Zoob

They had Rosenior on a 5 and a half year deal.

Yes me too - I just worry that Edwards, Hughes, FSG may not see it the same way... But I hope they learned from what happened with Rogers, when they kept him even after the 2014-2015 season, and it just meant the following season was a waste (obviously we got Klopp, but were such a mess and still finished well outside top 4)

I think that what's happened with Chelsea and Spurs since firing their managers may scare FSG from making a change. I hope I'm very wrong... Summer obviously better for a fresh start than Oct when we're already down to discussing whether we can make top 4/5

A few decent pieces of play, and if Isak hadn't looked like he was playing in lead boots, maybe the pass to him may have resulted in something more. But he did some absolutely woeful things today. a couple of attempted passes that were embarrassingly bad. Like something you see in an under 6s game or an over 60s game. I don't know if Wirtz will be able to make it here, but I do remember early Coutinho. His shooting was terrible, like a kid kicking the ball, and he was too easily dispossessed. And then in his second season he bulked up, and just kept getting better. Wirtz has the talent, but let's see whether he wants it or not. That's a weird shout given how bad Isak has been. I think the point is more that Ekitike aside (who has also pretty poor in the couple months before his injury) ALL our attackers have been very poor. It's an unpleasant competition to try to work out who among them has been the worst, because they've all been varying degrees of s***.

And before going out for dinner with Margot Robbie.

I saw a vid about Chelsea's finances that suggested how screwed they might be. They were turning down 30-40 million a year sponsorship deals when they were UEFA vase and world club FIFA cashcow winners. They believed they could get more, but it hasn't happened, so they've just lost out on sponsorship money (and now sponsored by another made up company partly owned by their investment group for far less). They have a huge and expensive marketing department that is doing little other than generating costs, and yeah, they have this overall ticking timebomb where maybe even in less than 7 years, they are going to be screwed. The investment company thought they were onto a sure thing, but it hasn't turned out that way. It's pretty encouraging really, particularly now that the Prem has belatedly stopped clubs selling s*** to themselves (at least I think they have)

I'm annoyed this isn't a 12.30 KO, as that's 4.30am for me, and when the games start at that time, it's all over by the time I wake up, and I can either avoid watching entirely or fast forward through us doing nothing for most of the game.

Felt sick to read that doing your ACL is 'better' than a full rupture. Some have made it back fine (But then players like Beckham were never quick to start with). for a player like Ekitike, who was actually the only one with any pace, it's just sickening. Adds to the utter utter s*** show of the season. And while Leoni's ACL seemed a freak injury, maybe this is down to conditioning and other factors that are a bit more causal.

He's better than Kirkland but I can understand the comparisons, because when he dives at full stretch, it looks more like he's just falling over to one side rather than being a 6 foot 6 keeper. And he does have the same look of fear in his face that Mignolet used to have.

Or there's almost nobody making any good runs, and when they do, he's actually quite good at picking a pass out. I don't know if he's going to make it here or not, but with the quality of players around him, Salah, VVD and MacAllister's form all falling off a cliff and the tactics of the team, it's pretty hard to assess anything. Ekitike did almost nothing before he went off injured, Isak looked exactly as unfit as he is (and did even less than Ekitike) Salah's legs couldn't move as quick as his brain wanted them to, Gakpo didn't even have the opportunity to cut in and blam it into the defender... Don't think any of that is Wirtz's fault.

It's funny, but I think that was a terrible decision. Eyes were on the ball, wasn't like he gave it any meaningful pull and, I don't think it was deliberate. To put it another way, it was the least violent red card for violent play I've ever seen. VAR shouldn't be doing that s***.

Feels weird to be so "meh" about a win. Yay, 3 points. Better than not winning. Great goal by Rio, who played well. Made hard work of it in the second half and tried our best to let Fulham back into the game. Using Joe's long throw to trow it back to Virgil behind the half way line was a nice change of long throw tactics. Doesn't make me more optimistic about anything we have left coming up.

It's embarrassing that we look at this run with (justified) trepidation (which is why I said we're as likely to finish 8th than 5th) . Even if we played Wolves 7 times, I wouldn't be confident of winning more than 3.

The crapness of the other teams (and maybe Villa focussing on Europe) means we might still be able to limp into 5th. But I think there's just as much chance we finish 8th than 5th.

And hubris.

I think there's some recency bias in there, but either way, it's still utter s***. s*** is s***, and when comparing one kind of s*** to another kind of s***, the answer is still s***. And what makes it worse is that winning the league and spending as much as we did should not result in the season we've had.

Gonna pretend it's another international break. The last one was the best ever.

Could easily be 20 once the season is done.

I just want to enjoy football again. I had no excitement for tonight, and wasn't even bothered when they scored because we all knew it was going to happen, just a matter of how many. Quite something for a manager to do that to a club like ours.

Aside from not losing by far more, there was nothing surprising about that game and our performance. I'm sure nobody expected anything different, and we delivered exactly as we have been doing for much of the last 6 months. We may as well focus on getting the most out of Gomez and his long throws. Get him up to expert level on use of the towell. Maybe if you dry one side vigorously and leave the other slightly damp, it will move more in the air, like a cricket ball.

Below Brentford, who at the end of last season sold their two best attacking players and appointed their set piece coach as manager (leading many to believe they would get relegated this season).Np better than the Mancs who had Amorin for much of that time. Only 2 more points than Everton. So grim. And I don't think people can say the games after we'd secured the league don't count, cos fans paid money for that, and that's where the rot really set in.

This is so sadly insightful. This is why we play pointless football. So that he can say stuff like this. We can faff around for 35 minutes doing nothing, waiting for the other team to grow into the game, capitalise on a mistake, score with their first shot on target, and it's like a win for us because for 35 minutes we didn't look like conceding. And then of course he has to have a go at our keeper too, just to build up his confidence.

A single sentence: "In recent weeks, and increasingly in recent days, Xabi Alonso has opened himself to the possibility of stepping in earlier, even within the coming weeks, a development that has also been reflected in conversations with Florian Wirtz, with whom contact has remained intact, and what elevates this beyond a simple adjustment is the context surrounding it, as Florian and Jeremie Frimpong, both of whom experienced Alonso’s methods firsthand during their time together at Bayer Leverkusen and now play together again at Liverpool, have repeatedly revisited internally how Xabi’s mid-season arrival in Leverkusen allowed him to establish immediate authority, implement first principles without delay, and create a structural foundation that was later amplified through a full pre-season, ultimately leading into the unbeaten run that followed, that exact pathway, once viewed by Xabi Alonso as out of the question given his intention to take a six-month break and only assume a new role at the start of a season, is now increasingly being discussed again, reflecting not only Florian’s preferred outcome but also a growing feeling on his side, shaped by more recent conversations with Xabi, that this earlier arrival is now seen as a realistic and potentially preferred scenario, with the underlying logic no longer centered around waiting, but rather around controlled early implementation." He needs to make friends with Mr. full stop, and Mr. Paragraph. But hopefully it's mostly true and not just the result of too much coffee. He was spot on re Wirtz when everyone thought he was a spoofer.

The oddest thing about this tweet is how that Moby bloke translated French clubs into 'Belgium clubs' and then goes on to list three French clubs.

Room to get much better, but in a functioning team with some actual tactics and players who pass and move, I still believe he'll be fantastic.