So, now what?

[Judge Jules]

Interesting post as usual from Binny, but with respect I think he's drawing a false distinction there. I doubt any of us believes we can realistically expect to win the title, but the best way of finishing as high as possible is to aim as high as possible. Settle prematurely for 4th and before you know it we'll be stuck in 6th or 7th.

 

[manwithnoname]

Interesting post as usual from Binny, but with respect I think he's drawing a false distinction there. I doubt any of us believes we can realistically expect to win the title, but the best way of finishing as high as possible is to aim as high as possible. Settle prematurely for 4th and before you know it we'll be stuck in 6th or 7th.

You're just hoping some cunt will say something about "aiming for the moon, and landing on the stars" just to annoy me.

 

[Best Believe It]

We're fifteen games from greatness

 

[FoxForceFive]

You're just hoping some cunt will say something about "aiming for the moon, and landing on the stars" just to annoy me.

Hahaha, that phrase actually came to mind when I first replied to this thread, & I laughed out loud cos I fucking hate it. Nearly as much as I hate those generic 'Family, Laugh, Love, Live' or similar, murals in peoples homes.

 

[manwithnoname]

Hahaha, that phrase actually came to mind when I first replied to this thread, & I laughed out loud cos I fucking hate it. Nearly as much as I hate those generic 'Family, Laugh, Love, Live' or similar, murals in peoples homes.

Yeah, well at least those are vague, intangible concepts. We actually know the distance to the nearest star, and it's The Lying Rag, 93 million miles away.

Which is 92, 750,00 miles further away from the Earth than the moon.

Not even the same fucking ballpark, is it? If you aim for the moon and fall short, where you actually end up isn't "among the stars", it's burning up in the Earth's atmosphere.

 

[StevieM]

It's also worth noting that City are now equal on points, and United not far behind.

And with City finally dropping the fucking car-crash Bravo, you would have to assume that they will improve defensively, and rely on their 200m attack to start winning more games

It's ok.... it's February.

We have a month of Arsenal imploding to look forward to.

 

[Buddha]

I just want to finish above Spurs really.

 

[Hansern]

I just want to finish above Spurs really.

Yep, and Utd.

 

[RedStar]

Momentum is everything...it all depends on where we are with 5 games to go...say if we were 4 points behind with 5 to go...I'd back us...

Once the Hull game is out of the way we have a tough run of fixtures with Spurs Arsenal Leicester Burnley City and Everton and how we do over those fixtures will probably determine where we finish because we play so many direct competitors for top 4 places. But we now have a full strength squad to chose from and no other competitions we should see a return to something like our form pre Christmas. The last 8 games are all pretty winnable so I'd fancy us to outperform our rivals during the run in.

 

[FreshRed]

Once the Hull game is out of the way we have a tough run of fixtures with Spurs Arsenal Leicester Burnley City and Everton and how we do over those fixtures will probably determine where we finish because we play so many direct competitors for top 4 places. But we now have a full strength squad to chose from and no other competitions we should see a return to something like our form pre Christmas. The last 8 games are all pretty winnable so I'd fancy us to outperform our rivals during the run in.

The winnable games are the only ones I worry about these days.

 

[StevieM]

Once the Hull game is out of the way we have a tough run of fixtures with Spurs Arsenal Leicester Burnley City and Everton and how we do over those fixtures will probably determine where we finish because we play so many direct competitors for top 4 places. But we now have a full strength squad to chose from and no other competitions we should see a return to something like our form pre Christmas. The last 8 games are all pretty winnable so I'd fancy us to outperform our rivals during the run in.

... and we effectively get 2 weeks off after the Spurs game.

 

[Judge Jules]

Winnable games? They're all ******* winnable games.

 

[The Nomad]

I keep waiting for Chelsea to implode, but they don't. I feel the fact they are 9 points clear of 2nd and that 1 point seperates 2nd to 5th, means we are going to scrapping with teams around us rather than looking upwards.

For me dry January means the dream is over. I just hope Klopp has learnt he can't go hell for leather all season. Especially if we have Europe next season.

