Moving swiftly onwards
There’s no getting away from it, that was a shitshow yesterday and it really took me by surprise. The same team that looked so on it last week and dominated City for the vast majority of the game, looked like they’d never played together in the first half yesterday. Couldn’t string three passes together, sloppy touches, beaten to every second ball… It was actually shocking to watch at times as Fulham gave us a lesson in desire and intensity.
I’m not going to labour the point on every poor individual display or we’ll be here all day so just some main talking points. Trent at the back post again igniting old arguments about his defending. Can he defend? Of course he can, there’s many games he’s excellent defensively. For me, it’s usually the same thing – he doesn’t see the runner. Same thing in the CL final, I don’t think he knew Vinicius was there and likewise I don’t think he knew Mitrovic was there yesterday. If he does, then surely he jumps to meet the ball, rather than waiting for it. These things happen though and we can micro analyse every incident but we may just have to accept that Trent is a midfielder that was converted into a fullback and he maybe just doesn’t have that natural defensive instinct but we get way more out of Trent going forward than he costs us defensively.
Five minutes into the second half and Klopp had seen enough. On came Darwin for the ineffective Firmino and Elliot introduced for a seriously rusty, below par Fabinho and we instantly improved. Darwin causes absolute chaos on his own and chances immediately started coming his way and Fulham found themselves on the back foot. Having opened his PL account with a cute flick, I honestly thought we’d go on and win the game at that point.
Cue Van Dijk with the most un-VVD like challenge, to give away a penalty. Mitrovic is known for a lot of things but his dribbling prowess isn’t one of them. The guy turns like the Titanic but Virgil dangled a lazy leg and over he went, with minimal (if any) contact.
There were some positives, I thought Elliot looked really good when he came on, Milner made a big difference too, making something of a mockery of the argument that it’s the age of our midfield that’s the problem. The big positive though, is Darwin. I suggested a few weeks back that he wouldn’t be thrown straight into the starting lineup and that has proven to be the case but I think with Jota’s injury, he may well be fast tracked in there now.
Many of us have discussed a likely switch to a 4-2-3-1 this season to accommodate Nunez and with our midfield options dropping like flies, this may be brought in sooner than planned. I still think Bobby has a lot to offer and hope he’s offered an extension but I think the false 9 has run it’s course. Centre backs have figured out that if you don’t get dragged out of position by him and just hold your position, you deny the space for our wingers to run into and with a narrow midfield, if denies Bobby the space to be effective. As soon as Darwin came on, there seemed to be more space for everyone. He was occupying both CB’s, causing panic and suddenly Salah came into the game, having barely had a sniff in the first half. We created plenty chances second half and like I said, if not for the daft penalty, I think we’d have gone on and won that game.
It wasn’t to be however and hopefully it serves the team as a wake up call. If there was any chance of a mindset creeping in where they just thought they had to turn up to win, let that be a lesson.
Anyway, a frustrating game, made worse by the fact we don’t play again until a week on Monday but there’s nothing else for it than dusting ourselves down and going again. I’ll be amazed in Nunez isn’t in the starting lineup for Palace though. This kid’s a monster in the making. Walk on!
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