Welcome to Issue 309 of Red All Over The Land.
The last month or so has veered somewhere between exhilarating and bloody frustrating. Maybe the game down at Brentford encapsulated the whole mood during the ninety-five minutes the players were on the pitch. Had the game ended in another points dropped scenario the dark mood that had started to engulf the fanbase would have got even darker but the final five minutes, and the result from The Emirates, changed everything.
A couple of years ago the team under Jürgen was competing on four fronts but in the end, it ran out of legs. That should have been a lesson that we needed to be stronger. Last season the same thing happened and already this time around there have been some mirror images but this time they have come a bit earlier.
The days have long gone when a manager could ring another manager and talk about a player and from what we can gather Arne might not even have a say in transfers. If he did, maybe the soap opera that is the contracts saga wouldn’t still be being played out. Like Jürgen, Arne will say he’s happy with the squad and that’s understandable but is that how he really feels?
At this moment Joe Gomez is the only defender nursing an injury but are we spoilt for choice? When fit Gomez can play just about anywhere across the back and couldn’t we do with another left back now. We’re seemingly reliant on the same players and as the season goes on the games are going to get harder, certainly in The Champions League and there’s work to do in The League Cup. Diogo Jota is one of the best players I’ve seen in a red shirt in and around the six-yard box, but it seems he misses far more games than he plays. Although Darwin Núñez did what he did against Brentford we are relying on the same front three week after week. In the months ahead is that enough? We don’t want it to feel like Arne is pushing a steamroller up a hill.
I doubt Liverpool will add to the squad in the final days of the transfer window, but the signs are there that we possibly should. We’ve been here before and as I said earlier, ran out of legs when the final laps came around. As the cover says, Arne’s got the whole world in his hands, don’t let it slip.
JJP: Our local Priest once told us that God sees everything. So why do we bother with VAR?