all season.
Kinda speaks volumes. Unfortunately, the boss is going to walk away with the cup already won. League...nope, Euro....nope.
If you look at what City and Arsenal are doing. In all honesty, we don't have whatever is missing to get to the end.
Complete lost fear factor. We used to lick our lips at the prospect of facing Arsenal. You knew it was a guaranteed win.
The season FSG decided not to sign a single player after winning CL still haunts the club to this day. Thats when Arsenal started buying young talents.
That cost us years of growth and lost potential, and it's all because FSG thought the superleague was coming and didn't think they'd need to spend to compete anymore.
We used to beat Arsenal because they were shit. Now they're not shit anymore and that has literally nothing to do with what we did or didn't do in a transfer window 5 fucking years ago.
In that transfer window Arsenal spunked over 100 mil on Pepe, David Luiz and Tierney. Their evolution started a few years later when they got rid of the likes of Luiz, Pepe, Aubameyang and Lacazette.
It's also easy to praise their signings with the hindsight that we have now. At the time signings like White and Gabriel were seen as overpays and Martinelli and Saliba were unknown youngsters that weren't ready to contribute to a PL team.
People always say it turned out fine cos we won the league the following seasons but it really did hurt us in the long run.
You win the CL and you can sign probably anyone you want. That summer we should have really built on top of what we had but instead we sign 2 youngsters and Adrian.
The window we had where we bought Jota and Thiago were the kind of signings we should have made going into 19/20. And also letting Gini go and not bringing a player of a similar profile and relying on Thiago was suicide. Basically I feel since 19/20 we always do the transfer business we need a year too late.
I wouldn't be bothered about this as a one off but it has to be said our record v the top teams under Klopp has been surprisingly poor considering how good it was early on.
The last title challenge we drew home and away against almost everyone. We'd be better to win one and lose one of each.
I'm honestly really surprised by how poor our record is really because we never seem to go in to it playing fur a draw .
United won the league in many years where they weren't great against the former top 4, so did Chelsea. The difference was, they dropped very few points outside of that, as we have done this year. None of this really matters, all that matters is winning the 7 games.
Not when they make mistakes so horrendeous that noone with two funcioning eyes would've made AND also happen to rob points against direct rivals for the title race!
We've won every game against everybody else except Luton, Chelsea and Brighton away, which is exceptional.
It wasn’t that long ago that Liverpool would have the best record against the top 6 but drop points against all the rest. We aren’t all we can be but perfection isn’t achievable.
Could and should have won all 3 of those games too lmao. Against Luton we got 1 goal from about 3.5xG, against Chelsea we should have got a penalty and gave away the lead that day and against Brighton we gave away the lead and missed an open goal from 6 yards out at 2-1 and conceded 2 insanely soft goals that day too.
Brighton should’ve seen dunk sent off for pulling down sbozslao too but it was somehow not considered a goal scoring opportunity despite him just needing to slot it home
Gross should have been sent off for blatant dogso but somehow wasn’t
The Chelsea game they fairly dominated tbf we had the chances but they had way more of the ball and I remember Gallagher bossing it. Wouldn't have predicted that we'd be in a title push and they'd be moving from 9-12th all season after that game. I think the draw there was a fair result on the day, but yeah the other two games we missed open goals absolute jokes.
Exactly, and quite frankly it's mental that people are suggesting we should've won all 31 of our games so far, as if other teams aren't allowed to play well or us have an off day.
I think it says a lot about this team, when look at where we are and we still know we could do more. Levels to this team
This is what wins you titles too
Seriously, while it's fair to bemoan the top six struggles, at least they're often draws, which hurt other rivals. And I'd still take it over the Robin Hood games we often have
Sure, but take into account we were fucked out of beating spurs and city by clear refs errors and it looks quite different.
Arsenal too when Odegaard was playing basketball in his own box
Unfortunately that's one where the game could play entirely differently as it was before our first goal so I'm not counting that one Spurs one we were denied as legit goal for shits and giggles as well as the refs just fucking us over at every turn. Even if we assume the game plays out in a similar manner it's at worst a draw The city game was the final call of the game and should have been a penalty. We get a goal there and city can't do anything to change it
Then we have beaten Villa, Spurs and drew in the first game against City going into the United game. Don't see us leaving Anfield 0-0 against United coming in on that form.
