Blown It

It was Edmund Burke who wrote: "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing." Or in the case of the Premier League, all it takes is a bloody ludicrous eleven minutes of fuck-witted football suicide.
Throwing away a title has never been quite so inept, has it? A title that was still eminently possible has been chucked away like a chocolate wrapper out of a chav's car window.


This wasn't so much looking a gift horse in the mouth as dicing the poor nag into a thousand tiny pieces and handing it back to Tesco's lasagne suppliers all wrapped up in a pretty bow with a serving suggestion on the side.


All season long those of us who longed for someone other than the Super-Duper Rich to buck the trend and win the title have been worried that at the heart of their defence was a chasm as deep as the Marianas Trench. And so it proved at Selhurst Park, against a team that were the joint lowest scorers in the league.


If Palace can get three against you (Cardiff managed the same) you have a problem. Liverpool's back four have looked great this season - going forward. Skrtel has been scoring for fun at one end and creating a lot of fun for opponents at the other. Sakho has been the one on the end of golden chances in recent games and has shown all the finishing prowess of road-sign. Flanagan and Johnson have raided forward brilliantly but get a nose-bleed when they're on the edge of their own box.


Of course this is partly why we have enjoyed Liverpool so much this season. Even at 3-3 divine intervention almost arrived but the ball fell to Moses, who promptly failed to do the Lord's bidding and shinned it horribly.
Yes, this has been Keegan's Newcastle revisited. And I'd hold Rodgers a little bit responsible for the recent slip-ups. His team has been naïve and so has he.


After Mourinho's miserable unseating of the champions elect, with Rodgers unable to change tack during the game, the draw at Palace reeked of complacency - a complacency that was sown from the moment Your Man Bren suggested that the goal difference between them and Citeh could be made up in two games. A ludicrous statement even if a 5-0 victory against Pardew's Petit Filous is a formality.


At 3-0 after 50-odd minutes, Liverpool pressed forward in numbers hoping to bag another fifteen. After Delaney equalised Liverpool got a corner and put seven men in the Palace penalty area. Dim.


Dwight Gayle's brace, accomplished with no little class had as much to do with the absence of defenders around him. Liverpool were as madcap an outfit as the Crazy Gang* - which is appropriate given Flanagan and Allen were in the team.


So the dream is over, unless Aston Villa can grab all three points at the Etihad on Wednesday. As I said, the dream is over.


Now there'll be those that,  will point out that when all's said and done this has been a wonderful, transformational season for LFC. Well, yes. But the point is that after the defeat of Citeh at home the title was theirs to lose. And they lost it. Luis was crying. That's not a good season.


But it's a better season than the ones experienced by fans of Cardiff and Fulham. Once again club chairmen have been the architects of their own downfall. In a season of deeply average performances by teams near the bottom I reckon Malky Mackay might well have been able to keep the Bluebirds (that's the team playing in red) up. Vincent Tan will disagree but reports suggest that that is his default response to everything.


Fulham have played silly buggers all season and even Magath, armed with relentlessly black and white spectacles and a sunny disposition, was unable to convince them that they were at a club that knew what they were doing.


Norwich, plucky and goal-shy, will join them after Sunderland, in an awe-inspiring run of result that has seen them dig their way out of trouble (I could've sworn I saw Conor Wickham shaking dirt out of his shorts during the win at Chelsea), grab the one point they need. The Canaries centre-forward options of Hooper, Van Wolfswinkel and Elmander make Chelsea look like they're awash with cracking No.9s.


And talking of Chelsea, well it's not been that great has it? Even Rafa bagged a bit of tin in his interim season. What's this new bloke done eh? Nowt. Just bored the pants of us. The question is, after a trophyless season punctuated by falling out with his best player, why is Abramovic indulging this specialist in failure?


(The other one has succeeded again with the Gooners striding over the line as if it was never in doubt and if he wins the FA Cup I'd be asking the victory parade to take in a piece of the Kings Road if I was Arsene.)


And so a very exciting finish is likely to be a bit damp squibbish come next Sunday. I suppose there's an outside chance that Andy Carroll might nut in a trio of magnificent headers and turn logic on its head. And England might just be dark horses for the World Cup.


*Not the Wimbledon team.