Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 4 Bayer Leverkusen 0 in the 2024-2025 Champions League group stage…
HALF time – cagey. Tight. Two good sides.
Full time – Liverpool resplendent. Leverkusen despondent. One excellent side. Some bums.
Some bums is so harsh. Leverkusen are a good side, a very good side. But they don’t look as fit and sharp and smart as The Reds by the time the clock hits the hour and then Liverpool stretch their legs.
And how. The opener is a fabulous goal, a fantastic ball, a glorious finish. It is one of those goals that feels like it should count double, but that’s fine because the double goal is on its way.
An Anfield Wrap truism given to us by Sean Rogers is most goals stem from one player doing something brilliant, two players doing something very good or a mistake.
The two goals that kill Leverkusen’s dreams and make it 2-0 stem from two players doing something in the space between very good and brilliant.
Curtis Jones to Luis Diaz.
Mo Salah to Cody Gakpo.
All four of these players are worthy of praise for their part in these goals and their part in this evening. All four are excellent.
Diaz gets a lovely hat trick, a scruffy hat trick (his second and Liverpool’s third being the quintessential goal from a mistake but I’d argue it is from exhaustion as well) and he gets his song sung from the rafters. He is in the midst of an excellent season, just as The Reds themselves are.
It is the second consecutive home where the Liverpool crowd and Liverpool team find synergy second half, the second time The Reds are called home. It’s fabulous to be part of and we have a big Saturday night in store to see Liverpool be the continent’s best performing side for the first quarter of the season.
Everything is built on the rock that is the centre backs. That was the case under the previous manager, but the question was always about where that rock was positioning itself and what was around it.
Right now, these two brilliant centre backs who could defend 50 yards from their own goal with no support, are now 30 yards from their goal with a ton of support.
Everything is at arm’s length until the game is 3-0 and finished, and even then Leverkusen don’t genuinely get in. Everything is on Liverpool’s terms.
And that is the thing right now. Everything is on Liverpool’s terms, almost all of the time. And that is to the credit of the manager who has rocked up here and acted like it was always going to go this way, it was always going to be like this.
He’s shown the minimum of fuss – this seems like the benchmark and it was what I wanted. Liverpool are a super club. They have a super club turnover and pay super club wages. They are a European behemoth.
I don’t like that the idea of super clubs is a thing, but we are one and this city needs Liverpool FC to be one. This city needs the beacon which the football club is. It is an export industry and we should be proud of everyone involved and the wider civic enterprise which scoops all this up.
We should take no backward steps and the manager hasn’t. We should make no apologies and the manager hasn’t. We should manage no expectation and the manager hasn’t.
We should stride forward together, winning 14 out of the first 16 like it is just what we do. Because it is just what we do. What super clubs do. What Liverpool do.
It’s in the approach to games like these and this is massively to the credit of the manager and his players. They want to play like the best, play like the big team that they are.
This is what it is to be on the march and to be real. There is no one realer right now.
Long may it continue.
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