Drawing the line
Fourth place in the first week of January is respectable enough for just about any Premier League club in any season and in any era, even if it’s not quite where the defending champions thought we’d be while still up on our perch, way back in August. But after the grisly run in late fall, taking a total of four points off the league front-runners – and becoming the only side to hold Arsenal goalless in the league so far – is a very welcome development for Liverpool Football Club.
There is reason to be chuffed and buoyed and all that after Thursday’s sometimes-thrilling, otherwise-frustrating 0-0 affair at the Emirates. We were not bollocked, and if the pitch and ball are dry, you could see Dominik Szoboszlai’s 82nd minute free kick tucking under David Raya’s crossbar.
But feeling even merely very good is hard right now. It feels hard after seeing the stat line and learning that despite holding the ball for two-thirds of the second half, Liverpool made history again in the wrong way. With no strikers healthy and Arne Slot playing a defender up front where Mohamed Salah might have been very useful indeed, Liverpool failed to record a shot on target for the first time in 600 Premier League games. (Not since March 2010, a 1-0 loss at Wigan Athletic, currently in England’s third tier, has an opposing goalkeeper not had to make a save.)
Watching the loathsome 3-0 and 4-1 disasters become either mind-numbing or maddening draws feels hard. Because while 10 straight games unbeaten is a vast improvement over losing 9 in 12 and the worst run since the 1950s, it’s still not quite what you signed up for. It’s hard not to feel Liverpool left something like four to six points behind in December, at Anfield as well as Elland Road and Craven Cottage, and that that could easily be the difference between third and fifth come May.
And it feels very, very hard after seeing Conor Bradley, who came the closest to both making Raya work and grabbing a win that wouldn’t have felt entirely undeserved, go down with a serious injury.
The regrettable and avoidable ugliness that followed almost tastes like a palette-cleansing release. Gary Neville said he was surprised a Liverpool player didn’t go deck Arsenal substitute Garbiel Martinelli after he put his hands on Bradley, writhing in clear and obvious pain on the soaking pitch. (Ibou Konate tried.) Maybe Neville just wanted to feel something.
For now, let’s leave the moralizing to him and to Roy Keane, who (almost) never leave a misbehaving Gunner off the hook. Let’s accept Martinelli’s apology, as Arne Slot appears to have done. Let’s also hope, for their own sake, some of the Gooner fan contingent, overeager to rationalize their man’s poor self-control to the point of denial, recover their perspective. (After all, sitting here writing this on Jan. 8 in the United States, I don’t need to remind anyone of what is and isn’t truly important. But this is our fan blog and this is our distraction, so on we go.)
Drawing away at the league leaders is almost always an acceptable result for any team, in any year. For us, in this context now, with no strikers and our very bad period still fresh in the head, it is better than that.
Slot decided to play for the draw and see if a win could be stolen. It almost worked better than expected, because Mikel Arteta didn’t manage a response. But the eye test and the results say clearly that this is not quite enough to win games or to make watching Liverpool fun routinely fun, (most of) this latest result aside.
Perhaps Cody Gakpo can work as a center forward. Jurgen Klopp didn’t think so, and neither does Dutch national team manager Ronald Koeman. Watching Gakpo drifting left and making two rough touches rather than use his right foot to nudge the ball towards goal after Bradley banged the crossbar, you are left with the impression he doesn’t think so either. I really like Jeremie Frimpong, but as exciting and spirited as he is, surely he cannot be even the third choice at right wing, a position he played exactly once last year before arriving on Merseyside. That’s only true if Federico Chiesa is completely superfluous, and if he is, he deserves to move on to somewhere he can prove otherwise.
Arne Slot himself says he doesn’t want to play like this. One assumes he knows he will not hang onto FSG’s favor unless the correction continues and takes a sharp upward swing. Brentford and Newcastle are right there, and three and four less points than our haul was enough for United and Chelsea respectively to decide they’d be better off with someone else on the touchline. Slot will not beat similar allegations if Liverpool are in the Europa Leage next season. Not if Xabi Alonso is out of a job, not if the club’s young academy talent stagnates while Slot plays stalemate football with a record transfer budget.
Before Bradley’s injury, Slot hinted another transformation via the January transfer window was unlikely and that he likes the squad he has. Conveniently, an opportunity to try out a formula that might work wins in grinders against bottom-half clubs in the league as well as in the Champions League tilts Slot insists he wants is here. Barnsley, currently at the bottom of League One with our old friends Wigan, visit in the FA Cup on Monday before Liverpool host second-to-bottom Burnley in the league a week from Saturday.
This would seem to be the time to try something else, to get Florian Wirtz singing rather than humming. I have given up trying to figure out what FSG wants, but in these games, we the bums watching in bars will expect more much than a 1.5 xG and seven to nine men behind the ball.
I don’t believe being on the losing end of a 3-2 thriller against Arsenal would feel better than a draw. It might have, if just one of Fulham or the two Leeds games were a win. Because if you can’t rack up goals from time to time, you will end up slipping from fourth to fifth place anyway as the mad gambler who figured out that winning four and losing six is better than drawing ten takes your place. Because holding the line only works for so long, and it feels well past that time for Liverpool.
