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Liverpool’s best performance of the calendar year so far could not have come at a better time. Jürgen Klopp’s side ruthlessly dispatched Atalanta 5-0 in the Champions League on Tuesday night.
It was a complete performance. And to think that Klopp was working without Virgil van Dijk or Thiago Alcantara. He was working with a teenager in central defender making his first start in the Champions League (a teenager who was six months away from playing in the National League North). He was working against a formidable Atalanta team with the best attacking record in Europe in the last 24 months.
Do not bother yourself. Klopp’s side was clinical. If anything, 5-0 underestimates the quality of the performance.
Atalanta prepared in traditional Gian Piero Gasperini style: you-score-seven-we-score-eight, but he still looked flat for much of the first half. The Italians gave Liverpool plenty of space and Liverpool used it. The ball bubbled around the field. One touch. Two touches. One touch. One touch. Rat-a-tat, the ball is gone. Yeah we can’t keep up with that t, Atalanta replied.
The go-go, boom-or-bust style of the Italian is just that: when they’re in it, when your side is overwhelmed by positional freedom and sheer volume of rotations, they can hit five, six, or seven in front of you before Your defense has had time to shout “Virgil van Dijk”. But when one side is able to match its movement, it can set its own tempo, it can contort and move on the counter, it can find players in transition, things become a little easier. Space is useful. Playing Gasperini’s mafia becomes more of a pleasure than a challenge.
Klopp’s team delighted all of space – space that allowed quick counterattacks, space that allowed Curtis Jones and Gini Wijnaldum to overwhelm the midfield area.
On a night of only positives, here is our podium.
Gold – NASCAR package
Where do you start with the first three? Diogo Jota, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané were unplayable. Liverpool entered the night concerned about the quick, incisive, Is it really there? rotations. But it was Klopp’s three forwards who made the rotating pack.
The New York Giants infamously had a group of skinny pass rushers called the NASCAR pack. They were undersized by traditional standards for NFL defenders. But they were fast, all of them. Their collective speed and positional interchangeability was too much for rival teams. They broke the rules, they broke the rules, and they broke a series of all-powerful offenses on their way to handing over a Super Bowl title to the Giants.
Salah, Mané and Jota have something similar. All three moved, rotated and appeared here, there and everywhere. Jota started centrally and moved to the left. Then it stopped to the left and moved to the right. The three took turns playing down the middle. You have a chance, now I will! Atalanta had no chance to collect everything.
Whether or not Klopp persists with the NASCAR package heading into the weekend against Man City, takes Roberto Firmino back to the side instead of Jota, or opts for the 4-2-3-1 look is now a fascinating question. .
Silver – Curtis Jones
The three forwards owned the night, but a special mention should be reserved for midfield. Jordan Henderson and Wijnaldum went crazy to press and recover. Both were crucial instigators of the quick counterattacks Atalanta couldn’t cope with, and both were happy to keep up the stifling pace – a combination of tactical nous and an understanding of how to modulate the pace of a game during difficult play. European trip; his experience was evident.
But Curtis Jones stood out among the three. He was always set to be a Jones night. Gasparini’s style meant that there would be space and freedom to operate. In that world, few other Liverpool midfielders would thrive so well (perhaps a Naby Keita in top form and firing).
Jones was happy to push and harass, and just as happy, no, desperate, to join the three forwards in a four-man attack. At one point, Salah and Jones looked at each other and laughed, like a couple of school kids arrested for making faces in the back of the classroom. I can’t believe we got our way.
Jones’ defensive discipline has been his problem early in his young career. When to push, where to push, that kind of thing. It wasn’t a perfect night in that department, but it got a lot better. As always, he offers a growing and driving presence in Klopp’s midfield, and is capable of generating sparks of brilliance that don’t even register as possible for other rotating members of the department.
In the end, Jones’ statistical output was fine; a long hit upfield to Salah from a defensive corner will be credited as an assist. But Tuesday was so much about what Jones did away from the ball: distorting the defensive lines; loading in the press; turning the terrifying trio into a terrifying quartet, and often while flying forward in transition.
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Bronze – Jurgen Klopp / team management
Klopp got everything right. He was on a strong side, and when he could, he got a little break for some crucial starters (especially full-backs) before Sunday’s game. You know things are going well when you can summon Firmino and Naby Keita from the bench just to get your legs moving a bit before Sunday.
You should do better: talk about what the BT commentator “can hear”
Now is not the time to deliberate on the merits of Darren ‘Fletch’ Fletcher’s and Steve McMannaman’s comments. But can we at least stop the (incoming buzzword) “normalization” of not being fans in the stands?
I understand many of you will have your own local announcers, but here in the UK we were tried to mention over and over again how ‘great’, ‘brilliant’, ‘amazing’ it was for the commentary team to be able to hear the managers and the player speaking and barking orders. “I hope,” Fletcher said at one point, “that when the fans come back they will be able to mic the managers.”
First of all: that’s silly. It is never, always is going to happen (by the way, Fletcher may be being fed a different food or may literally listen to managers because the broadcast cuts the microphones when the manager’s words are easy to hear).
Second: What nonsense. European nights away are all about the wacky vibe. It’s about your head throbbing. It’s about the fullback on the other side no being able to listen to your coach and have to figure it out yourself, get a teammate to convey a message, or expect a rare interruption in play. Big, loud and aggressive crowds are what make European nights special, not being able to hear other central shout OUTSIDE! UP! COME ON!
Rant about.
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