THE FAMOUS FIVE
Men at the back are grinding out wins to give Liverpool best shot at that elusive title
THEY have missed these days. It might seem an odd statement to make, given how tension rose and nerves frayed, but in 90 minutes at Brighton you saw why Liverpool have gone 29 years without the title.
These are the kind of matches in which Liverpool have historically stumbled. When the flair and flamboyance has gone missing from their play down the decades, it has usually been a signal for their fallibilities to appear and title chances to disintegrate in one unexpected game.
Those who followed Liverpool through the 1990s will recoil when thinking of the damage Coventry City did to them; a defeat at Middlesbrough proved costly for Rafa Benitez in 2009, while a stupid draw at West Brom in February 2014 can be traced as a defining day for Brendan Rodgers.
Brighton in 2019, then, had all the hallmarks of being one of ‘those’ moments. The hosts were obdurate and resilient and simply wouldn’t give Liverpool the space they wanted to weave their pretty patterns.
When they went behind to Mohamed Salah’s penalty, Brighton kept plugging away and pushing forward, looking to capitalise on the faintest glimmer. We know pressure can make players do funny things and the closer Liverpool got to fulltime, you wondered whether there would be a false step.
But then you saw Andrew Robertson scampering back and forth, making tackles as if his life depended on it. Alongside him, Virgil van Dijk strolled through the frenzy with the calmness of a holidaymaker on the promenade.
Then there was Fabinho, Jordan Henderson and Gini Wijnaldum, the artisans who made a block here, an interception there and kept control of possession. It was mature and nerveless, the kind of performance that hallmarks potential champions.
‘It’s just the winning mentality and finding a way to do it,’ said Robertson, whose preparations for the game had been happily disrupted on Thursday when he became a father for the second time to a girl named Aria.
‘That’s what we did. But that’s what all the teams are doing now. Manchester City haven’t played at their best but have been winning games. Tottenham have done the same, so I think we are all showing signs of doing that right now.
‘Whoever wins the league will look back on some games and go, “Do you know what? We probably weren’t at our best there, and that was probably one that helped us turn one point into three or zero into one”.
‘Whoever wins the league will probably have three or four games to look back on. If we manage to do it, I’m sure we’ll look back on this game as one of them. Brighton are a really tough team to come up against and it was a struggle.’
He was right. Liverpool didn’t have a shot on target in the first half and the wall of blue-and-white shirts that confronted them had been drilled to precision. The aspect that is setting this team apart, though, is the back five and the numbers they are producing are remarkable.
Manchester City are the only team in the Premier League to have scored more than once in a game against them and they simply don’t concede the cheap goals that used to be their achilles heel; a measure of their dominance was signified by Alisson Becker not needing to make a save.
‘In a game where it’s 0-0 with 20 minutes to go, what they’re able to do is make the changes that means they can win it,’ observed Brighton manager Chris Hughton.
It helps, of course, that Salah is sparkling. He was the one member of Liverpool’s front four who looked capable of producing something different and he suckered Pascal Gross into making a silly grab at his shirt then a trip. Some have tried to suggest he made the most of it but it is a nonsense.
‘He is back on his game and is a world- class player,’ said Hughton. ‘He is a top, top player and if Liver pool win the league, he will have played a massive part in it.’
The key word is ‘part’. Salah is magnificent but if Liverpool are going to get over the line — and it remains a big ‘if’ due to the out standing quality of the team pursuing them — the men at the back will be just as key.
What they showed on the South Coast is they have the nerve to take with the strain. more of They these are anxious ready days. to cope