Report by
Dave Usher at Anfield
It’s frustrating to not be able to hold onto another lead but much of the reaction to this result seems excessive to me. We played pretty well against a good team, and fortune went against us in the way we conceded late on. It was partly self-inflicted, but there’s no denying that bad luck played a part this time. The capitulation against Sevilla was a disgrace, but this was completely different.
Is there any other set of fans that subject their players to the level of scrutiny and micro-analysis that we do? I include myself in that by the way, I’m not slinging mud here as we all do it. I just think sometimes we need to maybe take a step back and add some perspective. We drew with Chelsea. The sky is not falling in because of that and although it never feels good when you have the points snatched away so late, there was a lot to be pleased about.
Are Chelsea fans going mad about only drawing with Liverpool? Are they forensically going through the goal they conceded and apportioning blame on individuals like we do every time we concede? Maybe they are, I’m not involved in that community so I don’t know for sure, but the only fans I see who are as reactionary and judgemental as us, is Arsenal.
I'm not telling people what to think, and God knows at times I've gone off one after bad results and may have over-reacted. It stems from the frustration of 27 years without a title and it's understandable. But I dunno, I just think maybe it's becoming unfair at times?
We just drew with Chelsea, not Chester. We’ve only lost two games all season (three if you count the second string being beaten in the league cup) and although there are problems that need fixing, I do feel like sometimes we are over-reacting a touch, and this is one of those times.
Drawing with Watford or Newcastle is one thing, being held by Chelsea is another. We’re supposed to beat Watford and Newcastle and being pissed off when we don’t is perfectly natural, but in what world do we have the sense of entitlement to think we should be beating Chelsea? Of course we are capable of beating them and we almost did, but it’s not something we have a right to expect. We could just as easily have lost, because they're a good team.
The only people who would dispute that Chelsea are better than us are some of our own fans. Everyone else would say they’re better and they have the trophies to prove it. Personally I’d like to think the gap has closed and that maybe at the end of the season we’ll be above them or at least be right on their coat-tails, but as of now they are a better team than we are. So the reaction I’m seeing to this result seems a bit excessive to me. They’re the defending Champions for fucks sake.
I agree with a lot of the things people are complaining about but at the same time I feel like it’s being overlooked that we played pretty well against a well organised, highly defensive team who looked like they came for a point, and the only reason they got it was down to a complete fluke goal.
It wasn’t a brilliant display, and the midfield especially didn’t function as we needed them to. Milner had a dismal first half but grew stronger as the game wore on, Henderson was just meh and Coutinho wasn’t at his brilliant best. The defence played well though and Mo was electric again.
Klopp kept faith with Moreno after his midweek nightmare and the little fella responded with a strong performance full of commitment and determination. He defended well too, other than one reckless moment late on when he hurled himself with his back turned as he challenged for an aerial ball. Had he made contact with the player he could have given a penalty away there, and I’m not sure his reputation could have ever recovered from that. He got away with it though. This time.
The two centre backs were solid and for the time being they should be first choice. Lovren has been alright since the debacle at Spurs but he cried out of another big game and it’s becoming a trend now. I don’t know what’s wrong with him this time but if Matip and Klavan are fit they should play until hopefully re-enforcements arrive in January.
I thought it was interesting that Chelsea picked a team with only two attacking players in it. They changed their usual formation and had three defensive midfield players as well as a back five. That suggests they have a higher regard for us than many of our own fans do. Conte came for a point and he got one, although not necessarily in the way he drew it up on the tactics board.
Their gameplan was to block the space we like to play and then hit us on the break with the imperious Hazard, who was unplayable at times. He returned to form at just the wrong time for us. He was brilliant at West Brom last week and he gave us the runaround at times, especially poor old ‘Hendo’ who resembled a training cone on a couple of occasions as Hazard just whizzed around him.
The captain is getting a lot of stick of late and statistically he’s not looking good at all with the lack of tackles and interceptions. I didn’t think he was bad against Chelsea but he did have his troubles with Hazard. He won’t be alone in that regard though. It’s clear that Henderson isn’t in top form at the moment and he needs to step it up. I expect he will do, he usually responds well to criticism but we’ll see.
I thought overall this was a strange game. We looked to be the better side for most of it and had it under control, but the best chances seemed to fall to Chelsea. That’s basically because of how good Hazard is, as it really was just a one man attack for them until Conte made his subs and chased the game after we went ahead. That one man was enough at times though.
The Mig made a couple of good saves and although he’s getting blamed by many for the goal, I think that’s a little harsh. Maybe he could have moved his feet quicker, but he was in position to deal with a cross and was taken by surprise. Keepers are beaten by those more often than they save them. Maybe a better keeper than him saves it, but that's a goal most of the time in my opinion.
We had some chances but it was a bit of a slog against that packed defence. Salah was always the one who looked like he might break them down and he went close with a good curling effort in the first half. I really thought he had that one. He got one in the end though, and well taken it was too. He was almost as good as Hazard and that's high praise. He’s getting better game by game now which is a scary thought considering how good he’s already been.
