Why Liverpool ‘win half the match’ before kick-off and ‘lucky’ argument is nonsense

Liverpool have a ‘psychological edge’ over their opponents even while ‘looking pretty vulnerable at times’ because they have invented scoring goals.

But first, Diego Simeone should face a Cantona ban.

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.

Simeone like you

Mediawatch was a bit sensitive. Admittedly you don’t usually get that level of obscenities at Anfield but its hardly unheard of in football is it? Simeone only reacted because his team were outplayed and conceded a winner.

If he was that bothered about it, he could have reported it to a steward. Its unacceptable to respond to verbal abuse with violence at a football match.

Every football game, in every country, ever, has had the crowd giving the opposition grief. You cannot be a professional goalkeeper if you can’t be told you are sh*t ahhhh everytime you take a corner.

The fan was wrong to give all that verbal abuse to Simeone, he should be asked to moderate his behaviour going forwards.

Simeone was wrong to try and fight a fan. He should be banned for a long time like Cantona.

Simeone is hardly a paragon of good behaviour in football himself is he? As Jesus said, don’t give it if you can’t take it.
Alex, South London

Let’s be clear, I’m a Liverpool fan but I’m trying not to be myopic about this… but your Mediawatch today, WTF guys? Really?

Let’s be clear, Simeone did NOT react to insults or gestures coming from some knob head in the crowd, Simeone reacted to conceding a 92nd minute winner. Do you really think if they’d seen out the draw or even got a late winner, he would’ve even looked at the that fella in the crowd? Would he b*llocks!

Now to the main reason for my email. I will go easy as I try and  help you down from your high horse, as I’m aware you need at least one hand to clutch your pearls with

‘acted like a complete pr*ck’ – yep, no argument there. I go the match (season ticket part share) and there’s a guy near us who shouts obscenities most of the game. And rightly enough we call him a pr*ck.

‘Just casually shouting “f*** off” over and over again before ending with what some people are calling a ‘spit’.’ – Whoah there high horse. First of all, if you don’t KNOW he spat, why TF are claiming it on here? Don’t cover yourself with ‘some people’ crap. That’s a pretty serious accusation to be putting out there with no evidence.

And also, you watch any crowd at any match around the country when the opposition score. This is exactly how they act. I’m not even going to bother sending you links to examples as you know exactly what it’s like.

Are you trying to tell me what that guy did was worse than what Simeone gets week in, week out in La Liga, in his native language (does he even know what ‘bell-end’ means)?

Come off it. Should this guy be lauded. Of course not. Should he be singled out by you, and tarred with a pretty disgusting brush. Also no.
Matt. Liverpool

I didn’t watch the Liverpool game but I did see the article about the supporter hurling abuse at Simeone. As I read it I was instantly reminded of Lee Ryan’s (formerly of Blue) mail after the Newcastle game and this line in particular “How in anyone’s right mind can Liverpool fans ever be slagged off”.  Well Lee, there’s reason number 2 for the season. I’m sure you were outraged by it, or does it only concern you when it’s directed at a Liverpool player? Interested to hear your thoughts!
Ratt Mitchie NUFC (England 3 Spain 1 after we play Barcelona this evening)

Shaky defence

So there are two narratives – Liverpool are lucky because they keep winning late

And

Our shaky defence will cost us.

Firstly it’s not lucky to score late, that’s just one team playing to the whistle while the other isn’t. We do it more often, so we score late more often. It was a feature of fergies best teams and klopps too. There’s nothing lucky about it.

We need to stop using the word luck to describe it really. Luck is when the ball hits a beach ball goes into the goal and gets counted. Luck is when it cannot be accounted for by intentional action.

What other teams should be learning is that it’s actually very very hard to defend for 90 mins and expect to take something away from it. For that to happen you gotta be perfect, for your opponent to take something away they just have to find a weakness one time.

On the subject of defense I’m not worried at all. When we need to defend we can, arsenal being a good example. But defending well (despite what pundits say) does not win titles or even games. Scoring goals does. Nobody ever won a title drawing every game 0-0 and conceding 0 goals. This is why top managers focus on scoring goals, you need goals to win. Defence only stops you losing.

It also sets a bit of a psychological edge when you come up against an opponent who always scores, mostly wins and gets more likely to score the more tired the game gets. So you win half the match before you step on the pitch. That’s the edge city had in the past when everyone believed a good result was only being beaten 1-0 as opposed to the 4-0 thrashings everyone else got. It’s the edge Milan used to have where everyone felt it was nigh impossible to get past that back four.

And it’s an edge we now have that pretty much everyone believes one way or another we are going to score and going to win, despite us looking pretty vulnerable at times. The reason – is because we can and do score, almost always.

If we can score 1, there’s no reason we can’t score more.
Lee 

Manchester United not a big club? They’re THE big club

Thank God Pablo from Dublin stepped up to the plate and debunked all the utter gash that’s been spouted recently about United apparently reverting to their mean in mid-table while Liverpool ascend to their rightful perch. Pablo used some neat historical parallels, very hard to argue with his logic.

I won’t be quite so methodical in my own take. I also live in Dublin, a city which is dominated by United and Liverpool fans when it comes to football. The absolute spray that gets spouted in both directions is nauseating, often belched out by people who have no grasp of context or nuance (and very short memories). We all know the type.

Nestled in among all the gobsh*tes however, I have a Liverpool-supporting friend who I quite like to watch games with. Being a United fan myself, he’s been having a far better run of it for the past 18 months or so. But here’s the thing – having a non-rabid, Liverpool-supporting friend helps to give you context on how quickly football can swing. It wasn’t so long ago that he was in the doldrums as they pathetically defended their last title win, or dreading United’s second season under Ten Hag because the first had turned out pretty well. As a stark reminder, that was less than 2 years ago.

I’ve seen enough swings in ascendancy over even a brief 5-6 year span to stop me from spouting guff to denigrate Liverpool or big up United in any kind of historical context. Anyone doing that is a fool, desperate for their nonsense to magically become manifest. The 2 most successful teams in England are, by definition, the 2 biggest until such time as they’re overtaken. And even if they do get overtaken, that success has established them at a level where their heritage speaks for itself. Any attempts to warp that with selective framing of their success is doomed.

So don’t bother trying to tell yourself that United are somehow not a traditionally gargantuan club because they’ve “only” had 2 hyper-successful spells. They’re arguably THE gargantuan English club, as evidenced by them announcing revenues that continue to grow even as the team plumbs the depths. And as desperate as Liverpool fans understandably are for their current plight to last indefinitely, eventually some of the stuff being thrown at the wall will stick. Maybe. It could happen.

In the meantime, shouldn’t they be enjoying their club’s current status instead of trying to force it down everyone else’s necks? Surely the whole point of being at the top is that you can lord it over everyone else WITHOUT resorting to whataboutery to try to undermine other teams? I swear some people are only football fans to get drunk on schadenfreude instead of embracing their own team’s success when it arrives.
Keith Reilly

The big question

Damola AFC or Berlin Germany mentioned twice in his mail this morning about the Big 4 or 6, in his suggestion that Mikel Arteta does not need to win a trophy this season (getting the excuses in nice and early!).

However, he really needs to be keeping up with events, as in his ‘Second XI’ analysis, Dave Tickner is already stating that we have a ‘Big Eight’ now.

How long will it be until we have a Big 20 including all teams in the Premier League?
A, LFC, Montreal