FA Cup 5th Round - Liverpool 3 Southampton 0

 

Here's Our Player Chipping the Keeper : No Goal

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of months, you will know that this is Jürgen Klopp’s last season as Liverpool manager. If you have just emerged from under that rock and you tuned into any sports media anywhere in the world for longer than about 30 seconds, you will know that it’s Jürgen Klopp‘s last season as Liverpool manager. The media coverage is endless.

You will also know that Liverpool have lots of injuries and have a fixture pile up. You will also know as they have been playing a lot of their academy products in recent games, including the Carabao Cup final which they won 1-0 against Chelsea, with a goal by a defender who was average before they paid a world record fee for a defender to sign him from… who was it again?… Oh yes, Celtic. Oh no, hang on, that was Southampton. Southampton signed him from Celtic for a reasonable fee, developed him into one of the worlds best central defenders and then Jürgen tapped him up by inviting him to Blackpool and the rest is history.  As for the fixture pile-up, yes Liverpool have had quite a few games recently but they’ve had less than Saints but I would expect that to be overlooked by anyone in mainstream sports media talking about the game tonight.

Liverpool, as you’d expect from a club of their stature, are still in the running for all four major trophies and having won the smallest one of those, the dream narrative would be for them to win the quadruple in Klopp’s last season. Last year, Pep Guardiola and Manchester City were on for the quadruple until they came across Nathan Jones at St Mary’s. In one of the more ‘strange but true’ episodes from last season, Nathan Jones stopped Pep winning the quadruple. Is it Russell Martin’s turn today?

Russell has done his usual and alluded to the fact that we have so many games coming up in the build-up, which means that there will be a fair few rested today. Liverpool will doubtless do the same and this is a sad indictment of the fixture planning and the decrease in importance of the FA Cup.

Talking of which, the teams are in and Liverpool only have van Dijk and Gakpo from their first team with Gomez and Tsimikas being the other senior players.  Saints have Bednarek and Manning from the first team – Aribo and Edozie from there or there abouts and all the squad players – Lumley, Bree, Stephens, Rothwell, Charles, Mara, Sulemana.  It’s a weird felling as the game kicks off – I of course want us to win but don’t feel that I’ll really give too much of a shit if we don’t.

Saints start really well and show that we want to pop the ball about, easily breaking the Liverpool press.  There are less than 30 seconds on the clock as Aribo puts Mara through and he looks miles offside but strides on and finishes low past Kelleher.  A brief visit to Stockleigh Park because we have VAR tonight..

Craig: Hello from Anfield – Craig Pawson here
SP: What do you want?
Craig: Just checking that offside
SP: Why?  I switched off when I saw who it was – shit!
Craig: What Sekou Mara?
SP: No, Southampton – they haven’t paid their VAR subscription with Sky this year Craig
Craig: Well they’re in the Championship – where the refs are shit but honestly shit
SP: Less scope to get the result we want though Craig, if you know what I mean?
Craig: Offside it is then.
SP: Hail Jurgen
Craig: Hail Jurgen

Liverpool overplay in midfield and Aribo gets a tackle in and tees up Sulemana on the left and he takes his time and his low right-footed effort comes across Kelleher and flicks off the far post and wide. Shit.  A decent effort but has to score really.

Liverpool or not looking any more comfortable as we go on with van Dijk and Gomez combining to play Bradley into trouble and he gets binned by Mara and Mara ends up dead centre, edge of the penalty area with the whole goal to aim at and with a swing of his left foot and visions in his head of the net bulging and being a hero - he puts it straight at the fucking keeper.

We decide to keep attacking until we score and Sulemana wins a corner off of Quansah.  In it comes from Rothwell and Aribo has a header blocked before we recycle it back out to Rothwell and he cuts in onto his right foot and then sharts it wide of the far post.  I am reminded of that Roy Hodgson meme where he gets his hopes up before seeing them smashed to pieces and slumping back into his chair.  Another break and once again it’s Sulemana taking on Quansah and bursts past him before once again shooting straight at the fucking goalkeeper.

Aribo puts Mara away on the right and he’s 1v1 against van Dijk, with Edozie in support.  Mara’s brain is thinking ‘take on best defender in world or pass it to the unmarked team mate?’ and his decision making is predictably terrible and doesn't end well.

One Attack, One Deflection, One Goal

Approaching half-time and Liverpool‘s first real attack sees a corner headed out as far as Elliot and his low shot is well saved by Lumley.  Liverpool come again though with the next attack with Clark (son of Lee) feeding Tsimikas (son of some Greek bloke) out on the left and he finds Koumas (son of Jason) on the edge of the box and he cuts across Jack Stephens (son of Russell Martin) and gets a shot away and it flicks off Bednarek (son of Poland) and gives Lumley (son of Joanna) no fucking chance at all. For fuck‘s sake.

Once everyone calms down, we do our best to kill the game off before half-time when Bree runs into traffic and gives the ball away in our half and eventually it falls to Gakpo who drags his shot wide.

Half time and overall we’ve played well, broken the press, created chances, missed them and paid for it due to a bit of bad fortune.  The bad fortune wouldn’t be so much of an issue if we’d been two goals ahead like we should have been.  Interestingly, because it is a Premier League side after all, we’ve sat a bit deeper and the shape in midfield has been good.

