Before the international break, Liverpool trudged to a deflating draw to a Tottenham Hotspur side that had become the laughingstock of the league. Spurs fans had dreaded going to the match, the players seemed lacking in any drive or desire, and the matchdays primarily served as meme fodder.
Enter Liverpool, a side happy to add to your confidence. spurs fans left with a reminder of what joy in going to the ground is like, not just because of the result (a draw isn’t quite the pinnacle of achievement)
but the manner of it. The current iteration of Liverpool Football Club seems designed to collapse after a setback, to become easy to play against, to allow opponents to build their confidence against amenable opposition.
The FA Cup loss was all this, and also humiliating.
In many cases, the best way to evaluate your own side is to consider what your opposition thinks about the experience of playing you. Manchester City fans, who have had their own challenges this season, were overjoyed by what Liverpool provided for their team’s development.
Speaking to the BBC after the match, City supporter Gene felt that Liverpool gave Erling Haaland a great opportunity to work on his struggling form: “Overall fine performance against a team that looks like a shell of its former self, especially defensively. Haaland needed a game like this to help get back in a groove. Statistically, this was an even match, but the individual battles were weighted towards City, which was evident during the game.”
Needless to say, these are not encouraging words when it comes to evaluating the overall performance. Liverpool have been at the bad end of a big scoreline without the underlying performance being as bad: the 3-0 loss to Barcelona that famously got turned over in the second leg was one such occasion. Less and less this season, however, are the Refs losing games they don’t deserve to lose, and lose badly.
Liverpool badly need to arrest the rot, badly need to become difficult to play against even when not quite in form. Needing these massive changes in a make-or-break week of football is not good news, but if you struggle for as long as the Reds have I suppose you should be grateful that your matches still have meaning in them.
There’s still time to turn things around, but such a tight window for regaining mental strength in the face of challenges is a big ask. Here’s hoping Liverpool can remind us what’s good about watching the match again, instead of just helping remind the opposition.
