Liverpool 0-1 Crystal Palace (Eze 14′)
ANFIELD — So much for the perfect goodbye, the long walk into the sunset, with Jurgen Klopp as a double Premier League champion.
In the space of four days, Liverpool have been virtually eliminated from one competition and humbled at home in another. The margins in the title race will be small and the gaps in Liverpool’s midfield are chasmic. The wheels have come off the season in spectacular fashion.
So little is working right now that it’s hard to remember back to when it was, although that was only weeks ago. It makes it difficult to apportion blame because every problem appears interlinked, like a form of destructive symbiosis. You criticise four components of the system and feel overly generous towards those you’ve omitted.
Defensively, there is a new shambles. On Thursday night, Ibrahima Konate returned to the team and it didn’t help. On Sunday, Alisson was back and nothing improved. By 50 minutes, they had the first-choice back five on the pitch. Liverpool have become a game of reverse jenga, key pieces added to the tower and somehow only serving to make it less structurally sound.
There’s no doubt that their uncertainty increases because of a new midfield conundrum. The abiding image of the first half against Crystal Palace was Alexis Mac Allister holding out his hands because he couldn’t find a passing option. If only to exacerbate the same situation, Palace found it ludicrously easy to cut through left, right and centre.
And then there’s the strikers. Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz are both ranked in the bottom nine for non-penalty goals minus expected goals this season, indicating that they get a lot of chances to score and need them too. Unfortunately, when Liverpool’s passing sequences fall down, both are restricted and look less than useful.
That’s not helped by the form of Mohamed Salah, who was virtually non-existent before the break, but Nunez is becoming a clanging problem. Chaos is only fun when you’re winning and thus able to bask in its farce. Having lots of shots is only acceptable if you aren’t using up those others might score.
Oliver Glasner will have watched Atalanta unnerve Liverpool with their high pressing and giggled at how it fit his own preferred style. He will also have noted that he could pick Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze in the same starting XI for only the fifth time all season. They are the secret to this pressing and turnover whir because both are so good at being the connecting points in attacking moves with one or two touches at a time.
This was Glasner’s first away win as a Premier League manager, a forced acclimatisation period from Roy Hodgson’s end days that took the players some getting used to. This is a plan that may rely upon the presence of attacking midfielders who will be targeted this summer, but it was founded upon brilliant defending. Nathaniel Clyne, who endured such injury heartache as a player at Anfield, was magnificent.
Dean Henderson may not perform better in his Premier League career. At full-time, the away end held each other tight and jumped en masse, but stopped to serenade their goalkeeper and their new-ish manager. They see the start of another new future and what better place to enjoy your breakout win.
Adam Wharton has made a difference too, a January arrival from the Championship who could also have needed time to settle. Not a bit of it; Wharton’s principles are simple – take the ball, pass the ball, try to win the ball – and he was magnificent in blocking those passing lanes that so frustrated Mac Allister et al. Had he come to the Premier League last summer, he could have been the Kalvin Phillips replacement for England on this form.
They imagined these final weeks a thousand times, the pursuit of the final peaks. They knew players were coming back, those who had stood up so many times before for Klopp. It wasn’t meant to go like this, self-inflicted defeats at Anfield soundtracked by ten thousand groans and just as many sighs. Klopp stood on the touchline in the final moments, arms folded, looking down. Everything is quickly unravelling just as he prepares to let go.