Brighton 2-1 Liverpool: The Anfield Wrap

0:00This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network. Hello, it is the Anfield Wrap after Brighton and Hobart will be in 2, Liverpool 1 and Bethlehem's up, joined today by Rob Guttlin by James Sutton and by Ian Summon. It's going to be a bit of a therapy session again today, guys. We certainly need it after that performance from Liverpool on Saturday. But while Liverpool season might have veered way off course, if you want to get your fitness journey back on track, then why not give Peloton a try? The Anfield Wrap is brought to you by Peloton, the official strength and conditioning partner of Liverpool until March 30th. You can get up to £900 off selected packages of the Peloton cross. James, you don't need that, do you really? That's very nice of you, isn't it? Rob? James has done it all for Peloton, I'm going to tell. The training series powered by Peloton IQ go to www.1peloton.com forward slash offers for more. Peloton is also teamed up with the 2026 Hocker. It's a Hocker or Hocker,

1:01I always wonder this. I always wonder this. I've always called them Hocker. The Hocker or Hocker, however you say it, Hackney Half and they're giving away an unbelievable prize and entry to the 2026 TCS New York City marathon and a Peloton tread. So whether you're running in Hackney Half or not, join Peloton at a run club in London or on a race weekend in Hackney as they cheer on everyone, including Liverpool Women, Legend, Natasha, Dowie and Azavir any questions, just direct it to John because he loves being harassed about these things. And to enter that competition that I just mentioned, go to www.1peloton.com forward slash we run Hackney Terms and Conditions Apply. We've got an insight as well. Today we're going to speak to Martin Fitzgerald on his book The Umbarella Man and other stories. But before that unfortunately we do have to talk about the football. Is it a class? James, what's in your car? Yeah, I write. This is a mustard and tea. It's oat milk, but it's gone a bit weird. I thought it was some sort of health drink. You see that? That's gone

2:04deeply on appealing. The milk is sort of sorry rated from the coffee. Is that distracted enough from talking about Liverpool? Yeah, it's curdled as much as Liverpool's performance. Oh, that's that was it. James, it feels like it felt like to me made the trip down to Brighton on Saturday. Yeah, it's incredibly, incredibly long, long day trip back. It feels like in many ways that that first 15 minutes encapsulated Liverpool season, you know, I thought they actually started fairly well in sort of comparisons how they've started games this season. They were more front-footed, and then it's a mistake that undermines that open in 15 minutes, that leads to a goal, and an injury as well. Obviously, it's here at QGW. Yeah, I mean, not just the first 15 minutes, I thought the whole game was kind of a microcosm of the season. You know, good moments, a couple of good performances, but ultimately, you know, we let ourselves down. A lot of that,

3:06I think, it seems to be psychological. You know, we've got really, really fit energetic players that aren't playing like fit energetic players. You look at them in field, being outrun by James Milner, which is just insane, you know, the press and the sort of desire that we saw midweek in the Champions League was just nowhere to be seen. And I can't understand why you can play like that. Of course, there's, you know, there's injuries and players missing, Mohammed Salor, and obviously Ekiteke goes off the goalkeeper, but you should have enough to at least recreate some of what you had midweek, and the drop-off just seemed crazy to me, to be honest. I actually stopped watching on 80. I stepped away from the TV because I had no faith in us turning it around, which is really, really sad to start again so well. And then, you know, this is the thing, this is why I keep going back to like a site, it's more of a psychological thing for me, is that things happen in football.

4:07You have to constantly overcome problems. That's the nature of the beast. Things happen and it's how you pull yourselves together. It's why we have leaders on the pitch. This is what they're there for when you go a goal behind against them when they play. You know, you go, right, this isn't happening today, right? We're going to drag ourselves back through this. And again, it was just, it was pathetic. Quite honestly, the second half was pathetic. We know you don't even. Well, I hasten to use the word Shibuya, but you're absolutely spot on. The most juiced. But second, you know, second, second, second best to everything, you know, being outworked out, thought out that, you know, outbodied by Brighton, you know, who are, they're not, they're not a particularly ambitious side. They're not a particularly strong side. They're not a team that you look at in the fixture list and think, oh Christ, we're going away to Brighton. You should be going, right, we're going down to Brighton. It's going to be a lovely day out. You know, maybe we can pop to the beach after for an ice cream, but we're going to take three points with us. And it was just, it was, it was the, the manner of the defeat that, that really got me and the, as I say, that the psychology behind it just wasn't there for me.

5:10And, and I'm looking at players like Virgil Van Dyke, who are misplacing passes and making the state. That's not what you want from your captain. Your captain should be, it should be a leader's performance. It should filter through the team from him. And again, we just didn't see that. Yeah, we'll get on to the actual game itself in it in a minute while, but, and just, James mentions Mo Salah there and obviously I was in Becker. And again, that, this is in no way an excuse for, for what we saw on Saturday because it was again another really dismal performance from Liverpool, but it sort of sums up the season. The fact that, you know, Mo Salah probably has his, maybe his best half or is one of his best halves of the season and you start to think, right, well, if he can, you know, if he can replicate some, some degree of that for the rest of the season, then it, you know, he's a, he's an incredible attacking threat for Liverpool. And then he obviously goes off in that Galatasaray game. Alice then gets a broad out. It sort of feels like every time something looks a little bit positive for Liverpool, something goes wrong. And I mean, half the time

6:14things that go wrong are down to Liverpool's performances and their, their application on the, a bit. This, this comes down to the central question of the season. To what extent has the, the vast disappointment that it's been down to the vagaries of chance and to what extent are we architects of our own demise? And the manager, I know we're going to come to talk about him, will suggest in press conferences to a large degree that where something can go wrong for us, it does go wrong. We have been hugely unlucky. And you look at certain moments, certain types of injury. And you like, like, for example, what on the one that's cost us, ESACs for the most of the season, you've got that's just done bad luck. Most out of playing well against Galatasaray wasn't, wasn't just, well, our luck's turned our ex-best player suddenly turned good again. Yippee, now we've got to look forward to it. It didn't happen by accident. It's played in, in a, in a subtly different position. He was played more centrally. He was playing what, 10, maybe 15 yards to the, so the left of where he'd been, he'd been stationed for most of the

7:14season. Now, when we were coming into this season, lots of us saying, well, we've got both, thank God he signed a new contract. We even said it two seasons ago. At some point, Moes can't be left to be a winger, because he's never going to have the legs of a winger as a 35-year-old man. It's what's rare for that to happen. And the only Aryan Robin has ever displayed that is stillable empirically after a certain age. So everyone said, we could see Mo Salah coming back into a central-ish role, which he had, he played it in under clop, I think, even in his first or second season under clop. So it's not in dispute, the Mo Salah can play in central positions. Now, could he play it off the striker? Could he play it as a lone striker? All these things were doable. I wanted to say last season he couldn't play as a central striker. Well, he's wrong, yeah. He can't, because he's lethal between the sticks, the proverbial sticks. Also, we've seen hints of in play of Salah being played in the two earlier in the Champions League campaign. I think it was a way of Milan or I say I can't remember it, not Milan because he didn't travel. It might have been Marseille. And he looked more effective there. And I'm not saying Mo Salah

8:15can't have the odd effective game out wide. Of course, he can. Of course, he can still show special things. But I don't think it was an accident. We saw the best of Mo Salah. Now, we lost him through injury. Well, we play, you know, Mo Salah doesn't get taken off that often. Mo Salah plays a lot of football. The manager doesn't really love the idea of rotation. And I think the biggest loss we suffered was energy in this game. It is beyond obvious going into games for not just for us against teams after you've played a competitive game in midweek against the Champions League that you are going to be diminished energy wise, especially in the second half of games. What's the antidote to that? There's only one antidote. Make the bloody changes. Now, we picked what, a nine and unchanged side. I think Cody Gappo came in for Mo Salah effectively. That was the only change. That's a force change. So therefore, Mo Salah had been fit. You can probably assume you've been entirely unchanged from an energy sapper. Well, it was a big game in the week to how many hours after this was it? Less than three days afterwards. We went with the same team

9:18and what a surprise when they were up against it and they needed extra reserves of energy. They didn't have them from anywhere. What was on the bench? Very little. Now, I think I've said it before. I'm not a massive fan of Arteta's maximum that finishes or is in poor on the starters. But sometimes, in the season, you've got to accept that. You've got to say, what side are we going to finish with? That means you have to compromise your starting 11. This might mean that we had to fit in the bullet and put training only in from the start. Why not? Might have had to make two or three other changes, which weren't ideal and would have had quite frankly a lot of fans wincing a kickoff. None of us winced a kickoff when their team dropped. Did we go, not a nice team, nice team, Anna? Everyone felt good for five minutes while that team looked nice and then it went down and down and down and we got what I think was inevitable happened to it. Yeah, I think that is such an important point about the Hammer's home, that idea of the small squad that Liverpool have had this season just being a little bit of a disaster. It's clearly

