Gary Neville: “You do NOT get beat 7-0 at Anfield if you’re Manchester United.”
Jamie Carragher: “You do today.”
Gary: “Do one.”
So, rumours of Liverpool’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. But not as bloody exaggerated as rumours of Manchester United’s rebirth, despite them being the recently crowned Carabao Cup world champions.
Not that she wanted to rub it in, but Kelly Cates pointed out that United’s previous worst defeat in this particular fixture (1-7) happened in 1895, James Milner making his 100th appearance for Liverpool that day, so it had been an entire 128 years since they had experienced these levels of pain.
“I don’t know what to say,” said Roy Keane, but Kelly told him they’d be on air for another hour so he better think of something. As it proved, replays of Liverpool’s goals filled most of the time, “I can’t even remember them there were that many,” said Roy.
And he’d been quite hopeful at half-time, too.
“This game is far from over,” he reassured us, buoyed by United’s first-half performance despite them going in a goal down at the break.
It was post-match, though, that he revealed he began to worry when he saw big smiley heads on the United players as they emerged from the tunnel for the second half, noting, in a somewhat withering fashion, that they were having a chuckle with Anfield staff and the like.
If Roy had been in the same position back in the day, he’d have washed down the liver of any Anfield staffer with some fava beans and a nice Chianti if they’d even looked at him sideways. “Forget this laughing and joking rubbish,” he said, smiley heads when a goal down being an affront to his very being.
Come full-time, the smiliest head of all belonged to Graeme Souness, who wasn’t slow to remind his punditing colleagues of his prematch hunch: “It’s a long time since I’ve been as confident about a Liverpool win against United as I am today, I just feel they’re going to turn up today, they’ll be bang on it.”
Gary and Roy had tried to stifle their giggles, and some of the rest of us needed our sides restitched.
So, we’d like to offer an apology to Graeme. But we’d also like to swiftly withdraw it in light of his lack of sensitivity towards Gary’s hurt, being a touch gloaty about United’s annihilation.
A heated debate ensued between the pair over whether this was a freak result (Gary) or a pattern that demonstrated United are really quite crap (Graeme), Roy still so annoyed by the smiley heads he didn’t bother getting involved.
He did, though, tell us that if he’d been involved in a defeat like that, “I’d go in to hiding – I think I’d go missing for a few months.”
An ashen-faced Erik ten Hag had the look of a man who wanted to do just that when he chatted with Sky’s Geoff Shreeves post-match, while Jürgen Klopp’s beam could have lit up all of Merseyside and the southern half of Lancashire.
Back in the studio Gary and Graeme were still arguing about whether it was a freak result, by now the only upside for an inconsolable Gary being, perhaps, that the Qatar lad might withdraw his offer to buy the club, possibly concluding that, say, Dagenham & Redbridge would be a wiser investment.
Disappointingly, this punditry feud distracted the panel from the game’s main talking point – Roberto Firmino’s right foot looked offside for Liverpool’s seventh, but VAR didn’t spot it. If VAR had done its job, it could have been a very different game.
Mo Salah, meanwhile, revealed just what an uncontrollable party animal he is by telling Geoff he would celebrate becoming Liverpool’s highest ever Premier League goalscorer, passing Robbie Fowler’s mark, by “going home to the family to have Chamomile tea and sleep”.
Back in the studio Gary and Graeme were still arguing about whether it was a freak result, Gary, by now, wanting to wash down Graeme’s liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Roy? He just wanted to go home. And there’d be no smiley head on him on his commute.