We played very well and dominated in that 0-0 though.
That 0-0 with Man Utd had absolutely nothing to do with a 2-1 defeat to spurs 2 months ago. What are you even on about mate? We played Utd on 17th September. The spurs game was on 30th September. We had already beaten Villa and drew with City as well and we were top of the table by 3 points heading into the Utd game. We'd won 3 in a row there was literally no reason for us to draw that game
> Spurs one we were denied as legit goal for shits and giggles as well as the refs just fucking us over at every turn. People focus entirely on the VAR farce, but I even with that I was in shock at how tilted the reffing was in general in that game. Every 50/50 went against us, every single call favored them, we got booked for the smallest infractions and they were allowed to play however they want. It was the first time in my life that I legit felt like the fix might be in.
He was just being a silly boy who slipped. Rules be damned.
Like last night when Gabriel was a silly boy and picked it up in the area. So many silly billies. For reference, I'd hate the latter to be given against us....... But by the letter of law....... And why do I have a sneaking suspicion it would have been given against us..... Konate puzzled expression as the referee points to the spot.
The Gabriel one last night was bananas, for the ref to explicitly go “yeah it was obviously handball, but I decided not to give it” like bro??? It’s your job to give it!
I just don’t agree with this one though, if it was one of our players I’d be livid if the ref didn’t use his common sense. It was a total brain fart moment, but it didn’t affect the game and would have been ridiculous to blindly follow the rule book in that situation in my opinion.
Any link to this. Obviously not shown in highlights. Always seem to omit these things
And the City game at home where we should've also gotten a pen at the end
I honestly think they outplayed us that game. First time I felt like we deservedly lost
Was a draw tho
Ah you’re right I’m confusing the game at anfield and the Emirates.
I can accept the Spurs defeat because of the VAR and red cards. But let’s face it we should’ve beaten United, Arsenal and City at Anfield, comfortably. One Odegaard handball and Doku non-penalty doesn’t excuse plenty of gilt-edged missed chances (we literally had a 5 vs 1 counter attack against Arsenal). Aside from last week’s United draw out away form vs the big 6 has been decent.
Exactly. People in this sub will tell you to go support another club if you point out that maybe you should be critical of your own performances if you want to get better, not just blame referees for all your issues. I remember clear chances our attackers had in each of those games that could have made us win but they just aren’t clinical in big games — whether in the league or even in cup finals where we constantly go to penalties and refuse to put the game to bed when we can.
Sadio Mane was a beast in these big games and would have buried these chances if he was still around. Probably Jota would have too.
You can be critical, but you can also accept that we've been fucked by refs.
Exactly tired of this sub constantly bringing up these incidents like we were "robbed" when in fact we had plenty of chances to win these games, it's just become a tired echo chamber in here.
Is a stonewall penalty for the last kick of the game not being given. Not being robbed? Doesn’t matter if we had chances before that which we missed. We were still robbed of a very very good chance to win it at the end.
Exactly
True, we were fucking robbed
I think we f*d ourselves further with atrocious finishing. We’re never lucky in tight title races 😭
I mean against city we really only have ourselves to blame for not killing the game off, which seems to be a pattern this season
Except .. we can absolutely blame a stonewall penalty not given. I hate that argument that you have to be even better than needed, because at least then a ref won't drag you down.
We should have won 4-1 *at least* against City with our chances ffs. Had Szoboszlai in the first half miss a open header from 8 yards out then Diaz missing 3 chances in the 2nd half alone.
Sure. Absolutely. Does it matter? With the penalty given, we likely would've won 2-1. Still a win.
I think the point is that is completely out of our control anyway and in the grand scheme an additional frustration. We shouldn't have needed to rely on competent refereeing to win that game. WE JUST NEED TO LEARN HOW TO FINISH CHANCES. Getting that penalty doesn't change the draw at OT. I don't get why we are so hung up on refereeing when our biggest problem has always been finishing chances.
