IT could well be Liverpool’s best performance of the season.
Off the back of one of the most disappointing, that is quite something, off the concern rattling around the diaspora it is everything.
It is what happens when a unit is genuinely resilient, what happens when a team is absolutely brilliant. Liverpool top of the league.
I wish you could have been there.
Nothing is quite like a 5-0, nothing feels more like a weight off. Five-nil is the score of dominance, and the thing is Liverpool dominated a good side. Watford were actually quite good. They were tidy in moments and had a clear shape and plan. They had thought about Liverpool.
But they had no answer to Liverpool in the flesh, nothing they could do to cope with every single outfield player. Liverpool were irresistible. That was the point of them today.
Almost everything is based on the start from Sadio Mane, James Milner and Fabinho. The three of them dictated the early tempo. Mane absolutely ran the show from centre forward, a Bobby Firmino karaoke performance that took light, became better than the original, became everything. The header is tremendous, the backheel is the best thing I have ever seen in my whole life.
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I wish you could have been there.
James Milner bombed about the pitch, it was like playing with 12, like playing with 13. Watford will sleep tonight with Milner on their retinas — closing, and moving, and shifting.
Fabinho loved it. Loved the pitch and the contest. He is a joy to watch, reading the game better than any other on the park. He plays his position with joy and he made clearly, early and often, that the game was a Liverpool game.
But Trent Alexander-Arnold has just thrown in the type of performance which would make David Beckham in his pomp blush. He has done it from right back.
There is a crazy conversation around Trent that is desperate to move him into midfield. The game shifts and changes, and right now it is easier to create explosively from full back rather than from central midfield. Trent shows that time and time again tonight alone.
Why be one of the best centre mids when you can be the very best right back? It will be a debate reheated for the whole of his time at right back.
Yet it doesn’t happen with Robertson. We saw his brilliance tonight too. He came alive.
Mohamed Salah made Adam Masina’s life awful. I felt for him when two down, legged time and time again. The gulf between them was astonishing. Salah kept asking him questions, at times holding his position with chalk on his boots.
Imagine the courage it would take to hold shape knowing Mo Salah has 30 yards of space. Imagine the stress levels. I watched Masina not know whether or not to stick or twist, knowing that the doubt in his mind will be in the mind of his teammates, knowing that everywhere they are left uncertain.
Liverpool don’t just outplay you on nights like tonight, they leave you spun, unsure, a wheel of fortune that cannot stop ticking. They tap one shoulder and walk past you. They put a pea in a cup and ask you to guess where it lands. And wink at you.
Divock Origi warmed up brilliantly for Goodison; always willing, always strong. He charged around, shuttles and then scored a goal that was never on until it was obviously in the back of the net.
Virgil van Dijk got his brace and left me willing a penalty, shades of Gary Gillespie in the run in of 1985-86. Liverpool battering sides while Everton squeak wins. Until they can squeak no more.
I wish you could have been there.
Let’s see, let’s see where we end up. For now, Liverpool are top and suddenly Liverpool are having a ball. Calm as you like. Anfield unwound tonight, Anfield enjoyed itself and Anfield stood agog watching the league leaders be outstanding.
Too many bottles have gone, you know. Too many of our lot have spent weeks secretly wishing they were having Manchester United’s season. It isn’t stressful, it is hopeful, playing for fourth, hanging on for a cup. Easy that. Being Liverpool has been weighty because of the number of points required, the sheer scale of the task. Fucking cowards, the lot of them.
The scale of the task is nothing to the scale of the potential achievement. The scale of the night out, the scale of the sheer fuck-off dance we can have together. There is no scale greater than spending the summer sitting in trees smiling at passers by.
There is nothing better than Liverpool top of the league, everything else pales into comparison.
Opportunity knocks. The manager knows it and his lads know it. They knew it tonight.
One point clear.
Twenty-eight games gone. Ten hurdles to go. They were our lads Sunday, our lads tonight. They will do for me. They are not cowards.
Neither are you, handsome. Neither are you, queen.
I wish you could have been there.
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“That’s by a mile our best performance of 2019.
Liverpool were excellent tonight.” 💥
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Reading that,…
I wish I could have been there
Great game!
Wish I was at the match Neil. Loved every bit of it though and the Reds.
Excellent performance all round. Couldn’t have asked for more, though more goals from VVD and Mane would have been just fine.
Great to see Colossus get his share tonight. Mane deserved a hattrick too. He continues to be my favorite player who doesn’t give up and fights more than anyone on the team. That first goal was like a cry of war!
