Liverpool fans trying to ‘retcon’ season expectations is ‘absolute bullsh*t’

Editor F365 12 Nov 2025 6:57 AM

‘Absolutely inexcusable’ Florian Wirtz verdict given in German media

Liverpool continue to dominate the agenda as the fans try to pretend they never expected to win the title anyway.

It’s nonsense of course and is called out as such. Feel free to write in about other stuff to theeditor@football365.com

Come on, who pretended to be a Liverpool fan?

I’m calling Darren, the Liverpool supporter’s, email out right here and right now. That was 100% a perfect parody of the all the awfulness of Liverpool supporters that other fans cannot stand.

No one could be that unself-aware as to type those actual words and not be trolling us all.

Well played, sir.
Colin

…Right then, City fans, time to own up. Which of you thought it would be wildly witty to write to the mailbox of an esteemed football website as “YNWA Darren”?

Look, it is quite well written and even Arsenal fans – with their well known sense of humour – got the joke, but it isn’t a good look to mock the afflicted.

Behave!
Mark Meadowcroft

Why pretend that Liverpool were not contenders?

We’re not midway into November and Liverpool fans already want to retcon early season expectations. I’m struggling to understand why their fans would take this approach to reimagine what they themselves said at the start of the season rather than simply admit that their plans have spectacularly failed. The collective embarrassment radiating from that fanbase is nearly tangible at the moment.

That said, and I’m sure you would get plenty of mails on the subject, what is this new nonsense to claim that they did not spend top dollar on established players? A true miracle that club, even when they outspend every other club in Europe, they seemingly have not? Now all they need is a ‘refreshed squad’ on top of the 400 million.

Oh and by the way, they must also now get rid of Slot and get a ‘tactical’ guy as well. Whatever happened to his supposed tactical genius and his ability to bend the course of games to his will at half-time with subs and all that?

I mostly wrote this mail however, wanting to remind dear Darren that no there was in fact no luck involved when Liverpool lost at Anfield to Manchester United. Your captain couldn’t get back to defend in time for the first goal, and for the second your entire team decided it was safe to counterattack after a set-piece when it wasn’t.

Against City, your captain decided to do that moronic swap with AR at the worst time for the first goal, and then your whole team decided not to close down a shot from distance for the second. And in neither of these games was Liverpool’s goal threat particularly impressive.

I’m with you on the offside goal though. That should have stood, because Donnarumma was already (understandably) going the wrong way to cover the much larger open space to his right and was thus wrong-footed to be able to save the goal. I am not sure why AR is judged to have interfered with the play as its pretty common for goalkeepers to shift towards the center of the goal as the cross comes in. The accuracy and pace of the header meant that the slight step from the keeper was enough for the ball to be out of his reach. Mind you, the goal standing would not have altered the result of the game though.
Man United fan, India (Wayne Rooney was right.)

CHECK OUT: An exhaustive list of the 51 PL players who have created better chances than Wirtz this season

…Ah Darren.

It’s fans like you that make every neutral fan really, really dislike your club.

Not paying top dollar? For Isak? Buying young players, unlike City. The only players in the last 6 transfer windows they’ve bought who were over 25 were Kovacic, Gundogan and Philips.

“Anyone that supports the club knew it was about hopefully getting into the Champions League”. Sorry but that might be the most out there thing you said. You’re telling me that all ‘proper’ Liverpool fans thought that after winning the league and buying £400,000,000 worth of players, that at best ‘Pool would get into the CL this season? Really Darren?

Oh and yes, I’m sure Konate is a turncoat if he does what he is entitled to do and not accept a new contract for a place of work. YNWA and all that bollocks though.

This is why neutrals will never like Liverpool FC it’s a cult more than a fan base. An incredibly entitled cult at that.
Will

…Darren, thank you – genuinely – for such a stereotype confirming slice of delusion. It genuinely made me, as they say, lol.

Apart from Liverpool spending the first five games of the season riding lady luck so hard she probably put her back out, and alongside being the most consistently soaped up and w*&@ed off team in the country, this line in particular was incredible in its one-eyed lunacy: ‘rather than doing a Man City and just paying top dollar for established players’

Again, Darren – thanks for the laughs. You can always rely on that Scouse wit.

Love,
Ben

Four points, Liverpool fans

Not as in, I have 4 points to make, but as in there are 4 points separating 4th and 13th in the Premier League right now.

As a Man United fan I am enjoying seeing the huge vats of piss-boiling going on amongst Liverpool fans at the moment for their fairy limp capitulation to City on Sunday, almost as much as I’m enjoying seeing United gradually emerge blinking from months (Christ, years) of unending shitshow into the new daylight of vague competency. Hesitantly, though, because we’ve had moments like this before in recent years that have led to nothing more than ever diminishing optimism on the road to the next disaster.

