Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 2 Aston Villa 0 in the 2024-2025 Premier League season…
FOR us, it is a double header.
Last weekend, against Brighton was a great example of what this thing is about – the crowd knew what was at stake more than the players because the crowd knew the Manchester City score.
Today, we have a double header. We get to live two games imbued with meaning for what we can hope to expect through the winter and into the spring. We get that. We are, I suppose, lucky. Lucky when it goes for you, certainly.
They get no such thing. Perhaps they know the Manchester City score, but they don’t know the story. Don’t know that City started brilliantly and wilted against a constantly improving Brighton team. They can’t know that.
For them, it is just a single header. A job to be done with singular focus. For them, there is only our business. And they show exactly that focus from the outset.
There was never a moment in the game where it felt as though Liverpool were going to lose it. For a period in the second half, you wondered if a set piece or a mistake or a deflection could offer Aston Villa the chance of a point, but at no stage this evening did the idea Villa could win it flit across your consciousness.
Aston Villa are a Champions League club. They finished fourth last season and will finish top seven this. They are the opposite of mugs and are a big crew. They may well not currently be at their best, but they never looked like landing a blow.
To reiterate a theme for the season for perhaps the last time – because everything from here is about that singular focus on a title – it was madness in the summer when so many of the punditry class tried to categorise Liverpool with the chasing pack and not with the sides that finished first and second. On many of their (Mancunian) parts it was wishful thinking, but it completely overlooked the gulf Liverpool had underlined.
Liverpool are much better than Aston Villa. They were last season and, right now, this, it is night and day. The story of the game is that difference writ large.
It’s important to be clear eyed. Morgan Rogers and Ollie Watkins are good. Very good. But one lapse after half time aside, they couldn’t get near Ibou Konate and Virgil van Dijk. Konate in particular dominated in every single phase of play.
Watkins is quick. Konate quicker. Rogers is strong. Konate stronger. Both can play, but Konate’s passing was sublime. It was Ibou’s pitch, Ibou’s game and they were privileged to share it with him, if not at all lucky.
The opening goal was a flash. It involved a frankly mad piece of refereeing, some great number nine play and a calm finish. Darwin Nunez could have had a hat trick and what he does for his second one-on-one will need a bit of looking at. But he makes a key contribution at the time Liverpool deserved it.
Mo Salah was integral there and then nearly again with Luis Diaz, and then finally when he realised that the world’s best goalkeeper wanted to get himself a seat in the Anfield Road end, and simply kept moving forward until there was just too much goal to hit and he duly obliged. Liverpool home and hosed. Liverpool top of the league.
Between the two goals, Curtis Jones looked like the Premier League’s premier midfielder, looked capable of dominating every phase of play and excelling on every blade of grass. He looked for all the world like the biggest winner you have ever seen.
Andy Robertson played well and exploded well through the game. The suggestion persists that his skillset could be the one with the greatest differential of use between Klopp and Slot, but today he suited the game down to the ground. It was important to push Leon Bailey back, important to push Aston Villa back.
Part of what Liverpool did brilliantly all game was make it so hard for Villa to get 25 yards from Liverpool’s goal. They could manage it – they are good players, after all – but by the time they got there they were knackered, they’d used up energy and excellence and had no more for the toughest bit.
Ryan Gravenberch would nick it and turn and suddenly Aston Villa looked like a side who had rolled a six only to land on a snake and be back by square one.
There is a lot to this. Liverpool are doing this through great coaching and appreciation of space. They are well drilled and are constantly talking to each other. They drop the line with certainty and push it similarly. They were up against a team of strong runners through the middle of the pitch but, when they needed to, they could squeeze that space like an accordian.
Liverpool squeezing. Squeezing the opposition and squeezing the table. It has been some time since the chance has been there to make the running. Right now our primary opponents for the big one are vulnerable and are having hard lines.
Well – good. About time.
Last season, Liverpool suffered an injury crisis that led to a huge number of players with fewer than 15 senior appearances playing a final, a kidnapping, four sendings off in their first 10 games and the most egregious VAR episode seen to date and kept pace with Arsenal and Manchester City until mid April.
The pair of them can tell their hard-luck stories walking, as far as I am concerned. When it involves a ransom and “good process, boys,” I’ll pay attention.
Until then though, we need to prepare ourselves for more single headers. It may well be that there is only one headline act, only one show in town this season. It may well be that everything ends up being on our terms.
We’ll have to see. There is two weeks now for everyone else to gather their forces and work out what to do about us. Because we’re eleven games in and there are some indisputable facts about this season – Liverpool are on the march. They are focused. They know how good they are. They know what is at stake.
Whatever happens from here happens, but on this Saturday night know this and hold this close – there is a football league to be won.
Promise.
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Holy mother of Jesus, YES !!!
Manchester City and Arsenal are experiencing just the tip of a reality iceberg that Liverpool have lived for most of Jürgen Klopp’s days at Liverpool. Their whining and the media’s obsession with their troubles and ignorance of ours amuses and infuriates me no end.
“When it involves a ransom and “good process, boys,” I’ll pay attention.”
Nail on the head, Neil, nail on the head.