Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 0 PSG 1 in the 2024-2025 Champions League last 16…
FINE margins. Hard lines. All the hits.
But Liverpool play five sessions of football and are only unequivocally the better side in one session; the second half today.
Now theoretically that could be enough. By virtue of this game of ours being a low scoring one, that could prove to be enough. Today it doesn’t.
There is a thing where Liverpool start well. We’re the better side. The goal feels like it is coming. And then it does but just in the wrong end. Just in a manner which deflates the balloon that is our hopes and dreams, and suddenly Anfield is pensive. We are pensive. Liverpool are pensive.
It is the worst type of game – a side who keep it ever so well in a moment when the next goal feels like the winner. Paris don’t hurt Liverpool with blows or stabs, but instead stretch us like a wrestler. They find sinews and pull on them.
The quality of the game is exceptional and as it wears on it is a reminder of what happened in the second half last week. Paris play well last week, but have to be so good to get 20 yards out they can’t carve a chance from 10 yards out. Tonight, Liverpool suffer the same problem. They get there – just there, just on the verge – but don’t hammer the shots home, instead try and caress the ball.
And then the margins are fine. And then the lines are hard. And then the idea of fortune and misfortune folds into one form. We need them to be unfortunate, but in the act of them not being then we are. Twice Salah’s heels are clipped innocuously and either could be penalties. Posts are struck and on Jarrel Quansah’s effort it is only spin which means the ball doesn’t hit the net.
Salah in key moments is poor around their box, but he isn’t alone. What clangs is that he isn’t the full Salah. His positioning is good, his workrate is good, but the key moment is missing.
Liverpool are emphatically in the ascendancy, but the graft it takes to get there and stay there takes its toll on us both in the moment and come extra time.
Liverpool deserve a goal second half, but they don’t get it. And then the subs who all replace tiring players don’t play that well outside of Quansah. Nunez is unlucky in general. He does sensible things only to find players nowhere near his wavelength. But also I am just sick of unlucky generals like Napoleon.
Curtis Jones can’t find the pace of the game. Cody Gakpo can’t find any pace. Harvey Elliott simply doesn’t seem to know the plan. Liverpool who have been much the better side on 85 are all at sea by 97 and back being second best. Back surviving.
Back putting off the inevitable.
Our opponents have done a marvellous job across these two legs of viewing Liverpool as some sort of final level boss in a video game. They’ve envisaged and planned for the most demonic Liverpool and produced the goods up to and including the penalties. I hate that they are state owned because I want to like them, especially this incarnation.
I’m gutted for Curtis and for Darwin. Gutted for them as people not just footballers, but they are getting deserved medals at the end of this campaign and I would start both on Sunday, bold as brass.
Bold as brass is what we need next. What we want next. I have no time for feeling sorry for ourselves. This season is a feast, a delight, and we need to dwell on that. How lucky we are. We need to dwell on how special our opponents have been across these legs. We haven’t lost to mugs. We’ve lost to likely winners. Tonight felt like a semi-final for a reason.
The truth of this season is Liverpool have got what they deserve. I love that in a way. There is a purity about it. They have played 29 league games and deserve to have won 21, to have drawn seven and lost one.
Bang there.
Did they deserve to draw Paris who could be the best team in Europe? Maybe not. Did they deserve to get through against this team? Not quite. Did they deserve to win this game tonight? Probably yes.
Football is a slippery thing from time to time. We deserve more. We have got what we deserve. These two things shouldn’t be simultaneously true.
Tell you what, let’s just win the league. Win our 20th title. We deserve that without any shadow of a doubt.
I’ll see you at the parade in May and I’ll love every last one of them. And you. Always you. Unconditional.
Promise.
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i step too far I feel . As you say we needed a little luck . Forwards are not Firing . Mo has been off it for a while tbh . Nunez will leave at the end of this season. He is not good enough
For now lets go balls out Sunday then a break and win this bloody league