 

[StevieM]

I keep waiting for Chelsea to implode, but they don't. I feel the fact they are 9 points clear of 2nd and that 1 point seperates 2nd to 5th, means we are going to scrapping with teams around us rather than looking upwards.

For me dry January means the dream is over. I just hope Klopp has learnt he can't go hell for leather all season. Especially if we have Europe next season.

Not over, no, but certainly not great.

There isn't much more scope for dropping points between now and the end of the season - maybe 6 points - which will be tough.

It's Chelsea's to lose.

 

[Dreambeliever]

Ah Jesus Jon there is no chance.

We should have enough for top 4 but the league is gone.

We gambled by not replacing Mane and Coutinho for Jan and it backfired in terms of our league chances

 

[StevieM]

Ah Jesus Jon there is no chance.

We should have enough for top 4 but the league is gone.

We gambled by not replacing Mane and Coutinho for Jan and it backfired in terms of our league chances

You know that Mane only missed 2 League games & Coutinho only 1 in January, right?

 

[Insignificance]

You know that Mane only missed 2 League games & Coutinho only 1 in January, right?

Stop ruining alternativ facts with true facts.

 

[Dreambeliever]

You know that Mane only missed 2 League games & Coutinho only 1 in January, right?

How many points did we drop in those three games?

And Coutinho still isn't 100% and it has shown while Mane only came on against Chelsea.

Two capable replacements could have made all the difference.

 

[StevieM]

How many points did we drop in those three games?

And Coutinho still isn't 100% and it has shown while Mane only came on against Chelsea.

Two capable replacements could have made all the difference.

So just to clarify.... we should have bought new players in January to cover Mane & Coutinho for the couple of games they missed - and these players would have bedded in and had an immediate impact before being dispensed with in February when Mane & Coutinho are back.


We didn't drop points for lack of scoring Dreamie.

 

[manwithnoname]

So just to clarify.... we should have bought new players in January to cover Mane & Coutinho for the couple of games they missed - and these players would have bedded in and had an immediate impact before being dispensed with in February when Mane & Coutinho are back.


We didn't drop points for lack of scoring Dreamie.

Is this only a discussion about the Premiership games? Because as fun as it is to pile onto Dreamy, every fucking person on Earth knows we were shite in every single aspect of football during January, with issues scoring goals and also conceding goals, leading to the worst month of results in a quarter of a decade

So while it may be fun to talk about how we didn't really miss Mane, it's quite obvious that we did, and everyone has discussed it at length.

Was his absence the only factor? Of course not. But we should have had far more squad options to deal with his absence, and the other frailties in the team

 

[Dreambeliever]

So just to clarify.... we should have bought new players in January to cover Mane & Coutinho for the couple of games they missed - and these players would have bedded in and had an immediate impact before being dispensed with in February when Mane & Coutinho are back.


We didn't drop points for lack of scoring Dreamie.

Your clarification is incorrect as I'm sure you know. Fully fit players coming in with a similar calibre could well have hit the ground running and made a huge difference.
Our alternatives were fucking brutal.

Klopp gambled and lost badly.

If we had brought said players in we wouldn't have dispensed with them we would simply have better competition for places and improved options off the bench and for rotation.

We could have arguably still be in both cups too.

I beg to differ regarding your scoring remark. We have gone completely off the boil in the final third while our defence continues to flatter to deceive.

No doubt we will recover now with those key players back and ample rest between games but our shot at the title and of a cup are gone for another year.

 

[StevieM]

Is this only a discussion about the Premiership games? Because as fun as it is to pile onto Dreamy, every fucking person on Earth knows we were shite in every single aspect of football during January, with issues scoring goals and also conceding goals, leading to the worst month of results in a quarter of a decade

So while it may be fun to talk about how we didn't really miss Mane, it's quite obvious that we did, and everyone has discussed it at length.

Was his absence the only factor? Of course not. But we should have had far more squad options to deal with his absence, and the other frailties in the team

Dreamie was the one who originally limited it to affecting our league position.

