“WHATEVER the issue – wrong owners, rip-off ticket prices, reduced allocations, travel issues, kick-off times, the manager, Luis Suarez; whatever it is, the question is always the same: ‘What do Liverpool fans think about…’. For about five years now I’ve been involved in Liverpool fanzines and websites, like Well Red Magazine, and later this here, The Anfield Wrap. During that time I’ve spoken to all kinds of journalists about all kinds of issues surrounding Liverpool and Liverpool fans.” The Anfield Wrap

“In his second full season on Liverpool’s first team, 19-year-old prodigy Raheem Sterling lit up the Premier League with nine goals and five assists. He was an integral part of Liverpool’s unexpected title challenge and eventual second-place finish. He helped the team score a club record 101 goals, partnering in an almost unstoppable attack with Luis Suárez and Daniel Sturridge. You can get lost watching Sterling’s YouTube highlights from Liverpool’s 2013-14 season — so much so that it’s kind of remarkable to think that two summers ago, the most compelling Sterling clip was one of his manager dressing him down in front of his teammates.” Grantland

“As Tottenham discovered last season, regardless of how much money you receive for your star man, it’s extremely difficult to replace him. For Tottenham and Gareth Bale last season, read Liverpool and Luis Suarez this season – it’s difficult to imagine how Liverpool can replace a player who scored 30 league goals last season. Will suarez departure from liverpool present problems? In reality, however, Spurs’ transfer approach was entirely correct. Their problem in Bale’s final campaign was that they relied on him too much – which was understandable given his incredible goalscoring contribution, but meant that when he was off-form, or injured, the rest of the side struggled to function. Bale was effectively handed a free role, which meant he produced some stunning moments of genius with his license to roam, but the structure of the rest of the side fell down.” Free Bets

“Brendan Rodgers forged his managerial reputation at Swansea City on the back of a possession-heavy philosophy, and it was widely expected that this approach was to be a permanent feature of his time at Anfield. Early in his tenure, the Ulsterman famously told a fansite briefing: I’ve always enjoyed and worked with the statistic that if you can dominate the game, with the ball, you have a 79% chance of winning a game of football. If you’re better than the other team, with the ball, you’ve got an 8 out of 10 chance of winning the game.” Tomkins Times

“The dream is over. The romance is dead. The glory will have to wait.  Liverpool’s season is not mathematically at an end, of course, but the nature of their spectacular collapse will have drained the impetus from their title challenge with as much speed as it has animated Manchester City, once thought adrift from the summit of the Premier League table.  Given the 25 years of heartache linked to the Hillsborough disaster, the souring of a dream which captured considerable public sympathy is especially hard to take. There is been more than a hint of misty-eyed destiny in the accomplished way that Steven Gerrard has carried his teammates to the pinnacle but, in purely sporting terms, their fall is not completely surprising. If Liverpool’s intense, fast-paced attacking style provided us all with some kind of illicit high in recent months, then their disregard for the game’s core principles surely represents the wicked comedown.” backpagefootball

“My name is Mikey, and I’m a Liverpool supporter. It has been three days since I last watched a game. I get up at four or five in the morning to watch matches because I now live in Australia. There have been times I have woken up the entire family with my screaming at the TV. I force my son to wear Liverpool pyjamas and sleep beneath a Liverpool bedspread every time Liverpool play. I blamed my wife for a defeat once because she put the duvet on his bed the wrong way around. I have a kid’s football shirt in a frame on the wall because I believe it made Liverpool unbeatable whenever my baby son wore it. I even got my wife to wake him up and put it on when we were 2-0 down to Portsmouth. He got back to sleep eventually. We won.” Tomkins Times

