When you pitch two teams of fringe players and youngsters, desperate to impress, against one another, you’re always likely to witness an energetic and chaotic spectacle.
“Our mentality has improved. That’s grown over the last few years and the gaffer has changed that so much.”
What a difference 72 hours can make. We were poor on Sunday at Old Trafford, there’s no doubt about it, with a lack of attacking ingenuity the main cause of a failure to break down Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s innovative take on parking the bus. But at Genk on Wednesday night, our old joie de vivre in attack was very much clear and present.
We can say it through gritted teeth, but the fact remains: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer got his tactics spot on in the 1-1 draw at Old Trafford on Sunday.
Let’s face it: there’s NO good time for an international break in the calendar, whether you support Liverpool or enjoy a bit of a bet every now and again. But it’s an especially bad time when you are enjoying the power of eight, as the Reds are. That is, we’re on an eight-game winning streak and enjoy an eight-point lead at the top of the Premier League table over Manchester City.
We were shown in glorious technicolour the perils of getting complacent on the football pitch at Anfield on Wednesday night. Liverpool had romped into a 3-0 lead in barely half an hour in the Champions League game against Red Bull Salzburg, with goals from Sadio Mane, Andy Robertson and Mo Salah giving us the most comfortable of leads.
That’s another stern test of our title credentials passed. Make no mistake: plenty of teams will flounder at Bramall Lane this season, where the Sheffield United fans are able to whip up a raucous atmosphere and make their opponent’s afternoon work rather difficult.
When you thrust your fringe players and a bunch of kids into the limelight for a tricky away tie in the cup, as a manager you must always fear the worst. But you couldn’t take the smile off Jurgen Klopp’s face as his makeshift Reds side grabbed a deserved 2-0 win at MK Dons in the EFL Cup on Wednesday.
It wasn’t a vintage performance by any means, but the 2-1 win at Chelsea summed up once again how far Liverpool have come since the early days of the Jurgen Klopp era. This is a game that we would have drawn at best a few seasons ago, but the players now know how to ‘manage’ matches and show character and resolve when required. And no lack of quality, either.
In football, it’s often fine margins that can make all the difference. Yes, we were poor in Naples in midweek as we succumbed to a 0-2 defeat in our Champions League opener, but it was those key moments that ultimately cost us rather than being overwhelmed and outclassed.