Neil Atkinson’s post-match review after Manchester United 2 Liverpool 1 in the Premier League at Old Trafford, and The Reds look hungover…
LIVERPOOL were dreadful. Tragic. Miserable.
It’s amongst the poorest showings since Virgil van Dijk signed for the club. It’s amongst Virgil van Dijk’s poorest showings since he signed for the club.
I was worried about this. Worried about it from the moment Darwin Nunez got sent against Palace; worried about it from the moment Big Ben Mee made it three when Manchester United were against Brentford. Because it meant we were in for a big opening from Manchester United and it meant we were in for a crowd who would cheer blocks like corners, corners like goals. A team and a crowd who would see the basics as bonuses.
I wish we’d got to see the basics as basics. But that moment never came.
Instead Liverpool took Elanga hitting the post not as a wake up call but as a reason to be more complacent. The quick Mancunian start wasn’t a surprise to me. The Liverpudlian stupor was.
Jaden Sancho’s opener, while deserved should have been stopped on about four occasions from the moment the ball is first at Christian Eriksen’s feet and he doesn’t know what to do with it. But Liverpool are just asleep. Asleep in allowing it to be too easy for Eriksen.
In the passage of play that follows the only Liverpool player who reacts correctly, who reacts with any sense of urgency, is James Milner. Everyone else is utterly, inexcusably dreadful. Everyone else is static, everyone is jogging, apart from the goalkeeper who is jumping the wrong way.
There’s a list. It’s most of Liverpool’s outfield players. This whole extended piece of writing could just cover this goal and what the players are doing. It could expand into what they could possibly be thinking. Trent Alexander-Arnold, for instance, reminds me of me after I wonder if I’ve locked ours up properly halfway to the train station. Maybe he had a sudden existential panic. He wouldn’t be alone tonight.
For the second, as the building is burning down, Jordan Henderson turns his nose up at a perfectly reasonable yellow card to do what exactly? An impression of Fabinho against West Ham away last season at a similar stage of the game? The building is burning down and Jordan chooses not to turn on the hose but toast some marshmallows. What’s the worst that can happen? Asks Jordan Henderson, as Alisson Becker, Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Roberto Firmino in a way had all asked before him in the first half.
There is a lackadaisicalness about Liverpool that has been building across the two seasons that beggars belief. Like you’ve looked at it and believed a great many other things, not least because the results have mostly kept coming. But tonight Liverpool are nothing but lackadaisical in everything they do. They appear to be mildly surprised at times that there is a football match happening, instead they appear to have been expecting a slightly competitive training session.
Liverpool couldn’t have offered Manchester United any more encouragement this evening. They couldn’t have made being Manchester United any more straightforward.
The building was on fire. Time and again the building was on fire. And, Joe Gomez aside, Liverpool’s core players did nothing to deal with the fact the building was on fire.
It still is. But we can come back to that.
It feels like Liverpool have forgotten how to pace an opening. It feels like Liverpool have the yips. They can’t time the serve, can’t find the swing, can’t strike through the cue ball early in games. In that instance there is one suggestion I have for an 11 — go after everything like your lives depend on it first 15. Don’t look to time it, look to bladder it.
But they can’t find that note. It isn’t that they are trying and failing, it’s that they aren’t trying in the first place. And then when they start trying the opposition have their eye in. They can time the serve, they can find the swing, not least because Liverpool have just encouraged them to have a million attempts to work it all out.
I wish it was about the bench. I only wish I could say, well, he couldn’t change it. The bench was dreadful but the worry from the evening, the worry from the start of the season, the worry from the whole building being on fire is something more core to the side appears to be absent.
Or more accurately, The Reds look hungover. I’ve been hungover. I’m expert at it. I’ll nail it again tomorrow morning. I know what a hangover looks like. My favourite music is hungover music. Music I often cite in these words. Music that remembers last night through a lens, that loved and lost, that tries to pull the fragmented memories back together, that knows nights out happened, that things got out of hand.
Pulp, The Hold Steady, Robyn, LCD Soundsystem, even Cave and Kanye, in more than one way. Everything became too much and we cling to it, but who knows where the brilliance truly was and to look back now at the kaleidoscope it means sense eludes us. Feeling and no meaning.
Liverpool barely have feeling. And meaning has left town all of a sudden. Last season was long and in a way it ended horribly. Trust me, it was fucking horrible and unneccersary. But games are happening now. This season is happening now. The building is on fire now.
The building is on fire. When that happens you take steps. I don’t really care what the steps are in this moment. Manchester United took steps between Brentford and tonight, they’d taken them on the training ground. They found the basics. They cheered them as bonuses.
Put one foot in front of the other, Liverpool. I am imploring you to do so. We’re in this together, I promise you.
I’ve been hungover. I know the ropes. You do the basics and then you see.
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“Some of those players are so far below the standards they’ve set… this season could get away from us if we don’t get our act together fucking sharpish…”
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Harsh Neil, but not without truth.
The line about them being surprised that a football match was happening particularly resonated. At times tonight felt like a collective amnesia.
We all know what this side was built on, and personnel may change but the spirit didn’t seem there tonight, the fight, I don’t expect the Reds to steamroll everyone but these first half performances are getting me slightly worried.
Darwin could have changed this dynamic tonight but we’ll never know. The attack looked totally devoid of ideas. I don’t want to point fingers at individuals I just hope we can start moving soon. Like, now.
And don’t like saying it but Man Utd did play well. So did Fulham. It’s up to us to take that and trample all over it regardless. Not tonight, but I hope we get into stride and remember who we are and what we do to teams, even if they do show spirit and have a gameplan.
Grisly and alarming in equal measure. I don’t know how we can completely boss City and then three weeks later perform like that against United. The season has been poor since the off but while we could (undeservedly) have won at Fulham and fully deserved to beat Palace, that was just woeful.
A telling detail was Milner eating out Virgil. Virg has clearly been the best central defender in the world for most of the last four or five seasons *but* I have wondered whether he was starting to think it was all a bit too easy. That the real troublemaker on the other team would just manifestly avoid him, and that his reputation carries an extra 10% going into games. I hope I’m wrong but since day one at Fulham there is a fallibility and if the aura slips, he needs to show the substance that built it in the first place. Maybe this is the type of internal malaise that hits other players at times, like Trent, possibly Hendo, maybe Fab. Maybe if you keep winning almost every game complacency, at some point, is inevitable. But if so, it’s got to stop.
I don’t want VVD’s greatness to be past tense, or Trent’s still-untapped potential to stop being a thing. We need to keep evolving and to arrest this shit because otherwise the first thing that’ll slip into the past tense is this entire season.
Brilliant. We’ll look at last season with an optimists’ view and say ‘2 out of 4’. Those lads know they dropped two, and Mane and Edwards left. It is different. It looks different.
One of the keys to ours and Klopp’s success has been condensing play and squeezing the life out of the opposition. This is then compounded by being excellent in tight spaces and playing around the press.
Now everyone always looks isolated? How can that be? There’s barely ever a pass on? How can we go from playing like we always had 13 men to looking like we’re playing with eight?
Expertly written piece of analysis. We are avatars of last season
The players look shattered . Hendo , Milly , Ox , Thiago , Keita need replacing # Now