Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Manchester City 0 Liverpool 2 in the 2024-2025 Premier League season…
DRUMS pounding.
Drums pounding when Jarrod Bowen scores. When Arsenal go to 10. When their time ticks away, sands through their hands and our drums pound louder. Final whistle in North London and you’ve never heard the drums louder.
Suddenly four from the next two is brilliant. But six. Six would mean the world. It’d mean an enormous step forward and it can only happen by winning where we haven’t since 2015, winning at the home of the reigning champions.
But the drums you see. The drums don’t care about fripperies, omens or anything else you care to mention.
And suddenly nor do Liverpool. Because Liverpool are all business, and the drums you hear are Liverpool kicking a door down, and Liverpool building an impregnable fortress.
Manchester City defenders are going to see Mohamed Salah’s face in their dreams tonight. They are going to see him scooping the ball up from a Trent Alexander-Arnold cross (a brilliant, unique, impossible cross) and running at them making hexagons on the pitch impossible to stop. This is what Trent and Mo did all afternoon.
And enter also Dominik Szoboszlai. Picking up from Salah and feeding him in return, their partnership opens Liverpool’s account on the 14th minute and tops it off on the 37th. The first, a training ground routine, exercised while City defenders just watched. The second, equally calmly done. That was that.
Jeremy Doku is a living nightmare; possibly the worst player in the country to watch. For both sets of supporters. He walks the finest line between terrifying and terrible. Every single time he gets the ball, I think “oh God what now?!” and every single time the answer is nothing. He’s the inverse of so much of Liverpool’s attacking recruitment.
But if that’s how I feel, imagine how it feels to be Trent. Everything you look up, there he is, galloping down the wing coming straight at you. Again. Again. Again. He’s about to possibly make you look daft and you know that Manchester United gobshite will be on the commentary somewhere.
But you also know the job is to hold him up, wait for cavalry, not play for ego, play for time.
It’s one of the only manoeuvres this Manchester City side have. Haaland nowhere to be seen. Top Red Kev De Bruyne gets taken off after 66 minutes, having done not a great deal other than kick it out for throws. Phil Foden looks anything but fearsome.
These are a shadow and the drums pound. These are the former champions. Am I scared? Yes, because Rodrigo Muniz and Fabian Schar, because of The Jockey and The Tark, because of Ollie Watkins. Because I’ve watched football while the drums pound and instead the other shoe has dropped.
The shoe isn’t going to drop. Jeremy Doku will press on the bruise all afternoon long. It doesn’t generate anything in the end, but my god it was painful.
The second half showed a new ability from The Reds to switch things around. We beckon City on, playing low and defending with every part of the body.
Salah tracks back to support Trent and stop all runs, attacks, crosses and curveballs. Virgil Van Dijk has this Liverpool side in tight formation holding their shape. It’s stressful to watch, but shows the mental agility of the team.
The two centre backs especially look like they have watched a video of this game before and they know all the moves, but know enough not to quantum butterfly it all off track. Don’t stop it at source, just deal with everything in our stride.
You long for a runner, an escaped ball, a freewheeling attack. You long for the Curtis Jones goal to stand, but know immediately it can’t. But most of all you look at the clock. Liverpool are playing the clock.
Time is always a live thing in football matches. And the clock goes slow until it suddenly doesn’t, until Liverpool have made the idea of keeping these at arm’s length look so easy, so part of the plan, so inevitable.
These are a shadow and the drums pound. These are the former champions. And we’re watching the side most likely to take their crown.
Am I certain? No, but I’ve read about Liverpool’s 1983-84 season, Arsenal’s 1990-91 season and remember Chelsea’s 2016-17 campaign. Liverpool are the shape of these sorts of campaigns. Swiss Army Knife football teams that find themselves in their moment.
Swiss Army Knife football is of course the way to deal with a Manchester City side likely tired after their long day’s journey into a European goodnight in the week. Winning over seasons is hard. So hard.
We will get tired too. Nothing worth having is easy. And when the final whistle goes Dominik Szoboszlai collapses, drenched and magnificent, a man who never stopped running – pounding, pounding, pounding.
Because this season the drums are a Liverpudlian beat. This whole league has had to accept that for months. It’s our noise, our rhythm. It looks for all the world as though it is going to be our time.
There is loads still to do. We all know that. But we get to own and revel in this Sunday night, this Sunday moment. We get to hit it hard. We get to believe and we get to ask if now you are going to believe us and we get to ask that because you are kidding yourself if you have faith in anyone else. Ask Jarrod Bowen for one thing.
Liverpool are not the only show in town, but they are the only one with a rhythm section. Their drums, our drums, threaten to be the call of the spring and the soundtrack of the sweetest fucking summer.
Sitting in trees, smiling at passers-by is just there. Sharing it all, smiling at you, having it all together is just there. It would mean the world.
All my love.
