Footy 365's 16 conclusions:
[article]* Never in doubt, was it? Some live matches entertain and absorb the viewer, while others test patience and addiction to the maximum. There must have been plenty who turned off their television sets after 70, 75, 80 or 85 minutes of what Sky Sports hyped up as ‘Mersey Monday’, and no-one could have been blamed for doing so. At times it was cagey, disjointed and downright rotten.
But there’s always a moment, a special treat for those of us who ploughed on through the dirge. Everton had scored four times in the last five minutes of their last five league matches, and conceded only once in the last 15 minutes of games this season, but Liverpool turned those statistics upside down in second-half stoppage time.
Do you think that Jurgen Klopp cares that neither team deserved all three points? Does he balls. Not when Liverpool are the closest challengers to leaders Chelsea at Christmas. Not when they are four points ahead of fifth almost halfway through the season. Not when they are seven points ahead of a Manchester United team they face next month. Good teams win when playing badly, Klopp might say. Not to mention winning at the ground where a title rival lost five days earlier.
* For Everton, a performance which virtually mirrored that of Arsenal on Wednesday at Goodison. They started brightly but failed to take full advantage when on top. After half-time they were a shell of their former selves, allowing the opposition to unsettle them and dominate the ball while providing little attacking threat of their own. Just like for Arsenal, the game had a sting in the tail which left one team with less than they deserve. I feel more comfortable about writing ‘one step forward and two more back’ than I did five days ago.
Ronald Koeman might have thought that beating Arsenal kept disgruntled wolves from the door, but he can think again now. Two big away trips against Leicester and Hull await before a home game against his old club. Fail to get five or more points and Koeman might really be in a spot of bother.
* The starting line-ups meant another update in the tiresome saga of Liverpool’s goalkeeping dilemmas. Tiresome, but clearly big news. No other elite (and we’ll define that as a team in Europe’s top five leagues with hopes of Champions League qualification) club has such a quandary about who to pick in goal.
“There was a lot of talk around this position, but that’s not the reason to push Loris,” Klopp said after the victory (and clean sheet) over Middlesbrough. “He’s a much better goalkeeper than he showed in the last game. It’s a long-term approach, especially if you have a goalkeeper like Simon, who’s training at a high level. That’s all.”
We can only theorise what Klopp meant by “long-term approach”, but we must now conclude that, for the short term, Mignolet is Liverpool’s first-choice goalkeeper again. You don’t pick your second choice for a Merseyside derby.
There’s nothing wrong with a manager changing his goalkeeping order, but Klopp cannot spin this as a positive. He has changed goalkeepers because Karius has made too many mistakes, and because he believes the very public spat with Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher may have affected the German. Having decided that Mignolet was not good enough to be No. 1 in August, that is unlikely to change barring a superb upturn in form. Successive clean sheets is a good start, but do Liverpool need another goalkeeper next summer?
* If Koeman was desperate for his Everton team to pick up where they left off against Arsenal, his wish was granted. The home team surged out of the blocks, harrying and hassling in midfield in a way that would make Klopp proud. James McCarthy kept his place after his second-half performance last week, and Gareth Barry was not missed. In the first 20 minutes, Liverpool failed to have a single shot or touch of the ball in Everton’s box.
Evidence of the home side’s dominance came in the positioning of the full-backs, with Seamus Coleman and Leighton Baines both registering an average touch position in the Liverpool half in the first 30 minutes, while Nathaniel Clyne and James Milner were pinned back. When Everton play well their full-backs stand out perhaps more than any other Premier League team (Tottenham, perhaps?), and Coleman had four more touches than any other Everton player in the first ten minutes.
* Before the game, Gary Neville predicted that Everton would mirror their tactic against Arsenal in favouring a direct style. Not only was that an attempt to service the height and physical presence of Romelu Lukaku, but it was also a counter-measure to Liverpool’s strength. If Everton had lost the ball in their own third of the pitch when passing short, Liverpool’s players are trained to effect a lightning-fast counter and expose any flaws. That was demonstrated after the break when Enner Valencia was robbed and Roberto Firmino almost had a chance to score.
Neville’s assumption was correct. Lukaku, Valencia and Ross Barkley competed for 16 aerial duels in the first 25 minutes alone, Lukaku winning 71% of his and enjoying initial success against Ragnar Klavan. The plan was to get attacking midfielders close to the Belgian in order to feed off his knockdowns, and that worked.
* Unfortunately, for all their dominance of territory, Everton failed to carve out a single meaningful chance, nor did they have a shot on target in the first half. One of the biggest reasons for that was the continued struggles of Barkley, who hampers the side as much as he helps them when in this kind of form. It’s time to ask serious questions; ‘what could be’ is too quickly becoming ‘what may never be’.
The moment to sum up Barkley’s first half came after 20 minutes, when Lukaku won a header against Klavan, nodding the ball to his midfielder. Lukaku then peeled off his man and screamed for the pass that would send him through on goal. Not only did Barkley delay his pass too long, he then played the ball straight into Klavan; the chance was gone.
The moment to sum up Barkley’s second half came as the game neared stoppage time, when he shanked a cross so badly into the crowd that Koeman had a two-second nervous breakdown in response. Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t start the next league game. He should be suspended anyway, to be fair.
I don’t want to be too harsh on Barkley, who is clearly suffering from an extended period of poor form. But when you register a pass completion of 44% in the first 15 minutes when your team is on top, and 57% in the entire match, something is clearly awry.
