Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Brighton & Hove Albion 3 Liverpool 2 in the 2024-2025 Premier League season…
YOU’VE never known an away end as carefree.
There have been Liverpool away ends as a season draws to a close where there has been nothing to play for. But I’d have hardly called Liverpool at Stoke City in 2015 carefree. That was a heavy, heavy day.
This is all light. All sunshine and all sheer joy. New songs rattle around the away concourse, a variant on the songs we never got to write last time.
This is part of it, of course it is, a doubling down because we never got to single down. But it is something else because of the retrospect – a sheer exuberance because you never know what is round the corner. So delight in this because you never know.
The songs are there. The dancing is there. The long summer of it all is there, just there, just waiting alongside the not knowing about what comes next.
Except with Liverpool you sort of do know. You trust the manager. Trust he can coach. You trust the people making the decisions around the money. Trust they will spend and raise every penny as though their lives depend upon it. At times that has driven us a bit mad. But those decisions are part of – not always crucial to – what has led us here.
Here is the blissful moment. Brighton in the sunshine when you already have a league-title-winning, Ready Brek glow. Your engine purring, powered by however many years of the inverse.
The sun sets on The Amex and The Champions are led out by the main man. By the player of the year.
And until they go 0-1 ahead, The Champions are the better side. This is mildly surprising in a sense. They are the ones who have been having a party, been away and who have nothing to play for. But they are also The Champions. The best team in the country. And despite the changes they show it. It is another assist for Conor Bradley with such a powerful run after a fantastic Mo Salah flick.
Then, though, Brighton move into a different gear. If I supported them, I’d wonder why there wasn’t more of this at 0-0. Liverpool are a team who have been quite literally on the beach. A high tempo man to man approach from minute one is surely the plan from the outset. Liverpool can’t get out, can’t cope. Jarell Quansah is excellent but busy. Too busy. Finally the equaliser comes and feeling hits this could be a rocky road to half time.
Nope. Brighton then sit off again. In the long run this is vindicated; they win the game. But something is just a bit odd and Liverpool get an accidental second which they have deserved and we get the break.
Shall we do journalism? We don’t really. Never actually. But the half time concourse is just about the most joyous you have ever seen a support. There is singing and dancing and just so much joy. If you couldn’t be there let me tell you that those who represent us did it with sheer overwhelming noise and delight.
There is this energy: We got what we always wanted and it is better than we could have imagined. Everywhere you look this is the case.
The second half kicks off and Brighton are on the front foot. Liverpool pulled here and there, and Brighton get their goal.
And then Liverpool are again the better side. Salah misses a good chance, subs are on and all play their part until Brighton find so much space in the middle of the pitch and do the decent thing. They are a good side and if you let it be easy they will find their way. Jack Hinshelwood – a lovely young player – makes it 3-2 after an extensive VAR check and Brighton have played well for 15 minutes either side – vindicating the manager.
But the last 10. And the 10 afterwards. The away end sings about running round Anfield with the league. The Brighton PA plays “Freed From Desire” and everywhere there is delight. Sheer delight. Liverpool’s players don’t quite know what to do.
But they have given us these days of leisure.
They have.
Mo Salah is all smiles. The Captain is there and he looks great. They didn’t – in the words of Carly Rae Jepson – just come here to dance. But sometimes dancing is all there is. Sometimes dancing is all that is left to do.
Dancing round Anfield with the league.
This is, as it so often is, a love letter. Sometimes you live, and want, and need, and desire, and then all there is left is to dance. If you know what I mean. You know what I mean.
The dog that catches the car. Ahab with the whale. But we know how to drown and what to drown in. The sheer bliss of it all.
These days of leisure.
Arne Slot, Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk and all of them have given us these days of leisure. They can have their own as well.
Listen, look, promise – it is a joy to be alive. It is an act of love.
