Topic: Fulham 1-0 Liverpool: Full time

[Crackerjack Sam]

I knew I just knew it. Muggy linesmen and inept refs. Cheers Glen the linesman, you have shite eyesight and decision making

[firing squad]

8 league goals in 27 games for Suarez. It's becoming an issue. Outrageously talented footballer. Outrageously frustrating in front of goal.

Doesn't help him that there seems to be nobody else capable of pitching in with consistent goals.

did you watch the game at all?  Suarez was out wide so the porn star could do fuck all in the middle and even there he was the best on the pitch a nd scored a wrongfully dissallowed goal.

[S]

sick of keepers making miraculous saves and having their game of the season against us....

I'm not making excuses (the ref etc) because I think it's ultimately down to us to start scoring but I'm with you there.

[NorthamptonKopite]

I'm sorry, but if Pepe doesn't spill the ball then we don't lose the game. But he did, and they scored. End of.

Couple in the fact that we again missed chances that we should have scored, and there's really only one direction to point the finger of blame

i.e: at ourselves. Being down to 10 men hindered our chances to win, but it wasn't the sole cause of this defeat.

I'm fucked if I'm going to have a go at Pepe though. A player who has bailed us out numerous times made a mistake? Fuck it, so what, that's football.

24 games still to go. Anyone throwing in the towel on 4th now can throw themselves off a fucking bridge as far as I'm concerned

It confuses me that our fans have this confidence that we will suddenly turn around our poor fortunes against the lesser teams. People are just being realistic in thinking that the top four will be beyond us this season. And in all fairness it's not shame, this is without doubt the toughest season to get into the top four in the premier league era, and probably ever. It's not about people throwing in the towel, it's about people having an opinion.

My opinion is that our squad is not better than Arsenal's, Tottenham's, Chelsea's, Man United's or City's and that they will finish above us over the course of the season. I'm not 'throwing in the towel', it doesn't mean I'm not going to watch all our games and not will us to get that top four spot. It's just called being realistic.

[redk84]

Ref was appalling.

We weren't clinical enough again but apart from right at the start of the game and after the "red card", we restricted them to shots from outside the box.

Should have been winning before the game changed.

VERY frustrated. Especially cos it had to be us as the only ones to drop points out the top 7.

However it will be a long season. Lots of Ups and downs to come.

Bed

[snoop123]

Didn't deserve that. they kicked lumps out of us all game, and we're the ones who see red.

[cptrios]

well despite all this hate towards the ref, henderson played a decent game in the middle

well despite all this hate towards the ref, henderson played a decent game in the middle

well despite all this hate towards the ref, henderson played a decent game in the middle

well despite all this hate towards the ref, henderson played a decent game in the middle

I'm pissed off as hell but let's please not ignore how much Henderson is improving with each passing match. Silver linings, people!

[tbonejones]

I am fucking gutted. Should have finished our chances. If we had then we would gave won, simple as that. Bugger

[-Willo-]

He looks onside because the angle you have that picture on, if you make it so we are on line with Hangelaand he is clearly offside.

[Twelfth Man]

I'm sorry but what does carroll add to the team, really?

Knock downs. Heart, courage, fight, a decent left foot. The sad thing is, his qualities are not aligned to cultured pass and move football. His signing has always struck me as such an enigma in terms of our identity as a football club. I'm sure the older supporter's will point out Norman Hunter, Toshack etc but those days are gone. If Andy lacks speed then you would expect him to have nous in front of goal. And vice versa. Carroll unfortunately for us lacks both qualities. I still hope that he is a brace away from going on an amazing goal scoring spree.

The transfer fee and expectations at LFC I fear are bearing down heavily on a decent young player.

[Carllfc]

Very harsh red card, Spearing clearly got the ball but apart from that we had plenty of chances to win. We will bounce back from this little slip-up. Senderos should have been sent off for that foul too.

[**** The Pain Away.]

Stop blaming everyone else and just realise that we are not good enough at the moment.

[Crackerjack Sam]

so many bitches on this forum
we battered them all match
stop trying to make a crises out of everything you bunch of pussies

 

[Kopite B205]

I am fucking irate after that. I thought we were poor tonight and lacked the required cutting edge again! Time and time again we ruined good positions with a poor final ball. In the first half we dominated possession without really creating any real chances, and before the sending our improvement should have seen us at the very least leading the game.