Anyway, the point is I wouldn’t get too excited or too upset just yet as a fan of any team from Sunderland down to Everton, as it’s probably another 6 games or so each before you’re going to see any significant margins open up between the standings. Any victory could potentially catapult, say, Everton up the league or a defeat could see Sunderland’s great start fall away if a few other results go against them, and it’ll be this way a wee while longer. Delicious for clicks and arguments, but all these positions are currently built on sand.

Liverpool’s next few fixtures are relatively kind, and losing to City at the Etihad is never a complete disaster over a 38 game season, even if it was a pretty comprehensive defeat. If they’re sitting in midtable come Christmas, fair play, that’s a bad season. But I’d hold off on writing off Salah, VVD, Wirtz and Slot just yet.

That said, the revisionist nonsense where some Liverpool fans are saying that after spending 400-odd million to improve a title-winning squad their only expectations were a transitional season and maybe CL qualification, that, mate is absolute bullshit. You thought you’d walk the title and Slot would begin his dynasty. Don’t go pretending otherwise now after a few defeats.

They’ll finish third.
Alistair Gilmour, Glasgow

Is Arne Slot improving Liverpool though?

So after a previous entry in which Liverpool fans (presumably) disagrees with the idea of sacking Slot. The common comment was – he should be given time.

We hear this a lot with most clubs. But let’s focus on Liverpool – how much time? Genuinely curious. Do you wait until you’re out of all comps and mid table at Xmas and then take action? Do you wait longer?

I don’t think an arbitrary amount of time should be the focus really. Whether or not you should sack someone depends on two factors really –

1. Are you seeing an improvement?
2. Are the problems being addressed?

If the answer is no then you could give the guy 100 years and it won’t make a difference.

So let’s ask –

Are we seeing an improvement at Liverpool? You can make a very good argument that almost everyone except Szoboslai has regressed. We’ve VVD losing his man all the time. Salah gets tackled almost immediately. Gakpo missing back post sitters. Gravenberch has gone from a player of the season to a wandering nomad with no defined role.

Now some (Salah vvd and Robertson) you can blame age if you want. The rest you can’t.

2. Are the problems being addressed? Honestly, I don’t know. It doesn’t look like it since our back four seems to be forming a new pop group called “Goals Allowed” the midfield spends its entire time on the edge of the opposition box and the strikers seem to be on strike (except Hugo).

Should he be sacked. You can argue it’s too soon. But I imagine Rodgers would have argued that 15 games into a new season was too soon as well.

I know someone will point out that Klopp had a bad run of games when he first joined as well. The difference is we were seeing an improvement to how we played. Right now, we are seeing it get worse.

The idea that managers always need time is false. Some clubs (Madrid, Chelsea, 90s Milan) sack winning managers on a regular basis and still win. It didn’t matter as much 30 years ago if a mediocre manager was left in charge because clubs didn’t have billion pound wage bills and they didn’t lose £100m in revenue for missing out on the European cup.

It’s a different game today and the margin for error is smaller, both on and off the pitch.
Lee

READ: Five Liverpool stars who need to be replaced with upgrades, including Virgil van Dijk and Mo Salah

Excuses, schmexcuses

Loved the missives from the Lees in this morning’s mailbox, especially Lee from Blue’s (we miss you – we’ll all rise for the reunion tour) – it did get me thinking though. Lee the first is not allowing Slot any justification, it is all his fault – he must go.

Lee the second is blaming the (once again) shocking officiation and it’s direct impact on Liverpool’s chances. Both are presumably Pool fans, and it is interesting to me how context, and how one’s interpretation of events in order to bring one’s own context, has informed diametrically-opposed opinions from two people who broadly want the same thing – success for the Reds.

Here is how Google defines an excuse and an explanation – eerily similar right?

Excuse – a reason or explanation given to justify a fault or offence.
Explanation – a reason or justification given for an action or belief.

The only difference appears to be if fault, or shitness, is involved, and with Liverpool it unquestionable is (the context) – so doesn’t that meant that any explanation immediately becomes an excuse, because Liverpool are so shit?

No mention at all about Jota again in any of the coverage, this appears to have been dismissed as an excuse – for me it underpins why Slot is behaving the way that he is though. He’s trying to take the attention off the players who are clearly struggling, by doing all the things that Lee the first quite rightly calls out. The players are struggling because they have other things on their minds.

