Well that was shit. It’s hard to comprehend how a team can go from a performance like we had last week at Palace, to the one we saw here. Well, the second half anyway. I actually thought we were pretty good in the first half and there was nothing to suggest what was to follow after half time.
I think West Brom just bored us to sleep. They sat back in their own half and didn’t even try to put pressure on the ball until we got into the box. They just let us have the ball and do whatever we wanted. Until we reached the box and then they actually defended. I don’t think our centre backs or midfielders were closed down even once all day.
What that sometimes does is lull you into a false sense of security. Players take an extra touch because they can. They relax a little too much. And before you know it, you’re not creating any chances because the ‘zip’ isn’t there. That’s why Thiago was brought in. Games like this one. We started brilliantly and just got worse and worse the longer the game went on. I can’t even say West Brom didn’t deserve a point because based on the second half they probably did.
Their performance levels were as contrasting as ours. From the beginning of the second half they clearly had much more intent to break when they could. In the first half there was zero intent. In fact, there was one breakaway when Grant chased a ball with Matip and when he reached it he was surrounded by six of our players and not one of his team-mates had even bothered crossing halfway.
That changed at half time and although they were still playing with everyone behind the ball, they did look to counter when the chance was there to do so. And the chance was there because we were sloppy as fuck and gave the ball away far too often.
It shouldn’t have been like this though. We scored early and if we could have added a second the game was done. West Brom always had one goal in them because they did the same thing at City. Went behind, scored with one of only a handful of attacks and then held on for a point.
The second goal kills teams like West Brom because at 1-0 they will just stick to their gameplan and won’t change until the last few minutes. At 2-0 they either have to try to keep the score down or open up. 1-0 changes nothing. 2-0 changes everything in games like this.
The way we started I couldn’t see any way we wouldn’t score three or four. Robbo was getting in down the left at will and putting dangerous crosses in. Not high, aimless balls that play to West Brom’s strengths. Low ones drilled crosses across the face.
Sadio looked sharp, Bobby was floating around linking play. All good. We were knocking around at pace, the movement was good and we were pulling them all over the place. Look at the goal. Sadio isn’t in his usual spot on the left, he’s hanging around in the centre forward spot. He went short, didn’t get it. He loitered around a bit and then the ball went to Matip and Sadio hit the space.
The ball by Big Bird was great, the chest control and finish from Sadio even better. It should have set us on the road to another home win but instead we just seemed to lose more and more intensity as the game wore on. We were still doing quite well for the rest of the half but there was a gradual decline and by half time I was thinking we needed to step it up just a smidge.
I was happy with the overall performance but felt like we’d started to relax a little too much in the last 10-15 minutes of the half. It was just too easy. If we hadn’t scored I don’t think the sloppiness would have been there but because we were winning and the opposition were offering nothing, we kind of went to sleep.
The second half was genuinely terrible. I can’t think of a single positive thing to say about it. As Robbo said afterwards, everyone got sloppy and everyone (other than Alisson) made mistakes. There was no urgency whatsoever until we conceded. After that we pushed for another goal and would have found it but for a world class save from their keeper to deny Bobby. Klopp then immediately subbed Bobby for Origi. Why? What was the fucking point in that? 90 minutes on the clock, Bobby had played well and he’d just nearly scored.
The commentary team alluded to the amount of crosses we put in as a reason for getting Origi up there. This is one of the biggest myths in football. Div hasn’t won a header in about three years. Bobby is way more of a threat aerially and it annoyed me that he was subbed when we needed a goal. It smacked of “fuck it, might as well give it a try”.
Ox had come on for Jones prior to that but even that was about 15 minutes later than it should have been. And Ox couldn’t do a thing right. He wanted to inject some much needed pace and urgency into our play but he kept running into trouble. To be fair, his intent was right and if he’d had longer on the pitch I feel like he’d have settled down and maybe done something. At least he wanted to have a shot. No-one else did.
I thought Jones was too safe. In a game like this you want someone to make a bit of space on the edge of the box and get a shot away. That doesn’t just fall on Jones but it is a particular strength of his so I was disappointed that he continually looked to pass. And his sloppiness in possession that led to the corner they scored from was terrible.
He was already about to be subbed anyway so maybe that was in his head and affected his concentration. But that was shit and it almost felt inevitable they’d score from that corner. I thought they might have scored from one a few minutes earlier when Robbo’s sliced clearance gifted them one. We cleared that one but you can’t keep pushing your luck against shit teams by giving them set-pieces.
That’s what they live for. They’d probably spent hours practicing them all week. Allardyce isn’t stupid. He’s only really got one way of playing and he’s smart enough to stick to it. His teams do the same thing against us every time. Sometimes it works (too often, actually) and sometimes it doesn’t, but he’s never going to do anything different and nor should he. Stick to what you know.
