Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Manchester City 4 Liverpool 0 in the 2025-2026 FA Cup at the Etihad…
THEY play well for half an hour. In that half an hour they create the sort of chances you can mostly hope to create in a game like this, have the sort of chances to create chances you can hope to have in the first half an hour, away to opponents like this.
They don’t take them. They miss the chances they do create and they don’t create the chances they should.
This is the first issue and it is worth dwelling on. Goals change games but they also set games – the better side goes 1-0 ahead. Manchester City have some questions to answer.
Mo Salah and Hugo Ekitike are at either ends of their careers but both right now are not as ruthless as Liverpool need. It’s been a problem. Liverpool spend far too much time playing on the opposition’s terms. Playing against the scoreboard.
But they don’t score.
Instead they concede. A penalty, but if he doesn’t make the foul the chance is as good as a penalty. The issue is the Captain’s positioning and everyone else’s.
They go 1-0.
And then it is dreadful. From the kick-off it is dreadful, Van Dijk just sending it down the pitch when the first idea should be to keep it and kill some time. Just getting in 1-0 would have been fine.
They get to the injury-time board, Curtis Jones gets tangled in it but earns a throw. 45 seconds to the half-time whistle.
45 seconds too many. 45 seconds unmanageable. 45 seconds which sums up the issue of the season. A whistle on the horizon. Nothing daft. Instead Milos Kerkez ends up defending 3, the ball is hung up and Erling Haaland is on the move.
Just get to half-time.
The one positive of the goal which makes it 2-0 is that it is only 99% as infuriating as the one to make it 3-0 when every Liverpool player stands and admires. Again – get to the hour. Nothing silly. Nothing daft. Not for us. We invite it all and get yet more medicine. It also comes from our throw in.
The fourth sees Dominik Szoboszlai be very relaxed with Nico O’Reilly running off him. Joe Gomez is trying to back up Ibou Konate but now we are outnumbered. Haaland makes it four.
Salah misses a penalty in a way which is ultimately just comic by that stage.
And that was that. At least for me. I walked down on about 73 and found people on the concourse who just wanted to talk about the manager. One full of sympathy for him, about to board a coach full of others with literally no sympathy for him, wanting reassurance. Everyone else burnt out by it all. Everyone else, ultimately sad about it.
Because it became a performance that makes you sad. It is a team without brain and brio, without battling qualities, without belief. Without hope. Without delusion.
No one is kidding themselves. And this is part of the problem, part of the aftermath of this today – no one can. Liverpool head to Paris and it is impossible to believe they will find their way clear to rousing themselves right now.
Seeing the whole club devoid of hope is agonising. This was not the case on 25 minutes today. The Liverpool end was in fine voice, watching a good side show something.
But the issue is that the plug has, again, been pulled. A fresh start left thoroughly stale.
And the cliché is true for a reason – you can’t sack all the players. No football team ever has or ever will. However infuriating they were from 1-0 today most of them will be starting on Wednesday. Most will be starting at the start of next season.
But you can change who is in the dugout and today feels like it definitively changes the conversation. It changes it to “when”. And it may well change a lot of answers to “now”. It’s hard to argue against other than by being aware of the amount of upheaval there would be in the club ahead of a big week.
Arne Slot is a good man who followed the impossible and led us calmly to our twentieth league title. He did it without bluster, without kidding himself or anyone else, without delusion. He was then left with a desperate tragedy to deal with which shouldn’t be glibly downplayed by anyone. He managed his charges with gentleness and compassion and by all reasonable accounts this is the man he is.
An issue is that some of those strengths, the lack of bullshit, the endless rationality are now weaknesses. Massive glaring weaknesses. What he did last season was possible because he calmly made clear it was. He is not a man for the art of the impossible and it shows.
This is a team which has eroded against itself over the course of the season. It is now a nub. It is fragile. It believes in nothing when the going gets tough and there is no inner self-belief left to channel.
Do you right now dance with the one that brung you or do you see what else is left on the dance floor as they switch the lights on?
Whatever Liverpool do, it is a sorry, sad state of affairs. I’m not interested in performative anger but in Liverpudlian performances and everything is about what comes next for next season.
It’s a massive blow across the board. As ever, as we always say, the only way out is through.
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