Liverpool Beat Everton, Paul Tierney, the PGMOL, and This Whole Sick League

A great night for the Reds and the league table, a sad indictment of the PGMOL

Paul Tomkins, Andrew Beasley, Daniel Rhodes and other TTT regulars will give their thoughts on the match for 24 hours after the game, so the article received via email is unlikely to be the final version. There's statistics from the match and videos too.

Post-Match Thoughts

Paul Tomkins

Was that hard work? It was a bit of a grind, but bar one Everton breakaway, when Liverpool should have had a free-kick (usual story), the visitors did nothing of note that involved staying onside.

It’s harder to play against teams who should have men sent off, and fly into challenges with 15 stone of pure, spiteful reducer.

This is one sick league, run by the sick PGMOL, but even that sickness cannot stop Liverpool. Clear potential leg-breakers are fine, but we must clamp down on sarcastic applause. Don’t protect the players, fuck integrity, just employ the same iffy VARs.

My takes before the game in the pre-match thread included:

“I'm expecting Jota to be a bit sharper, another 2-3 weeks on, and with a few international minutes. He should be entering a nice zone of fitness/freshness/sharpness.”

And:

“Barrott, young and inexperienced, and Tierney – fuck me! Crucially, this is an Anfield debut for the ref, and he gets the Mersey derby. Younger/newer refs tend to be the worst at Anfield as they're the most scared of upsetting the neutrals, and their paymasters. I do think Barrott has potential to be a good ref, but why is a guy making his Anfield debut in a game this big?”

Obviously I knew Paul Tierney would not send off anyone against Liverpool as the VAR, as he’s NEVER MADE A SINGLE SUBJECTIVE DECISION FOR THE REDS, in nearly FORTY games in the role of VAR, which is as suspicious as hell, and increases with every game.

James Tarkowski’s followthrough was the worst since I had explosive diarrhoea as a baby, and for which, had VAR been around, I’d have been sent for an early bath. (Hopefully I was indeed given a bath.)

Tierney nearly ruined this match too, and it’s beyond the point where he should be following his mate David Coote out of the profession, as he’s as iffy as fuck.

Duncan Ferguson said it was an “incredible decision” not to send him off. Jamie Carragher: “shocking decision”. Gary Neville: should be a red card, he knows what he’s doing. All the ex-players agreed, one Liverpool, one Man United, one Everton. More on Sky’s other channel: Paul Merson (Arsenal), Mike Dean (Tranmere!). (Edit: and Man City lads Joe Hart and Micah Richards, with Hart saying Tarky is his made but he can’t defend him for a terrible tackle where getting the ball is irrelevant.)

No one can believe it, but I can, as it’s in the data that Tierney will do this to Liverpool. I’ve been saying it for so long now, as I did with David Coote. It’s not a conspiracy – they are both as dodgy as fuck. They are bringing the league and their occupation into disrepute.

A horrific challenge, a leg-breaker. Mac Allister’s ankle was rolled and his shin could have been snapped. It was about 100x worse than what Curtis Jones was sent off for after his foot rolled over the ball into the Spurs’ player, with little force.

Early in the game, and bottled by the ref and bottled by Tierney, as that’s what Tierney does. Again, as we near 40 games with this joker, it feels corrupt. He’s given various subjective overturns against Liverpool, all for Manchester clubs (not that it matters, but it doesn’t help, and two of the three were mistakes).

If you’ve played the game at any level, you should know what an attempt to “do” someone looks like. That Paul Tierney doesn’t see it that way, with the benefit of the replays, means he’s either corrupt or incompetent. It’s that bad, and it’s a pattern. (Another pattern is that Liverpool never get subjective overturns before 30 minutes in a game via a VAR, since its introduction.)

VAR is not being used to reach the correct decision but to gaslight, and make a mockery of the league. Liverpool won, but again, against more than 11 players. The PGMOL no longer seems to be even trying to hide it anymore.

We also had a near carbon-copy of a Jordan Pickford take-out of Virgil van Dijk, this time doing the exact same on Darwin Núñez, who was booked for being kicked up in the air and having the temerity to roll back onto the pitch; but Pickford, like Tarkowski, is English. While the whistle had gone meaning no penalty, that was another wild, reckless challenge. Núñez could also have had his ACL snapped.

A BBC stat said, “James Tarkowski now has the joint most yellow cards without ever being sent off in Premier League history (63, level with Oriol Romeu).”

But Diogo Jota, treated awfully on the night, like Luis Díaz, by another ref who favours the English, had the key moment with a typically mazy run – jinking this way, then that – before slotting home with the reverse slide, as we’ve seen so many times. My sense that Jota would be hitting top form again was proven, but only after my fears about a rookie ref at Anfield and the iffy Paul Tierney were proven too.

With the first choice goalkeeper out along with the first, second and third choice right-backs, this was a test of Liverpool’s mettle, against a team that thumps long ball up the pitch for 90 minutes, like John Fashanu’s 1980s Wimbledon, albeit with far less quality and panache than the alehouse Crazy Gang, where at least one of them could control a football.

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