What is it with us and the Champions League Group Stages? Why do we make it so difficult for ourselves? This was ridiculous. We were 3-0 up and playing some spectacular football, and then suddenly in the blink of an eye it’s 3-3 and we’re having to go out and win the game all over again.
Thankfully this team doesn’t panic and they know how to win tight games, but there are some things that need cleaning up because we’re not putting together 90 minute performances so far. We play in spells and those spells are usually enough because we’re so good. But in virtually every game we’re giving up clear chances. We’ve gotten away with it for the most part as until now no-one had been as clinical as Salzburg, but we don’t look as secure as we did this time last year.
Salzburg are better than people realise though. They’re lively, they’ve got a positive way of playing and they’ve clearly got some good players. I thought we’d roll them over easily and for a while we did. At our best no-one can live with us and even when our level drops most still can’t compete. Salzburg did though. As soon as we took our foot off their throats, they came up swinging.
I was really impressed with them but it’s beginning to feel like a recurring thing now. I've found myself praising our opponents quite a bit this season. Norwich, Chelsea, Sheffield United, Salzburg…. I’ve spoken about how well all of these played against us but now I’m wondering if it says more about us than them?
I liked it better when we made good teams look bad. Now we’re making average teams look good. I do suspect that Salzburg are actually quite handy though, and I fancy them to turn Napoli over. Maybe they'll even qualify from the group. They certainly gave us all we could handle in that second half and they had their moments in the first half too.
For half an hour though we were fucking brilliant. Some of the football was ridiculously good and two of the goals we scored were sublime. Salzburg got it wrong tactically and we made them pay. There was just so much space in wide areas that Mané, Trent and Robbo just ran riot in the opening half hour or so.
Sadio looked in great nick. They couldn’t get near him early on. The opening goal looked so easy but it was brilliantly executed. The ease with which he went past two players, the timing of the run, the weight of return pass from Bobby, the finish… all just perfect.
Goal number two was even better. Robbo started and finished a sweeping move from one end of the field to the other. One full back crossing for the other to score is the stuff Pep Ljinders dreams of. I remember him saying how that’s his ideal goal. Well now he has it.
It’s one of my favourite goals in a long time too. Robbo scoring just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. He had a great game I thought, although Klopp seemed to be on his case throughout the first half, constantly shouting at him to get forward. I mean fucking hell, it’s not like Robbo needs telling!
Mo shot disappointingly wide after Fabinho’s ball over the top sent him clear, but he did got his goal when he converted a rebound. The keeper should have done better with Bobby’s header really, but Salah was in the right place at the right time.
We were dominating and playing some lovely football, but Salzburg had carried a threat and the lad Hwang up front was very lively. Their movement and speed in attacking areas gave us some problems and we never looked completely comfortable. In the opening weeks of the season we were holding a high line, but I noticed a few times that Virgil went back in with runners rather than trying to play offside.
On one occasion when he did hold the line Hwang got in behind because Trent was fractionally deeper. Adrian had to make a save as Hwang went on the outside and hit a shot with his left foot. That was significant because the next time he got in Virgil anticipated him doing the same and was made to look foolish, as he ended up on his arse, helpless as Hwang cut inside and lashed a shot past Adrian.
Really good goal that, but it was avoidable from our point of view as it all came from Hendo losing the ball cheaply. They play in a similar style to us, pressing high and then hitting fast when they win it. Most of the problems we had were of our own making, losing the ball in the wrong areas and never really recovering our shape.
Still, when it went 3-1 it felt like it was merely a consolation and we’d just roll them over in the second half and score another three or four. The funny thing was the scoreboard briefly showed 3-3 rather than 3-1. My first thought was that maybe that goal should have counted treble just for the way the lad beat Virg.
Then I thought “I hope that’s not a sign of what’s to come”. Then I immediately brushed that off as nonsense. We weren’t giving up a 3-0 lead against these. The days of us doing crazy shit like that are over. Virgil is here now, we don’t throw away leads anymore.
And then that’s exactly what we did. It was mad, we just lost all control of the game and when they got their second it wasn’t a shock. They’d changed their system after half an hour or so and it completely changed the game. They started to win the ball in midfield and grow in confidence.
They caught us on the hop with the second goal. Gomez committed a foul but they took the free-kick so quickly we were completely on the back foot and out of position. Hwang showed good vision to pick out Minamino at the back of the box and he volleyed past Adrian to send the away end wild. Suddenly they believed.
