Liverpool’s late goal habit is the way to win titles
Here was potent demonstration of how titles are won: late and when not playing well. But in the marathon of the league such caveats become irrelevant.
And the statistic that matters reveals that Liverpool duly recorded their 12th win out of thirteen Premier League matches this season. Already, long before Christmas, the rest of the division has a stiff neck from looking forlornly upwards.
“I don’t take it for granted,” said Jurgen Klopp after yet another late win. “We cannot win only brilliant games. We are not out there to show we invented football. We have a job to do to get results. We did that again.”
In their prolonged Klopp euphoria, most Liverpool supporters remain unable to compute how Roy Hodgson could ever have been their manager.
But Palace fans love their boss, chanting his name throughout the match. And this despite the fact he has presided over his team collecting just one point from their previous possible 12.
One piece of encouragement came Hodgson’s way in the fact that Liverpool arrived with Mo Salah still not wholly fit. Starting in his place on the left of the front three was Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Klopp had said before the game he had no issue playing him given the England international’s form: after a year out injured, he has marked his return by scoring five goals in his last seven games.
Which is one more than the entire Palace front three had managed between them ahead of this fixture. Actually the collective record is misleading: Jordan Ayew has scored all four of the Palace strike force’s goals this season; neither Andros Townsend nor Wilfried Zaha had thus far found the net. When two thirds of your attacking resources are firing blanks you have a problem.
And, once the pattern of this game became clear, the goal-shy nature of Hodgson’s forwards was all too damning. Particularly as, in the first half, Liverpool looked stodgy, as if weary of all that front-running. The truth was, they were there for the taking, albeit by a side that was actually capable of putting the ball in the net. Trent Alexander-Arnold looked particularly off the pace. His attempt to find his full back colleague Andrew Robertson with a searing cross-field pass midway through the first half instead perfectly picked out Townsend, galloping down the right wing. He was tackled, the ball fell to Cheikhou Kouyate whose floated cross found Ayew in behind the Liverpool defence. But the Palace number nine skewed his shot tamely wide.
Liverpool might have been dominating possession, but they were doing little effective with it. About their best effort of the first half was when Virgil Van Dijk headed the ball down from
Alexander-Arnold’s corner; only for Vicente Guaita to scoop it away from a lurking Roberto Firmino.
Then, as both managers looked to the break to reorganise, Palace’s golden opportunity arrived. Alexander-Arnold maintained his sloppiness by fouling Zaha and Luka Milivojevic sent in the free kick which found James Tomkins unattended at the far post to head home. But the defender’s path had been cleared by Ayew’s deft push on Dejan Lovren and VAR rightly stepped in to disallow the goal.
Against a side like Liverpool opportunity cannot be squandered and almost immediately after the restart, Firmino drove forward from the half way line and passed to Robertson overlapping him. The full back returned the ball, Firmino helped it into the path of Sadio Mane. His shot was sufficiently mis-hit to outfox Guaita, who really should have saved it. Instead he pushed the ball on to the post, it bounced across to the other post and subsequently crept over the line.
Palace responded with real zest. Townsend had a long-range shot that Alisson saved, Milivojevic hammered a shot wide, then the substitute Jeffrey Schlupp also went close. The other replacement Christian Benteke followed the pattern by acrobatically volleying past the post.
Finally, to Hodgson’s evident delight, Palace realigned their radar. On the edge of the Liverpool box, Zaha received a ball from Townsend, sent Robertson the wrong way and drilled a precise shot beyond Alisson.
The trouble is, Liverpool are at their most dangerous in the closing moments of matches. With just five minutes of normal time remaining, in a scramble following a corner, Palace could not make an effective clearance and when the ball fell to Firmino, he stabbed the ball into the corner.
“It was our best game of the season, I thought we really did play well,” said Hodgson.