10:19demonstrated this morning, Federico Giazza goes off to international duty with Italy. It's the first time he's been called up in a little while and he's immediately dismissed with an injury. Was it? Yes. You've got poor Federico. Well, they didn't explicitly detail what the injury was and it just he wasn't deemed fit. The language suggested that he, maybe not maybe, shouldn't have been playing for Liverpool, but it's something that's ongoing, which might explain some advice not being used yet. Yeah, and that's the thing, and again, that's one thing that the manager can't really control. If you've not got the players to bring in, you speak about making changes and training onion and stuff like that, but would it have been a smart move to throw training on Saturday? Would it be worse? I don't know. Possibly not, but I think that is one thing that hasn't helped Liverpool this season. It is not having those options. Especially when he goes off, and then he'll come to you on this, they'll see, and that felt like a real blow,

11:22and maybe a bit of an omen for what was to come, and I think Vegel Van Dyke said after the game, there was a real lack of people making runs in behind when when a TK went off, and as soon as you lose that, you lose all real impetus up front. Yeah, but it was an easy solution. There was a solution on the bench, too, that the manager chose not to take that solution, and I thought it was really obvious. There's mitigation going on. I did the pre-match show, pre-match warm-up on Friday, and what we wanted, the three of us, me, Ian and Kav, were talking about the fact what we wanted was, as much as we could, the same as Wednesday night, because we played so well, and those lights have played so well, they've enjoyed the football, put them out on the pitch again. If they're fit enough to do it, put them out on the pitch again, because we've got four nights off, and it looks like Anna went the same way and went with the same formation and that formation is where they look like we found a formation, that would work for us, and we have the mitigation that it's 62 hours gap between the end of that match and the beginning of this match, and brighten up out a week off, but we haven't gotten one to make a change, but the big deal for me,

12:26I know we'll get onto the actual mistakes of the game in a minute, but the big deal for me is, when a TK gets injured, his solution is to bring on Jones and move it into one of those two false now fission, put them behind her up as well, put them behind her up as well, and the problem was, once you put the edge into that position, you lost all the creativity that Vets would bring into the game in the first place, when the obvious thing was, you want two lights down the middle, stick with your hand, you just played real down the middle at the end of the game against Galatasaray, stick with your hand because he will run at them, and now what we've got is, we've got Vets trying to find something to give a pass to, and there's no one for him to give a pass to, and it was, that's not the top and bottom of a solution, but that would have changed the shape of the game in the first half, and would have actually given something to actually have us now, but we had no outboard, we had no way of digging ourselves out, we had no one who could run, suddenly all the speed in the team was disappearing, and real playing in that position would have solved so much, and the mind just being reticent to use that for a while.

13:30I would say, I understand the look after the kid because we're never going to see Stephen Batchettes as you can now, and he looked like he could be a well-beater, and we've broken by overplaying him, so you don't want to overplay real, but one game before two week break, he's not going anywhere with an England team, one game before two week break, just get in the 70 minutes, somebody said on the pinky, you can always sub in back off, there's no rule that says you can't sub off, somebody you've subbed on, so if he comes on and he makes an impact, he plays for an hour, and he looks like he's tiring, then sub in back off, and then book here's his Jones hole. Yeah, and I'm struggling with the small squad issue, which is, we've all identified, I think, quite early on in the season, this squad was too small, because firstly there's a collective responsibility to have that happened with all the concern that includes the manager himself on this one. The secondly, once you realise you've got two smaller squad, you've only got one choice, you've only got one, sorry, only one way to expand the squad, and that's genuine, the rest

14:30of the other players you have who are technically involved. But you also had January and did nothing? Yeah, well, firstly you didn't do anything in January, now that's certainly not necessarily on the manager, because that's a task that you charge the higher ups with, go and get some players, and I think the genuine, you did try to get people in January, I think, some men, you might have been on the list at some point, what happens at the end of January, it's now a blur to me, we need to get a trowel during who else was, there was somebody else we nearly got late on car member. Oh, we're in for care, you had to begin loving, but that went pretty well, surely. But at the same time, there's a lot of asked and values, getting no football whatsoever. Well, it looks like a pool, exactly. I wouldn't have been fit enough to play, because we'd have had to give him a proper pre-season, once we were awesome, but if you bring him back in, that's another body. Would have been useful on Saturday. So swallow your morals, let Villa off with the fee that you'd have to pay, and just bring him back, that wouldn't have been dead easy. But also you have to look to your academy. If you don't know the big enough squad, you have to look to your academy, and you have to go, and also you have to make them grow on the job. That's the only way you can do it. You have to, and be sold all the best ones is when you want. Well, you can say, people can say,

15:30no, it's not ready, you can say, and come on, it's not ready, you can say, Calvin Rams is not at the level we want, we can pick, I don't know, whoever, Nalo, Kiran Morrison's getting games on the bench, we could also be able to drop off from them to our actual first team squad, it's huge. Yes, but if you don't have them, we're not in an injury crisis in the moment, we've got some injuries. If we had a genuine injury crisis, they'd be playing. Like Spursad? Yeah, yeah, yeah, like Spursad, like 11 or 12 hours. We're even 7 or 8, we don't have 3s and 4s here. If you had a genuine injury crisis, they could have been playing. You kind of had to have given them the minutes so that they could be ready. I think Jürgen saw, well, I hate to do this, yeah, in Jürgen's day, but there was an appreciation that you have to give players who you might have to call on minutes, at times where you don't necessarily want to. I think that's been a problem. It feels like a lot of this comes down to risk for me, and this manager, I know we're going to just bang on about the manager, but the manager is risk avert, he doesn't like to take chances, be that in a tactical stance or a formation or with players, he doesn't like to take chances, and a lot of what we're

16:33talking about here is about taking chances and going, actually, you know what, we're going to put a 17-year-old on. We're going to put him from the start in a game that we really, really need to win before the international break. That's a calculated risk, and I would argue that we're in a situation now where we need to start making some chances and throwing caution to the win and going, actually, you know what, fuck it, let's roll the dice. Let's see what these boys can do, because otherwise, you're just playing turgid, uninspired football that is quite frankly pathetic. In 2021, sorry, last thing I'll shut up. In 2021, the year after we were on the title after the COVID, the main COVID season, when we were in, did have an injury crisis and were in disarray. For the first part, the season, a Jürgen Klopp tried to plug, so the centre-half crisis by putting in first team players in outer position, and it didn't work at all. It just got them injured as well. He just got them injured. The only good phase we had this season, I think we win something like 9 out of our last 11 league games, and which ended up getting a third place unbelievably, was when he bit the bullet and allowed the two academy lads, Nat Phillips and Reese Williams,

17:35to just be our centre-half. However ridiculous that scene, the difference between them, the other nine players on the field was huge, the gap. But everyone was able to stabilise around that, and it was a lesson, I think. What you would say is Jürgen only did that when he literally had no other choice. It wasn't, you know, I think... Well, it took that, and I think there was a point we stopped putting, I think when Fabinho came back, he had been throwing Fabinho into the defence, when he came back, there was a point in which he said, no, I'll keep you in midfield, because you doing well in midfield is more important to you. So it was a bit of that. I know what you mean though, it did get worse and worse, but he did have a choice, he did buy a certain bullet, I think, by that situation. But to be honest, I think on Saturday, it wasn't necessarily, the problem wasn't necessarily that there were square pegs in round tolls apart from... No, that's true. It was, everyone was sort of playing in the right position, so if I was alive in midfield, it was... Tired peg. Yeah, but it was the team that I think most fans would have wanted, wasn't it? And the shape that the manager set down for the Galatasaray game, which has worked a couple of times. So... So it's psychological? Physical. Physical. Physical,

18:38psychological. Physical, psychological. Let's go on to the actual sort of details of the game, as much as we may not want to, James. Brighton's first goal, it's just a disaster from a Liverpool perspective, and again, it is another one that we've seen so many times this season, it's a needless mistake. I think the goalkeeper and Konate are both a little bit at fault. It's a poor pass from Mamadashvili. Konate just lets it roll under him, and they win a throw-in completely against the run of play. They have an opportunity to swing the ball into the box, and as soon as it gets nodded back across the six-yard box, you just know what's going to happen. Yeah, it's not the first passage of play that I've got a particular problem with. Everybody makes mistakes. It's just a throw-in. We can handle that, but it's the speed with which everyone should get back into position, and stop that cross from coming in. Konate is completely lost at sea. Van Dyke's looking round, like he doesn't know exactly where everybody is. And as you say, the situation unfolds, that it's a header back across, and it's a fairly straightforward goal. And it's something that we've

