Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Nottingham Forest 1 Liverpool 1 in the 2024-2025 Premier League season…
IT was a good game.
Indeed, it became that good a game it verged on being a classic.
Given the state of the league table, we are not at home to classics. Classics should not be our business. But given the state of the league table, we also need to acknowledge that we are playing the side who have been about third best in the country so far this season. On their turf, in a night game, when they are just beginning to believe.
Three competing things can be true…
i) Liverpool deserve to be behind at the half-time whistle.
ii) Liverpool deserve three points when the final whistle goes.
iii) Nottingham Forest’s players crawl off the pitch and they deserve a point. They do not deserve to be beaten.
And nor does the Forest crowd. This isn’t fashionable. They sing “sign on” and some of the other obvious hits – there is a genuine antipathy – but they rise to their biggest occasion since Frank Clark got them to third in 1995. The world is watching and the atmosphere at the City Ground is pulsating.
Scoring with your first attack helps. Scoring with your first attack from your talismanic centre forward helps. Playing a centre forward helps. Right in front of us. It was a knife to the heart, you know. It felt, in real time, like the goalkeeper should do better and I am not sure where Virgil van Dijk should be, but I’d just had a knife to the heart so who is to say?
Forest congest the middle expertly from there, look dangerous on the break and leave Liverpool all at sea on two or three occasions. Liverpool aren’t playing well. They look a centre forward short, Trent Alexander-Arnold can’t find his place, they seem to be making the pitch smaller, Alexis Mac Allister is getting swallowed like Jonah, and Andy Robertson looks like his boots are on the wrong feet.
Half time and Forest may regret it is only one. Elliot Anderson is the business in the middle of the park, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Anthony Elanga are far too involved and the game felt it was in the palm of their hand.
Second half though, Liverpool all improve immediately. With the exception of Andy Robertson. Robertson appears to be the most in his own head I’ve ever seen him – a key tell on this is how poor his deadball delivery has been all season.
That isn’t about pace, it’s about confidence.
Liverpool may be less good at attacking dead balls this season than last, but the underperformance has been so poor simply in terms of getting an effort away. This has been regardless of which full back is putting them in.
Today though, Alexander-Arnold’s second half from open play is magnificent with a moving ball and Robertson’s is no better than his first until he goes off. And then the contrast to Kostas Tsimikas’s delivery is immediate and telling.
So too is the reality of actually having a centre forward. Not dissimilar to Forest first half, it helps he scores with his first touch but for 20 minutes Diogo Jota is magnetic, the pole towards which the whole game is pulled. Suddenly, Murillo and Milenkovic are going through a form of absolute fucking hell which will end with both of them looking broken in injury time.
Suddenly, Alexis Mac Allister is controlling matters and suddenly this becomes a game Liverpool should win, deserve to win, have to win and suddenly there is also endless Curtis Jones claiming the sort of second ball that was never Liverpool’s business first half.
Matz Sels shows his range. Ola Aina is another hanging on for dear life but hang on is what Forest do. They are repeatedly so tenacious and dig in so that the Liverpudlian wave never quite sweeps them away.
Forest’s crowd roars them home when the injury time board goes up, crowd and players could ask for no more of one another, but then we could similarly ask for no more from our 11. All you can ever ask is that the opposition are left begging for it to end. The pitch is enormous, it will not stretch, and time after time Forest players are hitting the deck, playing for time yes, but actually just knackered as well.
The bigger picture: not as much two dropped as the game at Anfield against Manchester United, but that merely adds to it. Win that and this is a lovely draw in the grand scheme. You can’t draw your way to this title. Brentford and Bournemouth are the next two aways and Liverpool will need to start like they finished here. I’d play a centre forward, but I’m basic like that. Liverpool put it all together on the road in December without one.
But they do need to put it all together with greater regularity. They are having a little poor fortune at the moment, but who cares? The league table doesn’t and today it still looks kind. Tomorrow, though? And the week after, the week after that? Probably, yes, because they have been the best team in the country this season.
What I would like, though, is definitely yes. So two dropped from the definitely yeses.
No time to feel sorry for ourselves, though.
Massive game Saturday.
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Brilliant review again Neil. It’s always the first one I read before reading the daily papers. You’re right though we can’t draw our way to the title. Saturday is huge.