3-2 and all the momentum was with them. Minamino was brilliant and Hwang's pace and movement also caught the eye. They then brought on Alfie Haaland’s lad and he scored with his first touch, tapping in at the back post. We were at sixes and sevens and he was left all alone. Trent was nowhere to be seen but it wasn’t just on him.
The problems we had defensively were collective rather than individual. It’s easy to say we missed Matip but personally I don’t think it would have made a great deal of difference. Gomez wasn’t to blame for what happened and had Matip been in there he wouldn’t have prevented all the space they had in midfield.
Klopp mentioned their change of formation, and if that truly was the catalyst for what happened then I’d have to wonder why he didn’t change things himself. At 3-3 he did. He got Milner on to shore things up and then soon after he sent on Big Div for Gini and went 4-2-3-1.
After that we were fine, which again leads me to think that the midfield was more culpable than the back four. Hendo started the game brilliantly but he had a wobble early in the second half. Fabinho too. He was all over the place after half time.
The question is what caused it? Were we complacent? Was it tactical? Or was it simply a case of us dropping the tempo and allowing them to get back into it? Maybe a little of all of it. I don’t know.
If it was complacency then that’s the easiest thing to fix. I’m not sure it’s that though. I suppose it depends on how you define complacency. I don’t think the players just stopped working because they thought the job was done. Maybe they under-estimated Salzburg a bit but I doubt it. I think what can sometimes happen when you’re playing so well and are a few goals up is you start to try things you maybe shouldn’t. You get a little over-confident and sloppy.
And if you give the ball away cheaply against good attacking sides, they can hurt you. I know Salzburg aren’t playing against top opposition every week, but they score a shitload of goals and that breeds confidence. So when we’re giving the ball away and we’ve got so many players in forward areas, teams like that can hurt you.
Most of our problems were self inflicted and probably a result of a lack of concentration. It might do us the world of good actually. Klopp made the point afterwards that it’s better that we learned the lesson in winning a game than have to learn it after we’d dropped points.
Ultimately it doesn’t really matter what happened here. We won the game and the only thing that really counts is getting out of the group. This result helps with that, and if we learn a lesson along the way and the next time we’re 3-0 up we make sure we control the game then this was well worth it.
It’s also a positive that having been pegged back to 3-3 we were able to shrug that off and just go and get the goal we needed to win the game. It wasn’t pretty but it was fitting the way we scored it, as it came from force of will as much as anything. Not giving up, keeping the ball alive and just forcing the issue.
Firmino was foiled, Salah’s cross was cleared but Fabinho lobbed the ball back into the box and Bobby produced a lovely little header down to set Mo free. This time he made no mistake with the finish. There was a delay while they checked VAR, and for some reason Bobby didn’t go back into his own half and was waiting in the penalty, almost like he expected it to be disallowed. I wasn’t worried at all as I sit right in line with it and knew there was no offside.
After we got in front again we didn’t really have too many scares and it looked to me like Salzburg just kind of accepted their fate. They’d given it a go, caused us a big scare, but they seemed happy enough with a heroic defeat. Why do I say that? Mostly because of how they reacted when Adrian had the ball at his feet, taking his time over clearances.
You’d think a team desperate to score with time running out would have been closing him down and making him get on with the game, but they didn’t. As I say, it looked like they were happy with a heroic defeat and ultimately we should be happy with a narrow victory.
I say that because it doesn’t matter how you get out of the group just that you do get out of it. We’re on track to do that and if we get to the knockouts we won’t think twice about the scare Salzburg gave us. We won the thing last year and honestly, off the top of my head I don’t even remember what the score was when we played Red Star at home in the group stages, let alone anything about the game.
There is work to do though, because we’re giving up an awful lot of chances this season. We’ve gotten away with it for the most part but defensively we don’t look as secure as we did last season. To me it’s more of a team issue that just being about the defence, but whatever it is it needs tightening up because we’ve got some tough games coming up, not least this weekend when we face in form Leicester.
Jurgen joked afterwards that Brendan will have looked at this game and thought that Vardy would score five if we play like that. He’s not wrong either. Leicester are dangerous because Vardy is an expert at taking advantage of any space in behind and they’ve got players in midfield who can find him if we lose the ball in dangerous areas.
At least the front three bounced back after ropey performances against Napoli and Sheffield United. When they’re sharp no-one can beat us, even when we make errors at the back. They weren’t at their absolute best in this one but they were sharp enough.
Star man is Bobby, just ahead of Robertson.
Team: Adrian; Alexander-Arnold, Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Henderson (Milner), Wijnaldum (Origi); Salah (Keita), Firmino, Mané:
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