Report by
Dave Usher at Anfield
I could get used to this. Four easy, comfortable, routine wins in games we’re supposed to win easily, comfortable and routinely. This is what good teams do, but too often we haven’t.
I’ve heard a lot about how bad Southampton looked but to me that’s missing the point. Whether they are good, bad, indifferent, so what? We’ve dropped points to worse teams than Southampton, that’s for sure.
You can’t complain about not beating shite teams and then when they do beat them dismiss it on the grounds that “they’re shite”. We know Southampton aren’t great. Huddersfield aren’t either. West Ham are terrible and Maribor are no better. So what though. Aren’t these exactly the kind of teams we usually shit the bed against?
So rather than downgrade the performance on the basis that it wasn’t against quality opposition, I’m going the other way. Results like these are far more significant than what we saw last year, when we were walloping Spurs and Arsenal and winning at Chelsea etc
Where did that get us? Fourth place by the skin of our teeth. When you have that kind of record against the top teams you should be running away with the league. Instead we were in a dogfight to get fourth and needed a last day victory to secure it. Why? Because we didn’t win enough of the games we were supposed to.
Recently we’ve started winning the games we’re supposed to and not only that, we’ve won them at a canter. As I said, we’re doing what good teams do. It’s too small a sample size to say we’ve finally cracked the problem, but it feels encouraging.
I’d say much of it depends on who we have available, and specifically I’m referring to the two wide players. As long as we have Mané and Salah in the side I’d fancy us to break down even the most stubborn of opposition in all but the rarest of occasions.
Add Coutinho to that and it’s an awful lot for opposing teams to have to contain. Salah is on fire at the moment, but Mané’s time will come too. Next week it might be him hitting four goals in two games, or it could be Firmino, who isn’t scoring much right now but is playing superbly.
This was such a dominant all round performance. Southampton never laid a glove on us and although we’ve scored three, it felt like we were playing within ourselves a little and had another gear to go to if needed. It was the same in the three previous games.
Mané and Salah were tormenting Southampton from the start. Sadio whipped in two great balls with his left foot, and if he continues to do it’s going to make him even more difficult to stop. Showing him on the outside is the best way to play him, but not if he’s going to put quality balls in like that.
From one of them, Mo could have put us in front early on but appeared to shin it and missed the target. He had another effort blocked as Southampton desperately tried to scramble away after a run by Trent has caused problems.
Salah wouldn’t be denied though and on the half hour mark he whipped in a brilliant curler from the corner of the box. You can’t stop that. You can’t stop Salah, not at the moment anyway. He’s in one of those spells that players dream of. 14 goals in 18 games and he’s not even an out and out striker.
Van Dyke went walkabout for the second. It wasn’t a good look, he left a massive gap because he followed Firmino out into no mans land. That kind of thing doesn’t show up on any stat sheet for Firmino, but it was directly responsible for Mo scoring.
Coutinho will get the assist, and it was a lovely little ball, but without Van Dyke getting sucked out of the middle it doesn’t happen.
The only surprising thing to me was that we only managed to find the net one more time. It could have been more, there were plenty of opportunities, but Coutinho’s strike at the Kop end was all we had to show for it. Again, Firmino was involved as his shot was parried by Forster but Coutinho followed up with the rebound.
I hadn’t ever noticed before but Forster wears number 44. What’s that about? Does it refer to the amount of volts that need pumping into the bolts on his neck? It was great seeing him pick the ball out of his net three times as I can’t stand that fucker.
That was Coutinho’s last involvement as Klopp wisely brought him off at that point. The more games we can win early the better now, because we’re playing twice a week every week right up until the new year. Any chance we can rest Coutinho, Mané and Salah has to be taken.
The squad is strong in most areas and there are a lot of players who can’t get in the team. Matip, Can, Milner, Gomez, Lallana, Ox, Sturridge, Solanke, Woodburn, Robertson, Ings… all good players who weren’t in that starting eleven. We’ll need most of them over the coming weeks as the games come thick and fast.
Hopefully we can take care of Sevilla on Tuesday because not only do we owe them one, but it would mean the final match against Moscow is a dead rubber and Klopp could rest everybody.
The response after the Spurs game has been great and has rectified a lot of the damage. The table isn’t looking too bad, with us just four points off second spot. Forget City, they’re off over the horizon and no-one is chasing them down.
In some respects I feel like they should just be ignored anyway, the financial fair play dodging cunts. Finishing as the best of the rest would be an achievement in itself and that’s what we have to aspire to now.
The way to do that is to keep winning the games we’re supposed to win, and then make sure we don’t lose too many of the difficult ones.
What we’ve done since Spurs is exactly what needs to be done and if we can keep that up we’ll be alright. We’re a great team to watch when we’ve got all of our best players out there and the speed and one touch football is mesmerising at times.
We almost scored from an opposition corner again too, but Moreno’s lack of a right foot robbed us of what would have been another for an ever expanding collection. The speed with which we break is incredible, it’s probably been the best thing about the season so far. I fucking love those counter attacks.
It was a pity Moreno didn’t finish it but every time we do that it will make opposing teams that little bit less inclined to send too many players forward from set pieces or in general play, which can only help the defence.
Star man is Mo but everyone played well. I could single out most of them but the two I want to mention are Lovren and Moreno. I wouldn’t have started Lovren, he’s looked like a bag of nerves this season and I’m not sure I’d have trusted him in a game against his former club, with Van Dyke in opposition and everyone comparing the two.
He was good though. Not the most difficult game obviously, but what he had to do he did well enough. No doubt he enjoyed flattening Van Dyke just before half time too. His best moment was when he was left isolated against Boufal but made a good block, that drew a huge fist pump from Klopp.
None of this changes my opinion on him and I have no doubt it’s the same for all of you reading too. I just think he deserves some credit for not being shit.
As for Moreno, he continues to impress. He actually is a changed man, it’s one of the most remarkable turnarounds I can ever remember. He’s going to do something stupid eventually, but when he does I’m not going to see that as proof that he’s still the same brainless idiot he was before, because he’s not.
He’ll make a mistake soon probably, everyone does, but there’s enough body of evidence now to see that he has improved. He’s become a seven out of ten man, with the occasional eight thrown in. I don’t think he’s dipped below that at all this season and he deserves a lot of credit for what he’s done. He even missed the birth of his son because of this game. Consider me now won over.
Team: Mignolet; Alexander-Arnold, Lovren, Klavan, Moreno; Henderson, Wijnaldum, Coutinho (Can); Salah (Milner), Firmino, Mané (Oxlade-Chamberlain):
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