Report by
Dave Usher
This result did my head in far more than it probably should. There wasn’t a great deal riding on the game as we should still secure a top four spot regardless. A draw isn’t good but it isn’t a terrible either considering the circumstances (changed team, minds on the Roma game etc), but for most of the game I was just annoyed and frustrated at the lack of urgency in the performance.
It was probably due to how easy the game was. We had all the time in the world on the ball and West Brom weren’t showing any real fight, not with the ball anyway. When they didn’t have it they weren’t pulling any punches, quite literally in the case of that big fucking animal at the back, but for a team that was basically playing without any real pressure and had nothing to lose, they were pretty lifeless I thought. Almost as lifeless as the pitch.
Watching how the game unfolded I’d have put money on Klopp having a moan about it afterwards. I wish he hadn’t, as it serves no purpose other than to alert other teams that this is an effective way to slow us down. He should have said nothing as it just looks like sour grapes and it’s the kind of shit I’d expect from Guardiola or Mourinho.
That isn’t to say he doesn’t have a point. That pitch was difficult for us and gave West Brom an advantage. So what though, it’s their pitch so it should give them an advantage. We water our pitch to give us an advantage, they don’t water theirs because it suits them better.
I didn’t really notice anything untoward in the first half but the longer the game went on the more obvious it became that the pitch was behaving strangely. There were two incidents in the space of a couple of minutes that set the alarm bells ringing for me.
The first was when Klavan tried to let a bouncing ball run through to Karius only for Rondon to almost get there first. Karius was really quick onto it and saved the day, but Klavan is a wily old pro and he doesn’t make errors of judgement like that. On any other pitch the ball runs through to the keeper and Rondon doesn’t get a sniff.
Almost immediately after that, Gomez headed a ball back to the keeper and it just kind of plopped onto the turf as though the ball was burst. There was no zip in that pitch at all. The grass looked a little bit long and they didn’t water it so it was as dry and lifeless as a nun’s….. no I can’t finish that sentence. I went to a school that was run by nuns, I’ve got to have more respect than that.
The pitch was dry and lifeless, let’s leave it at that. Here’s the thing though, what right to do we have to expect West Brom to help us out by watering the pitch? They’re an alehouse team that wants to play long and probably 90% of their goals come from set-pieces. They don’t need a greasy surface to zip passes about on, but we do. So why the fuck would they give us that kind of advantage?
Technically there’s nothing wrong with what they did and I’m not sure there’s anything morally wrong with it either. It’s not like they did anything to fuck the pitch up, they just didn’t do anything to make it more conducive to good football. They could even argue that watering the pitch is more morally wrong than not watering it, and that by watering it you are in fact artificially changing the conditions in which the game is played.
It’s all a big fuss about nothing. It’d be different if they let the grass grow to a level that exceeds the maximum length (assuming there is a rule for that), but not watering it? Frankly they’d be fucking idiots if they did. It’s called ‘home advantage’ for a reason. Same as how the away dressing room is usually smaller and colder, and all those other things that every club in the world does to make their home stadium more inviting to them and a pain in the arse for the away team.
Klopp said afterwards “they can play on their dry pitch next season in the Championship” which seemed like a bit of a low blow to me and not really in character. Blame the pitch, blame the ref, but I hope he’s also letting the players have it for how casual they were for most of the game.
It was like a pre-season friendly. There was no pace or tempo, and that’s not all because of the pitch. It was almost too easy for us, and with the Roma game on everyone’s minds there was always the danger that this could happen and getting off to such a perfect start probably didn’t help, although it was a great moment as we’ve all been desperate to see Ings back among the goals.
Mané did brilliantly to create it and it was a sharp instinctive finish. Made up for him, he’s such a good lad and he’s been through hell. He could easily have had another but Foster made a great save. Perhaps Ings could have done better but it was more of a great save than a bad miss. He could have dinked it, Salah style, and perhaps if he’d played more games and been sharper he would have. I’m just happy for him that he scored and did well.
In between the goal and the missed chance not a great deal happened. West Brom were dreadful but any time they had a corner they came to life. The ghost of Pulis still lives on in this bunch. I joke about it in the round ups all the time, but really almost all of their goals do come from set-pieces.
They had a little flurry of activity midway through the first half where they had four or five corners and each one caused problems. It was noticeable they were hitting everything to the back post in order to take Van Dijk out of the play completely. They almost got it right a few times but players mistimed their jumps.
They really should have equalised though when McLean did well to knock the ball back across goal and Rodriguez somehow failed to connect with it from a yard out. So the warning signs were there, it’s just that we didn’t really heed them.
We should have had a penalty early in the second half when Dawson needlessly tripped Ings away from the ball. Ings probably wasn’t going to reach the loose ball anyway but that doesn’t change the fact Dawson deliberately stuck out a leg and brought him down. The ref saw it but said it just a coming together. Shithouse.
I really didn’t like how the game was going at all at this point. We’d been shite since we scored really. It was played at such a sedate pace and I just wanted us to step it up for ten or fifteen minutes to put them away. We never did, although we did get the second goal and that should have been enough.
It was a great goal too. Klopp had taken off Ings and Mané and sent on Firmino and Ox, and the two subs were both involved in the goal. Firmino flicked it on to Mo, then got it back and fed Ox who just powered forward and then did the kind of thing that he never used to be capable of. When he was at Arsenal he didn’t always play with his head up, but you see him now and he’s much better at seeing things developing around him. He saw Mo’s run and he delivered a perfect ball into space. Mo did the rest.