Saints start the second half relatively well with Charles and Aribo combining to send Edozie away on the right and his low cross is touched away from Mara by Konate and then Sulemana can only hit the fucking keeper again. Rothwell’s corner is there met by Aribo, who flicks it narrowly over the bar.

Another attack, another corner on the other side this time.  In it comes from Manning and it drops to Charles at the back post and he takes the touch has all the time to shoot and shits himself and produces an awful effort to shag it into the side netting.  Groan!!!

KWP and Adam Armstrong are on for Bree and Sulemana on the hour mark.  I’d have left Kamaldeen on to be honest as he was still looking dangerous.  Ten minutes go by and Edozie is off for Adams and Rothwell for Smallbone.

Here's Their Player Chipping the Keeper : Goal

Manning brings the ball forward and feeds into Smallbone for his first touch and he passes it directly behind where Manning was and straight to Harvey Elliott, who feeds it into Jayden Danns and the young substitute chips it easily over the onrushing Lumley.  Game over.  In the aftermath of the goal, KWP has worryingly gone off to be replaced by THB.

The tempo of the game has completely changed as well.  Alexis Mac Allister is on for Liverpool and they are now dominating and we can’t get out.  Aribo gives the ball away in blowing out of his arse fashion and the cross comes in from the left, headed out by Bednarek as far as Bradley and his improvised effort with the outside of his boot is pushed out by Lumley and Danns follows it in for a simple second goal.

Please let it end… and eventually it does.

Oh well, lost 3-0, fuck it.

On the positive side, we played pretty well for the first hour and showed a lot of bravery to play out from the back the way that we did and it should have brought reward as we beat the press regularly and created a load of chances.  However, miss them all and you don’t go in ahead at half-time, you go in 1-0 down to a spawny deflected effort from Liverpool’s first attack of note.

We started off the second half reasonably well but in the last half an hour, Liverpool took over and our substitutes just made the team worse.  Liverpool bringing on Mac Allister made their team much more difficult to play through as well.  When we had Edozie and Sulemana on the wings, we always had the prospect of breaking and causing them trouble in wide areas but when we replaced those with Adam Armstrong and pushing Mara out wide, you haven’t got that out ball or anyone carrying the ball forward, especially when you combine that with the slowest midfield three in history with Charles, Aribo (who played pretty well but was blowing out of his arse by this point) and Smallbone, who is the very definition of what you don’t want in an impact substitute.  Minor gripes however from a game where the expected happened.  The only real setback that matters is the injury to KWP and at time of writing there was no news on how serious that is.

I thought the back four and goalkeeper all played relatively well.  Bree did ok in his first game back but in hindsight, 45 minutes would have been enough.  Joe Lumley acquitted himself well in goal and didn’t have much chance with any of the goals. As said, Joe Aribo had a really good first half and Shea Charles did a good job defensively and just makes me wonder even more, why he’s not been in the side of late with Flynn Downes injured.  He did have his usual quota of flaky passing and giving the ball away but he was no worse than Rothwell who gave the ball away just as many times from a lot less possession.

The reason we didn’t have a decent go at winning this was down to the profligacy up front. Out of our misses, the only one that I would call unlucky was the one where Sulemana side footed that effort onto the post. Other than that, further misses by Sulemana and Mara were just shit.  Shea Charles, Aribo, Bednarek and Edozie all missed presentable chances. Mara – bloody hell.  Not only was it funny that he got 95 minutes, he also provided the funniest moment of that game was when he had a choice of playing a simple five yard ball to put Edozie clean through or taking on Virgil van Dijk, probably the best one on one defender in the world.  I mean, full marks for confidence or stupidity, one of the two.  Needless to say, he became a trailing speck of dust as Virgil moved upfield with it.

Our aim this year is of course to get promoted and play against Liverpool and all the others next season.  Even though it was Liverpool kids today in the main, the increase in speed and intensity showed up a few of ours today and is a bit of a reminder of how much work would need to be done on the squad in the event of us going up.  Though he wasn’t alone, Adam Armstrong proved once again that against slightly better opponents then you get in the Championship, not being able to control the football when it is passed to you is a bit of a disadvantage.

We lost again because we didn’t take our chances, end of story. We had so many chances in the first half whilst Liverpool‘s scratch team was growing into the game but didn’t take them and once Liverpool upped their game a little bit, helped admittedly by the slightly fortunate first goal, we didn’t really have an answer.  The five and a half thousand travelling fans were magnificent however.

Personally, I watched it on ITV and the coverage was a Klopp-centric as you’d expect it to be - very ITVomit.  It was all about him and his teeth and hair and the Liverpool youngsters and it was a great opportunity to shut them up but we blew it in that first half.  Sam Matterface can get in the bin as a commentator.  Absolutely shite and he’s bailed out by Ally McCoist, though he was a bit difficult to understand at the start of the game before the beers had worn off and he becomes less ‘Glasgow’.

So, we lost and in the scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter and it would’ve been Manchester United away in the next round anyway.  It would have been interesting as we might have done well against a side not known for pressing particularly well. We’ve gone to Anfield, we've played pretty well in patches, we’ve got knocked out and now we move on.

Being out of the FA Cup doesn’t matter is shit in the context of this season and all we can do is take the positives from this game and take them in to the rest of the league campaign where have very little margin for error, starting with Birmingham City away on Saturday. Win that and I will not give a toss about this game.

Up the Fucking Saints.