Salah brilliance masking 2017 vibes from leaky Liverpool
On paper, Liverpool have not lost for 17 league games. That bit is looking nice and tidy. They are the only unbeaten team in the Premier League. Pre-season, they were not even talked about in the same breath as Chelsea and Manchester City. First job ticked. As the international space station sucks up the Premier League again for a while, second is not a bad place to be.
Everybody knows how a Covid climate crisis floored Liverpool; tectonic plates cracked and key players fell through the chasms. But in the last ten games of 2020/21, Jurgen Klopp’s squad somehow managed to forge a new identity within their eye-rolling injury crisis to collect 26 points from 30 and storm past the line into third place. Gini Wijnaldum’s awkward ‘leaving’ ceremony, after Champions League qualification was secured against Crystal Palace, could at least be conducted in a positive atmosphere.
How predictable that ‘Gini’ was trending heavily after the 2-2 draw with Manchester City on Sunday. No matter what fans thought of the player’s form, demands and the shenanigans of the ‘will he stay or will he go’ saga, the Dutchman was a central figure in Jurgen Klopp’s midfield patrol over the last five years. The German emoted: “Gini was the most consistently available player. I loved his way of playing and how reliable he was. But he’s not here anymore.” Yes. Liverpool have moved on. But in a way, they haven’t, despite their healthy stock in that area.
Instead, the sentry door is letting through too many visitors without passes. The Reds are currently ‘enjoying’ a throwback period, fighting fire with fire. Goals are flying in at the top end of the pitch and now, they are stacking up at the other end. You would be forgiven for thinking it is 2017 again when Liverpool were the great entertainers but with a trap door that swallowed up much of the good work.
To see a 35-year-old James Milner given the runaround by Phil Foden was one thing, but Jordan Henderson struggling to contain the constant City flow (and his vocabulary) was more alarming. Curtis Jones soon realised that this wasn’t Porto or Brentford while Fabinho (who made our worst XI of the weekend) didn’t have his Inspector Gadget legs in full working motion either.
There are no shockwaves at Anfield. Far from it. It’s just that late concessions are beginning to hurt them when the defensive quality control is supposed to have returned. It was strange to see huge swathes of wide open spaces at the weekend after Mo Salah performed his latest trick. The Egyptian’s majestic skill was reminiscent of that wonder injury-time goal against Tottenham in February 2018, but both works of art were sullied by an almost immediate response. Liverpool’s goals on Sunday were raided from their greatest hits vaults; they kept them breathing when what they needed was a steadier pulse.
Klopp’s engineers are struggling to weld the more sanitised version of their pedal to the metal style with the strut and control that they showed when the old gang were more compact. During 2018/19 and 2019/20, they lost only two points to goals in the last 10 minutes. There have been signs, carried over from the tribulations of last season, that this version of the team cannot pull the kill chord on games.
On Sunday, the manager said that that his team initially served up a plate of “cold chips”. The first half was so one-sided it was almost like watching attack against defence when the latter had been lobotomised. This personality disorder was corrected after the break when Klopp charged down that tunnel retro style to remind Liverpool who they were. They know…it’s just that the working parts are not entirely pumping in synchronicity.
No longer do VVD and company look like the cool cats that can see out a game without breaking sweat. There is no definitive trend yet but the signs of wobble will only give the opposition hope.
“We really wanted to win this one but we’re still in the game. We’re going for the title and we have what it takes.” Salah summed it all up perfectly. Now they just need to seal the walls that Brentford, City and Milan have breached. Otherwise, a repeat of that 3-3 against Watford back in 2017 might not be such a wild prediction…