Terrace Talk: It’s hard to sing with a mouth full of fingernails

We won, log the three points, move on.

Terrace Talk: It’s hard to sing with a mouth full of fingernails

By Steven Kelly

We won, log the three points, move on.

You want more? Okay, but you won’t like it.

Everyone’s going to blame it on internationals, more accurately the injuries that always happen during them.

While everyone else just gets on with it, more or less, Liverpool have this tradition of being utterly scuppered during these fortnights. A quick look at ourselves might inspire a solution, but why bother when you can just complain?

It was Huddersfield by the way, so moaning about being put at a disadvantage is quite funny when your opponents’ squad cost 10 bob and a half-eaten Snickers.

Klopp’s tirade against the Nations League wasn’t wholly without merit. I couldn’t care less about England at the best of times but stick them in a fixture system devised by Erno Rubik and I’m even less concerned.

But this is what we spent the money for, right? Rotation, proper rotation, depends surely on a seamless exchange of players which produces a team that can play the same way whoever you use.

Trouble with that is there’s no-one like Firmino. Sturridge is a different kettle of kipper to the Brazilian, and I couldn’t work out what he was meant to be doing for the entire 90 minutes.

Use Lallana as well, when no-one could even remember his last outing, and you’re basically saying you’ll beat these with your eyes closed.

And Liverpool did their woeful worst to try and prove that literally. If anything, this was worse than Napoli. They got away with it, though God knows how.

Bad enough that Lallana seemed to inspire everyone else to copy his Globetrotter frippery. Nice when it comes off, easy possession for the opponent when it (usually) doesn’t. Shaqiri was better at it, creating the goal.

Huddersfield were ultra-functional, huffing and puffing in equally desultory measure. They kicked and tripped, aided by usual minnows’ rights; the sort of mawkish, patronising “bless, at least they’re trying” visual impairment most referees suffer from.

Oliver’s leniency only made them worse. At least he didn’t give them that penalty.

During preceding weeks much was made of Klopp’s idea of football primarily as entertainment, followed by the usual lemming obedience of fans that must back the manager whatever nonsense he’s spouting.

Then you get as unsatisfying and troubled a 1-0 as you’ll ever see and they’ve changed tack again. Their heads spin like Linda Blair’s sometimes.

It’s reminding me a lot of my debut season for the

Examiner

, way back in Houllier’s time. Lots of wins, a few draws, very little football and a glutinous mix of optimism and dread.

It was a great position, one we didn’t really deserve but there was gratitude and an unhealthy excess of “we won and nothing else matters” – until we lost, and other things began to matter.

Salah’s goal didn’t change very much. His boots look like bricks, controlling a ball seems beyond him right now, but thankfully not during the one moment he needed to.

This is what van Dijk and Alisson were bought for, with Gomez in his element too. Stay in the game as long as you can, one bit of magic can win it.

It’s a dizzying about-face from the last two years, when scoring three wasn’t a guarantee of anything – not even a point, on one ignominious afternoon in Bournemouth.

Is this better? Different, certainly. Nervous silence settles on fans at the moment, so rivals can berate our support all they like for the present. Hard to sing with a mouth full of fingernails.

It’s beginning to matter. City have had very easy matches but that’s about to change. We’re clinging a bit, with neither grace nor fluency, but is this a time we’ll look back on as one of the decisive moments of the whole season?

Get me, rationalising with the worst of them. Unless we see the results our ‘football’ actually deserves, there’s no other way to respond.

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