Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 1 PSV 4 in the 2025-2026 Champions League at Anfield…
IT COULD BE the worst half-time in the history of the club.
What went on at the break? A screening of Threads? A group listen to Automatic For The People? Cormac McCarthy gives the teamtalk?
Liverpool are the better side and broadly in control of affairs against a team they are better than when the half-time whistle goes.
Everything collapses. Liverpool concede. Everything collapses further.
Long time readers will know we speak constantly of encouragement – not giving it. The second-half is a lesson in what encouraging a side does.
PSV Eindhoven smell blood and the reason they do is that Liverpool are bleeding profusely. Liverpool start the game bleeding. Liverpool come out after half-time gushing with blood and Liverpool then gouge at their own wounds.
Liverpool are all encouragement and PSV get to have a deserved famous night. Nottingham Forest got a deserved famous afternoon. Manchester United got that as well. Liverpool, who spent the whole of last season saying not today, who went unbeaten in the league from 14th September to 6th April right now look like the most encouraging team in Europe. They are a dream opponent. They’ll give you a chance and they hate themselves.
What changes? The obvious thing to say is the manager. Liverpool though will be very reluctant to make any such change. The entire history of the club since Shankly, the entire history of the club since FSG took charge tells us that. But the manager himself is not a man for the big change. He’s not a man for a small change. And there are moments and there are times when you need to be able to press a big button and say “this far and no further”. If he isn’t prepared to do that then possibly Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards may well be.
Slot’s not been willing to contemplate anything around Ibou Konate but today may make that feel untenable. The body language of his teammates when it goes 1-3 felt untenable. There is something horrendous about it all. I hate singling out any Liverpool player ever but this season has been repeatedly watching Konate not so much be at the scene of any crime but be carrying a knife dripping with blood while going “not me, guv”.
This season has also been watching Alexis Mac Allister not win a battle in midfield. Tonight on 61 he fails to make the tackle he has been failing to make all season and it is the moment when I just think “well this is it”. More of this happening. Nothing is going to be any different.
Nothing being any different is why people find it difficult to love Cody Gakpo. That, and the fact that if you are an output merchant there has to be output. Gakpo was that last season and threatened it this, but right now he is not popping up with the goal which excuses the general play not being what you would like.
But he is good for a half. Good. So many of them, good. Not very good. Not great. Just good. And good is fine.
Currently Liverpool can’t cope with good. They can’t just be that and get a result. Any win on the horizon would feel like it was dragged up from our collective guts. Any defeat will be through 1000 cuts.
Ryan Gravenberch is less good than he was. There is something about that role which means that composure needs to remain at all times and he is so frustrated. With himself, with his teammates, with the referee, maybe with the direction of travel of the western world. But he needs to hold his nerve.
Who doesn’t? But sometimes holding of nerve is possibly the wrong thing to do. Tonight there needed to be more panic. More urgency.
What next? One foot in front of the other. Beckett: “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” It’s been three months of this:
You can’t stop playing football matches.
You just can’t. Liverpool though need to get with the moment. When you are going behind now you aren’t doing it as title contenders. Now, conceding, going behind isn’t going from 0-0 to 0-2. Conceding now is just something where you need to stabilise. This:
A draw is a good result.
We may have forgotten this because my god, we haven’t drawn in ages.
We drew against Crystal Palace, last game of last season.
The last draw in a game that mattered was Aston Villa away in February.
Liverpool gave up there today. They gave up because they didn’t see the value in a draw. They gave up because only Dominik Szoboszlai and Curtis Jones will work going forward for their mates which cannot work as they are only two. They gave up because they didn’t want to back each other up. They gave up because it is hard graft to fight for everything and no graft to fight for nothing.
This is no way to live.
—
Last little thing – was a nightmare outside the ground. Queues were massive. There were full body searches for everyone. This isn’t down to the stewards. The stewards were sound. They always are at Anfield.
But at the minute, maybe Liverpool Football Club administratively shouldn’t be making the punters grumpy. Because bloody hell, Liverpool Football Club are sportingly doing a good job at that one their own.
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Ibou times his moments almost perfectly, like a trained killer, but with the gun pointing the wrong way, self sabotage, kills the team destroys momentum and belief
Virg after talking the talk being the leader, thinks he’s playing basketball going up for a rebound, self sabotage
Much like Stevie in huddle after Citeh game, ‘ this does not slip’ we know what happened next, self sabotage
Choosing different but expecting the same,
These ingrained patterns lurking in the unconscious can wreak havoc and the cold heavy energy of grief filled with regret and guilt can be a catalyst and trigger it into fulll combat mode.
So hard to see clearly when engulfed by it, perhaps a fresh pair of eyes and new perspective is needed…
I almost want it to end start a new this is too painful to watch.