Who knows if I’ll see your face again
Denial goes, denial will return
There are two types of fans. There are the fans who were born for success. Championship every season, titles, the best players in the world stand in line to sign with you. If you have 80s-born friends, United fans or Barça fans of the Rijkaard era coming to Pep, you know what it’s about. And there are the second type, those born to suffer. Those two or three Liverpool fans in the class of United fans in the nineties or Everton fans in family reunions from the beginning of the millennium until the last derby.
The nice thing is that eventually, without noticing, during their lives both types of fans become the second type and come back for goodness sake. A kind of symbiosis that takes place in the mind of a football fan. The essential difference between them is the reference to success and failure. The first kind is sure that what has been is that it will be forever. Did Feigen and Dalgliesh go? Sons is from the system, nothing will change. Fergie gone? Okay he chose Moyes, nothing will change. So we did not take a championship one year, okay, happens. May the opponents, once a decade, enjoy blessings. Next year we will be back. We made a purchase, we changed coach, next year it’s ours.
Before you know it, a decade or two has passed (or in the case of Liverpool fans three) and then you have already become the second type of fan. While the first type of fan takes everything for granted because he is used to it, the second type no longer takes anything for granted, which makes him sometimes extremely anxious. The team star is about to miss two games? It’s better not to go up to the game, we have nothing to sell without it. The difference at the summit dropped from 19 to 17? That’s it, we’re going to kick a bucket, it’s happening again.
What’s amazing is that while to become a neurotic, anxious fan, one who is sure the group was formed to take down nine cabins of suffering alongside one side of contentment takes years upon years of suffering, disappointment and disillusionment, the ease with which you become the privileged fan is the first kind if you provide To be confused) is unbearable. Two or three good seasons and addicted to all that goodness. The truth, as always in life, is somewhere in the middle.
And if you say that there is destiny, you say everything is written
So maybe I have no reason at all to be sad
To say Liverpool are going through a weird season would be an understatement. Getting a seven from Aston Villa back when Van Dyke was fit and then giving a seven to Crystal Palace on a pitch where it has struggled in recent seasons are just two examples. Liverpool’s misfortune this season with injuries (we’ll expand on that later) is something perhaps unprecedented. As of early March Liverpool had lost players to injuries and illness for more than 1,000 days. By comparison, Leicester players, who also suffered many defensive injuries, missed less than 700 days.
Aside from the injuries of his defensive players, to which can be added Tiago who played just 135 league minutes in the first four months of the season and Diego Jote who injured his knee in a completely unimportant game against Midtland in the Champions League home stage final, Jürgen Klopp also had to face a sharp drop In the ability of some key players like Trent Alexander-Arnold, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino (which makes the decision to loan Taki Minamino to Southampton in January look puzzling).
But while serious injuries, at least those of players not responding to the name Joel Matip, are unforeseen, perhaps a decline in fitness of players who have done two rare seasons is something that should simply be put up with. This is a team that scored 196 league points in two full seasons, while winning the championship and the Champions League in a season in which 97 points, the fourth highest score ever in the Premier League, were not enough for the championship.
Players like Alexander-Arnold played almost restlessly for two seasons, with no pre-season before the current season and now there is a natural decline seen in young players who have difficulty maintaining stability over time (as also happened to Mason Greenwood and Phil Foden at times), something he did manage to do in both Recent seasons. Even in the last two seasons the team has not had a particularly deep roster. Along with the injuries, the drop in fitness, the lack of crowd that in the case of Liverpool is very noticeable, maybe it’s okay to make one season less good. But again, accumulating 10 points from 12 games in 2021, losing 6 from last 7 games, is beyond a bad season. So where do you go from here?
It’s been four weeks since the floods
The sun does not shine, the sky is not lit.
How did all this happen so fast? Just two-and-a-half months ago, at Christmas, Liverpool led the table by 4 points over second-placed Leicester after that resounding seven at Selhurst Park. City (who were with a missing game) stood in eighth place, 8 points behind Liverpool. Only since then Liverpool have scored 12 points out of 42 possible while City have scored 42 out of 45. Liverpool have played 68 games without a league loss at Anfield. 3 and a half seasons. Then 6 consecutive home losses.
And these are the names: Ashley Barnes, Stephen Alsace, Mario Lamina. There are 5 goals between these three this season. 3 of them gave Anfield 0-1 wins to their teams: Burnley, Brighton and Fulham who are currently in 15th, 17th and 18th places respectively. In the case of Lamina it is 1/3 of his career goals in the Premier League, in the case of Alzeta it gets worse, the league goal of his first and only Premier League in his career.
So the first and immediate argument is the injuries, and somewhere in a great deal of justice. It’s hard to remember a team whose first three brakes end the season and then also the fourth and fifth option, two back ties that played not in their natural role and lacked a link in what turned out to be a double loss, were also injured. Liverpool have placed an imaginary number of 20 (!!) different teams in the center of defense this season. Read it again. twenty.
