If you can’t be good, be lucky, was the gist of Jurgen Klopp‘s post-match press conference after Liverpool had snaffled three points from Selhurst Park.
“For 76 minutes it was a really bad performance,” Klopp admitted. “With the last 15 or 20 minutes we deserved it. Before that, we deserved nothing.”
Klopp was fair and honest in his assessment of a game that Liverpool were unable to control until a two-minute swing that saw Jordan Ayew sent off in contentious circumstances and Mo Salah score a heavily deflected equaliser inside the final 15 minutes of normal time. Nothing was going right for Liverpool and then in an instant, everything did.
“If you only win your really good games you have no chance to be really successful, that’s how it is, and obviously today was not a really good game from us,” Klopp added.
The Klopp-endorsed “mentality monsters” phrase is sugary bordering on sickly, but this was a prime example of mind triumphing over matter, determination driving weary limbs.
Liverpool were up against a mid-table side missing their two most creative players – Eberechi Eze was injured and Michael Olise fit enough only for a cameo – as well as Cheikh Doucoure and Tyrick Mitchell. Odsonne Edouard and Sam Johnstone joined the walking wounded during the match.
Palace ended the game with Remi Matthews in goal. The journeyman keeper’s Wikipedia page has never encountered so much traffic.
And yet they managed only two shots on target all game: their goals in the 76th and 91st minutes. It was a disjointed, scrappy performance strewn with individual errors and moments of sloppiness.
You can tell things when things aren’t going well for Liverpool by the number of times Virgil van Dijk’s frown lines appear. Had the winter gloom descended earlier, the Dutchman’s glare could have powered the Selhurst floodlights.
But they found a way to win, just as Arsenal managed at Luton in midweek. Succeeding in such circumstances is frequently interpreted as a sign of a top team. It was the 16th time in the Klopp era that Liverpool scored an injury-time winner in the Premier League, while they have recovered 18 points from losing positions so far in 2023-24.
Klopp would rather his players made life more straightforward for themselves, but will be encouraged by the mindset nonetheless.
PURE CLASS!
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) December 9, 2023
Harvey Elliott scores a wonderful goal to put Liverpool ahead
What a goal!pic.twitter.com/s19ttdO9P9
The form table is another metric by which to gauge Liverpool’s title credentials: they have lost just one of their last 27 Premier League games, in controversial circumstances to Spurs on 30 September, and taken more points since 1 April than any other side in the division.
That it was Harvey Elliott who seized the initiative and carried his team over the line will please Klopp no end. The youngster mustered a grand total of seven minutes when Liverpool won the league in 2020; he is not one of the old guard accustomed to success. Liverpool 2.0 need new leaders and Elliott stood up when it mattered.
Liverpool’s other scorer has long been a driving force of the Klopp era. Salah reached two landmarks in one in south London, scoring both his 200th Liverpool goal and his 150th in the Premier League. It would have been fitting if he had weaved around a couple of bemused defenders, dropped a shoulder and curved a strike into the top corner to score it; alas a scruffy deflected strike sufficed.
That it was an equaliser rather than a stoppage-time winner meant that the celebration was more muted than it might have been, a defiant fist pump rather than the big moment Salah signature move: shirt off, muscles flexed, roar unleashed. Klopp challenged Salah to “go for the next 100” and as long as Salah ignores the Saudi Riyal in the summer, more club and divisional records will no doubt tumble.
Salah’s year-on-year consistency is such that his monumental feats are perhaps overlooked. Only four others have scored more goals for Liverpool than the Egyptian, with all-time leader Ian Rush the last to reach the double-century mark three decades ago. Salah has more goals than Kenny Dalglish, Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen and a better goals-to-game ratio to boot.
Only four players have reached the 150-goal mark in the Premier League faster than him and each of them were out-and-out centre forwards: Alan Shearer, Sergio Aguero, Harry Kane and Thierry Henry. His Premier League strike-rate is a goal every 133 minutes. Few could have predicted he’d reach such heights when joining from Roma in 2017.
“Incredible number for a super, super, special player,” said Klopp, who revealed that he presented Salah with a shirt with the number 200 on the back in the dressing room.
A good day for Liverpool became a great one when Aston Villa beat another of their title rivals at Villa Park, this time Arsenal succumbing to a 1-0 defeat. Liverpool are now a point ahead of Arsenal at the top of the table and two clear of Unai Emery’s surprise challengers.
Maintain their mental resolve and keep Salah healthy and they might just stay there.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/bplYtcz
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