By the time the final whistle blew on Monday night’s Third Round FA Cup tie, Liverpool had secured a quite comfortable looking 4-1 victory over League One’s Barnsley. For those watching the match play out, though, it perhaps hadn’t seemed quite so comfortable.
After scoring on a pair of quite spectacular—and quite unlikely to lead to a goal, statistically—efforts and then conceding a quite comical goal against, the Reds had sat on their 2-1 lead for most of the match before scoring a late pair to make
things at least appear comfortable.
At the end of the first half, though, it was the lower league side visiting Anfield that had created more goal scoring opportunities as measured by expected goals, and even if Liverpool held more of the ball, they hadn’t created any actual clear cut chances with that possession.
“A good win—but that’s not the performance, it’s the result,” was manager Arne Slot’s take, acknowledging both that it was a good win by the final scoreline and with the Reds through to the Fourth Round of the FA Cup and that, well, the performance was at best alright.
“We wanted to go to the next round and we did that with four beautiful goals. All shots from outside the box. It’s not always easy to unlock a low block for any team but definitely not for us [this season]. You have a few weapons—set-pieces, shots outside the box, a one vs. one.”
“We saw today a shot from outside the box and then a one vs. one from Jeremie Frimpong. And then in the end we saw with the third one some individual skills from Curtis [Jones], Hugo [Ekitike] and Florian [Wirtz] which led to a good goal. So yeah, some good goals.”
Fans hoping that last week’s outstanding performance away at Arsenal—even if it only led to a nil-nil draw in the end—might be the start of a true revival for Slot’s Liverpool after a month of grinding out results with solid if uninspiring football will be a touch disappointed.
Still, it’s another good result for a side that in October and November seemed in the midst of a complete collapse. Long-term we still need to see more from a team that didn’t truly impress at any point in 2025, but it’s hard to argue against eleven games now without a loss.
