Before yesterday’s match, I spent a couple hours in the sun with my family and in-laws, drinking wine in the sun, eating good food, and watching my daughters run around like only a 3 and 6 year olds can.
I took a second car to the park so I could leave early to watch Liverpool play, which for some reason felt like a priority pre-match, and quickly became apparent that it shouldn’t have been. Indeed, I probably should’ve turned the match off and headed back to the park after Ryan Gravenberch’s well-hit
goal, because the other 97 minutes of the match were a complete fucking snooze.
In fact, there were many activities I could’ve been doing with my time instead of being bored to death by the same predictable and tepid football we’ve been subjected to all season. As the wine had its intended effect, combined with the forces of fresh air and sunshine, my couch looked like a pretty good spot to just curl up and take a nap. And I wish I had.
Had I fallen asleep, I could’ve been reasonably assured that I’d wake up to a 1-1 scoreline, with Liverpool failing to take advantage of early scoreboard pressure in their favor. And that is precisely what we got.
The football match as a whole was predictable. Liverpool’s attacking patterns, insofar as they existed, were predictable and—lacking a second moment of incredible quality—predictably unsuccessful. Liverpool’s defense, meanwhile, was always going to be accommodating hosts, encouraging a team without a point in six matches to attack and score an equalizer that they very much deserved.
The fans booed when Rio Ngumoha—the one player capable of delivering any spark whatsoever—was subbed off. And many just up and left as the minutes ticked down, confident that this Liverpool side was not one to push for a late, game-winning goal. And they were vindicated in the end.
Liverpool’s last shot of the match, a Virgil van Dijk header worth just 0.03 xG, came in the 79th minute of the match. There was no calvery to come on. There was no desire or ability to push up the pitch. There was no desire or ability to pin Chelsea in and ratchet up the pressure in front of a home crowd until the visitors simply cracked under the pressure.
The Reds amassed just 0.56 xG over the course of the game. Their biggest chance—once again from Van Dijk—was a sliced right-footed effort from a set piece.
The most damning quality of this Liverpool side isn’t the defensive fraility, despite how frustrating it is. No, it’s the that our only strategy for scoring a goal is “hope one of the boss lads does something boss.” That strategy has been somehow good enough for 4th place, if—to borrow a phrase from Arse Slot—we get over the line. This is no doubt a reflection of just how many boss lads we have in the squad, and equally a pretty damning indictment of Arne Slot.
We just don’t look like scoring goals. Ever. Even when we score them, they come out of nowhere (because of our aformentioned “hope one of the boss lads yadda yadda”), which counterintuitively makes them less enjoyable, not more. I find myself lulled into a hypnotic stupor watching this team, only briefly brought out of it either by a goal or the uncomfortable feeling of drool accumulating on my chin.
I don’t want to bring Jurgen Klopp into the conversation. That’s not fair on any manager. But it’s especially hard seeing a team that never gave up fighting slowly evolve into one that so proudly thrusts out its extremely fragil glass jaw, and then steadfastly refuses to respond positively after the inevitable happens. Of course we were always going to concede an equalizer yesterday. And of course we weren’t going to dust ourselves off, roll up our sleeves, and fight back. Instead, the equalizer spurred Chelsea on, making them look like the most likely winners for the rest of the match.
At Anfield.
I’ve been largely quiet on Slot this season. Logically, I know we could do a lot worse in replacing a legendary manager with someone who, we must remind ourselves, won a league title with Liverpool. One needs look no further than Manchester United in this regard. But equally, this season has been such a drag. The handful of legitimately great performances are wildly overshadowed by the middling-to-bad ones.
Moreover, it is not just the performances on the pitch that are concerning. Senior players are talking about the standards dropping in training. Some players—good players, who could contribute—have been frozen out over the last two years; conversely, some players are massively overplayed, leading to exhaustion, injuries, and errors. It’s not just poor from a man-management perspective (as if that is a small thing in today’s climate, where we are expected to compete on multiple fronts), but also from a fitness perspective.
Slot, more and more, appears both isolated and out of his depth. He is no doubt a good manager, but is he up to the challenges of mantaining Liverpool’s standards at the top of English and European football? It does not appear so.
We watch football to be entertained. Of course not every match will be entertaining, and seasons will have its highs come the lows. But this season, while there have been quite a few lows and very few highs, has been mostly boring. Drab. Lifeless.
I mostly just want it to be over and have a fresh start in August. Until then, maybe I’ll not be so quick to leave an otherwise enjoyable activity to watch this team waste away two hours of my life.
