Arne Slot ‘repeating Brendan Rodgers mistake’ as Liverpool CRISIS deepens further
If there was any doubt before, there can be none now. Liverpool are the designated crisis club and absolutely everyone is putting the boot in.
To sum it all up quickly: Arne Slot is making Brendan Rodgers-level mistakes, Liverpool are the worst team in Europe’s top five leagues and the only good news to be found for the Reds is the fact it’s ‘unlikely’ the Premier League’s actual worst club will win the title.
Mediawatch is starting to genuinely fear what might be said if Liverpool lose to Villa at the weekend..
Slot’s Real mistake
Mediawatch gets it. It is open season on Liverpool and their players and their manager. They are now clearly the Premier League’s designated crisis club after a much-changed side crumbled to defeat to Crystal Palace in the Carabao Cup to suffer a sixth loss in seven games.
It is very bad. Nobody is saying this isn’t very bad. But the fact things are objectively and measurably so very bad only makes Dominic King’s apparent desperation in the Daily Mail to make them even worse seem such a stretch. Liverpool’s pudding is currently so very eggy that it’s almost impressive to achieve the aim of over-egging it, but King has pulled it off. Fair play.
Liverpool fans got what they deserved – and Arne Slot is at risk of repeating Brendan Rodgers’ fatal mistake after gamble went wrong against Crystal Palace
Blaming the fans is a bold headline gambit, but King has not been stitched up by the headline writer here.
Perhaps there is an element within the club who can do without the League Cup; the abject performance in the final against Newcastle in March lives long in the memory, as does the muted atmosphere from the fans who arrived at Wembley thinking all they had to do was turn up to win.
They got what they deserved that day and they got exactly what they deserved against Palace, too.
Even looking beyond this quite weird attack on the fans, do we perhaps need to at least stop for just a second and acknowledge that if your point is about Liverpool thinking they ‘can do without the League Cup’ then perhaps your very first reference point shouldn’t, in fact, be their appearance in last season’s final? Which was also the third appearance in the last four finals for the competition’s most successful ever club.
But talking of reference points brings us to the real stretch here. Having already referenced Liverpool picking effectively an academy side for an FA Cup clash against Shrewsbury, King really goes for broke and compares Arne Slot making loads of changes in the Carabao – something literally every manager of every club does at some point as fixtures mount – to the most infamous much-changed team in Liverpool’s recent history when Brendan Rodgers fully took the p*ss at the Bernabeu.
Back in the Champions League after a five-year hiatus, Real Madrid away was the game everyone connected with the club looked at as the one around which they could declare ‘we are back!’ but Rodgers, given the circumstances, saw things differently. Chelsea at home was a bigger deal.
His teamsheet became infamous, with Steven Gerrard, Phillipe Coutinho, Jordan Henderson and Raheem, Sterling among a raft of names left out. The makeshift team Rodgers selected acquitted itself well, only being separated from Real by a Karim Benzema goal, but the damage went further.
Not sure what that comma’s doing there, but never mind that. It really, really shouldn’t need saying why making a load of changes for a Carabao Cup fourth-round game against Crystal Palace is not the same as making a load of changes for Real Madrid away in the Champions League, but apparently it absolutely does need saying.
Crystal Palace at home in the League Cup and Real Madrid away in the Champions League are different orbits but where things are the same for Slot and Rodgers is that a weakened team in midweek has ramped up the stakes for the following weekend.
So, to paraphrase: these two things are completely different, sure, but also in a way the same. It really is something when even the genuine crisis of six defeats in seven games across three competitions isn’t enough.
The Magic Number
The Mirror’s Liverpool offering comes under this headline
Liverpool’s misery goes on as Crystal Palace hit Kop flops for THREE at Anfield as Reds boss’s Carabao Cup gamble backfires
First up, describing that team as ‘Kop flops’ is, with a couple of exceptions, incredibly harsh. You can have Milos Kerkez and Alexis Mac Allister but the whole point is that this was very much not the team that has been flopping so very hard.
Mediawatch is more perturbed, though, by the idea of being ‘hit for three’ – never mind ‘hit for THREE’. We’re not quite sure exactly what number of goals conceded are necessary before ‘hit for’ or capitalisation become acceptable, but we know deep in our bones that it is definitely more than three. It doesn’t look, sound or sit right.
So you’re telling me there’s a chance…
As ever when Liverpool are the club in the CRISIS firing line, The Sun feel particularly safe to gleefully fill their boots given nobody from Liverpool will actually see it.
They giddily report that Liverpool are currently the worst team across Europe’s top five leagues after losing six of their last seven games, with seven games of course long being accepted as the standard metric for the measurement of current form, while also digging deep into the archives to find previous examples of such very specific Liverpool despair.
Wednesday’s defeat to Palace also marked the first time Liverpool had lost a domestic cup match at Anfield by three goals without scoring since February 1934.
Back then, they lost 3-0 to Bolton in the FA Cup.
We all remember that one.
But there’s more, and Mediawatch puts it to you that the following contains the single greatest ever recorded use of the word ‘unlikely’.
But Liverpool will be desperate to avoid repeating more history.
Back in September 1953, they lost five consecutive games against English opponents.
That run saw them end up being RELEGATED from the top flight.
However, Wolves also won the First Division that season.
And with the Molineux club currently rooted to the bottom of the Prem without a single win, that curse is unlikely to repeat itself.
Mediawatch is also interested in the fact the Liverpool relegation omen here simply cannot be untangled from the Wolves title-winning one. We don’t consider ourselves an expert on your curses or the omens of this world, so we’re sure there’s a very good reason why Wolves are key to the whole caper.
It does, though, feel like the very idea of actual Liverpool and actual relegation really might already enough by itself.
Have your AI slop and eat it
Some friendly advice for The Sun.
If you’re going to do a story about Phil Foden and his partner Rebecca Cooke being targeted by ‘sick internet trolls’ posting hoax stories about their children’s health accompanied by ‘fake AI images showing Phil and Rebecca appearing to cry together’ then maybe don’t also publish the fake AI images showing Phil and Rebecca appearing to cry together yourselves, yeah?
Especially when you stick that picture right underneath this line.
The father of three has enlisted an army of legal specialists in a bid to take down hoax stories and images from several social media platforms.
Because there’s a danger it might make it look a little bit like you could be absolutely despicable ghouls having your cake and eating it, rather than being deeply concerned for Foden and his family’s suffering, and we know you wouldn’t want that.