The sending off was harsh, but there is no way on earth we can push for a top four finish with Jay in that vital holding midfield position - the lad is simply not good enough. I have offered my support to Carroll on countless occasions this season, but tonight he disrupted our fluidity and incisiveness. With each passing game I fear the big man was a massive mistake.

The frustrating thing is we can go and beat Chelsea away twice, outplay the best team in the league then come unstuck against an inferior Fulham team who were clearly there for the taking. We need to be more ruthless! Moaning about referees and hitting the woodwork doest cut it with me. Fulham should have been put to the sword long before the sending off.

Here we are close to Christmas and we still haven't got a settled team. Maxi should be playing and I'm mystified why he isn't.

[IanMac]

Haha wasnt even me people are too sensitive on here

Not sensitive, just sick to death of the fucking whoppers that only appear on here after we lose spouting shite.

[callanlfc5times]

We've got a good run now were we'll win our next 5 games.

Didn't realise out next five games were against Chelsea, Arsenal, United, City and Spurs.

[hesbighesred]

Yep, hard to disagree with that. Id say if anything we need a poacher in front of goal.

In my honest opinion, the last thing we need is a specialist player who contributes fuck all in general play and doesn't offer much/anything outside his specialist area.

Besides, we've already kind of got one of those with Carroll. Despite his play today his finishing isn't all that bad, it's the rest of his play that's an issue, and that would be exactly the same with a Hernandez - type. The latter doesn't start all that often for Utd either. It's a nice option to have, don't get me wrong, but not one to go for when there are glaring holes elsewhere.

We need a better striker, or for Carroll to improve dramatically, another winger and a defensive midfielder before we even think about a nice option player like that, in my view.

[DougLFC94]

still trying to get my head around what to make of this, apart from gutted, obviously...

[stevieheighway]

We were so unlucky tonight, that ref was brutal.

We probably should have won anyway but we are a work in progress.

I still piss myself with delight when I look at where we are now compared to the shit we were in this time last year. Its such a joy to support Liverpool again even on nights like tonight.

[skene11]

Optimist of the year! Good man, don't take crap off no one ya hear?

QPR at home
Villa away
Wigan away
Blackburn at home
Newcastle at home

That isn't even optimism, it's expectation.   

People definitely need to give themselves a shake though, the season is far from over.  Kenny got it wrong tonight, he doesn't need told that.  Carroll just didn't work, as much as everyone wants him too.  Our movement caused Fulham problems, not Carroll's aerial presence.  He took up room that Suarez and Bellamy thrive on.

[Red_Rich]

Oh and can I just say .. HATE playing on Monday night when everyone else has played and got their points in the bag.  Had a bad feeling about this game all weekend.

[gakimab]

Positives for tonight were henderson, thought he was immense. Also thought agger and skrtel are looking better and better each game, just a shame we didn't have the quality of Lucas in front to aid them.

[Sinead7]

Not a knee jerk reaction been thinking it for a while- we need a clinical finisher in the mould of Aguero or Adeybayor. Suarez isn't a clinical finisher for Liverpool and he needs help.

[red tower]

I thought Dembele and Dempsey both had too much space in the area that Lucas normally controls, wee Jay done ok before his (VERY) harsh red card but obviously not in the same league as Lucas. As a few posters have said above... if we don't take our chances we won't win games unfortunately!

On a lighter note - does anyone know where I can buy that trackie top the team were wearing before the game? It isn't on the online shop and I've never seen it before, thought it was class.

[fefs]

completely gutted...to think arsenal were once in "crisis" and are now above us in the league and qualified for champions league knock out stages...

er no one has qualified yet, not even Man City

[Licky]

Isn't it past your bedtime?

Get a sense of humour dh

[Billy The Kid]

But you say we should take our chances yet we did and scored but not for a awful call we would have won or at least got a postive result.

We took "a" chance and scored. As in singular. As in 1 fucking chance in 90 minutes. Even if it had stood, it probably wouldn't have been enough to win us the game. A game which we largely dominated. It is a trend that has plagued us this season. See last weeks game against City as another prime example. We have scored 17 goals in 14 games this season. We're continuing to miss chances which is costing us points. No point blaming fucking refs. No one is going to hand us goals. We have to go out and fucking take our chances or we will continue to squander points. As I said, we've only ourselves to blame yet again. Our goal difference is +5. Man City's is +35. Now for full marks, can you tell me the correlation between the difference in ours and City's goal difference and the difference in our respective league positions?

