ABSOLUTE scenes. The big one we have all been waiting for.
Liverpool’s win means everything. It means they can be the best team in Europe. It means they can be the best team you have ever seen. The expectations should no longer be managed because this was the big one we were all waiting for.
Nothing should be minimised after this. Liverpool thought and played their way through 90 minutes in Munich with aplomb. They were stern for 15 and then dominant for 20 minutes or so. Dominant didn’t mean owning possession but it meant owning space, pushing in quick moments, finding ways to expose and panic Bayern Munich.
A valid takeaway from the game is that Bayern Munich hated all of it. Bar the last 20 minutes at Anfield there is an argument that Bayern have had 180 minutes of sheer hell, of knowing they can never let themselves play, of accepting they were the junior partner in this marriage of European royalty.
To be Jürgen Klopp tonight and know you have decimated those who decimated you in the past must be so very satisfying. Munich are marvellous and are top of their pops. But they aren’t Liverpool Football Club. They haven’t got what we have at the minute.
We have this: Sadio Mane. Currently there is a fighting chance the best attacker in Europe who isn’t the greatest player ever to play the game plays for Liverpool. Tonight Mane has shown everything his game has, there isn’t a third of the football pitch he isn’t outstanding in.
His finest attribute isn’t his speed or his touch, it is his brain. The pictures in his head and his ability to disrupt those pictures is second to absolutely no one. He gets the game in ways which stagger.
We rarely praise decision making in forwards, but Mane’s has verged on pristine for sometime now. He is a modern Liverpool great, adding silverware is all he needs to do to be a bonafide legend of one of the great clubs in world football.
Tonight is indeed that sort of night, a night which adds to the list of immortals. These are the lads who got to Kyiv on the whole, lads who send Liverpool deep in Europe again.
Mo Salah tortures another defence without scoring but while doing everything but. As we tick towards the hour I lament Milner and Wijnaldum not adding more and hope for a change. By 70 both have made fools of me, both running the show.
The barrel of Milner, endlessly wiping his nose on his sleeve, endlessly showing five more yards, endlessly dying for his teammates stays on the retina. Wijnaldum all hips and makers, cunning and present and crucial. Atkinson left daft, not for the first time.
Munich fall back then. The heady days of equalisers where Liverpool’s pristine left side proved poor long gone. Robert Lewandowski the loneliest man in Munich, the only living boy in Bavaria. Serge Gnabry plays well and hurts The Reds but can’t sustain it.
Joel Matip takes his own goal as well as you can and does the business. Fabinho recovers from a very wobbly 10 to be the game’s dominant midfielder. But Liverpool’s attack. Good god. Smarter than you, faster than you, stronger than you, technically better than you. Good god. What are you meant to do?
What are we meant to do? Let me tell you. Start acting like they are worthy, worthy of tonight, worthy of being thought of as potential league and European Cup double winners, worthy of the greatest acclaim imaginable. Worthy of unconditional love.
This column has been saying it for weeks. These lads are our lads. That manager is our manager. And they will do for us. Winning 1-3 in the gaff of the side who has made six of the last seven semis should tell you that.
Belief is everything; belief they can win this competition. Belief they can win this league. Belief they should fucking bounce into Fulham. Belief that anyone else’s crowd are from now till the bitter end only half a football team compared to the boys in red.
Our boys. Our belief. Our competition. Look at who is left. Look at who won in Munich.
Liverpool Football Club. European royalty. I whisper things, the continent sings them back to you.
Scenes.
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“This is a phenomenal football club, one of the very best in the world… and then there’s Bayern Munich as well.” 🔥
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— The Anfield Wrap (@TheAnfieldWrap) March 13, 2019
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Fucking scenes la! Is fucking right. Up the fucking reds!
Gave me fucking goosebumps that mate.
“To be Jürgen Klopp tonight and know you have decimated those who decimated you in the past must be so very satisfying.”
So happy for Jurgen. Seeing him beam after that Salah to Mane goal was his homecoming crown.
