Anyone who reads my stuff regularly will know that one of the biggest bees I have in my bonnet is about refereeing. Let me be clear: Liverpool deserved to lose the tie to Paris Saint-Germain over the course of the Champions League last 16 tie. Yet countless football teams up and down the land regularly achieve things that they don’t deserve. Saying things like ‘you can’t blame the referee’ is really irritating when you often can, in fact, blame the referee. The man in charge last night either turned up with an agenda or else wasn’t fit to referee a football match because he literally didn’t give us a free-kick in the first half and gave them free-kicks any time they hit the deck. There was a point when one of their defenders simply kicked Dominik Szoboszlai in the back of the leg in the penalty area and the referee looked like he was about to blow, only to change his mind and wave the appeal away.
I personally would not remind watchers that the competition is sponsored by Qatar when the Qatar-owned team is playing, but I guess we’re firmly in post-subtlety times
— Mari Murphy (@marimurphy.bsky.social) 11 March 2025 at 21:00
Working for Amazon Sport, Mark Clattenburg said that Szoboszlai was kicked, took a few seconds, and then went down, which is why the penalty wasn’t given. The problem was, he made that argument as we were all watching a replay of the player being kicked and then going down immediately. I am always aware that I take the most biased possible view when it comes to refereeing performances, so I like to see what Mari Murphy has to say about any incident, given the fact that Mari knows the ins and outs of what is expected of referees and always offers a fair opinion. Writing on BlueSky, Mari repeatedly pointed to the dreadful performance level of the referee and the fact that Liverpool appeared to be playing to a different set of rules. Yes, Qatari-owned sports-washing operation PSG deserved to go through in the Qatar-sponsored competition, but the Reds weren’t on a level playing field.
We Didn’t Do Enough
If Liverpool had left Paris having suffered a 4-0 defeat, very few people would’ve been able to put forward a satisfactory argument to the contrary. That we somehow emerged with a 1-0 win is to our credit and was seen as a sign that this team knows how to win in all sorts of different circumstances. Although we were much better in the second leg, and the PSG players were having to throw in countless different last-ditch tackles to stop us from scoring, it never really felt as though we were likely to score. As Martin Fitzgerald put it on The Anfield Wrap’s post-match show, we were walking up the road, but we were never knocking on the door. Although Gianluigi Donnarumma was doing a lot of jumping about and punching things, it was more because he is not a particularly good goalkeeper in the first place and so was having to rescue himself rather than us repeatedly asking questions of the Italian.
Wish we’d give Donnarumma a test without trying to walk it in the net as well. He’s absolute garbage
— 🐝 (@Shannxo) March 11, 2025
It is a frustrating thing to admit when you consider how good Liverpool have been this season, but the truth of the matter is that we were never really good enough to win that tie. Paris Saint-Germain are easily the best club that we’ve come up against so far this season, which should be the case considering the amount of money the nation-state that owns them has spent in putting the team together. They are a serious football team for the first time in years, whilst it is easy to forget that this is Arne Slot’s first season in the role of Liverpool Head Coach. We have plenty to learn, which is something that should scare the teams that are going to be challenging us for silverware moving forwards. As frustrating as it is to be knocked out, it is the right result over the 210 minutes of football that we played. My only disappointment is that the two scapegoats are the ones who missed their penalties. They don’t deserve the abuse they’ll face.
Go & Win the League Cup
It is extremely odd to be in March and yet know that we only really have one game left to play this season. Liverpool are going to win the Premier League; of that there is no doubt. Sure, we still have to actually play the games, but we will get enough points in the remaining fixtures to ensure that we end up as champions. As a result, all that matters now is that we have another pot for the players to raise as the open-top bus tour goes around the city centre at the end of May. The truth is that we have all been waiting for a Premier League title we can actually get together and celebrate, so even if it is that alone then that will be plenty. But this team has been so good this season that they deserve to add the League Cup to their trophy haul for the campaign. I would also very much like them to stop Saudi Arabia FC from winning something, given we couldn’t defeat another sports-washing operation last night.
Thought we played well tonight in general against a top team in PSG, second half in particular it was all Liverpool, just a shame we ran out of legs in extra time & to then lose it on pens
Never mind plenty to be positive about with the cup final at the weekend & a small matter of a Premier League to wrap up
— Chippy82 (@chippers82.bsky.social) 11 March 2025 at 23:22
It was far from ideal that we had to play extra time against Paris Saint-Germain last night, with the injuries to Ibrahima Konaté and Trent Alexander-Arnold meaning that our defence is now looking particularly threadbare for the cup final. Add in the mental devastation that the players will feel at having been knocked out of the Champions League in such a fashion and it is easy to see a world in which they struggle to get themselves up for the game at Wembley Stadium. That being said, you would hope that Virgil van Dijk and the other senior players are working hard today to pick everyone’s heads up and remind them that a Premier League and League Cup double is nothing to be ashamed of in the modern era. We have been the best team in the country all season long, so ensuing we get what we deserve now is vital.
