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A Just minutes from the end of this game, with Liverpool chasing the tie, James Milner fell into possession. Midfielder Jack Stephens recovered the ball and, with no Southampton teammates ready to make a run, ended up reluctantly dribbling the ball off defense, as if forced to do so at gunpoint.
Finally, Stephens threw a hopeful long ball over the top for Yan Valery to chase after. Just then, Alisson enters: heroically running out of his target to clear. Except, as Alisson quickly discovered to his horror, he wasn’t going to reach the ball first. And so, having advanced 45 yards, the Liverpool goalkeeper now simply stopped short, like a man who has just stepped forward to receive communion only to remind himself that he is not Catholic.
In the end, Valery’s shot was cleared by Jordan Henderson, and the game continued in a more conventional fashion. But in a way, this curious and slightly comical game passage seemed to encapsulate something larger: not just the game as a whole, but perhaps the season as a whole, or quite possibly the world as a whole. At some point in the last year we have been every character on this stage: the stumbling Milner, the half-hearted Stephens, the impetuous Alisson, the startled Valery. Even the ball itself: filthy, without energy and destined to never reach its goal.
However, from the perspective of this title-chasing Liverpool, slowness is becoming a recurring problem. Alisson’s late metamorphosis into a fast keeper, chasing a ball that he almost certainly would have made last season, summed this up. They often say the last yard is on the mind, and Liverpool memories are writing checks that their tired bodies can no longer cash for them.
First a little perspective. This was only Liverpool’s second loss of the season in the league. It continues to be the leader in goal difference. Four of their next six games are at home. And even in this futile effort, there was still more than enough pressure, more than enough possession, more than enough in the form of starts, that Liverpool would have turned this around on another night.
But as Henderson later pointed out, these slow starts are becoming a problem. So it was that shortly after 8pm, like the rest of the country, Liverpool had to pay a heavy price for inadequate precautionary measures. Even if there was an element of cheekiness on training ground to Danny Ings’ launch of James Ward-Prowse’s free kick, Trent Alexander-Arnold should have done a much better effort to clear it.
In all, it would be a miserable night for Alexander-Arnold: He gave away the ball 38 times, more than any player in the Premier League this season, and was unable to watch the match. But he was far from alone. Andrew Robertson on the opposite flank was just as poor. Mo Salah struggled to get into the game and offered little when he did. The midfield was weak. The press barely worked. There wasn’t a single shot on goal until minute 75. We could go on.
Above all, the real problem here was the lack of Liverpool’s trademark efficiency: the crosses to no one, the heavy touches in the last third, everything that hit them last season. They looked brighter in the second half, after what we have to assume was a sober and measured team talk from Jürgen Klopp. But still there was a basic oversight with the ball, one that feels like a natural consequence of the injury crisis of the first weeks of the season.
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At the time, Liverpool still had the depth and energy to cover the absences of Virgil van Dijk and Alexander-Arnold, Joe Gomez and Thiago. This may be the period in which they begin to pay it. Unlike their title rivals Manchester United, Liverpool have no experienced reserve banks on the sidelines. Meanwhile, Sadio Mané has played 12 games in 43 days. Robertson hasn’t missed a Premier League or Champions League game since July.
As for Klopp, he can be enraged, not without justification, at start times and rest periods. But it wasn’t the announcers who made the decision to face Diogo Jota in a meaningless Champions League tie who later injured their knee. The good news for Liverpool is that the title is at stake. The bad news is that if they want to win, they will have to suffer like never before.
