Liverpool’s squad is lacking experience, but while their youth players showed up against Newcastle, their experienced players didn’t…
THERE are times when the opening game of the season can tell you plenty.
2019-20. Norwich City v the European Champions. We wiped the floor with them. Alisson went off injured, but the crowd was so buoyant that Adrian was greeted like a Rush and Dalglish love child. The League seemed inevitable. Contrast that with…
2003-04. Chelsea at home. The first of the Roman Abramovich era. The West London outfit had money to spend, famously paying for Joe Cole in one go rather than resorting to the usual structured payment plan, and it showed. They were a coming force, and we were nowhere near. The inevitable inevitably occurred.
2026-27? God, I hope not.
Can we talk about the positives first? I’m so down on the club right now that I’d like to rouse myself to at least a half-revelry.
I like Lewis Koumas and Victor Munoz. After over an hour of slow build-up play that got us nowhere, it was nice to have the two lads view defenders as mere nuisances. They put their heads down and sprinted at them. Milos Kerkez did the same too at times, though that came with more worrying issues.
And Jeremy Jacquet. I’m tempted to buy a pet simply to name it after him.
And we kept at them until we wrestled a jammy draw. Good. I’m not buying the Sky narrative that Newcastle are somehow great. We couldn’t have been more helpful for their goals.
Jesus, those goals…
A few months ago I used this column to mock my own football failings, saying I just sit at the back and shout ‘Shape!’ to the few midfielders in front of me every five minutes or so.
I can’t help but feel that might have prevented the second Newcastle goal, rather than launching our own version of the Pied Piper behind their breaking players.
So many issues – the full backs, Rio Ngumoha being bullied (though that’s hardly his fault) and whatever existential crises Ryan Gravenberch, Florian Wirtz/Bez from the Happy Mondays and Alexander Isak were going through.
But it’s a point and ill-deserved points are the best.
Andoni Iraola has to give this team character. At the moment we’ve got A-listers masquerading as extras. If Wirtz and Isak are the answers, in the short term at least, we need to see more from them. Get them up, get them competitive, get them playing. They barely played on Sunday. They just took curtain calls. Not good enough.
But it’s early days and wake-up calls might help.
Part of me worries that they might think the result justifies the performance, that the penalty will be read as never-say-die when it was purely down to a kid barely in the country deciding enough was enough and square balls were no longer enough.
A point there is fine. A third straight poor performance at home to Forest on Saturday never will be. There are further wrongs to right.
Turn this around, Liverpool. You have the resources. The inclination would be a start.