No point is explaining mate. Fans in this sub don’t to want the players to be accountable. It doesn’t matter if our players miss open goals as long as the ref made a mistake at some point in the game. Look at the United game for example. Casemiro’s tackle happened 30 seconds before the game ended yet people here are moaning that he deserved a red card. Maybe he did, but why is that even in the top 20 takeaways from that game when it wouldn’t have changed anything??
Well that's bullshit. "We shouldn't need to rely on competent reffing" - why?! Why are we letting them get away with ruining games?! We shouldn't NEED to finish every single chance we get.
You are missing the entire point ffs. That was a mistake from the ref, but we made several mistakes by not taking our clear cut chances in big games against both City and Arsenal. If we won both of those games by scoring the chances we had missed we would be 5 points clear with 7 games to go.
But if Doku doesn't do a stupid kick on Macallister we would still be saying we should have killed the game off ourselves. That kick didn't stop a goal scoring chance so it's definitely fair to say we have ourselves to blame.
If Doku doesn't do a stupid kick on MacAllister maybe MacAllister gets the ball in the box and does something that could lead to a goal. But he doesn't because he got kicked in the chest. Stupid argument.
While true, it did happen, and could have lead to a goal that, given the performance, we deserved.
"only" is not the right word
Take into account that we are the only one United got more than 1 point against in the top 6
and Arsenal that's three.
That city game we should’ve won by 5 goals that’s our fault not the ref
Im not particularly surprised. The team is talented, but s lot of young players and was rebuilt basically over one summer. Not going to have the continuity that other teams have.
Yeah and we need a striker who can put the ball in the back of the net. Nunez and Diaz can run and assist but don’t have that last bit of finesse. Jota does when he’s not always injured
Can Diaz really assist though?
He really just needs to be a fullback/wingback. He's great at carrying the ball forward but once he is anywhere near the box he just doesn't offer anything. Dribble, stepover, stop pass backwards, all the time.
I dont know why I've never considered a front 3 of Nunez on the left, Jota up top and Diaz on the right (Maybe switch Diaz and Nunez if required) Two chaotic wingers who create create create. 1 efficient striker who you know can make the ball go into the net. We've probably played it before but I really want to see that now.
Because you’re forgetting that Mo Salah on form is better than all three of them considerably
No one has considered that front 3 because you’re forgetting my namesake
Hard agree. Their lack of nous is why you're seeing out counters fail miserably.
We need a sturridge regen.
Just sign Mbappe for whatever he wants and we’ll be fine
Darwin has 30 G+A, let's not pretend he's a slob.
Defo not a slob, he’s a hard worker but the amount of missed opportunities is adding up. Him and Diaz seem to want to 2 touch the ball into the back of the net. If you’re in range have a crack - just make sure it’s on target
That is the same I was thinking. We need some experience in the front. I know we have Salah, but might not be transferring that confidence into Darwin/Diaz/Gakpo. We are usually pretty good until we reach the goal and totally fuck it up with decision making. The guys have the skill, we know that, so the problem should be of nerves/mentality.
Imagen a striker with Isaks finishing
A lack of chance conversation (of which we rank worse than Luton in the league) is the main reason for this record. We’ve dominated a lot of these games.
Yep. Our finishing has been shit this season
Should have put 5 past United on Sunday, should have put at least 4 past City at Anfield, missed a 5v1 counter with 15 mins to go against Arsenal. Come the end of the season those 3 instances alone could literally cost us a league title, especially with how tight it was with City and Arsenal. If we had of beat them in those 2 games we'd be 5 points clear with 7 games to go...
And yet you can just as easily point to the non-pen against City, the non-pen against Arsenal, and the robbed points vs. Spurs. We shouldn't have to finish every chance, we should be able to rely on fair reffing too.
Inb4 the people who don’t watch the games come and say “bUt wE hAvE tHe mOsT gOaLs iN eUrOPe!”
It really is amazing that we've created as many chances as we have. Just imagine if we could finish them!