19:40seen a lot this season. We've seen this type of goal conceded. It's almost like one mistake leads to another mistake leads to another mistake. This sort of knock-on effect. And we used to be really good at this where it would be one mistake, and it would just be, you know, we draw a line under it and just boot the ball clear. But now we... They like to compile the wrong mistakes. Yeah, it just feels, again, I don't know, a bang on about it, but it just feels like there's a kind of mentality issue where, you know, I don't know if it's that people are not taking enough responsibility or what, but goals like that just absolutely infuriate me. They really do. And it takes the wind out of everybody's sales because it's against the run of play. We're all right up until that point, actually. You know, we have a few chances. But as soon as that goal goes in, you're just thinking, I'm not sure these lads have got the courage to drag this back. And that's exactly what happens. Yeah, the very few positives to take from Saturday and I think probably one of the only ones is that it's actually a really nice finish from Kerkhez. I thought you were going to say

20:42it's a really nice day. Well, yeah, it was lovely and sunny. It was lovely and sunny down in Brian. It was very instinctive from him, wasn't it? And sort of he made it look quite easy back. Yeah. When you watch it back, it was a very good finish. It's a lovely finish. And I think, again, sort of going back to what James said, I think maybe like 10 minutes or so after the bright and goal Liverpool lose the way a little bit, the heads go. But then they do quite well in the context of how they've done this season to sort of then say no, actually, right? We've got to be sensible here. And we know that we can create chances against Brighton and they do. I think the goalkeeper makes a good save from McAllister. Mice Copic was saved there, Goli. And it feels like, you know, momentum is then starting to shift back in Liverpool's favor. And Kerkhez is there to capitalise? Yeah, I mean, the run is fantastic. No one sees it. It's a straight route one football from the Goli up to Dunk thinking he's cleared it. But Kerkhez is at the awareness to actually make the run round the back of defence. When no one's expecting it, no one sees it. I don't even think

21:45the Goli season coming. But the finish to let, basically, he lifts it with the outside of his left foot over the Goli's head. And it's a brilliant finish. But I want to go back to their goal because I've got complaints to make because it's a terrible pass from Kerkhez's Jones to just behind Frimpong, I think it was, puts the straight out to touch the starter. So that's their first throw in. First throw in comes in. We deal with it a little bit, but our Goli, I think our Goli ends up possibly being our man of the match because Balls are four or five excellent saves. But he's got the ball in his hands. He's looking for options. And he's looking for options. And they puts the ball down and decides to play a left foot and pass because he is left footed. Obviously, as the team seems to forget all the time, across his body to the centre back on the right hand side who isn't looking at him and has no idea the ball's coming until it dies feet and it goes out. That whole goal, that whole first goal is completely on the Goli doing that. But it's also on the manager because our ethos is you play it to the centre backs, you play it to the full backs, you play it here. And that's what they're instructed to do when sometimes the sensible thing is just

22:49get back down there, which we did at the beginning of the game because at the beginning of the game, in this route, this really pissed me off. I mean, really, we went to a last not at the beginning of the game for the second game room. We did the game's gals, that's right. And we did it the other night. We took the kickoff and we kicked the touch. I will see that nonsense stop right away because it might get them pinned in down there, but it doesn't actually do a great deal. So, but the first goal, their first goal is completely on the Goli. We do lose our heads for about 10 minutes, but we do well together ourselves again, so we do claw it back a little bit. I think that's the last chance we have. Yeah, there's not much after that. The second half Rob is really poor. Just not good enough in any way, shape or form. I mean, Brighton's second goal is more shoddy defending, really. I think the cross comes in. It's a really good cross by Minter, I think it was. Yeah, you had a very good game. But again, it's just Canate and Bandai could just know where to be seen. It's so easy for Hinchlewood to get the ball across to well back. And you can't argue that Brighton didn't deserve it. No, no. I mean, the space is

23:54this gap all over the team that goes back to the central theme of tiring and we're not able to be compact. I mean, yeah, it was just utterly, utterly frustrating. Where'd you even begin with it? I was frustrated as anything by our set pieces. I think not enough to be said about that. We seemed to have sorted ourselves out and set pieces in the last couple of months, where we definitely have, because we've been defending them better and scoring them. Even when the other night, the first goal against Galatasaray, somebody who went to take, somebody took, was it Salah who took an out? I thought he's going to do an out swing or why are we doing an out swing? He goes in double like Super Sly finishes as a clever little decoy move. But against Brighton, they were virtually all Super Sly out swingers. I know it depends on what side he takes them against them. The last two set pieces went straight to the goalkeeper, didn't they? The insurgents. Yeah, but they don't need to be. You just need to deliver them deep and effectively or attack them properly. But before one of the big changes we made after that other gaffella who was the set piece coach left. Yeah, that's in, sorry,

24:55is to start doing what everybody else's scoring of corners do, mainly after, which is hanging right under the crossbar and jumping at the keeper. I'm having lots of bodies jumping at the ball as it hangs under the crossbar. It's nothing much more complex than that going on. What it does require is a really good delivery. Have we got players who can do a really good delivery? Yes, we have. We've got Dominics of Sly Mo Salon. I think Mo Salon not being there probably influenced our decision not to be doing the insurgents on certain sides of the pitch. It might be right, it might be wrong. But there's other ways. We've got a lot of quality players there, McAllister can take one very well. But we had a lot of corners, I think, quietly. And they were all entirely ineffective. That frustrated me. I'm in the rest of it that the fall off of the performance. When we equalised, I turned and said to my lad, we were sitting watching it with me. It goes, I feel I've seen the scene many times this season away from home. We're a little poor, fallen behind, quite early on. Maybe a bit unlucky to be behind. Huffing puffed their way back, get a goal. And we'll have historic muscle memories now. Now we march on to victory. We get the next goal

26:01and maybe even another one. This season, it's also we breathe a sigh of relief exactly. But we've never seem able to capitalise on getting that goal. I don't, unless my memory just sees me, I don't think after the Kirkers equaliser, we even had a five or ten minutes spell where we were all over them. No, I think there was one moment in the second half where the Brogdon saves from Kurtis Jones. Yeah. That was a good chance. But beyond that, there wasn't really a chance. No, just set pieces. Yeah. And James, I was in the press conference afterwards and I sort of asked the manager about that, that lack of creativity. And he said, I have a clear opinion what that's down to. But that's not what I'm going to say over here. As I said, they are the better, they were the better team and created more chances than us. Everything I say about this, people will see as excuses. And I never like to use excuses after the game. Now, I, sorry, what did he, what did he say at the beginning of that? Sorry about creativity. I have a clear opinion what that's down to, but that's not what I'm going to say over here. So I have a degree of sympathy and where he says

27:06people will use, we'll say it's excuses, because if he goes on about, players not being available or it's various different things, people will just say, well, it doesn't wash. And maybe that was what he was saying, maybe he was saying, you know, he doesn't feel like. But isn't it, but when we're talking about creativity, are we not, are we not talking about tactics as well? Is that and that that that surely comes under the same? Yeah, I thought it was a bit of a cryptic answer. He's implying that his answer is actually a series of excuses. Well, however you want to frame, he is implying that. I think he was implying. It's therefore not mine. I think he would have, if he'd been able to speak his mind to it, I'd say, well, I want to say, no one come back at me, please. Yeah, yeah. I think what he would have said is we didn't have much time. He's dead creative. We lost to a catique, so we couldn't get it. We had no one running in behind and we were a bit tired and my squad's not big enough. All the things which are in isolation and individually true, he would, he would have been thinking and and each one in isolation would have been correct.

28:11But, but that's no, that's no excuse for how passive we were in the second half. That's what he hasn't got a reason for. That's the, that's awful. Squad's not big enough to tired. He's round, it's also, it's no excuse for just throwing things at walls and seeing what sticks, which is what he's doing with those situations. Exactly that. Exactly that. Because you get the ends of the second half and try and tell me what shape we're playing or if there is a shape. I, I, I genuinely couldn't tell you in that second half. I couldn't tell you what tactically we were trying to do, what formation we were trying to do, how we were, how we were trying to lead the game. I genuinely couldn't tell you. So bookends up a centa bag, doesn't he? So a centa bag midfield hybrid kind of position, which we can submit field and then I think watching much because I watch much of the day back a couple of times for the highlights of it. And they talked about the facts of Oslo, I went back out there, I went back to the game and I was like, did he? That's interesting, I didn't actually notice that one because I couldn't tell you where any of us was playing. It's also reactive though. All the changes in the tweaks feel so reactive. Like moving Graven butch back

29:13is in reaction to the fact that there's this gaping space in front of our centre backs because our centre backs aren't stepping out quick enough. So there's this space there that the Brighton players can occupy all day long and are essentially one-on-one with our centre backs all the time, which is really, really for constressable. So that's why Gravenberg drops back. None of it is like, right, how are we going to seize control of this game? How are we going to take it to them? It's all right, how are we going to power in a paper over these tracks? It's moving back, step by step, all the way through, 100%. And it was all, it was, I thought it was evident from early on and that they brighten up more comfortable defending their right side than their left side. So Rio and Gamoa comes on and it's really tough for them. It does really well but within 30 seconds, we've got to switch them to the right. So we have no with on the right whatsoever. Who was on the right? So Sobslivers always tucked in, go to strings, I don't know, was sort of nominally around that area but we had zero with on the right hand side of the pitch. We did then switch Rio and Gamoa but it was too late and we didn't quite switch them back again. And then switching Rio exactly, that's what I mean.

