As fun as it was spoiling Steven Gerrard’s leaving party in May, him running off to the MLS retirement home meant we could no longer humiliate him on the pitch.

Fortunately, he was in attendance at Anfield last Sunday to see Liverpool’s poor run against Palace continue.

When the Premier League fixtures were released back in June, having checked the dates for their games against Everton and Man United, most Liverpool fans would have scrolled up and down the list for two words that are becoming increasingly familiar to them: Crystal Palace.

They were all itching for revenge, and Gerrard would have had the date saved in his diary the second it was announced, intending to fly over and watch his former teammates knock the little Eagles off their perch.

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“Mr Gerrard, we’ve got a problem. There’s MLS play-off semi-finals scheduled for that weekend, which you may be involved in.”

“I better make sure we lose in the first round then,” Gerrard whispered to himself maliciously, as he got on the phone to the airline to make travel arrangements.

“Hello, yes I’ll have one ticket to revenge city please!”

“Excuse me?” came the reply.

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“One ticket to the land of retribution!” Gerrard enthusiastically shouted.

“I’m sorry, I’m struggling to understand your accent…”

“Forget it, I’ll book it online.”

So he packed his bags, crossed the Atlantic and took his seat alongside Jordan Henderson.

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“This is it Jordan,” he said. “Dwight Gayle is injured. Bolasie is out of form. We’ve got Jurgen Klopp for Christ’s sake! We’re gonna beat them, I’m sure of it.”

Maybe next time Steve.

One thing you can be sure of is that Yannick Bolasie always has a good game against that lot.

Liverpool just aren’t that good anymore and maybe Klopp has only just realised the magnitude of the task ahead of him, with Pardew masterminding yet another win on the road.

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I know I mention my dad a lot in this column, but he seems to love it when I do and with Christmas creeping ever closer, the more benefit there is for me to keep him in a good mood.

At the start of last weekend he told me he’d left Scott Dann on the bench for his fantasy team, meaning he got no points for his winning goal.

I told him straight away he was an idiot. After putting a header narrowly wide against Man United the week before, with De Gea saving well from another one, it was almost guaranteed that Dann was going to score against the team he grew up supporting and I’m still not sure why I didn’t put money on it.

If he continues to play the way he has so far this season, then Roy Hodgson can’t have any excuses for not putting him in the England squad, particularly as he’s currently being frozen out by Phil Jones – average footballer by day, Quasimodo lookalike by night.

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Wilfried Zaha was back to his best at Anfield and is arguably deserving of another shot with England himself, especially considering the worrying lack of width in the current set up.

By the time Sunderland come to visit on Monday it will have seemed like forever since we last played, but with the squad given time to shake off any injuries and get fully rested, it could be a long trip home for Sunderland.

It’s inevitable that at some point we’re going to give somebody a hiding and Sunderland look really poor at the moment, so we might even do the impossible and get a goal from one of our strikers.

I’m by no means saying we’re guaranteed to win, because there are no easy games in this league and Allardyce has had a bit of time to try and fix things, but this is the best position we’ve been in at this stage of the season for a long time so the pressure is off and we can enjoy ourselves.

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