* For all Everton’s (sterile) dominance, it was Liverpool who had the best chance of the first half. They finally clicked on 40 minutes, when Sadio Mane jumped over a pass, Georginio Wijnaldum played the ball out wide to Clyne, and Divock Origi fired his shot wide.
Replays showed that Clyne was at least partly at fault for the chance being missed. The right-back was given plenty of time and space to pick his pass, but played the ball slightly behind the onrushing Origi. As soon as a striker has to deal with a ball behind him, the potential for missing the target increases.
Still, it was the best chance of a high-tempo but ultimately unfulfilling first period. Those lovely folk at Opta say it’s over seven years since a Merseyside derby has had so few shots in the first half. The second period would be better, surely? Well…
* Barkley’s other action of note was an appalling challenge on Jordan Henderson after the break. He is a player who regularly steps over the line between ‘rash’ and ‘behaving like a moron’.
You do wonder quite what Mike Dean and his assistant saw in the tackle to render it a yellow card and not a red. The intention of inserting the words ‘careless’ and ‘reckless’ in the rules was to cut down on the type of challenges that put an opponent’s safety in danger, and this was the dictionary definition of that. Barkley was wild, late and planted his studs above Henderson’s shins. Lucky, but silly, boy.
* Speaking of which, why in the name of Z Cars did Barkley then kick the ball away when Lukaku had committed an innocuous foul on Dejan Lovren? Is he really that dim? (Yes, apparently).
Barkley may well retain a huge amount of goodwill in a media that is desperate for him to be England’s answer in midfield, but we’re just not seeing anything close to that at the moment. He is a liability, and you can see exactly why Koeman is getting sick of it. So are we.
* It’s easy to wonder in hindsight, but have Liverpool actually suffered over these last few games for Origi’s goals? That might sound stupid, given that the Belgian had scored in each of the club’s last four league matches, but his goals actually only made a difference to the result in the 2-2 draw with West Ham.|
The point is this: It’s impossible to drop Origi given his goalscoring run, but he actually hampered Liverpool during the first half and part of the second until his withdrawal. The ball did not stick to him when played down the channels, regularly causing possession to be turned over. That made it impossible for the visitors to gain a foothold in the match.
This is not an attack on Origi, who has taken a chance afforded by Philippe Coutinho’s injury; he is still just 21 after all. But while Liverpool didn’t end up paying for his profligacy of possession, would Daniel Sturridge have done better given the opportunity to start the game? We may find out on December 27 at Anfield.
* It is hardly a technical term, but Valencia is a very odd player indeed. Just as you think he’s awful he produces something marvellous to make you feel uncharitable. Just as you think he’s pretty good he produces something rotten to make you feel overly generous. Five minutes after chasing down a lost cause, beating a man and winning a corner, the Ecuadorian will pass the ball straight out of play or run down a blind alley and fall over his own legs.
Crucially, it’s never down the middle. That makes Valencia fascinating to watch, but bloody awful to support.
* Now that’s a bloody pass. Emre Can, well, can’t…
* Having been on the front foot for the first half, Everton then allowed their head of steam to be lost on the wind. I’m selling the second half in that way deliberately rather than praising Liverpool for their vast improvement, because that’s the way it felt watching. Everton sat off the ball and allowed their opponents both possession and territory. The introduction of Barry for the injured McCarthy harmed the home side in midfield, removing one individual capable of harrying opponents for another whose ageing legs render that an impossibility.
Nor too could the full-backs get forward. In the first half Everton attempted 12 crosses from open play, but managed only one in the second half. They had only two shots of any kind in the second 45 minutes, and completed 54 fewer passes.
For Liverpool, the complete opposite. Having attempted only one cross before the break they attempted 12 in the second half, attempted 61 more passes and five more shots. While Clyne was unadventurous in the first half, he ended the game as the top chance creator in the match, with four.
* Still, there is no doubt that Liverpool’s second-half improvement did not merit victory. Adam Lallana was anonymous, failing to create a single chance or take a shot. Firmino looks jaded, clearly in need of a rest after leading the line for the first four months of the season. Wijnaldum is a drifter – it is very hard to identify exactly what it is he’s bringing to the party. The Dutchman has created only 19 chances in 1,196 league minutes; he is seventh on Liverpool’s list.
This was a poor spectacle of football that deserved to end 0-0, and hopefully a lesson to Sky Sports that adding fancy taglines to matches looks like an exercise in rolling turd in glitter when they fall flat on their face. I’d struggle to give any player on either side higher than a mark of 7 out of 10. In a much-hyped local derby, that’s a damn shame.
* When the goal finally came, it was a reflection of the entire game: messy and scuffed. Sturridge ran across the penalty area, but looked to have been eased off the ball as he shot. That led to a weak effort that wrong-footed another substitute, goalkeeper Joel Robles.
The tendency is to salute Liverpool’s fortune rather than skill, and it’s clear that the bounce of the ball from the post did help their cause. Yet look at Mane’s desire and anticipation ahead of Ashley Williams and Ramiro Funes Mori and understand that fortune only plays a small role. To alter the famous Arnold Palmer quote: the more you want it the luckier you get. Cue Klopp going mad on the touchline, and supporters doing the same in the stands. The rest of Goodison looked shell-shocked.
* A Mike Dean deliberate nutmeg to try and spice up a Merseyside derby? Of course it bloody is. Merry Christmas.[/article]