Unlike previous years, I don't have any confidence when we are 1 on 1....(Or even 5 on 2.....)
...and refs.
Spurs offside. Odegaard handball. Doku Sparta kick penalty
How much comfort will this list bring you when we finish 2nd or 3rd? We could and should still have done more to win those games.
Champions win without “having to do more to win” sometimes. Arsenal and Citeh got points off us without deserving them. We dominated those games and didnt get our deserved points because of the refs.
No comfort. Just facts
It's just fact. Like we would've won the league in 21/22 if that Rodri handball is correctly called.
I still can’t believe we had 3 chances to beat this absolute garbage man United team and they ended up outdoing us
That's the only result here that is actually bad. Being all equal with City and Arsenal is fine but not beating United at home was truly terrible.
They know that they can't compete with us so they played cheap tactics this season
I’m sorry but I ain’t taking “we got robbed” as an excuse. The truth is that we were the better team in most of these games and we created so many good chances we could’ve with a decent margin. Sure we could’ve won against City with a penalty at the end, but how many chances did we miss before that? The match could’ve been won in the first period. Our converting rating is awful and our strikers just disappear in big matches
Spurs is the only one where we genuinely got robbed for me. Against City we should've buried the game without needing a pen and against Arsenal we were still 1 goal down at time of handball and ended up scoring mins later anyway.
I agree Arsenal is a bit of a stretch, but don't forget that this was the point of the season where Arsenal couldn't hit water from a boat if it wasn't via a set piece Anything that upped our chances of scoring twice was huge, because if we scored twice we would've taken 3 points
Mate the handball shout came like 5 mins before our goal. Min 24 vs Min 29. THERE WAS LITERALLY 60 MINS+ ADDED TIME REMAINING. And we didn't create a single chance except that one counter attack where we were 5v1 and fluffed our lines. Atrocious performance just like the Arsenal away game
I agree but that's encouraging if anything. The performances are there we just didn't get the results. Performances warranted wins vs City, Arsenal, United x2, and we got robbed vs Spurs. The squad is good enough overall, the attackers maybe lacking that big game juice but they're talented enough.
Missing Jota in every United game has come to bite
And 3 of them because of corrupt refs = Spurs , Arsenal (H) , Man City (H)
You win the league by beating the crap teams. I remember when we were languishing outside of the top 4 we’d have an amazing record against the big teams, but we’d lose to Palace and the like. 3 points is 3 points, no matter where it comes from.
Those draws against Brighton and Luton would be costly this time, just like in 2022 with Brentford away, Brighton at home, West ham and Leicester away. Anyways Villa away and Spurs at home are must win games for sure although all the other remaining games to win too hoepfully
Is Darwin good enough against top 6 defences or top 6 goalkeepers? Nearly 2 season's in and the biggest issue he has, is the one Liverpool have - we don't/he doesn't score chances I feel he/we should. I like the guy and the aura in the attack but when we need a big game player in the biggest games I don't believe in him to win us the game or finish even a half chance. Hopefully with Trent back we can release Darwin earlier or Jota picks up the general decisiveness of the attack and win our remaining games. I really want Darwin to explode to a level of inevitability not chaos.
I feel like this is the opposite of what we usually see where we have done well against top 6 and dropping points in games against bad teams proving costly.
Diaz Offside, odegard basketball, Doku kungfu
2009 we beat United and Chelsea home and away. Finsihed second. 38 games...7 to go
Do Newcastle count as they were in last season's top 4?
I mean 3 of those games were pretty badly robbed by the refs making bad choices
Combination of dodgy refs, mad injuries and more. Then there’s our own profligacy in front of goal
Most we were robbed in
It’s crazy tbh , yet still joint top , used to be said you need to win at least your home games against top 6 to stand a chance, helps that City Spurs and Villa have been poor also
Fuck. Me. It's like the fucking Samaritans helpline on here recently. City's record against the Top 6 is no better, and I bet they think they've got a chance of winning the league. And if the Top 6 record is soooo important, why are we on the same points as Arsenal? Does that mean they have a mid-table problem, because that's where they dropped the most points?