30:16So there's no commitment to that idea. At least we had what Cody Gap was still on. The pitch wasn't too late onish, was he? Yeah, I'm sure he must do it. He wasn't taking off forwards in how many, you know, you still had, you still could have stretched with Cody on the left, Rio could have stretched some on the right and Verts could have pulled people around in the middle, at least have given you some sort of, I don't know, just, yeah, it's just absolutely frustrating. Yeah. Okay, sticking the boots into the manager, don't we? This might try not to. We'll get on to some individuals then, Ian. We'll start with Georgie Mamadashvili. Alison does a post before the game, an Instagram post and he says he's going to be out for a while. It's quite vague. It doesn't seem to be, I think the manager got asked about whether he would be available for the Man City game, which is obviously the first game after the international break and he said, maybe not, but it doesn't sound like as much as Alison has said a while, that it's going to be a long, long while. But we're obviously running out of time in the season, so there's a likelihood that Mamadashvili is going to have to play in some decisive games over

31:20the next month. I feel a little bit sorry for him because I think he's, you know, it's quite hard coming in, what's very hard coming in for Alison Becker because he's been the best goalkeeper in the world in the eyes of the football fans for a long time and still is on his day. I think Mamadashvili is a very good shot stopper. We made some good saves in the second half, but it did feel like he was a little bit nervy with his feet. You mentioned sort of the build up to do that first bright and goal earlier on. How concerned are you that he is going to be in for potentially a little while now? I'm not necessarily concerned about him himself per se. I think he is. He's a cracking shot stopper. He does make good saves. I do think he was quite possibly a man of the match on Saturday. The first mistake is ridiculous. It's a ludicrous mistake, hopefully. If our man just allows him to just get rid once in a while and maybe the problem is he's not great with his feet. We know that. We can't renew the first time we saw him play. He's not being bought because with his feet he's been bought for over the next iteration of the team. He's not going to

32:23be Alison. Very few goalkeepers are Alison. There's probably nobody in the country at the moment who plays as a goalkeeper with the feet the way Alison did when he was his feet, but Alison has been his feet quite a while. I think that's one thing I would say is that as much as Alison has been brilliant with his feet in the past, I think, his distribution this season has been a problem. I don't necessarily think in that department you actually lose an awful lot. You're not losing a huge amount. Alison is clearly his nest and hamstring injury of some kind because he will not kick for goal kicks. He has to pass it to the central defenders to actually move it on. He's nested himself through all the time. In terms of that, I don't think he'll lose great deal of time. I hate you don't lose anything because he's a big lad. He doesn't look a big lad in goal at the weekend, but he is a big lad and he's a good shot stopper. It's not a massive concern, but I would have been happy if it was Keller there because I trust Keller. I trust it for five years. It was the rest

33:25of the three of them with his feet in terms of the short kick. I mean, comparing what my mother dashfully gives us when we lose our Alison or we lose, Alison's superpower for me, he's got so many strengths. The main one is this quickness off his line to sniff out through it. It allows the defenders to play with much more confidence higher up the pitch. I've never seen a keeper as good coming off his line and anticipating stuff as Alison. Peter Schmeichel was the greatest in all time in two hours and came along. Mum and Dad's really did it very well when he came out, smothered the shop. Sometimes he's no slouch at this. He can't kick brilliantly, but then he, well, on his wrong foot, but then again, Alison can't either these days. Alison's never been a superb superb with his feet. I think we sometimes give it a try. Not as good as Edison, hasn't he? No. I think we confuse the fact that Alison can drop ball kick a pass like the famous one to Mo Salar against Man United for the fact that he's good with his feet. He can do stuff like that, which is incredible. And he uses his feet to come off his line. He really intelligence is positioning with his feet to really, really good. But I think most of what

34:28my mother dashfully is doing was really good. And I agree with you. I actually think the way he stops shots is quite Alison-like. Way goes with two hands as much as possible to get the balls far away from danger as possible. So I think they've done really well to scout it and found that keeper. Of all our problems at the moment, it seems a mounting to say, missing world class Alison for a few games isn't our biggest one. My biggest concern is that you're bringing in a goalkeeper who is quite clearly not fragile as such, but is a little bit nervy. And when you've got a nervy defense in front of you, you need someone who is experienced and confident to be part of a whole defensive unit. That's my biggest issue is that he doesn't look like someone who's going to commands his area, who can organize people, who can be vocal and be that dominant figure. Like Alison is even though he's not the peak of his powers, he's still Alison Becker. And this guy's coming in and yeah, he's a good shot stop. And I know doubt about that. But it's what it does

35:30to the whole back line and the whole kind of defensive setup that we've got is having somebody behind you who you are looking over your shoulder and thinking, what is he in the right place? Is he organizing things? That's my biggest concern. I think it's mostly these kind of an unknown quantity to them still, because your defense, I assume, and training most of the time, I'm going to defend with the goal of the goal of the goal of people playing, whether it's been Ali or season. So he's the lad down the other end playing for the other team against them. And he hasn't got that natural inbuilt authority. That's what he's looking for. He doesn't carry that yet. And I think, as opposed to that, something that will only come with time is still for a goalkeeper fairly young. He's obviously in his first season with the club he's not playing a lot. And I think that is where you probably need the players in front of you to not guide you through it, because you do want your goalkeeper to be taken responsibility. But you want those players in front to be settled and to be playing at a fantastic level. And the fact that they're not, is what makes it a bit of a worry, isn't it? That's my concern right now, is that Virgil Van Dyke

36:31is making a lot of mistakes. Ibrahim Okanate is capable of an eight or a nine out of ten performance and then follow it up with a five out of ten, like he's so inconsistent. And then you've got frailties all over the place. I referenced earlier on the fact that there was a huge gap in front of the centre-backs. It's all of these things compounded, the compounded issue that you need someone in goal who is really, really confident and knows exactly what's going on. And it's the worst time or arguably for a goalkeeper like that to be thrust into this side with the Champions League tie that we've got coming up. You know, every Premier League game now is of the utmost importance. We can't afford to drop any more points. We really can't. So I just hope that he has one or two games in front of him that he excels, maybe keeps a couple of clean sheets. That would be amazing. Just to build that confidence and that momentum because that's what you need from a goalkeeper. It's a really difficult position to just throw a lad in and go, right, you're in goal for Liverpool Football Club now. And by the way, every game is of the utmost importance.

37:34You need that confidence and that assurance. Yeah, I was going to talk about a few individuals Rob, but I know everyone will be keen to get into the manager. So I just want to give it a quick shout out to me, Lush Kirkers obviously gets the goal. But I think one thing for me, you know, for the last few months really and the last week is encapsulated. He is, he for me is one of the biggest positives in the team at the moment because you always know that regardless of what his performance level is, he's always going to be given 100%. You know, he feels like someone, one of my biggest frustrations watching Liverpool this season is it feels like the opposition, a far more willing to put their bodies on the line than Liverpool players are. You know, they're far more likely to throw their heads at across or, you know, really commit to a challenge than the Liverpool players are. I think me, Lush Kirkers is the exception to that rule. I think maybe the fact that he's young, he still maybe feels he's got to prove himself a little bit. I think he's always 100% committed to the cause. And if we had a whole team with that mentality at the moment, I think Liverpool will be in a much better position.

