Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 2 Lille 1 in the 2024-2025 Champions League season…
YOU mustn’t take Mo Salah for granted.
Tonight he puts in an electrifying performance where he is relentlessly involved. That he is electrifying almost goes without saying. What I just cannot entirely get my head around is how often his involvement is relentless.
This just shouldn’t be. He is a wide attacker. Wide attackers traditionally can struggle to get involved, can find themselves lost, can see little of the ball. He is a number 10. Number 10s are mercurial. They flit in and out of games. He is Liverpool’s main attacker, their focal point, to all intents and purposes their number 9. Number 9s end attacks, they wait on service and they pounce.
He somehow combines all of these things, and fills each of their vacuums with another strength. He changes his stripes to do whatever it takes to be at the centre of things.
This isn’t to say he is perfect. He misses. He gives it away. He sometimes fails to beat his man. But he is just quintessentially all of these things at once. He is the star of any show.
I love him. I hope you do too.
Harvey Elliott comes on and is almost as electrifying. He runs and works but his head is on a swivel and his weight of pass is a thing to adore. Adore, I tell you. I want more Harvey. I understand why he is struggling for starts and why he often does struggle for starts but I love to watch him. He appreciates the game in a way which just feels innate. It’s great he gets the winner.
The affair is an interesting one. Lille are clearly a football team and they come to Anfield wanting to be solid but not prepared to compromise their principles to bring it about. Rightly not – they have results in this competition and kick off handily placed to possibly sneak a top 8 finish. They just can’t find their way to get Jonathan David enough company to seriously rattle Liverpool. They have a plan to work Liverpool’s right and, via Conor Bradley’s rocky first fifteen, it nearly provides dividends, but then Bradley stabilises and shows the threat he carries going the other way.
Liverpool’s lead is one at the break but probably should be two, and then second-half after the changes they should find their way to three. Instead Lille going to ten sees the Liverpudlian intensity drop and that sees the ball end up in the back of our net. It’s an irritating, ratty sort of goal. It needs to be cut out. At least it gives the manager the video.
But they sort themselves and right themselves and ensure sense prevails. In among it all we get some cameos and rare appearances. We get a lovely slice of Federico Chiesa’s enormous natural enthusiasm. Currently he is reminiscent of a Dirk Kuyt or Kevin Keegan style player and that matters. That counts. He is first to Elliott after he scores. If we can get him right we will have a jewel on our hands.
Wataru Endo gets a runaround in midfield which becomes a massive run-into in a way which is massively entertaining. He clatters about the gaff giving Lille a whole new headache. Again – natural enthusiasm.
Jarell Quansah gets to assert himself. They pressed him like men possessed but he never wilted under it. He kept his poise and kept Liverpool on the front foot.
And Darwin. Oh Darwin. He was very good first-half, got in his own head for 20 minutes, second, and then snapped out of it only to then try to play a delicate lay off to Harvey Elliott which was never quite on. It’s one of the messes of contradictions in among it all. If he was making the wrong decision to be selfish that would make more sense in a way. But no. Instead he should put his foot through it but looks to find delicacy, looks to be aesthetically pleasing. Still he backs Saturday up with having played well in the round.
A good night’s work. Finishing top of the group would be great but annoyingly Barcelona keep that equation alive for one more week.
No matter. Not for the first time, if you were in Anfield you were lucky, lucky, lucky because you got to see a brilliant football team led by the best centre-back ever to play the game and the most electrifying man in sports entertainment today. Yesterday. The day before. For eight years.
Sorry for swooning. It verges on unedifying I know but we get to be soppy from time to time, don’t we?
