GAMBLE PAYS OFF AS REDS LIVE TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY
RaLpH HaSEnHUTTL called it their Champions League final. Give him his due, he has an imagination. Given him a little more, his bunch rose to it.
For a time, anyway. Between the 13th and 27th minutes, Southampton made it their business to get in the way. They led 1-0 with a corker from nathan Redmond and, in that sliver of a single evening in a long season, Liverpool had blown it. Given it to Manchester City. Coughed it away with an understrength side to an inspired one.
But they got there in the end. Takumi Minamino hit a nice equaliser and Joel Matip lobbed the winner off his head — when it looped in, Jurgen Klopp punched holes into thin air. He did so again when the whistle went after a hard-won slog in the most unexpected of places.
and so the quest lives on. Two out of four ain’t bad, four from four would be history, and for now there is a chance.
The odds still favour City, but for them, that would be as good as it gets. For Liverpool, they can still talk of a Quadruple.
That such an immense outcome remains on the table owes much to their powers of perseverance, with those on Klopp’s fringes last night proving they know how to have a ruck when needed. It isn’t just their leading lights who have the mentalities of monsters.
On the subject of rotation, the gag here was that Klopp picked a team for a Carabao Cup tie. no great harm in that — they won the Carabao Cup. They won the Fa Cup, too. So to sneer at a Liverpool second string this season is somewhat akin to comparing a machete to a gun. In the wrong hands, both are pretty nasty.
and they were up against Southampton, who in better times are a decent team with a good manager; these aren’t the better times — they had lost seven of their last 10 coming into this.
But nine changes? Even if we factor in Liverpool’s injuries and the lack of time since the Fa Cup final, that felt a little steep. a little too much of a departure from what we are likely to see in the Champions League final.
Who of this side can we expect to line up against Real Madrid? alisson, certainly. and then? One of Ibrahima Konate and Matip, probably, and perhaps Diogo Jota if injuries persist, but all other cases feel thin.
So there was a risk, a slight chancing of the arm 37 games into their league season.
among those chosen, Harvey Elliott (above) made his first league start since September and next to him in midfield was James Milner, 36, who made his premier League debut on november 10, 2002 — 145 days before Elliott was born.
There was also Joe Gomez, on a fourth league start. and Curtis Jones — his 10th. For Kostas Tsimikas, it was a ninth, and it was a first this campaign for Minamino.
His most recent Liverpool start in this competition had been against Crystal palace in December 2020 and that, tied to him hitting the equaliser, really is the point — if the beauty and art of Klopp’s Liverpool comes from its starting XI, then its success is plainly mined from its squad.
all components, from the over-stretched to those used sparingly, seem ingrained with the same collective refusal to back off from a scrap. They needed it here and they delivered. again. Two more hurdles to go.