He was without his partner in crime on the other side for this one, as Oxlade-Chamberlain was brought in to replace Mané. Ox did alright, there was nothing wrong with his performance but he’s never going to give you that bit extra that Mané does so obviously we missed him.
Sturridge didn’t do much in the middle but I didn’t think he was bad, just ineffectual. He looked decent enough on the ball but he was always on the periphery of the game and never looked a goal threat. This is not the kind of game where he’s going to shine and you would have thought last week against Southampton would have been a more obvious game to put him in and rest Firmino.
Klopp is getting criticism in some quarters over the resting of Mané and Firmino, but it’s something I’m loathe to get into too much really, as clearly players need a rest occasionally with all of these games coming up and we don’t have access to all the sports science information that managers do. It’s easy to second guess every decision when it comes to rotation. I’d have preferred they sat out one of the previous two games and been available for this one, but Klopp clearly wanted to get the job done against Sevilla and I can’t blame him for that, even if it didn’t turn out how we all wanted.
I expect that Mo might be left on the bench against Stoke, and perhaps Coutinho too. Again, if that happens and it goes pear shaped all hell will break loose, but it’s difficult. We all know there’s a need for rotation, yet often when it happens and we don’t win we’ll kick off and say he picked the wrong team. It’s a delicate balancing act and Klopp won’t always get it right, but if Willian’s cross goes where he intended it to then we’d be celebrating a win over Chelsea despite having Mané and Firmino on the bench.
I have more of a problem with the in-game management than I do the initial team selection. I didn’t like how Klopp immediately put us on the back foot after the goal by bringing on Wijnaldum for Sturridge. I understood it, but I didn’t like it. Other teams can do that and it will work. Chelsea could do that for example, and they often do. As I keep saying about this team though, we are capable of defending, but not when defending is all we are trying to do.
As soon as that change was made we went on the back foot and got pushed deeper and deeper. Firmino for Sturridge would have made sense, even Mané for that matter. Coutinho could have made way to bring more stability in midfield. I’m sure the plan was to continue playing as we were, only with an extra body in midfield to protect the defence more. It didn’t turn out that way because psychologically the team went into ‘hold what we have’ mode and ended up dropping too deep.
We’ve seen it before. Bournemouth last season immediately springs to mind. We blew a 2-1 lead that night. We did it against Man City last year too but held on for the 1-0. Some you win, some you don’t, but it’s always risky.
Of course, having thrown away a three goal lead in midweek you can understand Klopp trying to take the sensible, pragmatic approach. The problem for me is the players don’t seem to know how to get the balance right. Sit a bit deeper and be more compact by all means, but don’t drop all the way back and just allow the opposition to keep coming at you.
The whole farce involving the Lallana substitution was just embarrassing and did not reflect well on Klopp at all. He went postal on the fourth official as soon as Willian’s goal went in. His beef is that had he been allowed to make his change then Klavan would have been in the area that Willian shot from. I can buy that, but his complaint falls down in two areas.
Firstly, the players that were needed to make that tactical switch were all on the pitch. Lallana was replacing Coutinho on the left of midfield. Why not just send word to the players to switch to a back five and then send Lallana on when the ball goes out of play? It’s not as though Lallana was an extra defender coming on to play in the back five.
Secondly, it took eight minutes to make that change. Lallana was stood there waiting to come on eight minutes before he did. Why the delay? Klopp blamed the official, but that’s not what happened. Chelsea were making a change at the same time that Lallana was being readied. They made their sub and the ref was waiting for Lallana to come on too but he was getting instructions from Klopp’s assistant. In the end the ref just got fed up waiting and restarted the game, which was fair enough.
And I’m not sure, but I think there were other opportunities for Klopp to get Lallana on but he refrained from doing so because we were defending set-pieces. So how on earth is this down to the referee or 4th official? If I’m missing something, please tell me because I don’t get this at all.
There are things that could have been done differently and perhaps we’d have held on to the lead or even increased it. We’ll never know, and some of the criticism is fair, but here’s the thing; this is a decent result. It’s not a great result, but it’s fine. It’s disappointing to lead and then give it away late, but as I keep saying, unfortunately we’re not in a title race so the damage is minimal.
Drawing with our competitors is ok as long as you take care of business against everyone else. We’ve been doing that of late and the important thing is to win the next five games, which we should. Do that, and a draw against Chelsea looks fine. Of course, I don’t think anyone actually trusts us to win the next five, and that’s more of a problem than drawing with Chelsea. We’ll see though, maybe they’ll surprise us.
Star man is Salah, he’s an absolute star and I dread to think how this season would be playing out without him. What a guy.
Team: Mignolet; Gomez, Mate, Klavan, Moreno; Henderson, Milner, Coutinho (Lallana); Oxlade-Chamberlain (Mané), Sturridge (Wijnaldum), Salah:
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