I don’t really know what to make of this. I can rationalise it by saying it’s the toughest place we could have gone to and that we ran them really close. When you look at it that way, it’s not bad. Sure, it’s disappointing to be knocked out of a competition we won last year, and it’s never nice losing to them, but in that context there’s no need to feel downhearted by anything or worried about the tests to come.
I’m struggling to see it that way though. I’m judging it on what I saw and how I felt when watching it, and viewed through that prism I don’t feel great about it at all. I didn’t see much that I felt good about but I saw lots that I didn’t like. We won’t truly know what level we’re at until we’ve played the next three games, all of which we should win. This wasn’t a game we should win. It was a game that we could win, but equally it’s one that we could easily lose. This isn’t the game to tell us whether the break has allowed us to hit reset and get back to doing what has made us so successful. We’ll only know that when we’ve faced teams like Villa, Leicester, Brentford and others of that ilk.
That being said, I saw nothing in this game to make me think we have sorted anything out. The things that were going wrong in the first half of the season don’t look like they’ve gone away. Klopp himself said he wasn’t happy about the counter-press because “it was non existent”. How the fuck can that be the case when they’ve just spent weeks working on this shit and sitting in a classroom watching instructional videos? Ljinders said they’ve been showing them clips and re-educating them on how to become horrible to play against.
On this showing it seems like the players showed as little aptitude to work in the classroom as I did. I didn’t listen in class, I didn’t do homework and I really just couldn’t be arsed with school at all. Looking at this game, and specifically the car crash that was the opening 15 minutes, all I can think is that the lads were throwing paper aeroplanes around, scratching their initials on their desks and generally just taking the piss in class.
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