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Report by
Dave Usher
Another routine win over a bottom half team. I could defo get used to this. Whatsmore, Klopp seems to finally be getting to grips with this rotation business. Instead of just wheeling the same players out week after week, he’s utilising his squad and it’s actually working.
Scoring five with Mané on the bench? Things are really looking up. We look like we’ll score three, four, five maybe even more every time we play at the moment and the most encouraging part of it is that we aren’t relying on the same players to do it. As long as we have one of Salah and Mané out there the rest of it can just be mixed and matched.
The team selection for this one was interesting to say the least. A back three with only one defender in it? Some would call it madness, others would say it is innovative. Much depends on whether it works, and seeing as though it did we can say it was innovative. It was sort of forced on Klopp with the injury to Matip and illness to Gomez and Klavan, but regardless of that it was creative and he gets a lot of credit for it.
When we’re playing as well as we are in attack it almost doesn’t matter who is in defence against teams like Brighton. That’s not meant to sound cocky, as God knows we’ve had our troubles with these type of teams over the years. I just mean that if we attack the way we can and dominate possession, they shouldn’t really be able to do too much damage.
Man City’s defence isn’t great and you can get at them, but hardly anyone does because of how good they are going the other way and how difficult it is to get the ball off them. Barcelona have played with basically only two defenders for years, and one of them was Mascherano. Didn’t matter, they were so good with the ball that nobody could exploit the obvious weakness.
We’re not at that level, at least not when it comes to keeping possession and taking the sting out of games, but we are at that level when it comes to scoring goals and tearing teams apart.
We’re coming up against teams that are just sitting back and trying to frustrate us. It’s a tactic that has worked against us frequently in the past but, touch wood, we seem to have figured it out now. Brighton did what the likes of Burnley and Hull did successfully last year, but at no point did I ever feel like they were going to be able to keep us out.
It took a little while to get the first goal and prior to that we hadn’t created much, but with the players we’ve got in attack you know it’s only a matter of time before they do something. The only surprising thing about the opening goal was how it arrived and the identity of the goalscorer. Big Sexy heading in from a corner? No-one saw that coming.
Great header though. He played really well in the back three, but then he looked really good when he played there under Brendan so it’s not like he’s never done it before. Wijnaldum on the other hand, that was just weird. It shows how much Klopp trusts him to carry out instructions though. He started a bit shakily and had a couple of sloppy passes, but once settled down he was fine.
I can’t see him ever playing there again but you never know. I do think we might see him play in the number six role pretty soon, not because Henderson should be dropped but because he’ll need to be rotated and Wijnaldum might actually be a better option there than Can, who has done well in the box to box role.
Henderson’s performance against Brighton was absolutely fine. He wasn’t great but he didn’t need to be. He did what was required yet when James Pearce tweeted something about ‘good performance from the captain’ the ‘LFC Family’ went fucking nuts. Honestly, look at some of the things being said about him, it’s fucking embarrassing. I get it when he’s had a bad game, but now it just seems like some people have it in for him and see what they want to see.
What bothers me is that it’s Hendo and he doesn’t deserve this kind of shit. He’s a great pro, a steady player and a really nice lad. So he’s not Steven Gerrard or Xabi Alonso or any of the great midfielders of the past. He’s not Jean Michel Ferri or Christian Poulsen either though, so give it a fucking rest eh?
Anyway, at 1-0 down Brighton had no need to change anything as the gameplan would still be to frustrate us and hopefully nick a goal from a break or a set-piece. We immediately scored again though which changed everything. What a goal it was too. So slick, so quick, so devastating.
Salah got turned and running and carried it forward before picking out Coutinho on the left, and he played a first time ball across the face of goal with his left foot that Firmino finished at the back post. It looked so simple, that was the beauty of it. Just a brilliantly executed goal all round.
At 2-0 Brighton were in trouble because they couldn’t just let things continue as they were. They’d had one decent chance that Murray blasted high and wide but other than that they hadn’t got near us.
I thought they might put another striker on at half time but Chris Hughton kept things more or less the same structurally, although they did show more ambition and pushed more players forward. It almost paid off but instead it proved to be their undoing, as Mignolet made a terrific point blank save from Murray and less than 15 seconds later the ball was in the Brighton net.
It was so good, even better than the second goal. Once again Salah was involved as he carried the ball at the heart of the defence before cutting back and rolling in Firmino for another cool finish. The best part about this goal was the incredible amount of ground Firmino covered to get there, as he was the one who started the whole thing off when he met Henderson’s clearance and laid the ball to Coutinho, who then released Mo.