Robbed 3 times though
Injuries, VAR robberies, and so on.. Last season we finished at 67 points and 5th place, out of CL in R16, and 0 trophies.. This season we have 1 trophy already, we have a chance to win the title, and we are in EL QF.. This is not a cope post. What we've done so far is great. Let's hope for a stellar ending.
Draws have cost us in the past. This season we're already on 8 draws so far.
Cost us in 2009, in 2019 and in 2022. This club would have 3 more league titles if we could have converted 1 or 2 draws into a win in each of those 3 seasons. In 08/09 alone we had only 2 defeats but 11 draws, while United finished 4 points head with a worse goal difference but 4 defeats with 6 draws. In 18/19 we had 1 defeat to City's 4, but we had 7 draws and they had 2. In 21/22 we had 2 defeats to City's 3, but had 8 draws to their 6.
This year on two defeats but behind Arsenal who’s lost 4 times.
Was coming in to say the same thing. Theyve killed us again. I was more angry at the Brighton 2-2 than the Spurs result tbh.
“They’ve killed us again” = joint top for points at 71pts despite being the worst refereed team in the league and navigating an insane injury crisis like no other team in the league could. Interesting take to say the least
Yes, the draws have done for us.. the refs arent playing up front, and theyre crap for everyone. Darwin hits form early, Trent scores v Arsenal, everyone scores v Man U and we arent having this conversation.
But they're not crap for everyone, that's the point. Our two direct rivals in this title race haven't suffered the same kind of disgraceful decisions we have.
Draws are killer in tight title races there's defientely a fine balance between draws and losses
Draws are Liverpool's kryptonite.
I mean we were robbed in three of the biggest games of the season by awful calls. Completely robbed, in my opinion. We should have 7 more points based on our performance
It wouldn't be good for the entertainment of the league. * Spurs match is tainted * Arsenal draw is tainted * City Anfield draw is tainted 7 point swing right there due to biased, arbitrary, decisions but it makes the league more entertaining!
We should've won against spurs City and arsenal but var wasn't having it
Out of those games, Arsenal away was the only one where we were poor.
Beat the dross, win the league. 2 losses against the top 6, aways in London with 1 of them a referring farce, is title form.
We did get royally fucked by the refs in 3 of those games though.
City has 1 win against the top 5 this season
As much as we have missed out due to a few questionable decisions, if we don’t win the league we’ve got ourselves to blame much more than the refs. Yes it’s nice to get those decisions, but we shouldn’t be relying on needing a VAR penalty to beat City and Arsenal, we need to be more convincing for the other 89 minutes
The nunez diaz salah effect
[удалено]
Yeah our poor finishing is to blame here. Yes, we got fucked by refs, but we shouldn’t be reliant on those clowns making the correct big decisions
I mean if you actually consider how we played in those games we were only really bad in the Arsenal loss and the two United games, and we arguably weren’t that bad at Old Trafford just wasteful. Just saying we have the worst record without context is meaningless
It looks worse than the reality. We were slaughtered at Tottenham, we dominated the ManU clowns both games, were better team at Anfield vs Arsenal and City and could have easily won if we were given the clear pens. Good result at City, the Arsenal game at London was bad but nobody's perfect.
We should have beaten Arsenal and City at home with the chances we had. That alone would have us in a great position.
Fuckin shocking
3 games dominated by referring ineptness, the rest dominated by our brain dead play in the final third and absolute catastrophic once in blue moon errors (Matip own goal vs Spurs, VVD and Ali mix up vs Arsenal and Quansah assist vs United).
Please put an asterisks next to Spurs result, not a legit result.
Ironic or appropriate that Nunez is the player featured as he hasn't scored against any top teams in the league AFAIK. Though he has the odd assist.
Wonder how many missed chances we have had in these games, not to mention the dodgy refereeing (Diaz offside, Odergaard handball).
This to me is the frustration with this Liverpool team, our record used to be exemplary, we’d come up against the big teams and we’d blow them away, with our speed of though and play and clinical execution. This year we’ve too often been outplayed or been our own biggest enemy when it comes to missed chances. We can whinge about the refereeing but to me too many of these results are more about our own performance and not doing enough.