38:35We have two of them, they're both Hungarian. So that's maybe where we should be scouting a lot more. And it's, and it's a little weird, their nationality is not relevant, but they are, but they are our two most energetic performers, most committed. And Milos has been on this journey, supposedly, the season whereby people were critical of him at the beginning, were worried that he was fragile and not didn't show the potential to be the real deal. But I think his recovery, and those recoveries, evolution happened actually several months ago now. And he has Christ, he has actually been one of our star performers of this season. I think we're going to have to come out of it saying, Milos Kirkers, 21 still in Milos Kirkers. There's a part, part of me that thinks that people are a little bit prone to think about a fullback, a fullback at the end of the day, very few of them actually end up being something that you can talk about in terms of the way you would talk about forwards or in the evening field as a calf who were trained. They want the ones in other sort of lifetime sort of players. Milos Kirkers, 21 is really, really seriously good footballer. And you do wonder where his

39:37journey could take him. Could you know, could he be something we talk about as like, like we talked about, there's legendary Real Madrid and Barcelona, you know, wide defenders. Is he on that kind of trajectory? I'm not sure. He certainly has got the motivational, you know, he has the internal motivation to get him to the highest level he needs to get to, skill set, he's powerful runner, he's got a great cross on him. Yeah, and you know, as we saw with this finish, it's not short of technique or instinct. So it's a clip to say the sky's the limit, but he's certainly shown that that's possible. Well, he's also learning off the best as well. He's got Andy Robertson next to him in training every day. I mean, what could be better for a 21-year-old? Do you know what I mean? Someone to point out your mistakes and tell you where you're going wrong? I thought he was exceptional midweek, I thought he was really, really great. And I thought he was brilliant again at the weekend. Again, you're absolutely right, Beth, the energy, the desire, the work rate, the physicality of him. I just want that to filter through the team a little bit more,

40:39because it stands out. You notice it, you go, oh my god, there's a fellow who's really, really trying. Well, you're thinking similar to where he is in his career. He's straight ahead of where Rubber was at the age of 21. Yeah, right. Rubber was still thinking he was going to have to go and get a full time job in the real world. Well, that's enough positivity for now. Yeah, really. I'm just going to read out a couple of stats. Liverpool have now lost 10 league matches this season, which is their highest number since 2015-16, which was obviously one year open clock came in to replace Brendan Rodgers. The current tally of 42 goals conceded is already higher than the number they've conceded in each of the last two seasons. And a number that has that that's been doing around a lot the last few days. It's been for the 27th time in 31 league matches this season. Liverpool were outrun by their opponents, sorry, with only Chelsea having fed worse in that department. Now, I think that's that a lot has been made at that start. Can you give you one more so, which I saw? So if you do the league table, you took out the first five games. So say the season

41:41started on game six, where would you guess Liverpool are in the league? Well, I'll tell you, it's 11th. So that's actually better than I thought. I was actually, I was actually slightly better than I thought, but it was a defensive statement of this isn't there's no blitz here. So only five games are taking out. This is definitively what this Liverpool team is. 11th place team. I don't know. Brighton might have been 12th or 10th. I don't know. We played a team who were saying as good as the sunset of the on their ground and narrowly lost, it was a game between two well-matched sides. That's the grim reality. Yeah, just going back to those, those running stats in, because a lot has been made out of them. And I think it's important to, you know, I actually hadn't realised because when it's written down like that, 27 out of 31 league games, Liverpool have been outrun. It's quite shocking. It's quite shocking. It's quite dammit. When Liverpool, in 2021-22, when Liverpool finished that and got 92 points lost out on a league on the final day, we're on for the quadruple up until May. They were outrun in 26, so they're 38 Premier League games.

42:47So it's not a teago season. Yeah, so it isn't always necessarily a metric that decides how good a team is. And I think, you know, some Liverpool tends to have more possession than the opposition. That plays a massive part. That's the big guy. That excuse a lot. But I think what it does do in conjunction with the performances that we've seen this season and the results and coming back to what everyone said early on about the style, the passive nature of this team, it sort of marries with that image, doesn't it? It marries with this feeling that a lot of people have had watching Liverpool the season, which is that they just aren't intense enough. Yeah, it becomes worrying when you add it to the eye test of how we're actually playing. And when you look at what we're actually doing, it becomes worrying because the first thing I was going to say was, I don't know how valid these stats are in terms of the impact they have on games because the thing the slot was brought into to was give us more control. And the players that we bought in the summer were to give us more control. And the whole idea was to become possession based. And if you're possession based, you are naturally going on less than the lad who haven't got the ball because everyone after you're trying to

43:49get the ball off yet. So that point it becomes not necessarily an overly instructive stat. But when you couple it with the fact that you can see how bad we are, that's when it becomes the issue because we're not controlling the game. So if we're not controlling the game, then we should be running more because we need to stop the other team from controlling the game. At the moment, we have no control whatsoever. We have no energy. So we've perfectly fallen between two stools and we are neither sort of team anymore because the whole idea of control is gone completely because we're not functional. And the whole idea of counter-attack and is gone, the whole idea of pressing is gone because we haven't got any better to do from two compress. We're a team without any kind of identity at the moment. And it's horrible to say, but we actually haven't played well since the week we won the league. We're on a year of not playing well at the moment. With the occasional blip, you know, rail Madrid. Obviously, Galatasaray, there were a few games where we played well, but that's no more than saying, we're never some great against Chelsea at the weekend. That's where we are at the moment. We're

44:50not putting any consistency in. We are not consistent team. We have no sense of who we are anymore. Yeah, I think for me, James, that's the most damn thing. And the biggest mark against the manager's name, I guess, is that, you know, you just can't, you can't describe what this Liverpool team is. You can't describe what they're good at. You can't describe what what makes them unique. And that has been the case for most of the season. And I have defended the manager quite a lot. I've taken a fair bit of stick for it. I think a lot of the problems that Liverpool have had this season aren't necessarily his fault or exclusively his fault. I think he's been dealt a pretty poor hand. I think the players have let him down, maybe not intentionally, but have not been able to apply themselves in the right way. But I think when you see performances like that on Saturday, you just find it very difficult to see how long-term on a slot is the right man for the job at Liverpool at the moment?

45:50Yeah, he is right. Down to the identity. I don't know who, I don't know what this side is. I don't know what the plan is. I still don't know what the plan is for these players. You see us line up, we can weak out. I'm not sure tactically what they're being told to do. We're not pressing. And then the managers come out multiple times and mention this low block, you know, we're up against a low block. We're really, really easy to play against. That's what it seems to me from watching it live and on TV. We just seem really, really easy to play against. Really, really, really passive. I kind of walk in the park. We're not a side right now that teams are terrified of playing, albeit maybe there's a couple of Champions League games where people think it's Liverpool and the Champions League, but apart from that, no identity, no ambition. And I mentioned it earlier on in the show. It's the risk reward thing for me that is really unsettling. We're not playing with

46:50any kind of risk. And you have to play with a bit of risk if you want to win titles and you want to win trophies, you have to. It's the nature of it. You have to roll the dice. And whether it's a personality thing, I'm not sure, but on a slot doesn't seem like a man who wants to roll the dice. He seems to want to, this must be the setup. This has to be, you know, he's had plenty of time now with these players, plenty of time on the training ground to get his message across as the head coach. So this must be the idea, but if it is, it's not for me. Yeah, just to round this bit off, Rob. There will be a lot of people sat at home saying, you know, they want the manager gone. Once ago, or, you know, certainly now, the international break, they feel like it's the right time. I think all indications are that that's not going to happen. Sure. Before the end of the season, whether you agree with it, whether you don't. So it does seem like honest luck will be the manager of Liverpool until at least the sun or the head coach of the pool. Sorry, until at least the sun, unless something, you know, drastically shifts.

47:51I already know the answer to this question, but how are you feeling about that going into the final couple of months? Well, I mean, I was calling for making the media change what a week ago. I'm sort of a bit lost on it really because it's not going to happen before the end of the season. I don't think even teams that are going down don't change their manager this late. It is too late now. It's too late for it to be about in a certain sense. In as much, for so many reasons, I think anybody you'd approach, you go, what? You want me to come in and do what? Seven games. Really? Do I get a contract beyond that? No, mate, you just get to see him. Even let him say we spoke about a week or so, go about Steven Gerrard. Even Gerrard has got to come on. You could have asked me two months ago and I'd come to the service of my boyhood team. But for seven games, come on, what am I meant to do? So it's been sheer imagined, Newcastle, isn't it? Yeah, it's just, it's sort of almost pointless now and academic. Well, I said a week ago, any change would do. I don't know.

