Liverpool plan trophy parade with JUST three trophies – but Klopp won’t forget Kane injustice
Liverpool have planned a victory parade even though there will only be three trophies on show. It might be four if it wasn’t for Harry Kane.
Welcome to the cack parade
This season has seen a real rise to prominence of the Celebration Police. It’s been great. Real fun. But it is around this time that their distant cousins, the Trophy Parade Sheriff’s Department, start to come into their own. And that, too, makes for sensible enjoyment in which no-one makes themselves look really silly.
Over to the MailOnline:
‘Liverpool reveal plans to host a victory parade even if they LOSE next week’s Champions League final and miss out on the Premier League title, with the FA Cup and Carabao Cup already won’
How pathetic of Liverpool to use a victory parade to parade tangible evidence of their victories. How naive of Liverpool to combine said victory parade with representatives from Liverpool FC Women, who won the FA Women’s Championship, thus meaning at least three trophies will be on show. How laughable that Liverpool had to plan this kind of thing weeks in advance for incredibly obvious reasons and didn’t instead invite the logistical nightmare that would be waiting until the Champions League final on May 28 to see whether they win an extra two trophies, considering the parade has been specifically scheduled for May 29 because that is the only date on which all players will be available before departing for international duty or a summer break.
And in the final sign that everyone has lost sight of what success is in football, here is how Max Winters describes this decision made by a club that will have played the absolute maximum number of games available to them this season:
‘Despite the possibility of Klopp’s squad finishing with just both domestic cup competitions in the trophy cabinet this season, Liverpool will still hold a victory parade on May 29.’
Just both domestic cup competitions. Christ. Imagine how embarrassing that would be to only win two major trophies in one campaign.
Trophy strife
But the odds are that the victory parade won’t involve the Premier League trophy. It’s the MailOnline again who deliver this news:
‘Premier League presentation teams will be at Man City AND Liverpool as title race goes down to the wire… but the genuine trophy will be at the Etihad as official’s expect Pep Guardiola’s side to secure fourth crown in five seasons’
Those sound like fairly practical official’s. Well played to the official’s for looking at the Premier League table and deducing that the team currently top with one game remaining is likely to remain top after that match is played. Good official’s.
The opening paragraph is pretty amusing (and thankfully that ungodly apostrophe has been dropped):
‘Premier League officials have confirmed they will set up identical presentations at the Etihad Stadium and at Anfield as they expect the title race to go down to the wire.’
And there Mediawatch was, thinking Liverpool would be given a trophy made entirely of foil by some random off the street, with Jordan Henderson banned from doing the shuffle because the papier-mâché stage couldn’t take the strain.
Margin of error
If Liverpool do not win the Premier League title, absolutely everyone knows it will be down to… a 2-2 draw against Tottenham in December? What?
‘THE last time Manchester City pipped Liverpool to the Premier League title on the final day of the season, the margin was a single point – or 11 millimetres,’ Dave Kidd begins in The Sun.
‘Jurgen Klopp still remembers it keenly – an extraordinary goal-line clearance by John Stones in City’s 2-1 victory at the Etihad which was Liverpool’s ONLY league defeat of that 2018-19 campaign.’
Liverpool did draw four more games after that January 2019 fixture, so you could say the margin was 11 millimetres, or you could say it was failing to beat mid-table Leicester or West Ham, or being held by an Everton team that had lost nine of its previous 15 games.
‘If Sunday’s final day goes to form, with home wins for City and Liverpool leaving Pep Guardiola’s men a point clear again, this time Klopp will locate the fine margin for success and failure inside the wiring of referee Paul Tierney’s brain.’
Then that would be his own folly. After the 2-2 draw with Tottenham in December, Liverpool immediately lost their next match to Leicester and then drew with Chelsea. But no, the decision not to send Harry Kane off in a game five months ago will be why the Premier League title is not headed to Anfield.
Also, there is no saying Liverpool would have won that game if Kane had been sent off; they were losing 1-0 at the time. Also also – and this seems most crucial – you can’t just change one thing in a game in December and completely alter that result but keep everything else that has happened since.
In Kidd’s vague defence, it was Klopp who brought up the Spurs game. In Kidd’s condemnation, it was Klopp who added that “these things happen in the whole season, but for our story we didn’t think about it for a second”. So writing that ‘if Liverpool fall just a point short, Klopp will not be slow in airing his frustrations,’ and blaming a referee call from December, is absolute b*llocks.
All this, of course, is overlooking one thing: boiling a 38-game league season down to one incident in one match is really sodding stupid – particularly if that game was half a season’s worth of fixtures ago, as if Liverpool simply didn’t have the time or opportunity to right a supposed wrong.
AutoPhil
Brian Reade is offering his seasonal awards in his Daily Mirror column, eventually reaching the ‘BEST BUY’ section.
His eventual nomination is absolutely justified: Luis Diaz. But before that comes the usual rundown of options, starting with this:
‘Bruno Guimaraes proved to be a catalyst for Newcastle as did Phillipe Coutinho at Aston Villa.’
Guimaraes you can have. Five goals in 10 starts from midfield at a bottom-half club. Definitely. But Coutinho? He hasn’t got a goal or an assist in his last nine games and has started one win – at home to Norwich – in that time. Aston Villa were 14th when they loaned him and 14th now. What exactly did he catalyse?
Role up
Props to The Sun website for this headline:
‘Cristiano Ronaldo told he still has key role to play at Man Utd next season’
…by Nigel Winterburn.