But these are not just the injuries. To beat West Brom, Burnley, Brighton, Fulham or Newcastle and Southampton away at home, or even just to score an Anfield field goal in 11.5 hours, you don’t have to have Van Dyke, Gomez or Matip. One has to simply make the adjustments in the method of play that reality imposes on the staff. When Klopp had just arrived at Liverpool the brakes were Martin Schartel, Colo Tula and Mamado Sacco, not the brakes most suited to the high defensive line Klopp likes to play, but still the team has found a way to win games.
Klopp has insisted and still insists on not changing the method of play according to the staff currently available to him. At times, as in the second goal in the away game against West Ham, it has been proven that Liverpool can still be lethal in outbursts, but this requires a fundamental change in Klopp’s style of play that tries at all costs to play with a high, fast and intense defensive football. Consistently. In cases where it fails the result is very dismal, especially for viewing.
One who has made the necessary adjustments to a crowded, weird and crowded season is Pep Guardiola who suffered injuries from the only two strikers he has on the roster at the start of the season, saw he was failing to produce consistent consistency and decided to slow down the pace of the game. He decided that City will not give thirds and fourths this season but first and foremost will not absorb and most importantly – will be the most consistent.
Beyond all the hallucinatory dreams
There is no cure for longing
Liverpool currently look very far from a place that will lead them to the Champions League next season through the league. On the other hand she is in the quarterfinals and with a good draw, who knows. There are plenty of examples of teams winning the factory in low seasons. In addition, unlike previous seasons, we have already seen that missing Champions one season is not the end of the world, certainly not when it is not really clear when the fans will be able to return to the stands. Despite rumors about the German national team that it was natural for the Liverpool owner to emerge, it has already been announced that Klopp is the man who will continue to lead the club and that his plans to strengthen the squad will be backed up in the summer transfer window even if the team fails to qualify for next season.
There are some strong players in sight: Ismaila Sar of Watford has reportedly been very close to joining in the summer and then again in January, but Liverpool’s appreciation of his price was lower than demanded by the London club. Still, it is not unlikely that Liverpool will return to his option in the summer. Lyon’s agent, Hussein Auer, has also confirmed in recent days that Liverpool have expressed interest in the player, which is conceivable when less than six months to the end of his contract, Ginny Vinaldom has yet to sign a new contract and chances are he will leave in the summer for free.
And of course there are two names that all European giants will line up to sign – Holland and Ambape. As for the latter many Liverpool fans fantasize about him half jokingly, half seriously and the truth is that there seems to be interest beneath the surface. The owners have already proven with Van Dyke and Allison that when they sign a player who can upgrade the team transfer fees can be broken, but also with the move to Nike last summer, the release of a joint collection with LeBron James this summer, and an adoption contract that puts Liverpool at the top of the club in terms of revenue. This is a deal that is really hard to believe will be executed because of the salary structure at the club. No signing at Liverpool has signed a first contract that has made him the highest earner on the team and there is no doubt that Real will be able to offer Ambape a bigger contract.
And it’s a crazy world like the song you loved
And the captured heart has not yet been released to me
Sometimes it is easy to forget that we are still in the midst of an epidemic. The clubs did not sell subscriptions this season and had to return money to fans and TV networks last season, which affected the plans of the vast majority of teams entering an era of uncertainty and revenue shortages. Thiago may have arrived in the summer with not a lot of money (27 million pounds and that too after arduous negotiations with Bayern), but according to reliable reports, in a plague-free world Timo Warner would land in Liverpool in the summer as he hoped and not in Chelsea (an example of a team supported by an oligarch And not really harmed, if already the opposite).
In the end, Jote landed in Liverpool in a transfer that on the face of it seemed very puzzling to Liverpool fans, especially because of the amount (41 million pounds that can reach up to 45 million), but when you go into the details of the deal you see a different picture. Wolves have agreed to accept only about 10% of the purchase amount in the coming year. In addition, they bought from Liverpool the young Dutch defender Ki-Jana Hoover for 9 million pounds in immediate payment with another 4.5 million subject to appearances and so on. Which means Liverpool have actually got Jote and money in their pockets for the near term.
Despite the hopes of rival fans, chances are that this season will end up being a bit like the same October 7: 2 result at Villa Park – as a kind of freak. A mutation that took on a life of its own. A season of 20 different teams in the center of defense when some have not yet celebrated 20. A season in which the team coach loses his mother tragically and after a month the team goalkeeper loses his father in a tragic accident. A season that looks like an accident, but accidents happen.
Sometime in the next year the fans will start to slowly return to the pitches. At first these will be a few thousand, maybe the two thousand who pushed the team to victory during injuries against Tottenham last December. Then tens of thousands will come in slowly all those fans who waited three decades, those fans who were born to suffer, some of whom never got to see a championship and because the corona also did not get to celebrate it, they will go back and paint bright red Anfield instead of those lonely and sad layout signs. They will remember that they have one of the best coaches in the world, an owner with a proven track record and a mentally strong staff. They will forget this season, forget this accident and start the journey anew.
Because even this end is a beginning
See you in the next incarnation