48:51Arna is a person I like in respect. I don't feel I should have to caveat that every time. But increasing is the season's gone by, I think. And the results haven't come back for him, sufficiently enough. I think he's running out of road in his own mind as to what to do. I think he's the whole theme of the way he speaks now. It's about permitting himself to fail. From, it started early on with this low block thing, this thing about everything being not pure and about long throws and set pieces and about small squads. And on and on we go. So there are these mitigations, but then every manager has ever been sacked to all gone down or have you. It was always able to say that the press conference for they were sacked. Yeah, but what about all their injuries? Tough shit. Quite frankly, all the, all the, when the things go against you, really, really good ones, find a way through it. And a Liverpool, we need the, not just the really, we need one of the best three managers in the world. That's our standards. Arna slots are really great manager. Don't think he's one of the three best managers in the world at the

49:52moment. I don't think he's going to be that next season. The thing I'm concerned about is that the collective responsibility for this season from between manager, Richard Hughes, Michael Edwards, maybe June and more too, will push a group think, it will push, push a culture of a group think, it will go, well, we all have these excuses. These excuses apply to all of us. We all didn't know, and you could go back into the tragedy around yoga or jota, you go, we all didn't know, Salah would fall off a cliff. We all didn't know, ESAC would get injured like that. So once they start thinking like that, I think there might be an inclination to go with him again. What, not season? Yeah, that's what, what, what, I don't know, the trouble is, like Hughes, Edwards might not be there. Well, the thing is, I think we should be certain that he's not there next season. I think there's not a fan I talk to around Liverpool or online who doesn't go, he's got to go. It does have to go. Someone more respectful than others around that,

50:53but he's got to go. He's not going to be here next season, surely. Now, if the fans are 99% if I, if I can be so bold as to guess at a number, I'm 99% of the disguise now managing next year. Where are the decisions on that, on that scale? Because all they ever do, quite frankly, is brief that they're, he's their guy. And I suppose to an extent, you can't, you can't, to this stage of the season, God, he's got to go. You can't do that. But he does worry me that it's always he's our guy and we're committed to him for the long term. I wonder what, I wonder what changes that. I wonder, I wonder what point does he stop being your guy? Is it the end of the season? What is it? Is it the booze? Is it late? Is it being booed? Is it, is it, you know, all the briefness is there to the end of the season. That's, you know, little leaks coming out. What is he doing about in between? This is between obviously the talks is up your lawns out because if they haven't talks is up your lawns out, they're completely remissing what they're doing. There may be other managers they'll have talks as well. And I'm only assuming that I have no information whatsoever. Have you seen enough of a pattern in the press, the idea that he will

51:56be there to the end of the season? I feel for, now, I really feel for him because he've got to go back to the loss of yoga because it's, it's, it's a, I'm not sure you do. I think, I think, I think they always find, I'm almost beginning to find it. When you talk about it because it may have been really, it may have been really important. It may have had no effect. I mean, I was, I'm all enough to have been around in the hills, precise, and saw an entirely different reaction to, to a, to try to do it on a bigger scale, even. So there's no one set thing that you can say applies to. And because we don't know, I don't even think we should speculate around it. No, but I think that just the practicalities are that obviously the, I'm not talking about the psychological effect of the, the loss of their, their friends and their teammates, the practicalities of it are, pre-season training was supposed to start the next Monday. And it didn't. And everybody was given the least the next week of, and we don't know how people came back in trips and

52:57drabs. And that first week, the week of conditioning, the week where you run until you're throwing up in the bookers, wasn't there. And they were playing catch-up from day one, just the practicalities of it. And that's probably why we're seeing more injuries than we've seen from a manager who's, who's, basically, is, his whole being was he keeps players fit. That's why we brought him in. He keeps players fit. And he has, I don't think that was a quarter fight. And it wasn't two weeks, or ten days. There was the vast majority of it. I think they're meant to be back in on Monday. And I think the vast majority insisted they were back in by the Friday. It's not good, but it doesn't define the season. I've, I said, but all right, it's a factor. But there are a lot of, but I would have sayings, but it hasn't been like catch-up time. There's, there's, there's factors. I think we'll have quite the same injuries. Well, we could talk about this all day. It's almost if we need a show that mindlessly speculates about new managers called the award-winning gutter show. Catch the award-winning gutter show tomorrow. But for now, we have a chat with Martin Fitzgerald on his book, The Umbrellaman and other stories. They're lacking so with my friend and yours, Martin Fitzgerald, author of The Umbrellaman and other stories, which is available on

54:00bikeback to be now done on pre-order. All the players you get your books from, all the obvious hits, you shouldn't know how to do that by now. If you don't, you can come to my Instagram page. I've got a thing called a link tree. Oh, do you know about them? I've heard about them. It's got all the books shops you want. Yep. So you can have your choice of books, and I'm not getting into where people should buy their books from. Just buy the book, which is right. Yeah, just buy the book. It's also got some details of live events, one of which is with you, you know, so 400 blows, the number four, the word 100 blows, or mind Fitzgerald, on Instagram. It's in my bio. That's that bit. That's how you buy the book. That's how you buy the book. What is the book about? It is called The Umbrellaman and other stories. There's a further subtitle, which is somewhat wordy and makes reference to the JFK assassination, but it's not really about that. It's about memory and it's about place and it's about a sense of many things and about what it is to bear witness and what it is to tell stories. I loved it, genuinely loved it. I'm not just saying that because he's my friend. It's actually really, I was relieved how much I loved it because it

55:03would have been awful if not. You've been working on it for some time. Some would say a lifetime in a way, but recently you've been working on it for very, very heavily for about a couple of years. Yes, so I first came up with the idea to do the book. Around this time last year, I did a podcast called Smirgepod, which is by guy called John Vane and they do a different film every week. Now I did JFK and it was, honestly, it was so much fun and feedback was really good and I talked about my angle on the assassination and John was really interested in that. As you know, I've retired, so I thought, I'm just going to write this book and I didn't quite know what shape it was going to take when I started writing it, but then it all kind of fell together in a way that I'm really pleased with. I think it's a huge amount of fun. There'll be a lot of people listening to this that may know some stuff about the JFK assassination, I mean,

56:03and nothing at all about it, but there'll be a lot of people that have been put off this subject, and a lot of people that are wary of it because if you just google this stuff and you can disappear down rabbit holes online and you can often feel like you've been cornered in a pub by a lunatic and having read lots of books about the assassination, I've sometimes felt like that, and I wanted to write something where to read, I felt they were in the company of a friend. So this is one of the most richest subjects that I've ever come across and people ruin this subject by arguing about who did it, which kills me because I'm completely agnostic on the subject of whether it was Lee Harvey Oswald or whether it was a conspiracy. I can argue both of those points if people want me to, but it would be like taking, for example, the history

57:03of the Beatles, which is I think another incredibly rich subject, and ruining that subject by just having an argument about who was best out of John and Paul. And that's what happens with the JFK assassination. So you would miss the, you know, 1,200 hours that they played in Hamburg, which is about 800 gigs of one and a half hours, which is more than most bands ever perform in their lifetime. You would miss the fact that Paul McCartney meets a girl in 1963 when he's playing, when he's on steady-go, and he picks this woman as the winner of the dance competition. Her name is Melanie Leo, I think. Anyway, four years later, Paul McCartney's reading the Daily Mail and a girl has run away from home and he writes she's leaving home. It's the same girl that won the dance competition that he judged in 1963. That, those kind of coincidences and the richness of that story are so interesting

58:03that you don't need to argue about who's who's best out of John and Paul. Likewise with the assassination, you don't need to... And also, you're just never going to know, it's my point. But also, I mean, what you've done is you've taken the idea of this moment in Daily Plaza, and police is really important to the book, both Daily Plaza itself, then the police is that we know the names of, that all have these remarkable names that have ended up falling into common usage references, jokes, and all that sorts of stuff. There are not that many. In fact, it is the only book depository in the world. One of the things that has always fascinated me about the assassination from 2018 to 2014 when I first encountered it in a history lesson at school is it has its own lexicon. Yes. If you Google the Minnesota Book Depository or the California Book Depository, the first one that comes up on Google is the Texas School Book Depository. Because it's the only school book depository. It's the only place where there's a triple underpass. It's the only grassy knoll, and I've never met anyone else called Tsupruda either.

59:09So it has these characters in this lexicon, which feel, you know, otherworldly, and there's times in a book where I compare the geography of this place and my fandom towards it in the same way that people go to Tunisia to see the places where they film Star Wars, right? Because it means that much people have obsessed about Lord of the Rings, and obviously that isn't a real place, but people have obsessed with that stuff, more door, Gandalf, and everything else. I'm obsessed with this, not because of who did it, because this collection of people ended up in this place. Well, this place, dearly plaza, let's take the place because that's what you've done. So we freeze the place, and we freeze the moment, the key moments being the footage that, you know, is improved the films, and what you do is you take almost everyone who is within that moment,

1:00:09and find the stories that exist within War of Being Deemed down the years to be mysteries. A number of those mysteries are now, it's perfectly reasonable to describe them as uncovid, and explore fully the still of you that remain as mysteries. The why of that is, you know, you make a series of arguments about within the book, for instance, making the point that in that area of Dallas, it was not the sort of thing that would happen where black people would be interested in going into the authorities in the aftermath of events, and you make that argument, which is not one that's made very often around all of this, but what you've done is you've taken all of these stories, all these people, and these moments, and you're telling their stories, not necessarily obviously Oswald comes into it, but not necessarily Oswald, certainly not JFK, Jackie Yes, but not Kennedy himself. You know, these are the stories that you're delving into with these are the characters, the umbrella man being the first of them, the guy who put his umbrella up at the moment, that Kennedy was shot on another wise dry day, and the mystery that he became, but you're taking each of these people, and then you're taking that sense of place,

