In a season which will hopefully see some narratives around Anfield shift, Alexis Mac Allister has already been chief among them…
SO many football takes are based on the current moment. Anything before that is irrelevant.
A player can be alright for a bit and receive no attention at all. Then, one bad game later, a narrative is framed. Useless. Get rid. That’s the game now.
Narratives are bastards to shift. It’s easier to run to the accepted view without taking small improvements into consideration.
Last season, I wasn’t having Alexis Mac Allister. Just wasn’t. It was an about turn that took time.
For the final months of Arne Slot’s first season, he was absolutely unplayable. A nailed-on starter who would deliver time and again. He and Ryan Gravenberch swapping the Man of the Match awards between them, culminating in his goal against Spurs, which more or less wrapped up the title. The best we’ve seen from the Argentine (no one else springs to mind).
But come the following campaign, he was a shade of his former self. He couldn’t run, pass or challenge. Oh, he was still first choice, inexplicably to my mind, but he was miles off it. Clearly exhausted and struggling to find even the simplest pass, it looked like his race was run.
My confidence didn’t increase during the World Cup. He was great for Argentina and went all the way to the final, but every run in a striped shirt was a waste. He should have been saving his best games for us. Upon his return, he would just be a summer older and even more tired for the start of the Andoni Iraola age.
You know the rest. He’s been a revelation. Back to his best – forcing the play and setting the tempo, in what is Liverpool’s most problematic third of the pitch.
Form is temporary.
But this is how opinion is formed. In the moment.
Look at Bradley Barcola. Already written off in some quarters before he’s unpacked his bags. Yes, there was the hat trick in Austria, but a missed 1 v 1 in London a few days later and people are frowning.
Maybe this is due to an overreliance on stats. It’s possible to have a decent game without posting numbers in the right boxes. Stats don’t cover everything after all.
He should have scored, mind.
Florian Wirtz is the prime example of this. Form has not been kind to him, and though there have been glimpses of what he can do, he’s failed to deliver.
Overall, I’m not having him and have compared him to Bez from the Happy Mondays on various shows (lovely to see him dance, but he’s not really contributing to the song), but I was saying similar things about Liverpool’s number 10 last season. It’s difficult to change an entrenched opinion, but I’d love to see him do it, mostly out of sheer bloody-mindedness.
Not everything is black and white. Liverpool are unbeaten on the road, but are yet to win a league game at Anfield this season. That feels weird, but it will right itself soon. Florian Wirtz is a world-class player who is struggling, but he’s been fine in the last two games. Small steps.
Then again, you can’t judge players by the last few games. Or can you?
I’d have sold Cody Gakpo last season too. Now I can’t wait for him to come back.
If Macca can come back from that season, then so can Wirtz. Hopefully.
We don’t know what this season is yet. Personally, I’m not expecting anything from it, particularly as the cheats have rendered the Premier League a nonsense once again.
Maybe we should just use it to play people back into form and let the new lads settle in. I think I’d quite like that now that football is temporarily ruined.
Oh, and I want us to win the Champions League, obviously. You never know.
After all, class is permanent.
