Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Fulham 3 Liverpool 2 in the 2024-2025 Premier League season…
THIS season, Liverpool have done very, very well at getting what they deserve.
Is that true of today’s defeat?
On balance, it is hard to argue that Fulham didn’t get what they deserve from the game. When the chances were there to be taken, they took them. They harassed Liverpool on the front foot, took the encouragement Liverpool gave them and didn’t stop posing questions or blocking passing lanes.
Further, Liverpool deserved to be 3-1 down at half time. There is something about an unearned early goal. The only good version of the unearned early goal is when you back it up immediately, when you say “thank you, but can we have another one?” and don’t take no for an answer.
The oddest thing about this Liverpool 11-point lead season is how often they have been poor for the 10 minutes after going 1-0 up. Normally, championship-winning teams are brilliant at turning one into two quickly, at not taking no for an answer, at never looking a gift horse in the mouth.
In the league this season, Liverpool have been good at 1-0 up against Manchester City, home and away, and are just unfortunate not to get a second in the home game. They are great after they go 1-0 up against Brentford but that is injury time. Apart from that? Manchester United on September 1 stands out – a game they had to get in more than one goal ahead.
This is the strangeness. They have managed games brilliantly at 1-0, but not effectively ended them. And today seemed the perfect day for that. Instead, they showed themselves first half to be frankly appalling managers.
It started early. Ibou Konate presented Fulham with a gift it was astonishing they didn’t take. But the game settled into one which Liverpool were approximately fine with until a series of misunderstandings involving practically the whole back five left Ryan Sessegnon able to power the ball home. Andy Robertson makes a terrible decision which he then pathologically looks to compound resulting in Fulham’s second before Virgil van Dijk gets in on the act, albeit with some marvellousness from Rodrigo Muniz.
Muniz’s dander was up. In fact, Fulham were all dander by the time the third hit the back of the net. This season while Liverpool haven’t broadly been good at shifting from 1-0 to 2-0, they have been good at stopping encouragement. This, though, was the absolute opposite. It would have saved time had they all carried signs reading “there for the taking”. Dominik Szoboszlai saw his defenders giving it away cheaply and decided he wanted a big bowl of that.
Elsewhere, for the whole game, Mo Salah continued to be poor. Salah got to the end of the big February run and has barely been a force since. There is a problem with him and Diogo Jota when the game is going against Liverpool. Jota is fortunate that Darwin Nunez’s substitute appearances have been oscillating between invisible and dreadful, but Liverpool need an outball in away games.
There were bright spots, second half. Cody Gakpo had been Liverpool’s most involved forward and was perhaps unfortunate to be removed, but Luis Diaz was excellent swapping with Nunez – which was the best thing the latter managed to do by virtue of not doing anything – and deserved his goal. Curtis Jones was influential when he escaped right back until Marco Silva rejigged his pieces to cover him and then Alexis Mac Allister was influential.
Ryan Gravenberch was very good until Liverpool went to a back three at which point he got lost in the noise. And more than anything they kept coming. They never felt sorry for themselves which is another reason not to feel sorry for them either.
Conor Bradley showed his value and purpose in a manner I would describe as timely, as I didn’t want to look back on this game as a piece with PSG home and Newcastle away where Trent Alexander-Arnold could be accurately described as “missed”. In the end, Bradley fulfilled the brief. And Harvey Elliott was again vibrant. More of both of these would be no bad thing in the next two.
All of this is why an argument can be made Liverpool deserve a point, but there is no way Sander Berge doesn’t deserve three. Berge, Iwobi, Bassey et al are exactly what our manager has been speaking about all season – hugely talented, physically imposing, well-coached footballers who are making this league so competitive that if you are off it for a second, you’ll get hurt.
Well, Liverpool were off it for far too many first-half seconds and didn’t do enough to resuscitate the corpse after all the first half cuts the body suffered.
That’s getting what you deserve. Liverpool were good for half an hour, but if you are going to be that bad, good doesn’t cut it. You need to be irresistibly brilliant for half an hour and they were never quite that. Ultimately resistible.
The next two are now back to being of critical importance for a whole host of reasons really, not least being seeing the ship home in dock, but also to address a couple of issues. There can be nothing else bloody stupid. There has to be improvements at 1-0, has to be improvements from attacking set pieces, has to be a better sense of how we drop anchor when the game is going against us as it always will from time to time.
As a piece, the week weirdly takes us another step closer. The win against Everton mattered the extent to which it did in order to allow a bad one thrown in during the next three. That Everton did us a favour yesterday further underlined that. Arsenal were also not good when 1-0 up after their unearned goal. They make it two before the break and that probably stymies The Blues, but instead they end up pegged back with bigger fish to fry.
We have one enormous fish. Let’s just get it fried and not allow the slightest encouragement anywhere, anymore, please.
We have the lead we deserve with seven to go. Preserving that until there are five to go has to be the absolute priority.