He gave Mo a 30 yard head start and still got up there to finish off the move. Brilliant that, great desire. That’s what we can do though and as I keep saying, the more we do that the less inclined teams will be to venture forward.
At that point it looked like a mauling was on the cards as to score in the way we did must have been soul crushing for Brighton. Yet they were then handed a lifeline out of nothing thanks to the referee. That’s one of the worst penalty decisions we’ll see all season. Just brutal it was.
That ref is in over his head, I mentioned him in a recent PL Round Up because I’d never seen him before and after a decision I saw him give I commented “I hope I never see him again”. Sadly a week later here he is in charge of our game and on another day that scandalous decision could have cost us. Demote this cunt now, he’s a menace.
Aside from the unjust nature of the goal itself, we can’t really have any complaints about not keeping a clean sheet though as frankly we didn’t deserve to. Glen Murray had three great chances, two of them missed the target and the other one brought that great save from Mignolet. Brighton deserved a goal for what they put into the game, but we deserved the five we got too.
This team though, it’s so hard to trust them. I was far more nervous at 3-1 than I ought to have been. There was nothing out of the ordinary happening but we’ve collapsed so many times that any time there’s even a whiff of a comeback it’s panic stations. Not from the players, from me, and I suspect a lot of you as well.
Murray flashed an effort inches wide and Trent had to make a brilliant tackle to deny their substitute. Had either of those gone in then maybe we’d have been looking at another embarrassing Sevilla style capitulation. They didn’t go in though, and Coutinho then settled the nerves with a sneaky free-kick that he rolled under the wall. He’d won the free-kick himself with a sinking run that was halting as he approached the box.
He probably won't get credited with the fifth goal because it was headed in by a defender, but morally that should be his goal too. Brighton couldn’t cope with him, he was just on another level and when he plays like this he’s just a joy to watch. He’s like this most weeks now and that inconsistency that has infuriated me throughout his time here looks to be behind him. That might be because he feels he doesn’t have to do it on his own now because we’ve got so many other weapons.
Salah was excellent again too even though for once he didn’t score, but the star for me this time was Firmino who I thought was, dare I say it, almost Suarez-like. He was relentless, he never stopped harassing defenders and robbing them of the ball, his touch was terrific and some of little first time lay offs around the corner for Mo were glorious. And of course, he scored twice.
Firmino is the least heralded of the front four and there are loads of fans who would happily see him replaced by ‘a proper number nine’. It's a difficult one as there are times when that criticism seem valid, but as I keep saying, his ‘lack of goals’ is only ever a problem when one or both of the two flying widemen aren’t there.
In Klopp’s preferred set up, Firmino scores more than enough to justify his place. Its only when the goals aren’t coming from elsewhere that people complain about not having a 30 goal a season striker. I mean, what should we even expect from him? If he’s getting 20 (which he should do quite easily) that’s fine, right?
Considering everything else he brings to the table, if he’s chipping in with 20 while Mané and Mo are doing likewise and Coutinho isn’t far behind, that’s more than acceptable surely? Kane has 16 goals so far, Firmino has 11, which is the same as the 'prolific' Lukaku.
I guess the issue is whether he’s someone who will get the decisive goal in those tight games when you need a 1-0 or a 2-1. I don’t think he’s that guy, not yet, but there’s nothing to suggest he won’t grow into that role. Besides, if Salah or Mané becomes that player then it doesn't matter anyway. There’s a lot to like about Firmino, not least his deadpan goal celebrations.
Nothing about Klopp's celebrations is deadpan, and apparently Hughton saw his arse over it and didn't shake hands afterwards. It's easy to rip him for that but I sort of see his point as there's no need to overdo the celebrations when the game is won, but what he maybe doesn't understand is that Klopp is like us in that he never feels the game is safe because so often it hasn't been.
The goal to make it 4-1 was massive. If Klopp also gave it the beans after the the fifth then that's a tad excessive, but the fourth one deserved a big fuck off celebration.
We’re moving along nicely now but there will inevitably be a bump in the road soon, there always is. That’s fine though, as long as we respond to it in the same way we did the Spurs defeat. We’ve been great since then and these convincing wins over the shite teams are massively encouraging.
All I’m hoping for between now and May is that we can keep all of our attacking players fit, because if we do that then I feel like everything else will just take care of itself.
Team: Mignolet; Can, Lovren, Wijnaldum; Alexander-Arnold, Henderson (Grujic), Milner, Robertson; Salah (Oxlade-Chamberlain), Firmino (Solanke), Coutinho:
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