I just felt a massive sense of relief but it wasn’t just because we had a two goal cushion and that should have been the game. It was mostly because Mo had scored. If we win and Mo doesn’t score, it almost feels like a loss. If we get to half time and he hasn’t scored, I’m feeling really uncomfortable and nervous in case he doesn’t get one. It’s weird, but because he’s scored so many it feels as though he has to score every game now and if he doesn’t it’s a massive downer.
I don’t think it’s just me that thinks that way either. I’m sure loads of fans do, but Mo himself probably does as well and you can tell his team-mates do. They want him to score every game now. Long term it isn’t a healthy situation but because of the exceptional circumstances right now it’s understandable. He’s got every chance of breaking Rushy’s record and he’s maybe one Watford type performance away from having a run at fifty. I feel like it’s becoming a distraction, but it’s also fucking ace and I’m loving every minute of it.
I didn’t like Klopp’s decision to bring him off either. Mo is not really getting any benefit from six minutes rest, so what’s the point? As soon as he went off we had no counter attacking threat and West Brom were able to keep pumping balls forward because we couldn’t get out on the break.
They’d pulled one back by that point after we didn’t deal with a corner. Not really sure whose fault it was but Van Dijk seemed a bit lax in his efforts to get out and he played everyone onside. I think. There has been some suggestion Livermore was offside because Karius had pushed out, but it all happens so quickly it’s difficult to tell and I think he’s probably level. Karius actually made a good save but was beaten by a rebound.
I understand the logic in bringing on Lovren for the closing stages because it was obvious what they were going to do, but by taking off Mo it was essentially writing off any chance of getting a third goal to make it safe and it was putting all our eggs in the ‘hold what we have’ basket.
Rather than shore things up, Lovren was shite. He almost fucked up with a header under pressure from Rondon and needed to be bailed out by Karius. Then he played everybody onside from the free-kick that Rondon headed in.
Others were just as culpable, if not more so. Those last ten minutes were fucking shite. We couldn’t keep the ball, we kept making silly mistakes and letting them get into situations where they could get balls into the box.
The free-kick they equalised from wasn’t actually a foul, but it was sloppy, tired looking defending from Gomez who was fine for 75 minutes and then fell to pieces, presumably due to fatigue. On the opposite side Moreno was just horrific all day. He may have had games when he’s done more damage to us, but I’m not sure he’s ever played worse than this.
Honestly, I can’t remember him doing anything right. He did nothing at all going forward and defensively he was just getting killed by Phillips over and over again. He looked like a little kid out there, completely in over his head and unable to compete physically. It’s easy to pile on him after a performance like this but up until his injury he was doing alright this season.
Don’t get me wrong, when you see how Robbo is each and every game, it puts into perspective how even at his best this season Moreno has still only been ‘alright’ in comparison, but he was, as stated, doing alright. This was fucking appalling though. Ring rust partly explains it, but that being the case you’d maybe expect him to shake some of that off during the course of the game. Nope, he started badly and finished badly. He did badly in between too.
Still, as bad as he was he was he wasn’t as inept as Stuart Atwell. He was off the pace all day, just repeatedly getting things wrong even when he was looking straight at it. He saw the foul on Ings in the box and he saw Hegazi punch him in the stomach too. That big dirty bastard also smacked Mo in the face but it was as though he had a free pass to do whatever the fuck he liked.
West Brom were a bit overly physical at times but that’s understandable. They’re bottom of the league and didn’t want to be relegated in front of their own fans. Hegazi overstepped the mark but other than that I didn’t have a problem with their approach. It just needed a better referee to police it.
Ultimately this result probably won’t mean a great deal. We should still secure a top four spot. Hopefully we’ll finish no lower than third but any distant hope of second has surely gone now after this. So although it wasn’t an especially important game it’s still annoying that we blew it. It’s even more annoying that we’ve played the worst team in the league three times this season and couldn’t beat them. That is why we never win the title anymore. Every season we drop points to the relegated sides. EVERY. SEASON.
We wouldn’t have been in title contention this season no matter what, because City are likely to set a record points total. But what if City had not had a great year? Take them out of the equation and we’d be sat here watching a piss poor United side winning the title because we’ve had loads of shitty draws against cannon fodder teams like Everton (twice), Newcastle, West Brom (twice), Watford, others I’ve no doubt forgotten.
As good as we are we just can’t fucking shake these stupid slip ups. We’ve beaten City three out of four times, and failed to beat West Brom in three attempts. That right there is modern Liverpool in a fucking nutshell.
No doubt there’ll be lots of talk about the defence reverting back to their early season insecurities but we’ve been doing well of late and Klopp changed three of the back four, so it’s not like this was our usual defence. I don’t read anything specific into this in terms of our defensive capabilities. The normal back four will be reunited on Tuesday against Roma and, annoying as it is right now, providing we get the job done against them no-one will even remember this game come the end of the season.
Bad day at the office, annoying as fuck but best forgotten. We need to avoid these kind of fuck ups next season but for now it’s not a big deal as long as we take care of business in the semis.
Star man is Ings because no-one stood out and I can’t really think of anyone else who was more deserving.
Team: Karius; Gomez, Van Dijk, Klavan, Moreno; Henderson, Wijnaldum, Milner; Salah (Lovren), Ings (Firmino), Mané (Oxlade-Chamberlain):
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