MAGICAL NIGHT FOR MARSCH
Summerville’s late winner stuns Anfield to ease the pressure on Leeds manager
MANY thought Leeds would sack their manager, Jesse Marsch, last week after the home defeat to Fulham. Instead, they chose to spare him. Or at least give him a stay of execution. And last night at Anfield, the people who kept their manager in a job, even though his team had not won for eight league games when yesterday dawned, got their reward.
It was not just the three points that Leeds earned at Liverpool with a superb last-gasp 2-1 victory that was their reward. It was the way they earned those points.
Even before Crysencio Summerville poked in the winner on the stroke of full time to send visiting fans into raptures, Leeds had done enough to deserve the win. One off the bottom of the league when the game began, they had played with the spirit of champions.
So it wasn’t just the three points. It was the chaotic beauty of the way they earned it. It was the hunger they showed, the ambition they showed, the daring they showed, the skill and the promise. It was the refusal to accept a draw. It was the determination to keep going and going and going until they got what they deserved.
Maybe this is not fair to Marsch but this was a Leeds performance redolent of the heady days when Marcelo Bielsa was in charge, when anything seemed possible and no opponent seemed too big to take down. The hard truth for Liverpool is that Leeds were the better side. This was not a fluke. It reflected the run of play. It reflected intent.
The only way is up for Leeds. Liverpool’s path forward is more uncertain. They have now lost to the league’s bottom two clubs in successive games and are marooned in mid-table. As their fans stormed out of the ground, they smashed their fists on the walls in furious impotence. This is not the Liverpool of old. This is a Liverpool that runs down blind alleys and misplaces passes and loses its men and scuffs its shots. And most worryingly for Jurgen Klopp, the evidence of this showed that Leeds played as if they were hungrier than Liverpool. This is a Liverpool side built on hunger, a team that runs on hunger, a team that has won a title on hunger and a Champions League on hunger. Last night, they just looked tired, played out.
It is only a little over two years ago when Leeds came to Anfield and delivered one of the most brilliant and startling opening day performances a Premier League season has ever seen. They lost a magnificently chaotic game 4-3 but the ambition and the freedom with which they played on their return to the top flight after a 16year gap won a legion of new admirers.
For some, a performance kickstarted by a raking pass from Kalvin Phillips over the Liverpool defence to Jack Harrison, who waltzed past Trent AlexanderArnold and Joe Gomez before shooting low past Alisson, was their introduction to the beauty of a team coached by Bielsa. Over the following months, Leeds became the neutrals’ favourite team.
The thrill of the new curdled last season though and Bielsa was replaced by Marsch as Leeds struggled with the spectre of relegation. It is Marsch’s curse that he has had to follow Bielsa. However animated his touchline antics may be, he will always be the straight man to the Argentine’s maverick genius but he is trying to stabilise the club.
There were still remnants of Bielsa’s team in the side that ran out at Anfield but Phillips and Raphinha, their best players, were sold in the summer and Patrick Bamford, the man who once scored so many of the goals, has been dogged by injury in recent months and was only fit enough to make the bench.
The match crackled and fizzed from the start. Fireworks exploded above the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand and the excitement on the pitch began in the first minute when Liam Cooper and Ilhan Meslier made a hash of clearing a long ball from Alisson and Mo Salah raced on to the loose ball. Salah hooked the ball goalwards from a tight angle and Pascal Struijk headed it out from under the bar.
Two minutes later, Leeds took full advantage of their escape. This time, it was Liverpool’s turn to get themselves into a dreadful mess in defence. Joe Gomez appeared to be tidying up an innocuous Leeds attack on the Liverpool right and clipped a pass back to Alisson with the outside of his right foot.
The pass wrong-footed the Liverpool goalkeeper, though, and as he slipped, the ball rolled across the area and into the path of Rodrigo. Rodrigo could scarcely believe his luck and tapped the ball gleefully into the empty net. Perhaps, at last, this was the piece of good fortune Marsch had been waiting for. But the lead only lasted ten minutes. A cross from AlexanderArnold from the right bounced across the Leeds box and found Andy Robertson, feeding off the scraps on the left. Robertson curled the ball back into the box and Salah met it at the back post and stroked it past Meslier.
The game was frantic, end-toend, breathless. Every attack felt as if it was going to bring a goal. Brenden Aaronson volleyed a cross from Rasmus Kristensen against the bar and a minute later, Harrison found himself one-on-one with Alisson only for the Brazil keeper to block his shot with his body.
Liverpool scythed through the Leeds defence again after half an hour when Darwin Nunez headed a ball through to Salah. As he bore down on Meslier, Kristensen made a superb sliding interception to clear the ball. The defender rose from the turf and punched the air in triumph. The game was alive with that kind of energy.
Nunez should have put Liverpool ahead a minute later when he ran on to a superb through ball by Alexander-Arnold. Meslier raced out to meet him but instead of lobbing him, Nunez tried to take the ball round the goalkeeper and Meslier kicked the ball clear with his left foot. Anfield groaned in frustration. A minute before half time, the crowd groaned again.
Robertson went on the rampage down the left, pushing the ball one side of Kristensen and bursting him past him on the other side, nutmegging the next defender who tried to close him down and then firing in a cross which deflected off Robin Koch and spun just wide of the far post.
The match took a breath at the start of the second half but not for long. Leeds attacked, Liverpool attacked, Alisson saved, Meslier saved. It was relentless. The home team wasted another chance when Salah dispossessed Cooper and fed Nunez. Nunez hit his shot low and true but Meslier blocked it.
Meslier produced a brilliant onehanded save 12 minutes from time to keep out a curling shot from Nunez that was destined for the top corner but Leeds spurned an even better chance seconds later when second half substitute Bamford allowed the ball to squirm under his foot when a fine team move had freed him on the edge of the area.
Then, as the match entered the final minute of normal time, Summerville combined with Bamford in the area and prodded an instinctive, improvised finish past the despairing dive of Alisson.