Liverpool new boys show their worth but Palace may regret exposing problems Isak cannot solve
There were worrying signs for Liverpool even before the penalties against Crystal Palace. They might just be too entertaining to watch this year.
That was a tremendously entertaining Community Shield. It was all very good fun.
Yet one could reasonably if mischievously ask if for Liverpool this end-to-end 2-2 draw wasn’t all just a bit too entertaining. A bit too much fun.
Losing it on penalties is neither here nor there; the Community Shield is not real, it can’t hurt you. The only actual loser from that penalty shoot-out was Joey Barton and the entire men’s game, which was sadly set back decades by the embarrassing nature of the misses from your Mo Salahs and the Eberechi Ezes of this world.
What might exercise Arne Slot more than all the wokes enjoying a pair of elite men’s teams embarking on a clown-car penalty shoot-out is the way Liverpool were unable to seize and maintain control of proceedings during the 90 minutes.
Caveats be damned. It’s obviously daft to try and draw season-defining conclusions from the Glorified Friendly that is the season’s Traditional Curtain-Raiser, but are we about to allow that to stop us? We are not.
On the basis of what we saw here, Liverpool are going to be absolutely sensational to watch this season. Unmissably so. But we’re far less certain they are going to be as effective as they were last season.
Some of Liverpool’s forward play in the first half was absolutely delicious, and the sense that the future had arrived was clear not just in the scorers being Hugo Ekitike and Jeremie Frimpong with Florian Wirtz as creator-in-chief but in the fact that Salah had just 10 touches across that first half and none of them inside the Crystal Palace area.
All Liverpool’s new boys impressed, with Wirtz a far more complete and rounded footballer than any 22-year-old has any right to be. That he and Frimpong had such a great rapport is no shock, but the instant understanding forged by that pair and Ekitike is going to cause all sorts of teams all sorts of problems.
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Yet the sense that Ekitike in his current guise represents a kind of deluxe version of Darwin Nunez persists. He is clearly a better footballer, and one with a far higher ceiling; we can see exactly why Arne Slot sees the raw Ekitike as the more promising to mould.
Without being too on the nose, if he can become a bit more clinical and a bit more ruthless there will be a great deal of Alexander Isak about him. At the moment, though, he is still your classic scorer of great goals than a great goalscorer, with two eye-catching misses in the second half to go with his stunning opening goal just four minutes into the game at Wembley.
Salah was far more involved after the break although still nowhere near his dazzling best and, while Palace coped admirably, there are clearly going to be times when even very good teams find themselves just overwhelmed by this Liverpool attacking machine. And that’s without Isak, a transfer that we are increasingly enamoured with purely because of it being such an obviously correct thing to do while being a huge investment of time and money and effort into what is far from Liverpool’s current most obvious need.
That is to be found at the other end of the pitch, and is why the sheer scale of the entertainment on offer will have Slot slightly perturbed.
Liverpool look deeply vulnerable defensively. Virgil van Dijk endured what Paul Merson would call ‘an absolute torrid’. His foul for Palace’s first equaliser was clumsy and needless, a worrying blend of physical and mental error.
And he was again among the guilty for Palace’s second equaliser, attempting to play offside when it was never really a viable option given Frimpong’s own flawed starting position.
And the avoidable nature of the Palace goals was only part of a story of a game in which Liverpool could never truly find the level of control and domination one might expect of champions – especially after Curtis Jones made way for the final 20 minutes. It wasn’t just that Palace fought back twice from a goal down; it’s that they were extremely good value for it.
They really did give as good as they got and, for all that their summer has been immensely difficult, here was a reminder of just how positive the overall vibe should be for this group of players and their quietly impressive manager.
Palace have spent much of the summer fighting for what was already theirs. They have had to ward off interest from several big clubs in their star players while fighting with UEFA for the Europa League place they thought their FA Cup win had delivered.
It does mean they might end up a touch short for an unfamiliarly busy season, which would be a shame because there is so much to like about this group.
Adam Wharton was superb in midfield, Ismaila Sarr gave his burgeoning reputation as a big-game player another timely bump with a lovely finish for the second, and Eze is a bums-off-seats player any time he gets the ball.
It may, in hindsight, prove an error for Palace to have so frequently exposed those defensive frailties in Liverpool. Especially with Marc Guehi doing such a fine job at the other end. That link will not be going quiet after this.
Yet this was a day that should make Palace more determined than ever to stand firm. They really could be on the cusp of something special here, with a genuine chance of European silverware no matter which competition they end up in.