1:01:14I'm calling us in with it. If you imagine, if you imagine a daily plaza who's like a kind of, you know, painting by someone like Lowly, so each chapter I just point to camera at someone else, and these people, they haven't been the forgotten people of the assassination, some of them have got their own Wikipedia pages, but they haven't had their stories told in this way before, and there's still these are all fascinating, and you know, my angle towards this subject is that on the 22nd of November 1963, the main event that day was supposed to be in Main Street, right? So Kennedy was coming to Dallas for the first time in two years, and they organized a motorcade, and a motorcade went down Main Street, which is the big central dragon Dallas, and if you look at their, you know, photos and footage of that day, it's insane, the trail are 60, 70 deep, there's people hanging out of windows, looking through a blizzard of ticker tape,

1:02:18all the professional broadcasters are in Main Street, because Main Street is the place to be. But if that's where the party was, then Deely Poros is the kitchen, and we all know what sort of people end up in the kitchen at parties. So there aren't any professional broadcasters in Deely Plaza, there's a dressmaker with vertigo called Abraham Sopruder, and he's standing on a four-foot plinth whilst his receptionist grips him from behind so he doesn't become unsteady. He's going to become our documentarian for this event, and he's going to shoot the most famous home movie ever, and it will make more money than Cleopatra, which was also made in 1963. So here's left, a man opens up an umbrella on a completely dry day, and as he does so, Kennedy gets shot. Following it round, there's a construction worker in a shiny aluminium helmet, and he's sitting on his own, and he's opposite this building called the Texas School of Depository, and he's going to look up,

1:03:22just before the assassination, he's going to see something, and what he sees is going to become the official story, and he's going to tell everyone that God sent him there to see this. And then following him round, you've got a woman called the Babushka lady who's got a headscarf on and a big coat, and she looks to have a camel in her hand, and she goes unidentified for years into the woman called Beverly Oliver Steps forward in 1971, so that was me. And my point about all of this is that this is not situational. A lot of these people made a conscious decision not to be in Main Street. I wouldn't have gone to Main Street, Neil, and I don't think you would have done either. Sometimes you might be, you know, glass and being, everyone's going to the pyramid stage, but there's a trickle of people going off somewhere else to a different stage. You might go to the Louvre, but you might not go and see the main elisa where everyone else is going. So I'm interested in that as a personality trait,

1:04:25because I think that's like me. I can't really like big events and lots of crowds. I wouldn't have gone to Main Street. When you read the testimony of these people, you read the testimony of the construction worker. He finishes his lunch, and he looks out of the window on Main Street. He's always crowds and people's people jostling. I think I can't be bothered with that. I want to walk over there where there's hardly anyone else. I'm going to sit on this wall. I will look at the Texas School Book Depository. That time it's not an infamous building, but it would become so, largely because of him, actually. The umbrella man actually works seven blocks away, and he came out of his building where he worked in insurance. He crossed the road onto Main Street with his umbrella, and he walks all the way down Main Street, and every block he says, not here, not here, not here. Then he ends up in D.D. Blasem. To his right, there's a mound of grass, which at 1231 will become known as the grass you know, and has been known that forever since. But for now,

1:05:28it's just a mound of grass. To the young fellow man's left, there's the Texas School Book Depository. There's a window on the sixth floor, which is half open. The young fellow man stands between these two points, and he thinks, here, I'll do this, I'll do this here. No one will notice me here. So what happens when these people opt out of the main event, and then they become part of the most scrutinised seats? What's a scrutinised fascinating? Yeah. Fascinating because he literally doesn't take his video camera. He does everything he can to avoid doing this. It's almost like he half-nosed. He doesn't take his camera to work that morning. All of his colleagues have to talk him in to go and get his camera. When he then comes back to the office, his assistant has let everyone else of the building to go and see the president. So he says to the assistant, well, I'd better stay here. You film. You go outside and film it. He has everything he can't to avoid being put in a situation that he does. And then he ends up on his four-foot plinth,

1:06:30and how he ends up on there is an incredible story about his receptionist who'd gone to open a bank account, but the banks were closed. And his story is just, well, again, people know him through the film in it. It's like it is the kind of Bayer tapestry of the assassination. But people don't really know that he was an immigrant from Ukraine. This wasn't the first murder he'd ever seen, right? He saw his brother got murdered in front of him when his family had fled, you know, Ukraine. You know, history doesn't choose its witnesses, but Abraham's a poo that is about as perfect as he gets in terms of his desire for the footage to go to the right authorities and for his desire not to insert himself into this story. The book ends being very much about a sense of place. It becomes about Dallas, not just Elyplars, but becomes about Dallas as a whole, which for me is really striking the idea that Dallas ends up with this unbelievable reputation,

1:07:34hugely negative. It's deemed to have been, you know, a really. The city of hate, the city of hate. So, you know, suffered like no other assassination city. I mean, no one blames New York for Lenin, no one blames Memphis for Martin Luther King, no one blames Butler Pennsylvania for the attempted assassination on a Donald Trump. People blame Dallas, and it became associated with the assassin. I mean, despite the best efforts of local politicians in Dallas to try and move on, the wider world blamed this city. And it wasn't really until the early 80s when a TV show came along, called Dallas. And bizarrely, it's biggest show, which at the time, I think, was the most watched TV show in the world, was about an assassination in Dallas. Yep. And it was treated in exactly the same way. People were watching the footage over and over again. How many shots were there?

1:08:34Did J.R.U. in look at the shoot? Did he know the shooter? It was the same as 1963 all over again, but it was fun in games this time. And after that, the tourism to Dallas went like that. And people saw it as a city of sex, you know, stetsons, shoulder pads. When I first started to go to Dallas, people used to say to me, who do you think you are? J.R.F. fucking you in? You know. Because it was that, you know, despite the best efforts of politicians to change the perception of Dallas, was a TV show about another assassination, which really changed it. And I was fascinated by all of that stuff. And when you've been there, been part of the observation process, you've met, you've excellent two terrific stories, Tony and Mary within the book of people who were witnesses, but you pulled them out of that idea of they were witness to one thing, a daily plaza. And what you're actively looking to do and very much achieve is to make the point that these are completely well-rounded people with huge hinterlands that go way beyond this one thing. But this one thing is

1:09:41whatever one wants to speak to them about all the time, over and over again, in that circle of people who are obsessed with, well, no, actually, who did it? How did it go? What did you see? They're going to ask the question that somebody's going to unlock something that remains. And that's what they at times find themselves reduced to. And you're using this book to very much try to pull these people out of that. Yeah. And I'm trying to present them as as fully fleshed people that, that, I mean, look, it's so hard to fully remember just six seconds. Yep. There's so much variance in terms of the ear witness and eye witness testimony of that day. And of course, because the subject has become so huge and there's so many books about it and then you've got the support of film, it's hard for witnesses to disentangle their own original memory of that day from what they've read and seen since. It's almost impossible. Now, someone like Mary Mormons, she got interviewed five times on the day of the assassination and it's pretty much always, always told the same story. But I was in her

1:10:45house in November last year with a bunch of researchers and they just kept on repeating the same questions. Are any shots did you hear from what direction? She's got nothing else to say unless you ask her different questions and then she's a truly fascinating and talented woman whose, you know, life has been changed by the assassination. I would say ultimately now in a very positive way. And it's about bringing those people to life so they're not just the extras in a subdued film. Yep. They are their own, they've got their own films and they are the leading characters within those. It's a marvelous piece of that social history combined with. I think of a bit of a meditation on the azir being a witness and memory. It is called the Umbrella Man and other stories. It is written by Martin. It's with Bite Back Publishing. There'll be reviews of it all over the place but we want you to buy it now. There are loads and loads of positive things that people have said about it. You'll see all of that on Martin's link tree so do check all of that out as well. Go to the link tree. Go to the link tree. It's what they're all doing these days.

1:11:49You want to get on that link tree and then we're going to talk about it at length for the Amfield Rapper as well. That'll be out and then we're going to talk about it at water stones on I think the 14th of May. Absolutely. In Liverpool and all of those things will be different because the book contains multitudes. There are a number of different directions to go in but at no point will I ask Martin who I think who he thinks did it. That will not be happening at any stage in any of those conversations. You don't need to worry about that because that would go against the spirit and the essence of the book. I heartily, heartily recommend it. Do pick it up if you can. Wherever you are, do get yourself a copy of it. Thank you very much to Martin. I'm all be just black. One more thing for me if I can. Of course. It really helps the orders. It just helps the dos. Neil knows this but it gives confidence to bookshops and it gives confidence in terms of the size of the print one that you want to order. It would mean the world to me if you bought it. I'm extremely proud of it. I think it's really, really good and I think if you've ever

1:12:51listened to me or you've read anything I've ever done whether it was in the album club back in the day or whether it's shoot treatment now, you know how my mind works and this book is the best distillation of that. There's not a lot about Liverpool in it. Dominic Sabazoli is mentioned once but other than that, it's very light on Liverpool. But if you've ever enjoyed anything I've ever done then I would urge you if not beg you to pre-order this book and I will be eternally grateful and if you come to the shows and we can hang out and you can ask me what I think who I thought did it. I will entertain them. There you go, the shows you'll entertain it. See you later. Hi, it's John Gibris. Just quickly let me know what's going on Amfield over the Easter holidays. So of course there is the stadium tour that is going on every day but did you know there's a dedicated cop kids version that keeps younger supporters engaged with interactive games and puzzles.

