This was a good win. In midweek after we beat Fulham I didn’t really take much from it. The points were welcome but other than that there wasn’t much to feel encouraged by. This was different because it was a real test, the kind of test we’ve often failed. We weren’t at our best but how can you be when the ball is never in play for more than 30 seconds?
This was an horrendous spectacle, stop start and full of needless free-kicks. I’ll get to the referee in a bit but even without seeing the stats for how little the ball was actually in play I already knew it was bad. That first half especially was a fucking disgrace. We started brightly enough and then just got completely bogged down through no real fault of our own. The game was just constantly interrupted by the referees whistle and Brentford taking an absolute age on every single set-piece. Goal kicks, throw ins, free kicks, corners. All of them took ages, and then there were the stoppage where they needed the physio.
It just completely killed our flow and we never got going. So that wasn’t good, but our defending of all of those set-pieces as well as in general play was largely flawless. Alisson had virtually nothing to save. He dealt with some crosses but in terms of shot stopping he had an easy afternoon. That’s a positive and Klopp was beaming about it afterwards. Calling it the best set-piece defending session he can remember, against the best set-piece team he’s ever faced. He’s right too.
Brentford are so well drilled in everything they do and they’ve clever and innovative on their set-pieces. It’s not just that though, they’re a great counter attacking side too. We dealt with all of that brilliantly and the only time it looked like we’d made a mistake was when Mbuemo ran through and finished brilliantly, only to be denied by the linesman’s flag. VAR upheld the decision thankfully, because in real time I thought it was a goal and that Virgil had been badly caught out. It turns out it was good defending because he slowed himself down just in time to catch Mbuemo off. Close call but having watched that a couple of times now it’s really good defending and Virgil knows what he’s doing.
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