Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 3 Leicester City 1 in the 2024-2025 Premier League season…
THE job now at Anfield is ticking them off.
That isn’t visceral. It often won’t even be exciting. But it is what the job has become.
Because the job is winning the league.
There can be no hiding place from this. Liverpool are favourites to win the football league again – massive favourites to do the decent thing, and that means from now until the end of the campaign there will be eight games at Anfield against the current bottom 10.
One against Newcastle United at the end of February. And I think they are good. But we are demonstrably better. One against Arsenal. One against Tottenham Hotspur. But they don’t come until the end of April.
The job, from now until then, is ticking these home games down. The job is being better and easing home.
It means that nonsense like going behind is best avoided, but when it happens the best way to treat it is like a goal which has accidentally happened in the wrong place. Like a game has had a moment and become non-linear, but will make sense when all is said and done.
Liverpool 90 per cent manage that today. The only tell matters weren’t quite as you’d like after conceding were the crosses. Crosses to Conor Coady. Crosses to Jannik Vestergaard. Crosses they crave. Liverpool played their way into too many cul-de-sacs and then lashed it in.
But they had Leicester City penned even when they were blunt. They held the territory, dragged up by Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez.
The thing about Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez is that they know the ropes – these were the two centre backs who drove the greatest ticking off English football has ever seen: Liverpool 2019-20.
It was Gomez and van Dijk who sailed that ship home and here they are again, moving the ball quickly, squeezing space, supporting midfielders. Here they are again, preaching, demonstrating calm when lesser men may panic. The contribution of the captain to this era may still be underrated, but the contribution of his able partner most definitely is.
Elsewhere, last Sunday I felt we got Dominik Szoboszlai’s finest Liverpool performance to date and tonight we may have got Cody Gakpo’s. He was the brightest button and showed like nothing on earth. Constantly he looked to make it happen and deserved his shot squeaking in.
And he loves it. We’ve spoken a lot across years about Liverpool signing characters alongside footballers; signing captains. Gakpo has that demeanour. He wants and craves responsibility. Compare him to Chelsea’s options in wide areas. So many of them are good players, but they never evoke the air of grown-ups. Cody Gakpo was the responsible adult of Liverpool’s attack.
Well.
I am on Ratings tomorrow. Me and John. And there was a point in the second half, deep in the second half, when I thought I’d email my ratings in and ask John if it was alright we talk about Salah after I’d given him a six. A six! A six for Mo Salah. And my point was going to be “isn’t it good Mo Salah can throw a six in and Liverpool can still win?”
But Mo Salah had other ideas. Mo Salah so often has other ideas. He may well be made of other ideas. Other ideas, needle and unbridled joy. Fuck sugar and spice and all things nice. Had more than enough of that over Christmas.
His control of the flourishing Gakpo ball was divine, but the finish is so impudent that imps will call it “Salahudent” from this point on when one of them does something especially impish. It takes everyone’s breath away including Leicester City’s impressive young keeper.
And it just made me laugh. Made me be filled with the joy Salah wants his people to have. For we are his people and he knows these ropes as Gomez and van Dijk do.
Before a ball was kicked this season, a great many of the punditry class acted as though Liverpool would prove a busted flush. Me? I had other ideas, but mine were nothing in comparison to Mo Salah’s. To Virgil van Dijk’s. Joe Gomez’s. Alexis MacAllister’s. Curtis Jones’s.
Arne Slot’s. The greatest compliment you can pay Liverpool’s current manager is that he has made hitting the turn in the lead have the feeling of par for the course. The air he evokes is that Liverpool are going at the pace they should go at – it’s everyone else who was wrong and is doing it wrong.
And in a way I concur. Liverpool should have this many points, but possibly shouldn’t be this many points clear.
But come and adore them. They are the kings of Europe. They are going about their business. They are calm. They back themselves and Anfield backs them too.
Tick them off, boys. Another step forward. Another hurdle surmounted. This league will be won away from Anfield and all progress achieved on the road should be maintained here. That’s the job now.
Tick them off, Liverpool. Because we all saw 2019-20 and we know how it works and we understand the home front, but we never got the moment together all the ticking off deserved.
And that, more than anything, will be as visceral and exciting as anything has ever been.
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