1:13:51Also for two days over the Easter holidays you will get visits from Mighty Reds on the level two concourse on the 29th of March and on Easter Monday Club mascot Mighty Red were grief fans. Post for photos sign merchandise and take part in interactive football fun. So if you're kids and Mighty Red fans or you of course then there's a couple of days there where you can book in and meet Mighty on that stadium tour and of course don't forget as part of the stadium tour you also get access to the world renowned record-breaking fantastic LFC museum which is home to our six European cups and loads more besides so make sure you're active in time to go to the museum as well there is of course for the brave the Amfield app sale as well that's available throughout Easter and a couple of special events to let you know about it over that period too. Samu Lee is doing the Legends Q&A on the 4th of April now Samu is a great fellow so humble and he's got some great stories of within European cups and scoring on his debut and all of that so he's

1:14:53always great value and I think the Legends Q&A itself is very good value indeed so that's on the 4th of April and on the same day if you want to go very bougie and get the Amfield VIP experience that's with former LFC captain and of course assistant manager Phil Thompson and that is unforgettable experience we get five star hospitality a Q&A with Phil hosted by Steve Harder Soul Live music great food it is absolutely unbelievable way to spend your day that is on the 4th of April as well so something for everyone at Amfield over the Easter holidays so if you want to have a little bit of a look at those and anything else that is on offer at Amfield on a non-match day get yourself over to LFC.tv for us last tours thank you very much there to Martin a little interlude we're going to talk about album of the week which I've been tasked with doing today is this your first time yeah I didn't I didn't know until I saw the agenda it's very controversial some people don't like it but the latter one bit because I've been tasked with doing it today Neil Atkinson has

1:15:55introduced an album of the week where the host puts forward an album an album that's just been released so the the criteria is there is meant to be within six months Neil is an Australia today so there's nothing he can do about the fact that I'm breaking those rules this album was out last August so it is beyond six months and but it's an album called Bite Me by a singer called Rene Rap who is an American singer and I went to see her in concert on Friday she was very good hence why I've chosen her as my album of the week for some reason like like poppy rocky slightly alternatively and won't be everyone's cup of tea if it's not and that's fine because we can all have different opinions that's the beauty of the Anfield Rap and just very quickly we're going to have a little look ahead to the next few weeks James and I mean it was another blow at the weekend in the race for Champions League qualification and not if you win it well that's very true Villa and United despite United dropping points actually gained ground

1:16:59on Liverpool because obviously they didn't pick up anything so Chelsea are in a similar boat to Liverpool in the sense that that their situation at the moment seems pretty hopeless maybe even more hopeless than Liverpool's ever to do Liverpool a massive favour so Liverpool are in contention amazingly for a Champions League place but it does feel like now that the wiggle room is just not there in terms of dropped points now every drop point is really costly there is zero wiggle room there is no room to wiggle there's no wiggling yeah I think Chelsea are in a much worse spot than we are I think it could be decided as well by the fact that a lot of those games are against three of those teams that you're up against in United Villa and Chelsea it depends which ones you win three and you get something against Chelsea and I think you're fine Chelsea are in absolute shambles I mean they can't they can't stop conceding goals they are absolutely

1:18:00abysmal and their fans have completely turned on their manager and in fact their fans have turned on the hierarchy of the club it's a really really unhappy football club which I'm delighted to to say out loud they deserve everything they get so yeah I think it between us and Chelsea I think we've I think we've just got enough to pit them and luckily they've gone easier on enough than the Chelsea yeah because they have had this is quite they've had a nightmare run Chelsea yeah we've played everyone I think they might still have to play City and United do they wanted to channel knee lock concern here this season it's almost felt like the opponent doesn't matter the quality of the opponent because Liverpool you know I think we sat a few of us sat under the overview a couple of weeks ago and I think and not to drop you in it Rob I think you predicted Liverpool's get 12 points yeah and they they've got one point out of right and wars and Tottenham so I mean that's why so you can look at it you know the positivist way to look at it is it's so bring on it makes no difference well yeah well you can go hey bring on a good

1:19:03if it does it what's our record against the good teams it's not outstanding well I just I'm just going to read you Liverpool's fixtures in April so they've got and the FA Cup quarterfinals Manchester City in the quarterfinals of the Champions League PSG full of full of them in the Premier League PSG again in the Champions League Everton away Crystal Palace and then on the second of May they go away to Manchester United so it's a tough it's a tough all run you know there's tough about it and the reason the opposition don't matter is because we're playing back to back games and our squad's not big enough so the reason we haven't good we had game back game is because one game we get fresh for the next game we're not fresh for then there's a little maybe a little bit of a spike because you've got five days off rather than two days off or two days between games and we're getting better result this is sort of the pattern we're seeing at the moment isn't it or sometimes the reaction pattern so terrible result Brian they've got a bounce back and they've got to put on a performance game so and so so we may come up from international break full of vigor and them and and actually give City a game maybe even get through

1:20:06somehow but the FA Cup is PSG and we're interested for that we'll require we'll make it very hard to just get through against PSG on adrenaline alone or if we do PSG what would your what would drop some isn't on to be to face full of other weekend yeah I think it's the current iteration of Liverpool it's highly unlikely to see them progressing in the Champions League progressing in the FA Cup and maintaining the the required semblance of form needed for to to finish in the Champions League and I think that's one thing which I agree with James I think they're in a worse position than Liverpool in terms of the state of the club but the fact that they're not in the Champions League now means they've got two less games to play next month and games that will emotionally physically drain Liverpool so with all that in mind and how confident are you that they can they can have a positive end to the season for me not even vaguely um and we've had to backbone for the Liverpool by the way yeah and he's already accused me of being lily livid before we started the show which is not a fray and I'm usually the

1:21:07one with a relentless ludicrous amount of optimism I think we're terrible at the moment I'm worried about going to the Hill Dickinson now there actually started winning games there and the atmosphere is taking called an everybody behind them and they're playing some decent football I'm worried about them actually having more desire to win the game than us and if we play well against PSG on the Wednesday we will lose the full amount of saturday and I'm worried about Palace as well because yeah because I'm serious first off first the game of the season down there at there at their place they absolutely smashed us everywhere I'm worried if I'd ever last day who could be the head of a spider well they could be head of a spider yeah it does feel like this next month we're up just to finish with you it feels like this next month is is hugely decisive yeah or at the end of the day as terrible as the season have been has been if by some miracle Liverpool were able to progress in the FA Cup in the Champions League you'd say wow you know they've got the potential to end the season in a really special manner despite the fact they have been terrible for most of the season if as I think a lot of fans would predict at the moment

1:22:11they don't feel so well in those cup competitions it has the potential to be a real slog of a few weeks to end the season it does it does I think the stakes the height of the stakes will help us in certain situations because we do have we have an idea I said this one she feels like I'm pleading myself we said I've a show recently at before Galatasaray about Liverpool have it in their DNA to raise themselves as a club and that could be in any era in any position in the league to raise ourselves as a club and to play for the shows and play for the play for the history of the club and what have you so we can we all these games that doesn't look like we really probably would win at the moment say at Old Trafford or in Paris or against Man City whatever game you want to pick you can talk yourself into the fact that we're playing the way we're playing we could lose any one of them but it is possible I know this is your theme of the early thing it is possible we pull out a win or two an improbable win or two from somewhere and with the sack back and with this is the yeah this is one of the this is one of the things I was going to come on to the

1:23:11one thing that could make this better is if well well a little bit of luck getting salad back getting ESAC back in surprisingly good shape if that's possible keep it not being out for protract a period of time no new injuries but even those things come together he's still going to have to be bolder with his use of the squad he's going to have to go Rio and Gamma of course he's 17 you can't play him every game but he might have to play stop for the last seven three minimum you might have to in the Champions League you might have to start one of the legs against Paris Saint-Germain you might have to start against City I don't you've got to be training only might have to be trusted as well against follow if you've gone to Paris and put your top dogs out you might have to put him on roll the dice roll the dice you you're going to have to if you're going to play these games they're all back-to-backs now I don't think there's any respite in the international braces near as we're getting to to respite and until we go out of the Champions League by the way then we might get some respite but if we want to stay in these things we're going to have to use the squad we're going to have to make five changes after a midweek game minimum

1:24:15yeah well Liverpool might need to roll the dice they have to feel that roll the dice today bringing me in as a host for Finnie Lackinson but thank you very much to James to Rob to Ian for joining us it's been like a therapy session thank you very much to Paddy for sorting out the images Andy for sorting out the audio and thank you for watching and listening we'll see you soon