This disrupted season has yet to reach halfway. Conclusions hastily reached might easily be revised.
Yet for all that, there appeared an uncharacteristic fatality about Liverpool’s defeat in west London, a sense the players do not believe the special heave toward the top four demanded by Jurgen Klopp is within them.
The debrief will doubtless focus on the continued struggles of Darwin Nunez. The Uruguayan striker cost a club-record £85m. It does not matter how quick he is, how hard he works, how selfless he is – he leads the line for Liverpool. That is not the job of an apprentice.
When you round the keeper at this level the ball must hit the net, not Ben Mee’s knee. The Kop nation demands it.
Mee did well, of course. That’s his job. But the mind’s eye saw Roger Hunt, Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Luis Suarez, Sadio Mane et al wheeling away in celebration.
The hope must be that new signing Cody Gakpo has more of the necessary stuff. Five goals in 12 Premier League matches before the visit to Brentford seems ok, but when considered against his 52 attempts on goal, it all looks rather feeble.
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At 23 Nunez should not be acquiring an instinct, but acting on it. The negative value of his misses doubles when momentum swings and the opposition tuck one away, as happened here. Mee was involved again, enough of a nuisance at a corner to force a ricochet off Ibrahima Konate. Three minutes before half time, just 60 seconds after having a goal scratched for offside, Brentford added a deserved second, Liverpool now a chaotic, failing mess.
Brentford’s winless record against Liverpool – stretching back to 1938 – was due to the different company the two have kept. Brentford’s presence in the top flight still feels incongruous, however deserving it might be.
This sense of difference seemed to cling to both teams in an opening dominated by Liverpool, until the Brentford machine cranked through its counter-punching gears to expose their opponent’s frailty in the middle of the park, which the return of Fabinho did little to offset.
The player who actually scores goals for Liverpool, Mo Salah, spent the first half exiled on the right wing. The folly of this policy was duly recognised at half time by Klopp, who withdrew skipper Virgil van Dijk, Kostas Tsimikas and Harvey Elliott for Andy Robertson, Joel Matip and Naby Keita. He reformed into a back three and moved Salah into a central position alongside Nunez. The result was a shape and an outlook unrecognisable from that desperate first period.
Nunez had the ball in the net within three minutes of the second half, only for VAR to pick it apart by the millimetre. How ironic that he should fall the wrong side of the tape on the occasion he did everything right.
No matter, following the home team’s example the ball was returned to the Brentford goal within 60 seconds. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain stole in to give Trent Alexander-Arnold his first assist of the season, a curled left-footer dropped neatly onto his head.
The Brentford goal was now under siege. Liverpool powered though the gaps, prompted by Thiago’s pin-point passing and the width offered by Robertson and Alexander-Arnold. They were still required to score, and the best chance of this urgent spell fell to Nunez. In missing it he almost gave Brentford permission to go again.
Sent clear by Salah inside the box, he pulled his right-footed shot so wide it almost reached the corner flag before crossing the dead ball line. Time and space were his friend, yet somehow he made them his enemy.
If he had scored, the Brentford resolve might not have held. The spaces might have grown and Liverpool might have made the most of their dominance. In a team of 11 it can’t all be the fault of one man, but when that man is deployed to score goals and doesn’t, the cumulative impact of his failures is greater than any other position bar goalkeeper.
Thus did the energy seep from Liverpool legs and return to Brentford’s. The outcome Leicester threatened at Anfield before the own-goal immolation was delivered by a resolute ensemble that seems to relish the challenge presented by marquee opposition. The bigger the name, the greater the response.
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Konate, so impressive at the back for France in the World Cup, was too easily brushed aside by Bryan Mbeumo, who slotted the third with four minutes to go. The Liverpool players surrounded the referee claiming a foul. It was embarrassment that forced Konate to the floor, not the weight of the diminutive Mbeumo.
His shot was the only one on target by Brentford in the whole of the second half. Klopp had few complaints. He exchanged a handshake with Thomas Frank at the final whistle, then walked to the middle to congratulate the Brentford players then.
After a brief word in the ear of Stuart Attwell over his decision not to penalise Mbeumo, he disappeared down the tunnel with a weary resignation
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