NEVER liked playing Arsenal, these days more away than anything.
Most people reading this will be too young for 1971 at Wembley but the video of it used to be everywhere. Some too young probably for 1989 at Anfield. But let me fill in the gaps. North London Arsenal beat our Redmen and we did not like it very much. No guard of honour makes getting beat by these OK.
It’s no barrel of laughs getting beat. But it is fewer laughs again when you are absolute architects of your own downfall.
A Sadio Mane smasher at 20 mins is a beautiful opener slid behind Arsenal’s defence. David Luiz plays him on and the pass from Andy Robbo is glorious. But it is downhill from there.
The move from 0-1 to 2-1 happens almost entirely independently of Arsenal. At times during the game they press well but this is nothing to do with either goal. Both are just absolutely dreadful play by Liverpool. Liverpool were marvellous tonight and then they were 2-1 down and they weren’t marvellous anymore.
Football, especially the way Liverpool do it, is about a series of things working because everybody is all in. Arsenal were nowhere on that score just before it goes 1-1. They’d lost their way because Liverpool had taken it from them and hidden it.
Liverpool look tired and unmotivated. And who can blame them if heads are elsewhere. They have next season to think about. At a base level this game is meaningless.
You can talk about points totals, records, the simple pleasure of winning another football match, and another, and another. But we always knew that nothing would mean quite as much as getting that big title dog off our backs, and that fact is written all over the players’ faces. They are tired and a bit disorganised.
You see it in the final quarter of the game when Arsenal defend so deep they are halfway up the stand, and spread so wide their 10 man wall stretches from corner flag to corner flag. They were going to hold on.
None of this excuses the Redmen, however.
Those errors. Virgil is almost a god, but it turns out he is in fact human and does make mistakes from time to time. In this case his mistake deeply benefits Lacazette who was hungry for it all night. At 1-1 though you think we can get back into it, particularly as Roberto Firmino had shown some fire and skill in the early minutes of the game, and Sadio never looks like not scoring.
Still, there are further errors from Liverpool tonight as the goalkeeper error and the general wild lack of concentration leads to Arsenal’s second, scored by young Reiss Nelson, but Lacazette at the heart of things again.
We waste time we cannot afford and we squander balls to the obvious frustration of the manager.
We miss the captain and perhaps the vice captain. We miss the organisation, the defending, we miss the voice on the pitch and the experience. It is a long time since anyone called Liverpool a one-man outfit, but we really do miss these men when they aren’t playing. Mo Salah looks tired and none of the front players are wildly convincing tonight, despite Sadio’s good attempts plucked out of nowhere.
When the time comes to bring on subs, it is good to see Minamino in particular looking bright and up for it. He nearly scores, and in the second half of second half we play really quite well but there are a lot of balls that miss by inches. Too much of a miss to call it unlucky and with a shout of a penalty.
We are continually on the verge of finding a way through only to be thwarted at the last minute often by our own decision making. And the whole thing is just very frustrating.
This end of the season feels like beating time. It feels like we are marking it out, marking these games off. Yes it would be lovely to win a game by three, four goals – lord knows we have done these Arsenal people over before – but what would it really mean?
Liverpool lift the league title next Wednesday. A week today; exactly that at the time of writing they will do what we wanted them to do, what they needed to do for us. It’s generational defining stuff you know. Or it has been.
I was having a conversation today which again reminded me of the number of people who have made life and career-defining choices around being here the season they finally win it. I think thousands of lives of people aged between 24 and 46 have been profoundly impacted by a burning desire to see the thing we see a week today.
They’ve done that thing that we all needed and they will always be the most marvellous because of it.
I say this to contextualise the season and contextualise the criticism and perhaps even to contextualise the easing off. I remember the tears the night it was confirmed from manager and captain. They, along with their squad, had carried this burden. One carried by Sami Hyypia, Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard. One carried by Roy Evans, Gerard Houllier, Rafa Benitez and Brendan Rodgers.
This was and *is*, and we need to be very very clear about this, people’s lives. It’s no wonder Liverpool FC are a little different the other side of that lifting. We as a collective are all responding to it differently and it will take some time for that to settle. In some ways it may never truly settle, you know.
All of that said Liverpool will very soon – perhaps eight weeks – need to play better, need to cut out the sloppiness in both boxes because something new starts. It isn’t people’s lives in quite the same way but it is everything. And getting beat, especially like that, is absolutely fucking rubbish and it needs to stop happening.
I used to count them down, here. At the end of these, the hurdles. Liverpool smashed the hurdles to smithereens. They are the greatest gang of lads you can conceive of. Let’s just not build hurdles back up where we don’t need to.
Next Wednesday bring on the Champions.