“A tearful Luis Suarez was led away from the scene of the accident with his face hidden inside his white Liverpool shirt, first by captain Steven Gerrard waving away an intrusive television camera, then by unused substitute Kolo Toure. Gerrard had been on his haunches, as had several of Liverpool’s players, while others sat in utter misery on the Selhurst Park turf before manager Brendan Rodgers emerged into the media suite and spoke of his squad being ‘devastated’. Never has going top of the Premier League with one game to play been greeted by such an outpouring of grief, despair and disappointment – but this was a thunderous night in south London that turned all logic on its head.” BBC (Video)

Istanbul in reverse signals death of Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool dream
“It was the expression of shock on those in the visiting contingent, from Brendan Rodgers in the technical area to Luis Suárez out on the pitch, which told the story. At least the Uruguayan had mustered a smile of disbelief while the game was still in progress before disintegrating into floods of tears, hiding his face in his shirt. Steven Gerrard was just as inconsolable before recovering some level of composure to hoist his team-mate from his haunches and push away the intrusion of a television camera.” Guardian

Liverpool Lost the Premier League Title Just Like They Almost Won It
“They finished last season in seventh place and came into this year with something like 33-1 odds of winning the Premier League. After back-to-back losses to Manchester City and Chelsea to end 2013, they found themselves in fifth place. But since the beginning of 2014 they’ve won 14 games, tied three, and lost one. They’ve clinched a spot in the Champions League group stages, and they’re atop the table with one game left in their season. Or: Humans exist as cast members in the blackest comedy, directed by some cruel, faceless, string-pulling auteur we will never see. Everything is a disappointment. And any success is just seemingly self-prescribed medication against the bleak, hopeless, ultimately hollow reality that nothing will ever work out the way we want it to.” Grantland

“Brendan Rodgers says Daniel Sturridge is in with a chance of returning to Liverpool’s starting lineup at Crystal Palace on Monday night. The England international, 24, is recovering from a hamstring injury sustained during the 3-2 win over Manchester City on April 13. The striker missed the following Sunday’s 3-2 victory at Norwich, but returned to action as a substitute seven days after that off the bench as Chelsea won 2-0 at Anfield.” ESPN

“Last summer, I said I thought Liverpool should sell Luis Suarez. There were a lot of reasons behind it, but most of it boiled down to the fact that Suarez was one of the worst high volume shooters in Europe when it came to converting shots into goals. A non-penalty conversion rate of 8.7% in his first season in the league, followed by another of 12.3% in his second season weren’t impressive enough for me to think his dribbling (also inefficient) and ability to create his own shot were enough. Liverpool were already near the limit in how often teams can generally shoot in a game (19.4 in 2012-13), and in my opinion, Suarez’ inefficiency was keeping Liverpool from taking the next step and competing for a Champions League place.” Stats Bomb

“I grew up in the dark yet magical Liverpool of the 1980s, a time when Liverpool FC won so many trophies that the team seemed to be on a permanent victory parade through the city’s streets, showing off their latest piece of silverware (watch the Super 8 footage here.) As a third-generation Everton fan in his formative years, witnessing Liverpool’s stars perpetually cruise by aboard an open-top bus was a searing sight. The players lolling casually around the cup on the front of the upper deck, a pose that suggested winning had really been no sweat at all.” ESPN (Video)

“Liverpool stand three steps from Premier League heaven after all the qualities required to win titles were put to the test by Norwich City at Carrow Road. Brendan Rodgers’s side – it is still just too early to call them champions-elect – showed their attacking brilliance, resilience and enjoyed a little good fortune to hold out for a win that at one stage looked a formality. Early goals from Raheem Sterling and Luis Suarez were examples of the fluidity and brilliance that have become Liverpool’s trademark this season, but those other factors were at work as they dug in to go five points clear at the top of the table with a 3-2 victory.” BBC

“… Liverpool have of course spent some money to get into the hunt, but nothing compared with that spent by Chelsea, Man United and City in winning their titles of the past decade, during which time football became about billionaires and even trillionaires. Liverpool have five huge games left, but if they win the title it would make them the ‘cheapest’ champions in many a blue moon.” Tomkins Times

