Liverpool spent their Wednesday night under the cold lights of the Stadium of Light and left soaked to the bone but with a rare away win. Far from perfect again, but there is light and dark in every performance.
A gritty 1-0 win secured a much needed three points. Let's take a look at the positves, and negatives, from the win.
The Positives
Defensively solid
Wednesday marked one of the few nights that the match ended, and I was extremely impressed with how we played defensively. Ali didn’t have much to do and that is a testament to the work that was being put in, in front of him.
Ibrahima Konate has struggled this season with big, burly attackers who like to get up close and personal, but he showed tonight why he had the likes of Real Madrid keeping eyes on him in the summer.
He didn’t give Brobbey a sniff and was instrumental in blocking most shots that could have caught us out.Â
Consistency has been Ibou’s crux these days​, but if we can get 3 or 4 more of those performances in the next few weeks, we’ll be in a much better position because of it.
Wataru Endo was good in the tackle as we’d expect, but his night was cut painfully short. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery as we’re awfully bare at right-back currently.
Robbo really stepped up, and I’m sure Milos Kerkez was watching every move. It's actually nice to have some competition for a place because​, as of right now, based on that performance, I’d be happy with either.
And finally, Virg. Not much more to say, really. Strong, calm, match-winner, MOTM.
Crowd control
The Stadium of Light is a notoriously difficult place to play football at the best of times, never mind when a ‘Big 6’ outfit is in town.
Things can get a little louder, a little more frantic. These types of elements have been our undoing at times this season.
Sunderland flew out of the blocks of the opening 2-3 minutes, as expected, and I was sitting convinced that I’d seen this game before multiple times this season, but it didn’t last.
Through a combination of Sunderland sitting off slightly and our patient passing, the crowd never got into it.
As the game went on, we grew into it and ended up craving out a few chances and shots before halftime. All the while, the work we were doing was keeping a lid on things.
There was a small spike in the decibel level after halftime, but our goal quickly killed that​, and as a result, they never really got going.
Regis Le Bris tactics definitely had something to do with how things went tonight​, but we also never opened the door for Sunderland, and we’ve had a tendency to do that more often than not.
Far from perfect, but we’ve been far worse.
The Negatives
Team selection
There are some things that I’ll never understand: Quantum mechanics, why I can’t sink a putt over 20 feet, and why Arne Slot continues to pick Alexis Mac Allister over Curtis Jones.
Whatever your opinion on Slot, he’s proven that he isn’t the best at dropping players who aren’t in form. He adopts the approach of letting them play through their bad patches.
If you haven’t got a choice in the matter, I will not complain, but you have a fully fit Jones just gathering dust on the bench whilst Macca struggles for 80 minutes before getting hooked.
Macca was responsible for a lot of our dispossessions and turnovers, especially in the 2nd half, and when Slot finally made the move, Jones instantly made a difference.
Maybe something is going on behind the scenes that we don’t know, but if it’s purely football and form-based, Jones should start 10 times out of 10.
Then we cast our eyes a little further up the pitch towards our wingers. Two extremely valued servants to our club who are just absolutely miles off it. Salah is protected in the way that we don’t really have a replacement.
Nothing can protect Cody Gakpo any longer, other than Arne Slot. He’s counter-productive, predictable, and lazy.
He’s 3 yards behind every play and move, and in some cases ends up getting in the way of our other players trying to progress the ball.
Slot seems to now be so big on protecting our youth, but this is the same Arne Slot that started Connor Bradley against Vini Jr when he had barely turned 21.
Our next 3 games are against struggling opposition if you go off league position alone. Turn Rio Ngumoa loose, and if he ends up being a worse option than Gakpo, I’​ll write him and his family a formal apology.
Building around the stars we have
We’ve been incredibly lucky to have squads in the past few seasons that contained 10-12 world-class, league-winning type players and squad depth that allowed players to come off the bench and do a job.
Some of those names are still at the club, but aren’t at the level they used to be​, which is naturally going to happen.
It’s important we build around the world class stars we have currently, and unfortunately for us and our strict expectations, those numbers are low.
Looking ahead to next season, based on the performances of this, I think we have 3-4 stand out, world-class, league winner types, and the rest are there to prop them up.
Ekitike, Szoboszlai, Gravenberch, and the best of the lot, Florian Wirtz.
There is a reason why our most dangerous attacks start and end right up the middle of the park, because that’s where our best players are.
As soon as we introduce width, the standard almost immediately drops​, and you can see the frustration in some players when it does.
Tonight was a prime example. We looked the most dangerous when Wirtz was feeding the ball into players around the box or driving us on. As soon as he knocked it out wide, our chances of being impactful dropped.
We need to surround these superstars with a little bit more quality if we’re going to get anywhere near where we think we should be, and with the money we’ve spent, we ought to be.
A work in progress for sure, and maybe we can’t be too critical for the remainder of the season, given what we have at our disposal, but without Champions League football, our rebuild gets delayed, and we can’t really afford for that to happen.