Klopp & Real ease into quarters
Real & Reds take it easy in Champs League
ONLY a handful of efforts on target in a game against mediocre opposition at Anfield. No problem.
Barely a thrilling passage of play on a European night at the great stadium. No problem. Failure to record a fifth win on the spin. No problem. No goals in a match for the first time since January 22. No problem.
Still unbeaten in this season’s Champions League, Liverpool are in the hat for the quarterfinal draw.
More relevantly for the immediate future, this was a decent, light, televised training session ahead of the Premier League meeting with Manchester United at the weekend.
Because let’s face it, after drubbing Porto 5-0 in the first leg, this match was as much a formality as the handshakes and the daft anthem.
It was an opportunity to get some kilometres in Adam Lallana’s legs and keep the likes of Joel Matip, Alberto Moreno and Joe Gomez loose and a little happier with life.
On the whole, those currently not among the top-ranked acquitted themselves well last night.
Gomez might fancy himself as a centre-half but his aptitude for the overlap, one of which led to Sadio Mane volleying over one early chance, is an essential tool in a full-back’s box.
The problem for Gomez is that when most are fit, it is hard to see him getting in anywhere across Jurgen Klopp’s back line.
Yes, the picture is tinted rose by their current patch of purple form but
Klopp (left) appears to have some decent strength in depth.
Moreno was not overly tested but his zest for a lost cause led to another first half
Mane opportunity which found the inside of Iker Casillas’s right upright.
Apparently, the statistics bods do not count that as a shot on target, which meant there were none of those in the entire first half.
That just about summed up the night.
As Jordan Henderson said after the game: “We’re through to the next round which is the most important thing – obviously we wanted to win, but we have to give credit to Porto because they played well. “We couldn’t manage to break them down.”
But if Liverpool were a little too casual, far too sloppy and just a touch uninterested, you could hardly blame them, and any onus to take the game by the scruff of the neck should
have been on the visitors from Portugal.
Instead, for swathes of this sleepy occasion, Porto seemed content to become the first team in memory to try to protect a five-goal deficit.
To be fair, they did have the game’s first accurate strike on goal, Majeed Waris stretching Loris Karius, a keeper who seems to be developing fresh confidence with each start.
That is probably why Klopp decided against giving Simon Mignolet an outing. Momentum.
That must have been the reason Mane and Firmino had to do a shift apiece, although the latter’s lasted little more than an hour, probably the time you would have thought Klopp’s attention turned exclusively to the Old Trafford engagement in three days’ time. If they did, he confounded most people by sending on Mo Salah but maybe he was just keeping his main man ticking over.
Salah (left) duly produced opportunities for both James Milner and fellow substitute Danny Ings, who was denied by Casillas in what might be the final Champions League appearance of one of Europe’s most decorated players.
In his cameo, Salah probably carried the most creative threat of the night but that was hardly an accolade.
Because in truth, everyone could have gone home after the handshakes and the daft anthem.
Liverpool’s mission had long been accomplished, now for something livelier on Saturday.