Fulham 1-0 Liverpool: In game and Post Match Disappointment

We played well enough to win the match, but we are short in key decision making areas.

I hope we appeal to get Spearing's ban lifted just like Everton did with Rodwell and Bolton are doing with Cahill.

Two massive key things that the ref and the linesman got wrong. The first one was Suarez's great goal which he was not offside for and now the most obvious was Spearing's tackle which he clearly won the ball with.

For possibly only the first time this season I saw more negatives in our performance than positive. Carroll was extremely slow and lethargic, granted he won the ball often enough when it was sent to him but his reaction after winning it is to amble along and let play get so far in front of him that he's no longer a factor. I want to see him nod it on, or lay it off and make a run and be available for the return ball and it seems like either it's a lack of pace, lack of drive or just plainly doesn't know that's what he should be doing.

Henderson did a little better but not good enough for me, his overall contribution to the game was below what we should be expecting from him this far into the season. His effort on goal was excellent and what I'd love to see him do more often, get forward and show some confidence as I believe he has the ability but not 100% he has the mentality to believe in himself and develop into a reliable first team player. Final negative would be our defensive solidity, putting the red card to one side (which I can understand the ref giving the red to be fair) spearing didn't give us enough cover in front of the back four that he was in the side for, so many shots were taken from just outside the box without anyone closing down that the defensive midfielder must be questioned. Sure it was his first game in so nerves will be there but he's played enough times to expect a better performance.

Positives were Charlie Adam who had an excellent game for me, seemed much fitter, more drive to his game and most of our good work went through him. Thought he could of slid in Bellamy but also Senderos could of been straight red for the challenge on him at the edge of the box. Suarez again looked dangerous and thought he was beaten around by the Fulham defenders, could of had a pen and great work to set Andy up for what should of been a tap in near enough. Also he scored an excellent goal that was onside.

In conclusion I don't think Carroll offers enough to be starting games, we look so much better without him in the side, Henderson still needs to be stronger in the tackle and provide a bit more going forward. Spearing will miss 3 games now and hopefully whoever we bring in will keep the place as I don't think Jay is good enough despite red card as we were exposed defensively too often and looked to hang on a few times. Going forward we just lack a bit of luck and a better centre forward and we'd be on many more points than we are at the moment, could of easily walked away with the 3 points.

Just got back from the game and have watched the key moments back again, appears once again, we were on the wrong end of shoddy officials.Spearing, never a red, Senderous should have been sent off, Luis disallowed goal!!all incorrect decisions, our only fault is we just arnt clinical enough, we create chances, but just cant finish them.Luis needs a poacher to play with, to take advantage of his great movements and opportunities he creates.

My synopsis of the game would be that we were far from great tonight, that we had one of our poorer outings, yet we still could and should have won that game.

A series of individual mistakes, from the likes of Spearing, Johnson and Reina cost us dearly, and in football, that sh*t happens.

The important thing is to now go on and win at Anfield against QPR, and get back into the pack just outside the top 4.

Hopefully we will be in striking distance of Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs by 2/3 through the season, and our big squad and lack of European football combined, help us towards the back end to take 4th.

We are in the semi of the League Cup and have a favourable 3rd round home tie in the FA Cup. Hopefully we will get success in these.

I'm afraid to me Spearing made a clear foul, and I can even understand why a ref could see it as a red. It's dangerous play, he even goes in with two legs. The ball is on the field, Spearing kicks it away with his right foot and follows it through onto Dembele's ankle. Like that's not dangerous enough he somehow feels the need to lift his other leg up while going in.

Much as I love Kenny I do feel the "consistancy" argument was about as much defense as he could muster for Jay, let's be honest if someone did this to one of our players we'd be screaming for him to be sent off. I'm all for saying when we get decisions against us but this one is understandable, the offside that wasn't as much as we hailed Sian Massey when she got it right and disallowed one of our goals earlier in the season, this was the bigger injustice in the game for us. Jay should never tackle in that manner as he's giving the ref a chance to send him off, naive mistake.

Despite the fact that we didn't play very well, tonight's defeat seems completely unfair.  The red card was completely laughable!!  Spearo did nothing wrong, and I would not have even given a foul for that challenge.  He went in strong, won the ball, and followed through.  Dembele arrived late into the challenge, and although he took a good shot, Spearo cannot be faulted for putting in a strong challenge on a 50/50 ball. 

