Digging Deeper Into Liverpool’s Defeat to Everton
With a loss to Everton in the books, we dig a little deeper into what it means for Liverpool.
A game of football happened in front of maybe 100 people at Anfield today that resulted in Everton defeating Liverpool 2-0. It’s the newest of lows for a Liverpool team that continues to find frankly impressive ways to hit rock bottom. Everton walk away with their first victory at Anfield since 1999. Their first win over Liverpool since Roy Hodgson was on the touchline. Records are meant to be broken, I guess.
Everton’s first win over Liverpool in 23 tries and everyone wants to talk about the collapse Liverpool are having. So, let’s talk about that. Some of their collapse is due to the freakiest of celestial events which have caused Liverpool to play with 18 different centerback pairings in the Premier League. Other causes are by their own doing, like not blocking off the midfield passing lanes 4 minutes into a match. That’s the thing about the spectacular, it rarely has an explanation. There’s so many things going wrong at Liverpool right now. The latest bad thing? Losing your captain to injury while losing to your literal neighbors. Absolutely vile.
So, we have to talk about what went wrong against Everton.
Winners and Losers
Winners
Everton? EVERTON?!?!
There was only one winner today and that was Everton, so that means we all lost. I was 8 years old the last time Everton won at Anfield. I hope I’m in my mid-50s the next time it happens.
Curtis Jones
This is like the 5th or 6th straight league game where Liverpool look considerably worse once Jones comes off. I’m not a scientist or a mathematician or a doctor, but maybe Jurgen Klopp can stop taking Curtis Jones off of the field.
Losers
The backline: Another injury
Jordan Henderson is a very good midfielder on his day. Lately he’s had to ply his trade as a centerback. He’s been mostly fine, you probably have an opinion about what position he should be playing. In the 27th minute of the match today he got injured. That’s the 7th injury to someone who plays at that position this season. We’ll probably have a lot of time to talk about what position the captain should play because he’ll probably not play for awhile.
The attack: Scoring goals, things of this nature, etc.
Everyone, including myself, points out the insanity of the injuries to the back line. It’s easy to explain that. What’s not so easy to explain is how Liverpool has gone nearly 9 hours without an open play goal at Anfield. I really don’t know what to say other than I’d like to see Liverpool score more goals. That would be cool and good.
The midfield: Why so slow?
The pundits and people who get paid significant amounts of money to talk on TV all say the first goal was the fault of Ozan Kabak. From my point of view, that’s absolutely crazy pants. James Rodriguez has all the time in the world to pick out Richarlson because 1. no one closes him down and 2. Neither Thiago or Gini Wijnaldum block the passing lanes.
In addition to not defending very well neither player moved the ball quickly enough and that’s becoming a real issues for Liverpool. Everything looks so labored right now.
The referee
I don’t like talking about referees, but you do, so this is the space where you can complain about the penalty. It’s also like the 6th or 7th reason why Liverpool lost so go bonkers.
I want to end this by asking you a simple question: Would you trade last season for anything? Was it worth it?
I think it was. We all liked to make jokes about selling our souls for a league title. Well, we finally got one. Liverpool are still the champions for a few more months because they won the title. That’s a thing that actually happened. This season absolutely sucks, but would you trade last season to make this season suck less? I wouldn’t.