“The long wait to win a Premier League championship might finally soon be over for Liverpool. After standing as English soccer’s marquee club for generations — including winning a record 18 titles in the old First Division — Liverpool have failed to win a league championship since 1990. With an eight-game Premier League winning streak that has included comfortable wins over Arsenal (5-1), Manchester United (3-0), and most recently Tottenham Hotspur (4-0), the club now controls its own destiny. If it wins each of its six remaining fixtures, the league championship will again return to Merseyside.” Grantland

“Liverpool took advantage of an inept defensive display by Tottenham to cruise to a 4-0 win at Anfield on Sunday and return to the top of the Premier League for the first time since December. An eighth straight win for Liverpool was never seriously in doubt from the moment Luis Suarez scored his 29th goal of the campaign in the 25th minute, adding to an own-goal by Younes Kaboul inside two minutes. Philippe Coutinho’s low drive in the 55th and Jordan Henderson’s free kick, which crept in past a mass of legs in the 75th, finished off Spurs and fuelled the growing conviction inside Anfield – and increasingly across the country – that Liverpool can win a first English league title in 24 years.” SI

“Football supporters generally understand that different players are selected on what they can bring to the side; some wide midfielders are picked for their defensive capabilities over their attacking ones and not every central midfielder is expected to be able to spread the ball out to the wings from forty yards, some are there to tackle opponents and intercept passes. However, one fundamental misunderstanding still exists among a selection of football fans: every forward is picked to score goals.” January 16, 2014 Put Niels In Goal

“It happened without me even noticing on Friday afternoon. Gerry and the Pacemakers’, You’ll Never Walk Alone came on the car stereo and before I had time to adjust the dial, I was belting it out at the top of my lungs and with the knobs turned up to eleven. Maybe I’d been deluding myself all season but I couldn’t do it any longer. My subconscious was telling me in no uncertain terms that it was time to give Liverpool their dues. What follows is by no means a love-in but it is an acknowledgement of sorts. And to all those Evertonians whose club I have celebrated for many times in these posts, I am truly sorry. However, my sense of fairness dictates that I do this. Some might call it an affliction.” Dispatches From A Football Sofa

“Liverpool fans have revived the old ’70s Boney M classic ‘Brown Girl In The Ring,’ or at least chants to that tune, as a nod towards the team’s recent revival of fortunes. The more conservative element have kept to the far safer rewrite ‘We are Liverpool, tra-la-la-la-la’ up until now, but by the end of an efficient 3-0 win at Southampton, the more arrogant ‘we’re gonna win the league’ version grew louder and louder and louder.” ESPN

“Jordan Henderson and Daniel Sturridge netted twice each as title outsiders Liverpool edged a seven-goal Anfield classic against Swansea. Brendan Rodgers’ side continue to be plagued by a porous defence but moved within four points of Barclays Premier League leaders Chelsea after emerging victorious from one of the games of the season.” ESPN

” Liverpool’s progress for a top-four finish was stalled after a 1-1 draw at West Brom. Here are three thoughts from Sunday’s early Premier League clash … Fourth place was Liverpool’s for the taking. They were set to go four points clear of fifth-placed Everton and nine ahead of their slumping rivals Manchester United. Then Kolo Toure intervened haplessly, gifting Victor Anichebe a goal, and they were dragged back toward the pack. If Liverpool lose to Arsenal on Saturday, they could end next weekend in fifth place, which carries the gloomy promise of a place in the Europa League.” ESPN

“It is a concept their watching owner ought to find easy to understand. Liverpool are a team of two halves. John W. Henry comes from a sport in baseball where the division between offence and defence is clearer than it usually is in football. Not at Liverpool, however. Even if the nuances of the beautiful game are lost on a businessman with a greater grounding as the owner of the Boston Red Sox, it should be obvious his other sporting investment are terrific going forward and threaten to be terrible at the back.” ESPN