It’s unfair to blame Liverpool for being the best team: that’s how you win titles
Barney Ronay
There was an extraordinary moment in the seconds after Diogo Jota had scored the only goal of this Merseyside derby, as the home supporters seethed and writhed, bodies tumbling, a wave of noise barrelling around the Anfield stands.
At which point a lone middle-aged man could be seen emerging from the seats, waving his fists in the direction of what must have been the fourth official, making wild but oddly precise spectacles gestures with his fingers, all the while being hurled back by the combined efforts of three men in orange jackets.
It was a tableau made all the more striking by the fact the man’s own small round purple sunglasses had slipped off the top of his head and over his eyes midway through this sequence, staying in place as he was dragged clear, still a roaring Anfield apparition, a bald VAR-crazed John Lennon.
This is where we are now in the meta world of
Premier League rage. Goading the fourth official in the moment of celebration. But then, you could kind of see his point in some ways.
This has been a genuinely odd slow bicycle race of a Premier League season, and not for the reasons that are most commonly repeated. At Anfield Liverpool took the most significant of their many final steps towards the title here with an arm’s-length
1-0 defeat of a limited Everton. But it was also a game that seemed to capture the key points of their title-bound season.
Has any other team ever been so roundly blamed for how mediocre everyone else is? It is a really strange dynamic. Stop winning the league so easily. Make everyone else better. Find some jeopardy for us. Everton came here to defend, violently at times, but skilfully too.
Liverpool found a way to win. And in the process embodied the other key feature of their season.
They did enough here, were smart, persistent and well prepared. With Manchester City in a state of convulsion, it was clear pretty early on in the piece that this would be the way to win the league. You don’t actually need to outrun the bear. Just the other campers.
So don’t blame Liverpool for being better than everyone else. This is how you win a title. And don’t blame them for the fact there were only really two events in this game, both reflected in that moment of goal joy catharsis.
Alexis Mac Allister receives medical attention after James Tarkowski’s challenge. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters
The first was a wild tackle from James Tarkowski on 11 minutes that should have drawn a straight red card. Did Tarkowski really need to kick the ball so hard that he flew through it, through an empty pocket of space, both feet off the ground and into the leg of Alexis Mac Allister? What degree of force is excessive force, if not this? The ball was gettable. It really didn’t need the follow through. This is, at best, terrible technique.
Somehow the VAR was able to watch replays of this, to see Mac Allister’s leg bending back under the impact, the sheer pointlessness of going through the ball at that speed and height.
How do you feel if you’re the VAR at moments like these. You’ll know you’ve made a terrible decision. At half-time Duncan Ferguson, no stranger to acts of abrupt and decisive violence, is shaking his head sadly and talking about leg-breakers. All of this is being fed in real time into your periphery. You are now the story. This is not a pleasant or functional system. It hardly helps that those administering it seem so prone to making this kind of genuinely jaw-dropping mistake.
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But Paul Tierney was rescued, to a degree, by the only other notable moment of the game. Luis Díaz produced the key moment, a lovely little flick back into the path of Jota, who jinked, feinted, then smashed the ball past Jordan Pickford.
And that was pretty much that, unsurprisingly given Everton’s sole attacking plan was basically Beto running, and running in that strangely captivating way, like a man being chased by zombies. Otherwise this was a game where Arne Slot’s choices all pretty much paid off.
Anfield had been a lovely place before kick-off, the evening air a thick deep powder blue, the sky above the Kenny Dalglish Stand fading to a dreamy grey. There was a kind of event glamour about the whole thing, that feeling you get sometimes of a crowd speaking to itself. People wore T-shirts and waved their arms, sang wildly, gulping the air in like it was cool water.
Ryan Gravenberch, a Slot project this year, was back into smooth midfield dynamo mode. Curtis Jones at right-back made sense. Full-backs play in midfield. Why not the other way round? What is a full-back anyway? A polyvalent flank unit. A free radical touchline libero. A bloke who can do Mo Salah’s tackling. Jones was excellent here. Liverpool were excellent. They did enough, won just enough, were quicker, once again, than everyone else in the race.