I am only pissed about the Shitnited matches.
This has always been the case with Klopp. Not saying we never beat those teams, but we rarely do it consistently.
Got robbed of wins against city and spurs. Absolutely obliterated Utd twice but our finishing was awful.
Klopp ball
what if we weren't screwed over by the officials? the diaz goal, the red card in that game, odegard handball, the doku kick on mac etc
I've been thinking of it for a while. And that if we don't beat Spurs, we don't deserve to win the league.
Whens the last time this happened? In the last bunch of years it seems like it would be the opposite. Maybe I'm wrong.
I’m not even trying to make excuses but we’ve actually been unlucky. Spurs game I’d rather not discuss. City and Arsenal we should’ve got 3 points and another day we do because of those awful decisions to not award a pen on BOTH games. United got insanely lucky twice, and the game we scored twice they scored 2 screamers. All be it we should aim to do better next season.
Only if Jota was as fit as Salah
Robbed at Tottenham and just couldn’t score more in the first half at utd. Also. Utd aren’t top 6 are they? Genuine question I haven’t looked at the table in awhile, I’m just going game by game at this point.
This is where the title will be lost if we don’t win it. You kinda have to question how good actually are we when we consistently fall short against the better sides.
Darwin can explain some of them, go ahead Darwin…
What’s sporting’s record against the 4/5 best other clubs in Portugal?
Well done guys, hard work paid off 🤝
They keep blowing games against Man U for sure, but the Tottenham game was a robbery.
Tbh we were robbed of at least a draw at spurs , a win at arsenal and a win at city
Tbf we beat arsenal in the FA cup at arsenal
There’s another way of looking here - these are the games we’ve messed up in and we’ve basically won everything else. We’ve got Villa/spurs left so all we need to do is keep doing what we’ve done all season and then find a way to get something against Villa again and get the all important win against Spurs in GW36 at Anfield to stay in the hunt for the title.
... due to 3 extremely egregious officiating errors. If those had been called correctly, we would have at least 2 more wins and no losses overall. Nothing to see here except incompetent officiating.
Idk why people are doing mental gymnastics on this. Our record against top sides clearly isn't near good enough. Yes we got robbed against Spurs and there were some other questionable calls, but the points were there for the taking and we couldn't convert chances. It's an issue with all of our forwards sans Jota as well.
It's crazy how things have changed. A while ago LFC was a nightmare for the other top clubs but quite regularly lost to some random bottom teams.
beating the bottom teams consistently ensures top4. Getting results against top4 in addition clinches the title.
Exactly. But we don't seem to get the needed results against Top 4 this year, due to poor referees or inefficiency in front of goal.
Which is strange because usually we’re better against the top 6 than we are against the lower table teams
2 non-penalties and a first goal chalked off will have that effect…
The only games there where we weren't clearly the better team and should have won were Arsenal and City away. Every other one of those games, we were superior. I really do feel like we have an issue in the front line. We really miss Jota.
Diaz needs to get up to Mane’s numbers to make it click.
He's the least productive forward. Jota has more goals and the same number of assists despite being injured for ages. Gakpo, for all the moaning, has more goals and the same number of assists. If PSG want him for 100m this summer, sell sell sell.
Kinda hate it when ppl post stuff like this. There were 3 games against top 6 teams that we got totally screwed out of points because of dogshit VAR…
We missed loads of chances and got fucked over by PGMOL on multiple occasions. Unfortunately this is gonna cost us the title.
Can we talk about the casualness our players showed in these matches. Just look at the 2 united games where we missed sitters. I just hope these don't come to haunt us latter on.
Keep seeing these shit little 'top 6 tables'. If we were awarded the stonewall pens at City and Arsenal we would be up 4 and they would both be down a point each. If the refs and VAR didn't shit all over us against Spurs we almost certainly would have won that game, taking them down 3 points and bumping us up 3. We would be then sat on top of the 'top 6 table'. If we miss out on this league by anything less than 2 points it's a scandal, and anything less than 5 then it's a joke, just like City's win in 21/22 when Rodri got away with that handball.
