Liverpool are ‘finding a way to win’ in this title race. You’ve heard it time and again: yet the Reds showcased the exact definition of that particular football parlance by overcoming Luton despite missing 11 players due to injury and going a goal behind.
It is, to use another favourite football term, ‘the sign of champions’ to win games like these. But when your subs bench features five players who have never started a league game – and features only one player, full-back Andy Robertson, who has scored a Premier League goal this season – it really is a case of just ‘winning ugly’ and ‘getting the job done’.
Shorn of their three top goalscorers (Darwin Nunez, Diogo Jota and Mohamed Salah), who have scored 33 league goals this season, Liverpool’s starting XI had only scored 15 league goals between them this season. Thankfully, no matter who is unavailable, what is always present when Liverpool play at home, is the Anfield crowd.
“Everyone who enters the gates to Anfield has to be on their toes,” urged Jurgen Klopp pre-match, fully aware that his depleted side will need the proverbial 12th man. It was Luton boss Rob Edwards, though, who was most impressed by Anfield and the role the fans played in Liverpool’s comeback.
“We made them angry, didn’t we,” joked Edwards. “Second half, I thought we saw Anfield, we saw Liverpool, we saw full-throttle football, their counter-pressing was incredible, [they] suffocated us.”
An angry Anfield is arguably the best type of Anfield, when the fans really give the players on the pitch that energy - and also influence the opposition.
“The fans were amazing and it was probably difficult for the players to really concentrate and play like we had done in the first half,” praised Edwards of the home crowd’s influence.
Two goals in three minutes turned the game, something that has happened plenty of times in the past at Anfield, as Edwards noted: “Bigger and better teams have come here and it’s sort of happened to them as well, so it’s not a disgrace.
“It was like the Kop was sucking it [the ball] and we couldn’t really get out. We saw Anfield and Liverpool at its best.”
A learning experience, then, for a Luton side who had equipped themselves impressively in the first half but couldn’t cope when Liverpool upped the tempo in the second half - evidenced exactly by the contrasting performance of Harvey Elliott in the first half vs the second half. The 20-year-old ended up marking his 100th appearance for the club with the fourth goal following a superb, pressing performance in the second 45, falling to the ground with cramp at full time.
A delighted Klopp post-match related the manner of the performance - backs against the wall, key players missing - to the 4-0 win over Barcelona, arguably Anfield’s greatest ever performance.
“I promised my team I would never use the Barcelona game as an example, but I used it again today,” he admitted. Klopp had implored his side to “ignore the fact who was missing” and that’s what they did. “This is their ‘Barcelona’: a difficult situation, plenty of reason to give up, [but] I only saw a super group fighting.”
Even with 11 players out, Liverpool always have one thing: the power of the Anfield crowd.
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