Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Aston Villa 4 Liverpool 2 in the 2025-2026 Premier League at Villa Park…
WHAT we are talking about here is the stupidest team in the country. The stupidest team in the country wandered into Villa Park and got precisely what their idiocy deserved.
It takes eleven to tango where that is concerned. Any eleven. Any eleven you care to mention. This isn’t the same as saying eleven played badly – they didn’t. Within all the doombrain football there were moments where some acquitted themselves well. You just knew, Aston Villa just knew, that stupidity was just around the corner. A great example is just after it went 4-2 and Liverpool played into Villa’s hands with aplomb.
Eleven? Twelve. Let’s include the manager who ultimately oversees this stupidity. His name is above the door. Liverpool managed to have one of those days where they didn’t have enough players going forward but weren’t compact and left gaps going backwards.
Coaching staff too, if you want. Indeed: The football club from top to bottom has been remarkably stupid for 2025/26 and tonight is the epitome of it. A crisp distillation of everything they have been through this season, into one evening.
The thing about the opening goal was that it looked choreographed. So much so it looked like Liverpool were in on it. It was like something from professional wrestling, as though pre-match both sides had got together and arranged it all.
Obviously that isn’t the case. Aston Villa just knew they were playing the stupidest team in the country. The men who never talk. The XI that has looked at every rake as a friend they hadn’t stepped on yet.
It was the man Aston Villa would want in the specific place they would want him. And it proves the constant from this season: Hang in there, Liverpool will give you a chance. They may be on top now. But Liverpool having the ball is unlikely to mean a Liverpool opportunity. Instead it just means they will lose the ball. And then you never know.
But they do know. They have a plan for it. They know Liverpool offer nothing in their box and know that Ollie Watkins can offer something in ours. They know they will get to burst beyond lines and they know it will be just there.
And they know: Someone might fall over. Someone will ball watch. Someone will press when they shouldn’t. Someone will stand off when they should press. Somewhere Liverpool will make it easy. Because they cannot make it hard.
It goes 1-1 and it becomes a game of wondering how precisely it will go 2-1. The way it goes 3-1, after the histrionics, showed that along with tactically stupid and practically stupid, Liverpool could also be psychologically stupid. Roll up! Roll up! See what the circus has to offer next.
John McGinn makes it four and it is what everyone deserves and Virgil van Dijk makes it two because actually Aston Villa aren’t that good. But they don’t need to be. Because Liverpool are broken.
There is so much wreckage around the place as it stands. This starts from last summer. From both the horrendous tragedy of Diogo and Andre but also from decisions made in the summer, decisions made around prices, decisions made in January, decisions made around the manager. The players don’t seem to like or trust each other, don’t seem to know where to be, seem to be looking at one another like they are the next shoe to drop and that is no place to play football.
Liverpool can still hit the bare minimum KPI this season but at what cost? Who has confidence in this? The decisions made through the season, some by the manager and some not, now gnaw away at the manager whose own head must be burned out by what his side find their way to. The wreckage is everything and now any reasonable eye thinks “my god, there is so much to do”. There is a lot to be said for continuity, there always will be, but there is validity right now in asking “continuity of what?”
Further, it is valid to make the point that when a season ends and the league tables go back to zero that doesn’t mean the previous twelve months are forgotten. We are actually not goldfish. Would it be better if we were? Well, neither is the rest of the football world and right now it is perfectly valid for other top sides to anticipate a Liverpool next season that has not just not won in any of their grounds but actively shot themselves in the foot.
It is valid for Liverpool players to look at the men next to them and the man in the dugout and think “you helped make a show of me last year.” Resets are not easy. This would also be fair for a manager who can look at last summer, look at the people above him and think, “my god, you could have helped me out lads”. Further, what is the continuity argument worth when the three most senior men on the technical side of the club have contracts that run out in 57 weeks.
Everything in life is rolling the dice, of course it is, but it is also very human to look at the people who have rolled a load of ones, know that the dice is the dice but also thinking “well, I don’t think I want you to roll them again”.
We end up back here – whose name is above which door? What has been luck, judgement and where the two meet? But the manager’s name is above the door marked performance. It just is. And Liverpool have now lost as many games this season in the league as Sunderland and Leeds United. Two sides they failed to beat at home.
But tonight is just doombrained. Just doombrained. Doombrained is the worst. It is no way to live, no way to play a game of football. There’s a thing around The Anfield Wrap and, I’d say, around a lot of culture in the city. You never, ever want to be thought of or called a divvy. You’d rather be called a bastard.
You don’t want to be called a sausage. You’d rather be called a prick.
You don’t want to be called a balloon. You’d rather be called a cunt.
Liverpool are bad divvies. Liverpool are frigging sausages. Liverpool are fucking balloons, enormous fucking balloons, and everyone is sick of it.
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