Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Tottenham Hotspur 1 Liverpool 0 in the League Cup semi final first leg…
IT was all a bit after the Lord Mayor’s Show, that.
After the Lord Mayor’s Trent Alexander-Arnold discourse. After the Lord Mayor’s two dropped against Manchester United. After the Lord Mayor’s nine goals in the previous trip to the Tottenham Hotspur stadium.
The manager makes the big call before the game of starting Conor Bradley in place of Trent Alexander-Arnold. What I like about Arne Slot is he just seems to be able to quiet the noise around his decisions by taking them in his stride and exuding calm throughout.
Unfortunately in 2025, his level of calm is no longer translating to his players via osmosis, as it appeared to be before the turn of the year. Against Manchester United, the panic area was between Trent and Ibrahima Konate. Tonight, the right-hand side of the defence struggled to start against a slowing Heung-Min Son and Dominic Solanke.
Jarell Quansah goes off in a bit of a cloud of illness-based mystery and Wataru Endo comes on to restore a real sense of calm.
From the point of that substitution in the match to the point where Lucas Bergvall gets booked for a foul on Luis Diaz – 38 in-game minutes, but about three hours of all of our lives – there is very little to report.
It’s not that Liverpool and Spurs are both so good, so at it that they cancel each other out. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Every mistake The Reds made at the back, every misplaced pass to a white shirt, Spurs couldn’t string together more than two passes or stay on their feet long enough to take advantage. Every time Spurs started to look a bit too much like an Ange Postecoglou side at the back, our lads couldn’t get the ball out of feet quick enough.
Maybe Mikel Arteta had a point about these League Cup balls.
Then, just as a game was threatening to break out, Lucas Bergvall slides in on Luis Diaz and is booked for a challenge that admittedly featured minimal contact.
It’s the kind of tackle that is late and intended to stop the attacking player where you end up with the attacker jumping over the defender’s body to ensure there’s no contact, but he still goes down to ensure he gets the freekick having ceded momentum in his run. Referees give those fouls nine times out of 10 and this time there was a booking for the cynical intent.
Around 15 minutes later, Bergvall again goes into a challenge with the intent to stop an onrushing attacker and makes lots of contact. So much contact that Kostas Tsimikas is off the field for the period of play that follows.
From the period of play that follows, Liverpool are an absolute bag of rags. Konate, who still looks a good few yards off the pace, is both out of position and loses his battle with Dominic Solanke. Virgil van Dijk, rather than covering for his mate, is caught ball watching. There is no left back because he is off the pitch getting treatment.
Tottenham’s midfielders are quicker in both mind and body than Liverpool’s midfielders and suddenly the fella who had made two identical challenges, in terms of intent at least. The fella who had made two identical challenges in which the second had enough contact to ensure the next passage of play was defended with 10-men. Yeah, that fella scored.
On a night in which English football officiating showed off their latest breakthrough in who-actually-asked-for-this technology – by letting us hear the ref announce the decision we can all see happening anyway – English football officiating once again showed itself to be just as much of a bag of rags as Liverpool’s defence as Bergvall stepped up.
Slot can do nothing about the officiating besides curse our hard lines and the PGMOL. He can hopefully do something about the defending being all over the gaff before it becomes something more terminal. Most of all, I hope he has a central defender in mind that he’d like to see sign for the club before the month is out.
It was imperative that Liverpool strengthened in that position in the summer, and it is even more so now.
In his pre-Spurs press conference he expressed his feeling of duty to entertain. I’ll give you a free one here, Arne: footy fans fucking love a transfer. So make us dream, fella.
Meanwhile, Liverpool remain winless in 2025. Liverpool were not actually entertaining tonight. They were just as much a bag of rags as they were on Sunday, without any of the vibes.
Saturday is a free hit, but Tuesday Slot has his chance to exorcise the demons of the previous defeat to his mortal enemy – Nottingham Forest.
Tonight was the first time we’d tasted defeat since that day in September. The Reds were in rude health back then and took an unexpected punch to the mouth.
Two minor blows have now been landed on a team suffering from ill health, at the coldest time of the year, in the space of just three days.
Entertain us all you want, lads. But just fucking win on Tuesday.
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“As defeats go it’s not the most painful but it’s frustrating because last twenty spurs looked a bit ragged.”
“But it’s half time and they’ve got to come to Anfield. The most important game of this next week is Nottingham Forest.”
Post Match Show ️ pic.twitter.com/A5fLwUL0da
— The Anfield Wrap (@TheAnfieldWrap) January 8, 2025
