It wasn’t exactly the bounce back from the Arsenal game I hoped for, but a win is a win and in the end I was just relieved we got it. For a while there this wasn’t going very well and there was the potential for us to drop points, which given the opposition would have been unthinkable. You have to beat Burnley at home. And we did, in the end.
The first half was awful I thought. Just slow, passive, turgid shite. The goal we scored was a gift from a corner, which we then promptly gifted back to them in similar fashion. I don’t think anyone could suggest that we deserved to be ahead at the break. We never got going at all in that half.
Klopp’s explanation for it was that we were in too much of a hurry and kept trying to force it. I thought it was the opposite. There was no urgency in anything we did, everything was slow and laboured and the only time we were able to break out of that was when Nunez was able to run in behind. He was playing with urgency and at his usual level of intensity, not too many others were.
That being said, in hindsight there are clearly reasons for that. At the time my feeling was that we just had a massive hangover from last week. Crowd and players both feeding off the others melancholy. I’m almost certainly just projecting my own feelings onto others there though. That Arsenal loss has stayed with me, I wasn’t able to shake it all week and even now as I write this it’s still with me.
I definitely think the crowd were feeling it. Not helped by City having already played and gone top. The sense of “here we go again” is hard to escape, and when the team came out as flat as they did it just fed into it. But on reflection I don’t think last week really had much impact on the players, I think other factors affected them.
Not least the flu bug that’s gone around the camp and ruled out Alisson and Gomez. We don’t know who else had been suffering from it either. Some of those in the starting line up may well have had it during the week, or may have just been starting to feel it.
Then there’s the late changes to the side and players being shifted about. Kelleher came in at the last minute, Quansah replaced Konate but is doing a completely different job to when he’s playing in Virgil’s spot. Playing right sided centre back when Trent is the right back and is wandering infield is tough. Konate makes it look easy, but it’s not. Add to that Robbo making his first start in four months too.
Then the midfield had a new look about it. Endo returned, meaning Macca got to play further forward. It looks like he’s forgotten how to do it as it’s been so long. I think he’ll be brilliant in that role but it takes time to learn and he’s been learning to play the six the whole season. It didn’t look fluid.
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