Barring that frustrating yellow card needlessly picked up by Robbo, the team played fantastic, like potential CL champions.
I said on Rob Guttman’s post that the game was there for the taking and whoever wanted it most would see it through.
VVD making his statement shows how both defense and attack can do the job and should be doing so for the rest of this season.
That own goal was just a defensive lapse, otherwise Bayern didn’t trouble us too much given the amount of experience they have.
I hope Henderson is okay.
Okay hope you away Supporters are still painting the town Red!
On to Fulham.
YNWA!
Bloody hell Sash, have you been abducted. Positivity in your post and suddenly you are all happy for Klopp and the boys…
So do you think this lot are the real deal yet?
@J haha..
This team is a different deal for sure.
The Real Deal –> The LFC teams of the 70s/80s that gave us the “winning history” we supporters love to go on about.
The current team definitely looks the “real deal”, but will become one when Jurgen and the Reds get over the line. (I’ve already had enough highs of coming 2nd.)
Okay can’t sit down anymore – need to go get this probe removed. ;o)
One of your best ever Neil. These lads are our Lads. It may be too soon to start talking about the double, but there’s no reason we can’t back them to reach those unimaginable heights. The past is gone, the future looks bright, but the present is where we exist. Support these lads, this manger, this club. It’s why we’re here. Up the fucking Reds.
Great post.
Balls Deep In May
It’s all we ask of them.
Brilliant write up Neil. It encapsulates everything. However, 1 game at a time. Fulham next up. Another big game for us. All are big games now in this season, our season.
I love this team, they are great, they just need to know it at times. However we weren’t at our sincilating best last night, in fact there was far too many mistakes and Klopp and co will know that. I am not expecting us to be perfect in every possible way, but we had moments when we were sloppy or had switched off. quite a number were below their average standards… so imagine what will happen when all show up and reach their peak? It can happen.
I mentioned on Ben’s article the infuriating officials again last night. Wow were they garbage. Oh how I long for the officiating that Man Utd, Man City, Real Madrid and Barca get, game after game. Everything in their favour. Last night was another were even the basic of rules could not be applied, well certainly not given to us. All I saw was our players being unfairly pushed, pulled, dragged, blocked, wragged and all manner of illegal stuff, with the officials turning a blind eye to all of it… It is now getting boring, as this is the only way to stop us, by cheating and cheating with the aid of the officials. So much for RESPECT CAMPAIGNS, when UEFA and the FA let this happen every week and especially to us.
As for us. We weren’t at our best and we even scored a well taken own goal as a gift Bayern, as without that gift, they wouldn’t have registered a shot on target over 180 minutes, with us playing our 4th best defender throughout and having a makeshift one in the first game to accompany him. In fact, had we taken all our chances in both games, then this would have been embarrassing for Bayern, who give them their due, they tried every bit of shithouse tactics ever in an effort to win this game. However this isn’t Liverpool in Kyiv that succumb to such thuggery and dark arts, this is a more mature, savvy version who in the end started to play with some of their own.
So not at our best and yet we DID Bayern in their own backyard and we did them whilst they employed all manner of nonsense. Hopefully this will send a message to our boys (fuck everyone else), that they can do anyone when they turn up and play.
8 left in the league now and we truly need to win all 8, plus now we have 2 more in Europe… I am certain come Friday’s draw that no one wishes to draw us out of the bag on Friday and that includes Barca and Juve.
So on to Fulham next. We have to treat this game as though they are the biggest team in Europe and go and DO THEM as well. Up the Mighty Reds :)
“… junior partner in this marriage of European royalty.”
Take a bow Neil (or have another Schneider Weisse.)
Lewandowski toothless for the second time up against Matip. First time was a clean sheet alongside Fabinho, the 4th and 5th choice centre backs giving Klopp’s former pupil no joy.
I wouldn’t mind the CL being a sequence of dispatching players from Klopp’s past, starting from Lewandoski, then Emre Can, and finally Coutinho. Them with covetous eyes. Some fairly straightforward poetic justice for the grass-is-greener lot, even if Klopp would have none of it.