Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Chelsea 2 Liverpool 1 in the 2025-2026 Premier League at Stamford Bridge…
TWO THINGS are true at once:
- Liverpool aren’t playing well enough.
- Liverpool should get a point from both of their last fixtures on 75.
I’d rather start dealing with 2 if that is okay with you.
2 is Liverpool not accepting the moment well enough, not accepting that away games are hard. Liverpool’s entire modus operandi is that every game is winnable and this is true. But every game is real and every game is organic. Liverpool have spent a summer and a fortune wanting football matches to be easier.
But what if they are not? What if they are harder? What if Liverpool have been stitched up by the fixture list and schedule and played 5 teams that will finish in the top 10, in the first 7?
What if sometimes you have to shrug your shoulders?
Liverpool shouldn’t stop carrying a threat. Not least because on 75 above against Crystal Palace they were behind. But there should be a sense of being philosophical. Liverpool are not that.
But also – Liverpool are stronger than both opponents on 75. Stronger and quicker and more certain. Instead they tilt themselves at cliffs. They can’t look at an issue without forcing it. I love The Reds. I love that they can’t look at a mountain without being desperate to climb it. But they have to find base camp.
And they were good at that last season.
1 is more complicated but it ultimately comes down to a couple of things. Introducing new players and missing players who have left. Liverpool take more points from the last two league games if they still have Trent Alexander-Arnold or Luis Diaz. In completely different ways. How often did these two exchange passes? But both were escape valves.
Liverpool are a team without escape valves. So in build up the opposition apply pressure and the water boils and Liverpool can’t find the way to make that heat dissipate.
This is encouraging for the opposition. Liverpool have no quick release. Nothing to just make it easier at exactly the moment these lads need it easier. Instead it gets harder and harder and Liverpool capitulate.
Instead we end up with a list of Liverpool players finding football harder. Especially on the road. All the encouragement is intensified on the road. Everyone believes, except Liverpool’s players.
Again though, it is legitimate to demand more from fullback. Bradley and Frimpong were meant to counter this with movement and technical ability carrying the ball. Neither have met the moment.
Kerkez was meant to be a quantum leap forward on Andy Robertson and he has been nothing of the sort. Part of this is because Robertson was never as poor as was insinuated.
Kerkez is killing the flank but then today Mac Allister helps that process. He spends a first-half anonymous in his best moments and criminal in his others.
And he is the brains of the operation.
But to revert back to 2, all of this was true on 1 and they should actually have got two draws from the last two league games.
This is what makes it hard.
They are on the verge of being very good but currently find themselves on the back of three defeats.
Everything needs a rethink or a reset but nothing needs to be deemed disastrous.
Their first goal irritates you in a million ways. All three midfielders are a show but that Moises Caicedo gets to balance himself without being eaten alive by Virgil van Dijk drives you mad.
But it currently feels like a goal Liverpool concede. It felt it would be coming which is mad – it is a lad hammering it in from 25 yards. All of it felt on the cards though, and then Liverpool were snookered.
And rattled. Both. A combination of the two and then you take 1-0 at half-time.
Immediately you see that Florian Wirtz is too good. It is yet again clear he is too good. It will come. He will sort a lot out.
But then the game gets out of hand. The Alexander Isak touch is tremendous. The Cody Gakpo finish is unerring but from that point the game felt like a Carabao Cup 4th round game where nobody wants the penalties. It was too active, too overwhelming and nobody got a grip of it for Liverpool.
This brings us back – perhaps unfairly – to Mac Allister. Brings us back to a manager who leaves him on. Brings us back to wanting more from Curtis Jones, wanting two Dominik Szoboszlai’s, to seeing a manager wanting dominance only for it to fall away.
Brings us back to points 1 and 2. Not accepting 1. Not bringing about 2.
Part of the whole reason this conversation is all hard is that there is extreme mitigation for everyone. There just is. Sorry but true. Huge disruption. These are all heroes who have been through a great deal and now have to find their way to keep going.
And they always get to start again, with us in 2 of the next 4 league games and we have to stand together.
The manager though gets no time off this international break. He has to work all of this out.
It has to be better. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
One off the pace. Just one.
One too many.
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