Stay focused for the next game. We’ve had a thorough warm-up indeed.
Can’t wait.
True Poetry (in motion) and the writing flows too. Captures an enjoyable night when I was able to be there. Love your writing Neil. Brilliant!
I was there and everything you say is true Neil. It was a night when we were back to strangers hugging each other as the goals went in and revelling in theatre of watching this magnificent team. Let’s be quite clear it may not be this year but Klopp is building a team and a philosophy which will bring us joy and nights like this for a long time.I
If it is not this year it won’t be because we failed but because we are challenging perhaps the best team ever in the Premiership.
“Fucking cowards the lot of them”. Powerful stuff Neil, but for me totally nails the knee jerk element of the fanbase who’s heads go at the first sign of things not going our way; which in a long season is ironically exactly the time when the players and manager need us most.
Mane down the middle instead of a Sturridge who’s legs have gone. Another stroke of genius! Maybe Robbo will be up there for the Derby.
Fucking humorous son of a bitch you there Neil. You made my day with this.
ONLY TEN GAMES LEFT!!! I’m not suddenly nervous after that revelation, not at all. Incredible goals, incredible assists, incredible performance. I wish I had have been there. Come on we can do this!
Just what was needed to remind us how great we are. Allez!!
Scintillating!
Great to watch.
Just what everyone was looking for.
Glad we have this in our locker.
Hope we have a few more.
Let’s go Liverpool! Unleash the Fury!
Fucking Cowards the lot of them.
Opportunity knocks. The manager knows it and his lads know it. They knew it tonight.
The two best shouts I’ve heard in a long while, Neil.
I absolutely love all of these Reds. They echo all of us and our lives with the ebb and flow, the twists and turns that life throws at you. There’s no quit in these boys, these men. You stumble, you get back up, you never lie down. You stand up and fight. If we were to fall short it will not be because of some bullshit narrative of lack of bottle.
But they won’t.
They want it. They need it. They believe. We all should.
Up the Reds.
Important on a night like that to remember what we’re witnessing this season. This Liverpool team is marvellous. Maybe in a normal Premier League season that would get a bit more recognition.
Job done. Point proven. Watford are a really tidy team. They beat Spurs, they gave City trouble, but we’ve done them by a season aggregate score of 8-0.
The audacity of Sadio Mane. People were talking about bottle before last night and there he is backheeling things into the net!
Good post. We are a very good team, with a World Class manager. Just that we are in a run in with a team the likes of which have not been seen before in the Premier League era and for that matter probably the entirety of the Football League era and they too have a World Class manager. However take nothing away from our lads, they are incredibly good and when they turn it on we really show that we are one of the best in the World. We have some truly amazing players and we can play some fantasy league footy… these are good times and we are being spoiled. So we must enjoy these moments.
10 games to go and all to play for. We are in with a shout. It is now up to these lads to truly back themselves and push on.
Fantastic writing, as usual. Can’t wait for the next one.
I wish I could have been there too! Been trying to get tickets to a game all season but it’s hard! Been ripped off twice for tickets that never materialised. A ticket I actually had suddenly became unavailable when the owner decided he was going to go to the game after all.
These Reds, though. I haven’t doubted them once. Until maths tries to prove me wrong I’ll be certain that they’re going to go all the way this year.
I wish I could have been there.
I thought love was more or less a giving thing.
The more I gave the less I got.
What’s the use in trying?
All you get is pain.
When I wanted sunshine, I got rain.
Then I saw her face,
Now I’m a believer.
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I’m in love.
I’m a believer.
I couldn’t leave her if I tried.
You sure the line doesn’t go…
Then I saw her face and she’s a retriever???
So good Neil.
I wish I could have been there
Watford were on summer holidays. Let’s do the Bitter Blues.
I wish I could have been there but I feel like I was, reading this, Neil. Great writing; fantastically ballsy, creative and utterly joyous performance from our boys.
It’s all getting a bit giddy on here. One good win and wow we are all gone from dishing out the wilkies to knocking one off.
10 games to go. We are in with a shout as it stands. Let celebrate a good performance, some outstanding goals, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It is though about enjoying the moment.
Next up the Bitters, who will give us more of a game than Watford did. Watford had to be the kind of response it was in light of the insipid displays we had been producing, especially against Man Utd which was frustrating not good. We can ill afford that type of showing at Woodison to a team who regularly surrender 6 points to City and do so meekly. Somehow they ain’t going to be rolling out any red carpet for us on Sunday. This has to be a place that we go and truly get the 3 points we need.
*frustratingly