I mentioned this a few weeks back as not being an excuse, but it does explain the massive drop-off from last season in everybody’s performance – they aren’t 100% focussed, and in elite sport it only takes a 0.5% drop-off to get dominated by a team at 100%, which is what we saw on Sunday. Along with the fact that every signing is underperforming and actively making the established players worse – the new guys are trying to build relationships with damaged guys. Slot shouldn’t be trying to get them to learn new tactics in this state either – our best performances have come when relying on the muscle memory from last season and before.

There was some talk of weaponising grief from some trolls btl in relation to this, which whilst incredibly sad and disappointing that people would do that, does in fact acknowledge that grief is at play here – and who are you to tell anybody how to handle their grief, when they have to perform in front of thousands multiple times a week?

So yeah Liverpool are out of it, are undeniably shit, Slot’s tactics and talking are sub-Rodgers bilge atm, but they have been unlucky too, and all under the cloud of losing a mate – so maybe whilst laughing, which I understand is all rival fans really want to do, you can acknowledge that there are explanations (that necessarily must be called excuses) at this time.
Gofezo (PGMOL 100% needs to be axed though – I feel for the refs, their job is impossible already, and PGMOL / VAR are making it exponentially worse)

Clear and obvious bias against Liverpool though

As a Liverpool fan, Lee’s email made me cringe and yet contained some “truths”. My VAR stance is always “What if the roles were reversed”, so would I have wanted a penalty if Donnarumma had clipped Salah, absolutely. Would I want the “goal” disallowed had it been John Stones scoring, probably, I think the criteria were NOT met but there was a case and I’d been clinging on to that (although as we know, had it been John Stones, then it would have counted).

The Ed’s comment that the assistant disallowed the goal is also wrong. They do not have the power to do this and by definition are only assisting. Unlike pre VAR, the referee does not have to immediately respond to the assistant’s flag, they sometimes do and lo and behold, they’re sometimes wrong!

(My point was that VAR did not disallow the goal – Ed)

There are some marvellous (unsurprisingly) words on the IFAB site that state “The referee must always make a decision, i.e. the referee is not permitted to give ‘no decision’ and then use the VAR to make the decision; a decision to allow play to continue after an alleged offence can be reviewed.” So if the referee allows play to continue, he has made a decision, what would be an example of NO decision?

His comments on Michael Oliver are spot on though, he is the best example of the incompetence and inconsistency of officiating. The verbal gymnastics to defend some of his on field and VAR decisions are truly amazing.. His acceptance of the Saudi invite displays a serious error of judgement, clearly and obviously, the organisers did not feel there was a competent enough referee in the Saudi League to officiate in an exhibition match. Did they consider Michael a “celebrity”? His Greater Manchester born cohort Tierney is also suspect. We are told that the VAR are now encouraged to stick with the on field decision (i.e. less “clear and obvious} but Mr Oliver saw enough in the penalty to recommend a review but stuck with the on field for the “goal”. I realise I have said that both decisions were right but it is the inconsistency that rattles me, whilst he has made decisions which did not benefit City, his “inconsistency” weighs heavily in their favour.

Whilst some would argue “City have more possession and therefore commit less fouls”, they do have Rodri and Silva to negate this, so his record of having issued less yellow cards to them than any other “big six” team and never a red is also dubious, I know someone has to have the least but?
Aitch (not from steps)

Newcastle will be better with Wissa

Reports of Newcastle’s demise are a little exaggerated in my opinion. Yes, the owners Fd up really badly by turning down Liverpools ‘you have Ekitike, we get Isak’ offer. Ekitike was the perfect Isak replacement.

Newcastle’s biggest current problem is the absence of Wissa who will fill the Isak role better thank Big Nick. However good Big Nick is, Eddie Howe can’t play Howeball with him at #9. Howeball is dependent on a rapid #9 getting on the end of chances in the box. If Wissa was fit Newcastle would be further up the table.

Having said that, its wrong to judge Newcastle’s season by their current league position when they are 6th in the Champions League and in the Carabao QF. When Wissa comes back they will climb up the league and progress in the cups too. Eddie Howe will also have the option of playing Ancelloti’s Madrid/Milan formation with Big Nick as a #10 (in the Kaka/Bellingham role). He can’t do that without also having a proper striker in an advanced role.

The one unresolved issue facing Howezinho is can he put out competitive teams 3 times a week? He has an incredibly detailed and intense management style that so far over 2 seasons has not been able to combine PL consistency with Champions League. participation. Id back Mr Howe to overcome this challenge.

Newcastle have barely started their season yet, considering what is still to come. If Wissa comes in, stays fit and scores goals they will go from strength to strength after Xmas as Eddie Howe teams often do.

They would also be wise to bring in another fast goalscoring striker so the Toon can go back to playing Howeball as their default setting.
Ben Teacher