Which, given Mane might have been rested in at least some of the cup games, is fair enough.

Over-rotation of the squad was a bigger problem - much more so than not having Mane.

We changed the defence in every game - that's more of a problem.

 

[StevieM]

Your clarification is incorrect as I'm sure you know. Fully fit players coming in with a similar calibre could well have hit the ground running and made a huge difference.
Our alternatives were fucking brutal.

Klopp gambled and lost badly.

If we had brought said players in we wouldn't have dispensed with them we would simply have better competition for places and improved options off the bench and for rotation.

We could have arguably still be in both cups too.

I beg to differ regarding your scoring remark. We have gone completely off the boil in the final third while our defence continues to flatter to deceive.

No doubt we will recover now with those key players back and ample rest between games but our shot at the title and of a cup are gone for another year.

Alright - we fucked around changing large amounts of the team game-to-game between cup and league.

Result, unsurprisingly, inconsistent performances.

Yes - some of our alternatives aren't great - but which signing, made by another team in the EPL do you genuinely feel we missed out on?

It's all well and good banging on about strengthening - but none of the top teams bought - so what does that tell you?

We conceded more against Sunderland & Swansea combined than we did against City, Utd & Chelsea combined - yet we we scored against less against the latter teams.

We conceded 3 at home against Swansea!!!!

What you're highlighting is the band aid to fix broken leg.

 

[Dreambeliever]

Alright - we fucked around changing large amounts of the team game-to-game between cup and league.

Result, unsurprisingly, inconsistent performances.

Yes - some of our alternatives aren't great - but which signing, made by another team in the EPL do you genuinely feel we missed out on?

It's all well and good banging on about strengthening - but none of the top teams bought - so what does that tell you?

We conceded more against Sunderland & Swansea combined than we did against City, Utd & Chelsea combined - yet we we scored against less against the latter teams.

We conceded 3 at home against Swansea!!!!

What you're highlighting is the band aid to fix broken leg.

Or maybe just maybe our attacking players aren't good enough to do it consistently week in week out when not involved in a game where their attitude will always be at 100% such as games against top sides.

The staple of champions is that even when not at 100% they still win, when we aren't at 100% there doesn't seem to be much else.

Lately we are either excellent or dire and mostly dire which coincides with having fuck all decent attacking options.

Yes our back 5 have been shite but if our attack was doing its job we wouldn't have to worry.

We beat Watford 6-1, if we lost that game 0-1 would you be blaming our defence or attack?

 

[Halmeister]

We're not going to finish in the top 4.

 

[keniget]

We're not going to finish in the top 4.

Inclined to agree sadly.

 

[hmmmmm1]

From 8th to 7th. Progress eh.

 

[Halmeister]

We will finish 6th. In danger of Everton overtaking us actually. We've been well and truly found out. The hardest thing is that this game was no surprise at all. Almost systematic replay of a game we've seen god knows how many times over the last 15 years. We never learn.

We should park the bus for the rest of the season. Might get a point or two that way.

 

[King Binny]

Interesting post as usual from Binny, but with respect I think he's drawing a false distinction there. I doubt any of us believes we can realistically expect to win the title, but the best way of finishing as high as possible is to aim as high as possible. Settle prematurely for 4th and before you know it we'll be stuck in 6th or 7th.

I definitely agree with aiming for as high as possible than settle for 2nd best. My reply was directed towards FF's opening post (about the possibility of catching up with Chelsea).

A more realistic aim would be to win the 'mini league' between ourselves and the other teams between 2nd to 4th, esp. given how the teams around us have been picking up form and points as well as our dip in form since the turn of the year.

I was hoping today's results will instill more confidence and offer a glimmer of hope (thus holding back on the reply for fear of jinxing us! >_<) but we've fallen apart like a pack of cards. The old cliche of next game being the most important one couldn't be more true for us at this moment.

 

[Judge Jules]

Might that Dutch fitness coach whose dig at Klopp we were all ridiculing have a point after all? They looked distinctly leggy out there.