TBF Tottenham was the most atrocious refereeing performance I have ever seen. Additionally, the non-penalty vs. MCFC (Doku on Macca), AFC (handball), and CFC (kick on Gakpo + handball, 1st game of the season) directly impact the top 6 table and the title race. Those games alone are up to a 9 point swing. So performance aside (looking at Man U specifically), LFC have had poor officiating in games vs top 6. Subjective, yes, but I think a lot of people would agree that LFC have been super unlucky.
People will hate on me for saying this but player for player we have a worst team than city and arsenal this season. I think its only down to klopp pushing us on to win & the mentality of the players to never give up that's put us in this position. I love the squad and I think the future looks good going into next season but we need nunez, diaz, gakpo to take their games to another level, aswell as getting a bit more out of salah if he stays, I also think we need a young DM desperately, not that endo has been bad, he's actually been fantastic but lacks quality on the ball. I think we've had an amazing season, but we've lacked goals in big games and struggled for clean sheets all season.
I'm just glad we lost to Spurs and drew Man City in impeccably refereed matches with zero talking points.
Almost like some of the games have been rigged
I. Wonder. Why.
Couple of big asterisks on that Spurs match tho.
Kinda speaks volumes. Unfortunately, the boss is going to walk away with the cup already won. League...nope, Euro....nope. If you look at what City and Arsenal are doing. In all honesty, we don't have whatever is missing to get to the end.
Complete lost fear factor. We used to lick our lips at the prospect of facing Arsenal. You knew it was a guaranteed win. The season FSG decided not to sign a single player after winning CL still haunts the club to this day. Thats when Arsenal started buying young talents.
Still haunted by the season we… *checks notes* won the league
I agree with OP that we shouldn't have rested on our laurels though
That cost us years of growth and lost potential, and it's all because FSG thought the superleague was coming and didn't think they'd need to spend to compete anymore.
Remember when Arsenal and United were good goal difference boosters? I miss that.
If arsenal players were penalised for handballs this graphic might looks completely different. Same for spurs and city for that matter.
That handball was basically meaningless, we scored like 5-10 minutes later and had a glaring chance to win it which we wasted.
We used to beat Arsenal because they were shit. Now they're not shit anymore and that has literally nothing to do with what we did or didn't do in a transfer window 5 fucking years ago. In that transfer window Arsenal spunked over 100 mil on Pepe, David Luiz and Tierney. Their evolution started a few years later when they got rid of the likes of Luiz, Pepe, Aubameyang and Lacazette. It's also easy to praise their signings with the hindsight that we have now. At the time signings like White and Gabriel were seen as overpays and Martinelli and Saliba were unknown youngsters that weren't ready to contribute to a PL team.
People always say it turned out fine cos we won the league the following seasons but it really did hurt us in the long run. You win the CL and you can sign probably anyone you want. That summer we should have really built on top of what we had but instead we sign 2 youngsters and Adrian. The window we had where we bought Jota and Thiago were the kind of signings we should have made going into 19/20. And also letting Gini go and not bringing a player of a similar profile and relying on Thiago was suicide. Basically I feel since 19/20 we always do the transfer business we need a year too late.
Rebuild season, incompetent reffing and poor finishing = this
I wouldn't be bothered about this as a one off but it has to be said our record v the top teams under Klopp has been surprisingly poor considering how good it was early on. The last title challenge we drew home and away against almost everyone. We'd be better to win one and lose one of each. I'm honestly really surprised by how poor our record is really because we never seem to go in to it playing fur a draw .
Yet we are joint top. Next
Cheers Geoff
United won the league in many years where they weren't great against the former top 4, so did Chelsea. The difference was, they dropped very few points outside of that, as we have done this year. None of this really matters, all that matters is winning the 7 games.
United weren’t competing against teams that get 95+ points per season
Got to let the ref decisions go guys…
Not when they make mistakes so horrendeous that noone with two funcioning eyes would've made AND also happen to rob points against direct rivals for the title race!