Even more ridiculous is the fact that Senderos managed to stay on the pitch after two professional fouls.  1st he pulled Adam down on the edge of the box to earn a yellow.  However, he was let off the hook for a 2nd yellow when he pulled Carrol back from behind as we were about to break on the counter.  I don't care that there didn't appear to be much on for us in the attack, it was a professional foul and it deserved a booking. 

Despite not being great tonight, we could have easily had the game in the bag by the time Spearo was incorrectly sent off.  However, that is football.  Sometimes the ball bounces your way, sometimes it bounces the other way.....

On to the next game.  I hope the lads can get their heads up and go into the QPR match ready to redeem themselves. 

I'm afraid to me Spearing made a clear foul, and I can even understand why a ref could see it as a red. It's dangerous play, he even goes in with two legs. The ball is on the field, Spearing kicks it away with his right foot and follows it through onto Dembele's ankle. Like that's not dangerous enough he somehow feels the need to lift his other leg up while going in.

If you think that red was justified you need to start watching a different sport.

As for the game itself, they hardly threatened in the second half until that red card. The decision completely changed the game. I'm convinced we would have got a goal, we were making decent chances. In fact the Suarez goal was never offside seeing as Senderos was playing him on. Any decisions the manager made paled into insignificance once the Suarez's chance was disallowed. The focus should be on the referee's performance and just how bad it was. You could have picked any team tonight but if the referee performs like that, you've no chance.

One thing tonight showed though was how badly we need a poacher. Suarez is an absolute pleasure to watch, but if he doesn't score then we tend to struggle to find goals. Sorry to say but imo Carroll, unfortunately, just doesn't think, is always caught on his heels and the lack of mobility from him is shocking. He makes N'gog's time for us look clinical. He looks like he is not interested and doesn't want to be here and either in January or next summer the number one transfer priority must be a goalscorer to complement the foil in Suarez.

let's be honest if someone did this to one of our players we'd be screaming for him to be sent off.

Jack Rodwell!

I remember a lot of posters on here disagreeing with that sending off.

I can't see the video, it's been removed Huyton. And a still does not show the whole action. He had no bussiness going in with his other leg also after that and lifting it from the ground.

Now hear Saurez could be in trouble making offensive gestures to the fulham fans, he has had a rough go in the epl probably draws the most fouls than other striker in the EPL.Also people accuse him of being a diver considering his high work rate and skills, think there is proffesional jealousy at work here.

He had no bussiness going in with his other leg also after that and lifting it from the ground.

How do you stop your trailing leg though when committed to a challenge? FFS sake if that's a red what the F**k was Dempsey still doing on the pitch, that yank c**t should of seen red for what was tantamount to a headbutt on Bellamy!

Some will hate me for pointing this out, but even Gary Neville said other referee's would only show a yellow for Spearing's challenge. In fact it shows what F***ing pussies the majority of professional footballers are these days.

How do you stop your trailing leg though when committed to a challenge? FFS sake if that's a red what the f**k was Dempsey still doing on the pitch, that yank c**t should of seen red for what was tantamount to a headbutt on Bellamy!

Some will hate me for pointing this out, but even Gary Neville said other referee's would only show a yellow for Spearing's challenge. In fact it shows what f**king pussies the majority of professional footballers are these days.

He didn't need to go in with his other leg aswell, and he certainly didn't need to move it upwards away from the ground. I don't think I have to explain to you how a clean tackle is done with one leg.

And I never said it was a red. I said it's a clear foul and that I can understand why a ref could see it as a red. A ref doesn't have all the different camera angles or stills to prove that it's not a red.

He didn't need to go in with his other leg aswell, and he certainly didn't need to move it upwards away from the ground. I don't think I have to explain to you how a clean tackle is done with one leg.

And I never said it was a red. I said it's a clear foul and that I can understand why a ref could see it as a red. A ref doesn't have all the different camera angles or stills to prove that it's not a red.

Probably do yeah, I'm a bit of a fouling c**t when I used to play.

But let's be honest that ref was a tw*t tonight.

