What to say about this one?
I can probably sum it up in while I thought we were worth a draw, we were probably the cause of our own undoing.
The first half for me, was pretty poor and I have to confess to being a little bored.
We lacked the tenacity and tempo we showed in the Arsenal game, which is not surprising given we’ve had three difficult games inside a week.
But what disappointed me most was our incredible knack of giving the ball away far too easily, even when players weren’t under that much pressure.
That, combined with the fact that we gave Liverpool way too much respect and stood back too much for my liking. Yes, Pool have a decent attack, but they’re really not that good overall and the goal apart, I’m finding it difficult to recall any other chances they created, a ballooned shot over the bar apart.
So we were one down at half time and I was thinking “what do we do here?”
The obvious thing was to up the pace of the game and that’s pretty much what we did.
And it was much more like what I’d been expecting.
We started to get at them and started creating our own chances, where we could easily have had a couple of goals.
Gabby’s pace definitely worried them and Benteke was doing his usual winning nearly every ball in the air trick. Weimann had a decent shot, as did Gabby and Benteke had a storming shot well saved by Mignolet.
Part of me feels we were robbed though, as I think it was Benteke who seemed to be blatantly shoved in the back when a ball came in. It looked a definite penalty to me, but Mark Clattenburg wasn’t having any of it.
The second half was way better though and Delph stood out for me. He stopped them playing many a time and was involved in a lot of our creative play. I thought Bacuna did ok, but he was one of the worst offenders in giving the ball away early on, so him getting the MOTM award surprised me a little.
El Ahmedi looked very cool on the ball and his composure in the middle was like a breath of fresh air for me. Very accomplished.
On the definite plus side, I think Okore looks very solid. Even Vlaar wasn’t bad and I thought he marshalled the defence pretty well overall.
I just came away from the game feeling a little deflated, as I’m sure that if we’d have played the first half the same as we played the second, we’d have taken all the points.
Ah well, that’s our first three games out of the way. Many of us wouldn’t have been surprised if we were sat on one or even zero points today, so it’s not all bad.
If we keep taking it to teams, we will get results, no danger.