[Torpedo Tommy]

No point in blaming the ref.

Sorry.

Sorry but don't understand this at all. It's not blaming the referees though is it. Say we create a chance and score it. We could still end up dropping points because someone is paid a stupid amount of money to get decisions wrong.

Fine if he and his team get them wrong for both teams. But surely you can't be shit for only one team? Paid a fantastic wage to get the decisions right and be impartial.

If I performed like that at work, week in - week out, I'd be asked for an explanation of why I'm so shite and would be out of work soon. Not a bad job to get paid a Kings ransom for no more than 180 minutes work a week.....especially when you can get it so wrong and remain fireproof.

True, we were average in the last 3rd and mistakes cost us bur you do hope that eventually someone in authority clamps down on the lack of refereeing quality.

[steveeastend]

My view on the match that will end with a slightly depressed rant:

Another game we dominated, and which, on the balance of play, we more than deserved to win. We made so many clear chances, and weren't THAT troubled, though it's clear that we missed Lucas hugely. Henderson was incredibly unlucky with his shot - the bend and spin on it, well, I'd have put someone else's house on that bouncing off the post and in, it looked in all the way.

The front three looked intersting, the actual shape of the team was good and it's kind of hard to understand why that's the first time we've seen that formation, though I still think it's a little bizarre that the one position we don't seem willing to try Suarez in is on the right of that 3 where he scored about 70 billion goals in a season for Ajax, especially given that Bellamy plays so well on the left of the 3. I mean, why reverse them? Made little sense to me. Still, that's a very minor quibble, overall the tactics were spot on, as shown by the number of chances we made, even down to 10 men.

Spearing was unlucky, a harsh red card. In isolation you could justify it, and him getting the ball really isn't the main issue - it's all about the potential danger of the way he made the challenge. But it's another one where the ref lets physical, cynical challenge after challenge go, leaves cards in his pockets, only gives a yellow to Senderos for a deliberate, horrible and very cynical challenge right through the back of Adam, then has absolutely no hesitation sending Spearing off. Yes, by the rules he was within his rights to send off Jay, but if he's taking a hard line then he could have sent off Senderos, and certainly should have awarded a penalty considering the foul continued into the box (like with Mash a few seasons ago, foul clearly started outside the box but penalty was given because it carried on into the box). Senderos also could have been booked towards the end for wrestling Carroll to the ground.

Once again it's that inconsistency which absolutely infuriates me. I wouldn't mind the Spearing thing if it were part of a genuine clampdown on shitehouse challenges but it isn't. Do the same thing on Suarez at the moment and the ref will give you a fucking blow job. It's disgusting and it's a major, major failing in this league - shithouse refs making decisions based on reputation and media hype. This isn't 'Nam. There are rules. Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the FUCKING RULES???

-----------------------------------------------------------

OK, here's the more irrational, ranty bit.

Carroll was shite again. I thought he was shite against Chelsea too mind, but everyone seemed to think that was encouraging. He had two decent chances today and took both of them shitly, was shit on the ball, shit off the ball, and looked a mile off the pace. I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything about him that makes me think he'll be the tits one day. I see glimpses that he might make a quality Peter Crouch style squad option, but couldn't we have put in a sly bid for, say, Peter Crouch as a quality Peter Crouch style squad option rather than spending a wad of cash that could have paid for 90% of players in world football, or bought us 2 or 3 promising and highly rated other players who aren't at that 'top class' level yet? We paid Aguero money for him. We paid cash that should go to proven class or a kid so promising he could dominate the world. We could have gone all out with early bids for, say, Phil Jones and Ashley Young who we seemed hugely keen on.

Oh well, never mind. I really hope you come good Andy, I really do, but I'm just not seeing it. Sorry.

The other rant part is this:

Fuck this. We are not going to finish fourth this season, not a chance. We've blown it, and it isn't even January. What chance we did have disappeared with Lucas' injury. We now have a solid back 4, but it's lost it's shield, so essentially we still have a horribly soft underbelly. Up front we are utterly clueless. We miss a shocking number of presentable chances - perhaps not helped by leaving out Maxi all the time - and even beyond that our decision making is grim. It does seem like a mental thing because we are so much sharper against better teams, it's like we get a bit complacent. This isn't helped by it being open season on fouling Suarez, but then he's hardly an innocent party when it comes to wastefulness. In fact he's horribly wasteful for us this season, given his fee, talent and compared to other players in his kind of role for our rivals.

