Midfield leaders drive Liverpool’s title challenge
Wolves 0-1
Liverpool had little opportunity to swashbuckle and steamroll at Molineux. Instead, they fell back on qualities Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley would have understood: leadership, pressing and the ability to eke out victory in the 94th minute.
Their performance was an inversion of their core values under Jurgen Klopp – and how the manager revelled in it. “We really pushed Wolves back. Our pressing was outstanding, our recovery runs great. I wasn’t surprised the boys stayed on track, but I don’t take it for granted,” he said. “Yes, you have glamorous wins. But to do that 20 or 25 times a year is really unlikely. You have to win games.”
In the cold, wet and windy Molineux bearpit, before a crowd baying for an elite scalp, Liverpool needed leaders. They especially needed them in midfield which, utilising wing-backs and strikers who dropped back, Wolves had flooded.
Liverpool’s midfield numbered just three, but they won almost every battle and when they did not, Fabinho and full-back Andrew Robertson were shown yellow cards for crudely scything Adama Traore. At 31, Jordan Henderson may not have the engine of yore and his withdrawal was the moment match-winner Divock Origi emerged, but for his 70 minutes this covert specialist in ugly wins was everywhere.
At one first-half point, he was alongside Sadio Mane on the edge of the Wolves penalty area, making a run which opened a gap and dragged Nelson Semedo out of position to give Conor Coady a threeway quandary: Mane, Henderson or the space between them? At another, Henderson was patrolling in front of Liverpool’s defensive quartet when Rayan Ait-nouri outfoxed Trent Alexander-arnold. Who sprinted across to dispossess Ait-nouri? Henderson of course.
Off the ball, his leadership was more influential still. When Thiago Alcantara and Fabinho were in possession, Henderson was plotting for them, pointing out the spare Liverpool man, directing them into spaces where they could do their best work.
Thiago and Fabinho were no mere cyphers, though. Fabinho’s contributions are forever destined to go under the radar as he is dismissed as a water-carrier, Didier Deschamps-lite. But he is more than that. As a former right-back, Fabinho can tackle, but his pressing was a constant, ensuring Ruben Neves, whom Wolves head coach Bruno Lage had hoped would be the source of his team’s attacking manoeuvres, was a peripheral presence.
When Monaco won Ligue 1 in 2016-17, Fabinho formed a formidable midfield partnership with Tiemoue Bakayoko. At Liverpool, he is doing it with the very different Thiago, the yin to Fabinho’s yang.
Thiago was bought for his dribbling and passing, but on Saturday he was mature, disciplined and the very acme of tidiness, whether assisting Robertson in stymieing Traore, pushing Semedo back or pressing high and hard on ball-playing Leander Dendoncker.
There was something in Lage’s contention that his team’s stubborn, well-drilled defence, their Traoreinspired counter-attacks and the timing of Origi’s winner meant his team deserved tangible reward, but Liverpool had 17 shots to Wolves’s three.
Their goal, in the fourth minute of added time, was sublime: Virgil van Dijk’s magnificent long ball picked out Mohamed Salah, whose otherworldly first touch took out Ki-jana Hoever. His cross was low. Substitute Origi swivelled and fired it past the hitherto unbeatable Jose Sa in the Wolves goal.
One-nil to the Liverpool. Of such victories are titles won.