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Hard to disagree with any of this. Feeling frustration instead of contentment at this time is just weird and surreal. I feel annoyed at myself for having that feeling, but can’t help it.
They’re the greatest Liverpool side I’ve ever seen and we’ll all be eternally grateful to Klopp and the players for what they’ve done the past two and a half years.
But at the same time I’m starting to worry a little bit about us going forward. When you drop your level to the extent we have for a long period (we have in some ways become/may become victims of how early we wrapped it up), I think it might be harder than people realise to simply turn it back on when you need to.
I’m also quite worried about us strengthening, which looks more and more necessary to me with every passing week. Ox and Bobby’s form isn’t anywhere near what it should be and – even though he’s clever, lively and got good touch – Minamino for me isn’t the answer for the front three in any case. He’s just too lightweight, not a goalscorer and I struggle to see where he fits. We all know that Origi isn’t good enough, no matter how many big goals and great memories he gave us last season. But we’ve already missed a perfect addition in Werner and the noises coming out are very “we’re skint” for a club on top who have barely spent a penny for 2 years.
I understand the reasons why for all of these things in isolation, but it doesn’t make me any more optimistic that we can simply continue as we have next season.
Absolutely correct to call out the context for this one, we have been spoilt, they have spoilt us.. so we can raise our eyebrows all the more about them disappearing on us without saying goodbye ’til next season.
We’ve won just 5 from last 13 all comps. We played well, we are playing well, but we’ve won just 5.
3 clean sheets in 13. A million shots on goal but Palace was the only clinical performance. [thank god for the Palace game all of a sudden].
The switch has been turned off.. and we’ve got pretty short memories if we think a summer holiday and hug from JK turns it instantly back on.
We can draw on the first 29 games of the season. But momentum is crucial, it always has been in sport. The next 10 days are suddenly unnecessarily important to our summer break and theirs.
We can lament the organisation, the defending, the voice on the pitch, the experience.. but where are they gone? Are they safe in a drawer, ready for the 12th Sept, polished and clean?
Bring on the Champions is right.. but we’re allowed to look forward to seeing them behave like Champions again.
Deco!…….I think we all share your concern, the gap will close on us very quickly if we stand still in the transfer market,we need to freshen up a little.
Pretty much encapsulates everything I’ve processed about this game. I absolutely get that a points total isn’t a driving motivating factor in the same way the title or a trophy is, but I think this team is so amazing that it deserves something to burnish this most brilliant of seasons, and a points record that would probably have stood forever would have topped it off nicely. So the self-inflicted nature of this defeat drove me up the walls. I mean, we thrashed them 1-2, absolutely hammered them 1-2. It’s nonsense. And I don’t want to lose to *that* – David Luiz, Rob ‘Holding’… do me a favour. So yep, Neil, we can’t forget the overriding emotion here is one of joy and achievement and conquests secured and lived, but we got here through an element of fury. Klopp wanted us to “stay angry”, “they have our points” – I want us to get back to that, even if everything else is pretty much perfect.
I agree with many of your points Deco. Just wonder how many Liverpool teams you have seen? I consider myself fortunate to have seen some of our greatest teams and players during the seventies and eighties. These sides proved themselves year after year. I also have misgivings about Minamino, even from a distance he looks too lightweight and when i hear him described as a work in progress, it reminds me of when Gerald Houllier used to say of a player, he is not a player for tomorrow, he is a player for the day after tomorrow. Unfortunately that day never came, and i just hope that Minamino isn’t another example of the club signing a player who happened to play well against us.
I admit I was frustrated watching yesterday. These players have spoiled us. Smashing the records books would have been nice, but I’d say these things are mostly for supporters to hold in their back pockets to be pulled out in pub arguments or lobbed into Twitter melees.
It takes so much to fight the deep pockets of City, United, Chelsea, etc. We do it with skill, yes, but you can’t do what these boys did the end of last year and most of this year without massive amounts of heart and the collective desire of an entire city (minus Blues).
I fear for the sustainability of this model. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want it any other way.
The last 10 of 18/19 and first 26 or so of 19/20 this was a team that had forgotten how to lose or even draw a match.
Throw in a CL win, Super Cup and World Club it’s been a run like no other ever seen at Anfield.
Intensity and stepping up when it really counts is what this team is about. All feels a bit pre season at the moment and that’s pretty much what it is.
New signings. Is Minamino going to step up is the big one for me. I think we know Origi is more limited. Klopp has proven us all wrong time and time again with his bringing players on like Trent, Henderson, Milner and them incredible value signings like Robbo, Mane and Salah.
Let’s trust in his next move and enjoy Wednesday. It’s been a long time coming.