We've put ourselves in this situation, to an extent, through a degree of poor planning in the summer and in January, we've rid ourselves of players who can take chances and replaced them with players who struggle with it.

There's still a lot of promise in the team but we're not going to see it until next season, and we're going to need clever investment. We're going to have to work hard to keep Suarez in the meantime because you can bet there'll be bids and people trying to tap him up in the summer. It's also going to be that much trickier to attract the kind of talent we need given the almost certain lack of CL football next season.

Oh well, onwards and sideways.

It makes it even more depressing that we battered them last year under much worse circumstances.

It´s hard to understand why we forced the transformation of the first eleven so quickly, especially as it´s clear to see that there are way too many players in our first eleven either not ready yet or not from the quality required.

We cannot afford to loose too many points from now on and I think there have to be the best be playing in every league game from now on, anything else would be throwing away another season.

[Smug Cassandra]

We have now one of the worst midfields in the world.

Spearing, Adam, Henderson.............are no......Mascherano, Alonso, Gerrard..............

All of our summer signings are really average and we keep changing a winning forumla.

[rushyman]

Defence solid, midfield good, movement good. Individual mistake cost us the goal, ref in my opinion has turned the game on its head.

Goals and forward the only problem, need a striker in Jan, Bellamy/Maxi and Suarez either side in a 3.

[lfcmaster]

It confuses me that our fans have this confidence that we will suddenly turn around our poor fortunes against the lesser teams. People are just being realistic in thinking that the top four will be beyond us this season. And in all fairness it's not shame, this is without doubt the toughest season to get into the top four in the premier league era, and probably ever. It's not about people throwing in the towel, it's about people having an opinion.

My opinion is that our squad is not better than Arsenal's, Tottenham's, Chelsea's, Man United's or City's and that they will finish above us over the course of the season. I'm not 'throwing in the towel', it doesn't mean I'm not going to watch all our games and not will us to get that top four spot. It's just called being realistic.

our squad is poor compared to liverpool squads of the past

apart from maxi who else is going to score goals ?

[El jefe]

The most frustrating part of all of this is we can see that we have potential. Yet a mixture of abysmal finishing, great goalkeeping, frames of goals, poor refereeing decisions and just blatant bad luck is screwing with us. It will come good eventually. Until then, today is just one of those days. Or in our case one of those every other weeks. 

[Juan Loco]

Top post, sir.  Nail on head IMO.

Post the sentiment in one line and you're a twat, do it in 100 and you're a genius.

First week of December. Four points behind.

[Crackerjack Sam]

I'm pissed off as hell but let's please not ignore how much Henderson is improving with each passing match. Silver linings, people!

We were so unlucky tonight, that ref was brutal.

We probably should have won anyway but we are a work in progress.

I still piss myself with delight when I look at where we are now compared to the shit we were in this time last year. Its such a joy to support Liverpool again even on nights like tonight.

Goodnight all

[hesbighesred]

I'm pissed off as hell but let's please not ignore how much Henderson is improving with each passing match. Silver linings, people!

Good call actually. Henderson was quality again, really seems to be improving and was actually desperately unlucky with his shot, rather than just poor which was the problem with most of the rest of our finishing. He really couldn't have done much better with that shot, and with the bend on it I can't believe it didn't go in off the post.

He'll be absolutely class in a year or two, and looks like he'll have plenty of goals and assists in him too once he gets his confidence bedded in.

[ThepepeReina]

been as patient as possible with carrol, always stated i back him to come good. Losing patience now, needs to start producing much more, and soon.

[Red_Rich]

In the first half we dominated possession without really creating any real chances ....

You didn't see Henderson's chip defy the laws of physics then and come spinning back off the post?

[Neil D]

Kevin Friend and your lino you horrible cheating c*nts. Not a red card for Spearing, Suarez onside and scored a great goal, Senderos should have seen red. We hit the woodwork twice and Reina spills one to Dempsey. Not our night. Need to regroup and get as close to 15 from 15 as possible until City, not going to be easy.

[jaffod]

I've just calmed down and had a look at the table/fixtures. We should get maximum points from our next 5 games going into City away.  That will get us right back up there.

Let's put this game behind us and kick on to the next game.  Nothing we can do if we're cheated out a game by a shite referee.

Stop it, just fucking stop it.