There's control in the challenge, the moment you lift both feet off the ground you're at the mercy of the ref, it was minimum of a yellow in my eyes and to get a red I can understand it, not saying it was a stonewall red card but I'm also not going to say we were done on that decision. Agree with you that Senderos should of been sent off and perhaps Dempsey too, thought it was a butt and no idea what Bellamy got a yellow card for. Ref was completely inconsistant and had a poor game but I also don't like just blaming officials, we didn't play well enough when 11 v 11 defensively, up front we were better but still not great, let's not mask a poor performance by us by highlighting too much on the poor performance of the officials.

In my eyes Kenny did the best he could to defend Jay but reading through the lines I feel he could understand it if the same rule was applied week in week out which of course it isn't and that's most fans biggest gripe with officials. Worst decision for me was disallowing a perfectly good goal. Still my point stands that I hope whoever comes in for Jay does a better job protecting our back four than he did, yes he ran around a lot and made a nuisance of himself often but when you look at the space they were allowed just outside our 18 yard box I know Lucas would of been covering on at least a few of those occasions.

But let's be honest that ref was a tw*t tonight.

Definitely. But you can't control what the opposition or referees do. You can only look at yourself, learn from your mistakes and improve.

Bad refereeing.  What a load a shi*e.

The ref was just a full blown F***ing incompetent tw*t!

He cost us the game, we could have got back into it but nooo, he made F***ing sure of it that we couldn’t. After 20 minutes into it I was screaming at the ref for his sh*t decisions, we weren’t that bad, we weren’t good either but the ref killed us. Seriously after refereeing performances like that we should be able to complain and get some sort of action because that just looked like he had been payed by Fulham or just downright hates Liverpool.

F***ing tard!

Oh and those people saying crap about Kenny’s tactics, you got no clue. There was nothing he could have done even if he had god on the pitch playing for us.

Read through a lot of the posts in this thread now and people questioning Kenny at this stage need their heads testing, the transformation in the way we play from the Hodgson era to now is massive. No we're not title contenders this year but only supreme optimists thought we were at the start of the year anyway. Our aim has always been top 4 then add world class players in the summer I believe, the main objective of the big spend this summer was to build a squad of players capable of challenging on a few fronts and now that injuries are beginning to test many sides our better quality squad is showing as today our bench looked a healthy one. Europe will hurt a lot of the teams above us, sure it's a nice pain to have but we all know how teams struggle to maintain fitness levels with so many matches to play. I fully expect us to still finish inside the top 4, our luck so far this season has been horrible with officials and simply hitting the damn woodwork on what seems like 1000 times.

I suppose the main point of this post is to say to anyone who is losing faith in Kenny, we just beat Chelsea twice, we're pretty much the only team to take points off City and the only one that should of beat them this season, when we sort our consistancy and iron out a few of the settling in issues which we have got considering the massive change in personnel since last January things will turn our way, oh and also captain fantastic on his way back things will turn our way.

I honestly believe we'll add 2 world class players, one perhaps as early as January and without doubt 1 or 2 more in the summer and we'll then be bang there with title hopes. Actually believe we may come up a little short next year too but in Kenny I have every faith he's returning us right to the top again and he has my 100% confidence and backing and anyone questioning him should watch our two recent games against Chelsea then watch pretty much any of our games under Hodgson to see how far he's brought us in just a year. IKWT!

Never a sending off in a million years. If you want to see what the Fulham players thought of it go back and watch it again and look at the Fulham players.  Id actually go as far as saying it wasn't even a free kick.  He did not go in with two feet

Never a sending off in a million years. If you want to see what the Fulham players thought of it go back and watch it again and look at the Fulham players.  Id actually go as far as saying it wasn't even a free kick.  He did not go in with two feet

I totally agree withyou.even the commentators were saying it was'nt even a yellow card never mind a red.That ref was guilty of some other dubious decisions throughout the match,Spearing won the ball fair and square.I am angry at losing 3 points  as I am sure if we played Fulham again next week we would hammer them.

F***ing gutted!

Getting beat by a team that's won 2 games all season till last night. F**k me, why does that sh*t always happen to us?

Still can't believe Maxi didn't start and then to top it off Downing and Kuyt come on when our most recent goalscorer sits on the F***ing bench.

I love you KK but F**k you make some strange decisions sometimes. Carroll should have come off much earlier for me, the lad is really struggling and I'm afraid to say I can't see his performances turning around any time soon. Hope it does but F**k me, I'm losing faith in the man very quickly.