Maybe you are ok with "moral" victories, but I am not. I was unaware that Liverpool Football Club hung it's hat on "tough away points".
These are the kinds of games that title winning teams win. If you disagree, then you are delusional. I get that people want to put a nice shiny bow on a pile of dog sh*t to try and make themselves feel better, but in all honesty, we were lucky to get a point. They were at us the whole game, believe Mikywhatshisface missed two easy opportunities as did Pogba. This could have easily been a drubbing, would you have been making the same excuses then? In case anyone hasn't noticed, we are in a bit of a slump...you can blame it on whatever you want, make any excuses you want but it's still a slump. All teams are missing players, all teams have injuries, other than the blatant bottling by the twit of a referee, we did not play well. I'm calling a spade a spade....you call all tell me how stupid I am and reactionary and what not, I don't really care. I only care about us winning and lately we've not been doing enough of that and sue me, but I'm pissed about it.
I think you have to contextualise the result FL.
Personally, I wasn't looking forward to this on the back of our win-less 2017 run which obviously still remains. The Southampton performance was turgid and arguably our worst performance of the season. So, for me, going into this game confidence in the team was pretty low.
Plus, we are pretty much onto the bare bones of our squad with key players missing. You are right in what you say, that other teams miss players. I do agree with your sentiments on this. I remember what some said if Costa was out of the Chelsea side for any given period - apparently Chelsea's results would suffer. They played Eden Hazard in his place instead, some f**king loss eh. And they've still managed to maintain their good results pretty much. Okay, they haven't lost as many players as we have but their squad does have more depth in it in terms of quality.
We simply don't have the squad. I read a post where the squad isn't apparently 'thread bare', well it isn't if there are bodies still in it, but the quality simply isn't and that's a fact. When you're relying on teenagers to come in with little or no experience and compare this to the side Manchester United fielded against Reading in the FA cup, or the players other teams around us can call upon, then in comparison of quality the squad is indeed thread bare. This is our own fault and nobody else's, and I'm not using it as an excuse for our recent results like others will - we made our bed and now we have to lie in it. Klopp seems content with this, even though he did admit that he's juggling the team now with what can only be inferred as him having limited options to chose from. But if he's happy with the situation, he can't really complain about the lack of depth in the squad. That doesn't mean supporters amongst the fan base 'can't' complain with re. to the lack of squad depth - that's their right to a reasonable opinion, but it is 'Klopp's opinion that only counts'.
However, unlike the Southampton display the desire and energy that has clearly been missing was back, so while the result wasn't that great for you, you've surely got to admit the performance was better in that respect, right?
Yes, they could have been out of sight, similar to Southampton and yes we didn't have the quality on the ball to really ever dictate, control and thus create that many chances but the fundamental was there - which is the desire to gut it out. I think the lads should be buoyed from that and hopefully will take it into our next home game against Swansea where hopefully their swagger on the ball returns. From this game (Swansea) we'll be able to see whether the fixture of Manchester United V Liverpool game was a one-off game raiser under Mancunian/Liverpudlian circumstances, or whether it is indeed a springboard for the attacking intensity we've already exhibited earlier on this season. I'm hopeful it's the latter.
So, when all is said and done, the quality wasn't really there but the desire was and we looked more interested for want of a better word, than we have done previously. They were the positives for me, and the fact we came away from Castle GreySkull with something, at least was again something positive given the context of it all.
