City are a top team who had home advantage, whereas Forest are rooting around the relegation zone and had to travel. On their coach to Anfield they must have scooped up bags of grit laid down to neutralise ice accumulation on the motorway, and used it to rub salt in the wounds of a badly mauled Liverpool side.
The Nottingham pub where I drank pints of bitter on Xmas day 1996, if still in place, is most likely packed with joyous fans celebrating an Anfield victory for the second season in a row. The bars on Merseyside, glum and gloomy, except those frequented by Evertonians.
Liverpool had 75% of the ball and 0% of the goals. It is 1965 since they were beaten by three goals to nil in back to back games. Isak gave a clear signal of intent to usurp the role of Wirtz as a player who contributes absolutely nothing to the game. Konate was useless, being taken off in the second half. Salah improved but not to the standards of yesteryear. The once imperious Van Dijk seems vulnerable as he shouts at the Titanic sinking but appears clueless as to how the leaks can be plugged. Allison is back in goal but with that backline in front of him even his deep belief in Jesus cannot lead to miracles.
Before leaving today's vigil for Gaza I quipped that I was heading home to watch Liverpool get beaten. While I didn't really believe it would happen I was not in the slightest surprised when it did. I watched it on my own. My son was away with his girlfriend and was unable to make it back in time to listen to me whine.
My friend Andrew was at the game. Such a calamity for him to invest in. He sent a message to tell me the fans had started leaving the ground after the third goal. So rare an occurrence at Anfield, the television match cameras homed in on the dejected ones as they trudged the streets away from the scene of the crime probably thinking they could have gone to the pub, and for the price of a few pints watched the dreadful dazzle, like zebras, mauled by a pride of lions.
When the team form started to go south earlier in the season after surviving on borrowed time, I felt Arne Slot would turn it around. After today's performance I am not so sure. If he has not done so by the New Year I doubt I will be alone in thinking that the task is beyond him. As if to underscore the extent of his inability to motivate, within a minute of the second half Liverpool found themselves a further goal down, the much vaunted Slot half time talk making no impact whatsoever. Whatever he told them they forgot the moment they took the the field.
Another friend, watching the game at home on TV did the equivalent of the Anfield walk away fan - he switched channels, finding it too excruciating to watch. His money is on Slot going by Xmas, feeling he is in a position similar to Brendan Rodgers before the Irish man was forced to walk the plank into the Mersey. Perhaps, the former Celtic boss might fancy a second chance at coaching the Reds. Unthinkable in the summer, the bookies might now be reducing the odds . . . just in case.
This is a team in deep crisis. They will not be relegated but their direction of travel is down the table rather than up. As they picked up a title last season, something I thought I would never see again with - approaching 70 - the finishing line closing in, I don't get quite as angry as I used to. More grumpiness than rage.
Virgil van Dijk said after the game that the team needs to:
take it on the chin and work harder. I've said that quite a lot this season, it's not been working out, but we need to keep going.
They can't keep going in the same old groove. Those who do as they have always done tend to get what they have always got. Time for Virgil to heed Einstein's definition of insanity.
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