Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Fulham 2 Liverpool 2 in the 2025-2026 Premier League at Craven Cottage…
THE four goals in the game are all mad.
It doesn’t need a lip reader to see Harry Wilson tell all and sundry he is miles off. He isn’t. He wasn’t. It was a good goal and a sumptuous finish but the feeling persists that the finish would perhaps be more nervy if he didn’t feel relaxed.
Then the equaliser. I still think it is offside. I think Florian Wirtz does well and finishes well but I am just not having the graphic. I love the outcome but it doesn’t fill me with faith in the process.
What should be the winner is scruffy in every phase. It comes too late and then too early. Is too unlikely. Isn’t entirely deserved but is in terms of courage and commitment.
The Fulham equaliser from Harrison Reed is a genuine goal of the season contender. It would be easy to criticise Liverpool in terms of getting out and perhaps that is fair but I just think Liverpool want him to shoot. I mean what are the chances that he puts it top corner? What are the chances?
Ah.
Yes.
There’s the chances and the chances.
And then there is feeling broken and battered. Feeling gutted.
But that feeling is a choice. Or a product of a mood. Today I had a lovely afternoon. I spent it close and quiet with people I love. So I feel good for it, feel good with the mood. I’ve also spent years watching Liverpool toil at Fulham. Today held no surprises until Harrison Reed. And:
Liverpool were keen as mustard. After it went 1-0 they didn’t lose their minds. Ibrahima Konate played very well again. Liverpool were all in quite a good football team.
However Liverpool play too slowly again. We pass from side to side, looking for an in, a release. But Fulham are rarely surprised by us because it is all too slow. Our passing is imperfect. And our collective sense of where the opportunities are, where the chances are to be had, and who is the best outlet for this, is dimmed.
None of this matters if we walk away from Craven Cottage with 3 points. So we shouldn’t allow a crazy moment of drift that cost us 2 points to overshadow the better elements of Liverpool’s game.
Szoboszlai and Gravenberch are better than Mac Allister and Jones. They create pressure and make Fulham’s life hard.
But overall, Fulham’ life isn’t nearly as hard as you would like it to be. Credit to Harry Wilson and Smith-Rowe beside him. They are very much up for it and give Liverpool the run around all game. They are good players and Liverpool have to cope.
Liverpool do cope. The defending is better again. We let in a stupid early goal but beyond that, there aren’t a huge number of crazy errors. Wirtz is fierce and gives us something going forward.
Thinking Liverpool do okay enough isn’t an argument about the bar being low – last season the side on the journey to being Champions did lose their minds after conceding at Fulham. That side were the architects of their own downfall. They felt they needed a win and fell short.
These are almost all the same players and in equally great need of the points but they stayed calmer after conceding. They found their way through the difficulty and they then started the second half as markedly the better side.
What’s difficult at the minute watching Liverpool is that great football feels a million miles away from them; that playing well is just that – well. Seven out of ten.
Arsenal and Manchester City are not astonishing sides but they are capable of finding fifteen minutes of being nine or ten out of ten. There are sides across the country, across the continent of whom that is the case. And perhaps this is the greatest and fairest criticism of the manager – there just isn’t enough excellence.
To have excellence though you need to have excellent attacking talent at your disposal. And Liverpool just don’t. They have tons of talent but only one starting player who is a last line player.
All last line players offer genuine penetration with three of finishing, movement, ball carrying, pace/presence or passing. Some offer four of the five. Some are peak Leo Messi and give you all five. Wirtz is a complex character here. The essence of the modern number ten. He is exceptional at three but they aren’t the explosive three. He is, ultimately, an attacking midfielder and he may well prove the best one. But he isn’t a pure last line player while being a tremendous final third player.
Liverpool today just have Cody Gakpo and for one glorious topless moment he is enough. He hits the backpost and we hit delirium. A win that isn’t deserved but isn’t a mugging. Exceptionally under the circumstances.
The circumstances: It is no surprise that the Christmas schedule is punishing. It is no surprise that the Africa Cup Of Nations is happening.
But there is something greater here. Elite football across the last 15 years has changed a lot. It has waxed and waned between diminutive players keeping the ball and massive players being strong out of possession. It has had moments of four centre-backs across the back line being the best way and times of wingers playing fullback being the right thing. Times where strikers are in vogue and then false nines.
We can go on. It has been 15 years of Tika-Taka vs Gegenpress. Size vs speed. 6s vs 8s vs 10s. The game will never settle and the argument will be constant. In all aspects the tide comes in and the tide goes out.
Except for one thing – across the last 15 years the schedule has only got harder. Year in, year out it has only been tougher. Last season was the first with the Swiss System in European competition. This the first with that and AFCON.
Liverpool this season have fewer players ready for the challenge than they did the season before. This is the case before you wrestle with specifics such as Alexander Isak having played no football for four months or Alexis Mac Allister losing the summer.
Liverpool spent a fortune to start a season weaker. With AFCON on the horizon.
This was a choice. It would be reasonable to presume it wasn’t the choice of the Liverpool manager but who knows because it is only the Liverpool manager who ever has to speak in public. Those above him merely brief. They never speak. Almost as a point of principle.
The schedule was the schedule. And even if things had gone swimmingly would Liverpool be strong enough? The plan was to leave gaps but the direction of travel isn’t that you do it with 18. The direction of travel is that you need 25. Liverpool already had gaps and those gaps are merely deepened by circumstance.
Today I liked the public Liverpool. The on show Liverpool. The on the telly Liverpool. They were game as onions.
The behind the scenes Liverpool? The clever suits? The smartest men in showbusiness? Well they look fucking dumb to me at the minute. They look like men who can’t read a calendar, who can’t view a trend, who at best will make one season hard to make five seasons sing but who won’t be publicly honest about that. Long term planning is a good thing but so is transparency.
The good news for them is that I have a studio just there and they can pop in an explain their thinking whenever they like. Do it with me, with John, with Rob, with Ian, with Beth.
Watching on the telly today Liverpool’s end sounded brilliant. Liverpool the players showed a ton of commitment. The Liverpool manager did alright. The situation isn’t desperate. Far from it.
But it isn’t good enough.
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