We weren’t helped by yet another injury to Matip. There’s really nothing more needs saying about him. Wonderful player, made of cheese strings. He twisted awkwardly and looked to have pulled his groin. He knew the second it happened he was in trouble and he was signalling to come off.
Williams got the nod over Phillips again, which is fair enough based on how he played last time out against Spurs. He got caught almost immediately in this one with a ball over the top to Grant. I’m almost tempted to say there’s nothing he could do there as the lad was just quicker than him. But he’s quicker than Matip too and I bet there’s no way he’d have gotten in so easily if Joel was still on.
I don’t think Williams gave himself enough of a cushion really and Grant blew him away. To be expected though, he’s a kid and he’ll need to make mistakes to learn from them. Not really ideal if he’s having to play a load of games when we’re chasing a title though. Thankfully Alisson was there to make the save.
We’d had a couple of other warnings prior to that. Nothing serious, just little moments where it looked like they might cause us a problem with a better ball. The longer it went the more they fancied their chances and the more nervy we seemed to get.
We were offering nothing. It felt like every attack ended with Mo dribbling into trouble or someone (usually Mo or Hendo) trying and failing to pick out a run by Robbo, which West Brom were now waiting on every time. This isn’t like me but I’d have gladly taken the 1-0 with about half an hour to go as it never felt as though we were going to score again.
I wouldn’t say their goal was inevitable but it wasn’t surprising either. Am I the only one who thought that was a foul on Fabinho though? I haven’t seen anyone else mention it but the lad has two hands on his neck and pushes off to get in the air while also stopping Fabinho jumping. I don’t expect to get it as we get fuck all from VAR, but I’m surprised it wasn’t at least mentioned on commentary.
I thought Kevin Friend’s performance was fucking appalling all game though really. No consistency, got loads wrong and generally rubbed people up the wrong way. He’s actually been alright the last couple of seasons but this was the Kevin Friend I remember from before that. Fucking terrible.
Klopp was lucky not to get sent off though as he was giving him all kinds of abuse. Friend gave him a yellow but he could easily have sent him to the stands if he’d wanted to as you could see exactly what Klopp was yelling at him. Klopp was really agitated for the entire second half though and seemed rattled. Maybe that explains his weird substitutions.
And after their equaliser I had a genuine concern we might even lose. Why? Because Allardyce, that’s why. That twat was the last manager to win at Anfield and I’m a big believer in this kind of weird co-incidental shit. It would be just like football to have his big mashed potato face end our run. Thankfully that never happened as it would have been incredibly difficult to swallow that.
But for a stunning save by the keeper we’d have won it but a draw was probably what we deserved. There are no excuses for it. We had a strong line up, we hadn’t played in midweek, we were at Anfield. We should have won but we didn’t. In previous seasons this would have felt like the end of the world but now it’s just one of those things.
There’s a lot more margin for error than there has been but it’s still irritating as fuck that United and Everton are within touching distance of us. It’s partly our own fault and partly due to terrible misfortune and officiating incompetence in some of our games. This was a chance to extend our lead and in that context dropping points to the second worst team in the league is pretty bad.
To make matter worse we’ve lost Matip for God knows how long now. Fabinho, Williams and Phillips are going to need to hold down the fort for a while unless we buy someone. We surely have to buy someone now because Matip won’t be back in a week or two, he never is. And even when he comes back, how long before he’s out again? We almost need to completely discount him when planning for anything. Same with Keita. He’s a fucking waste of time too. Injured AGAIN??? Seriously
I can actually see us playing games with Fabinho and Hendo at the back as soon as Thiago is ready to come back in. It’s not ideal but in games like this one it wouldn’t really be a problem. If anything it might even help us.
Thiago was signed to help in this type of game but we’ve hardly seen him yet. If he can stay fit then we’ll be an entirely different proposition against park the bus shitbags like Allardyce. Hopefully he’s ready for our next game because Newcastle are going to play in exactly the same way, only they’ve got much better forwards than West Brom.
As disappointed as I am by this, the players will be far more annoyed than I am and I expect a response from them at St James’ Park on Wednesday
Star man is Firmino. It was probably going to be Hendo until that awful cross he hit straight to the keeper deep into stoppage time. And by the way, what the fuck was Trent playing at taking a short corner, five minutes into an allocated four minutes of stoppage time? Jesus Christ.
Anyway, yeah I’m going for Bobby because although nobody stood out I thought he was good with everything he did. He’s definitely back now.
Team: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip (Williams), Fabinho, Robertson; Henderson, Wijnaldum, Jones (Oxlade-Chamberlain); Salah, Firmino (Origi), Mané:
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