Arne Slot should have gone ‘crazy’ like Jurgen Klopp definitely always used to when inspiring Liverpool to win Big Six games. ‘Tame’ Mo Salah didn’t help.
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Mediawatch is mildly perplexed by the words of Jordan Davies, Arsenal reporter for The Sun who watched the 2-2 draw with Liverpool at the Emirates and came away with only one thought: Jurgen Klopp would have won that.
That is strange because Klopp lost two and drew two of his last four Premier League games against Arsenal before leaving Liverpool but yes, he would have swept those chancers aside.
The idea that this ‘was a massive missed opportunity’ for Liverpool is not without merit. Arsenal were missing a number of key players, had lost their last Premier League game and were unconvincing in beating Shakhtar Donetsk at home after that. They were certainly more vulnerable than usual.
But they are still Arsenal, a very good team with very good players and a very good manager, so quite how Klopp simply ‘would have found a way to win’ when Slot (and Arteta) could not is uncertain.
‘It was not until a Klopp-style counter-attack from back to front in the 81st minute did the visitors properly test the home defence,’ writes Davies in a sentence which doesn’t actually make sense, not least because it was ‘a Klopp-style counter-attack’ seemingly purely because it involved players Klopp coached for a long time.
The next line, though, is something special.
‘But even that finish was a tame one – Salah tapping in past David Raya into an almost empty net.’
That is absolutely bizarre. Salah put it in the corner. He literally scored. Raya was also not far off his line and had to be beaten. It wasn’t really even a tap-in.
Leaving aside the quandary as to whether an actual goal can ever be described as a ‘tame’ finish, it just wasn’t a ‘tame’ finish anyway.
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‘And with nine minutes left plus seven minutes injury time, the expected onslaught for another, to nick all three points – the tally-ho approach – never came.
‘Not Klopp’s heavy metal style, more pleasant folk music with a ukulele in a country pub.’
Write about Jurgen Klopp without using the largely irrelevant phrase ‘heavy metal’ in 2024 challenge (impossible).
‘You get the impression that Slot was delighted with this outcome. For large parts, Liverpool were defensively sound, gave very little away and snuck away back to Merseyside with a point tucked under their arm and a bloody nose avoided.
‘Yet it was in these sorts [sic] big blockbuster matches that Klopp and Liverpool thrived over their nine-year romance.’
You mean like when they drew both games with Manchester City 2-2 in 2021/22? Or how they were below Chelsea in a Premier League table comprised only of results between the Big Six last season?
‘And with Arteta’s Arsenal on their knees – quite literally in some cases – and hanging on for dear life, these are the moments in title races that require a bit of crazy, not caution.’
Oh how The Sun would presumably have praised the Liverpool manager if he went ‘crazy’ late on and lost instead of being happy enough with a point away at one of the best teams in Europe.
‘A Klopp team of the past would have gone completely and totally Kloppy, throwing men forward at will, blasting their opponents away and forcing the ball into the net through passion and thunder alone, regardless of how open it left them at the back.’
Did you not actually watch Klopp’s Liverpool over the past nine years or are you choosing to rewrite history for no apparent reason? From the German’s first full season in 2016/17 to his last in 2023/24, Liverpool drew 31 Premier League games against the rest of the Big Six. The closest team to that is Manchester United with 24, then Chelsea on 23 before you reach Arsenal on 18.
Even in their last properly sustained title challenge in 2021/22, Liverpool drew twice with Manchester City, Chelsea and Spurs. This exact sort of result in ‘big blockbuster matches’ was a frequent occurrence under Klopp. They did not make a habit out of ‘throwing men forward at will, blasting their opponents away and forcing the ball into the net through passion and thunder alone,’ nor of being whatever ‘totally Kloppy’ entails. Stop being weird.
‘Slot is not this sort of coach. He is measured, considerate, calm.’
Translation: he is boring, Dutch and not quite as quotable as the bloke who was there before him. But he does have a similarly handy surname for headlines.
‘It is hard to say if this will come back to haunt Slot…’
It isn’t; it won’t.
Mediawatch has looked for long enough but cannot find an example of Davies saying Pep Guardiola completely f**ked it by drawing 2-2 against Arsenal – and that was at home rather than away. Strange.
Kidd rock
Perhaps something was in the water over at The Sun when it came to the Arsenal game, because here is Dave Kidd:
‘The bullet-ridden Gunners ended up with a completely makeshift back four, having seen Liverpool skipper Virgil Van Dijk escape an early yellow card only to equalise Bukayo Saka’s early opener.’
Would…would Van Dijk not have been able to equalise if he had been booked?
‘Somehow, VAR Michael Salisbury is said to have deemed the offence ‘petulant not reckless’…’
‘Somehow’? It was very specifically ‘petulant not reckless’. It was a textbook example of that phrase. It was really quite silly of Van Dijk and probably warranted a booking but Anthony Taylor indulged in the usual Premier League referee tactic of letting such things go early on in big games. And VAR could thus only check if it was a red-card offence, which it categorically was not.
Why? Because it was ‘petulant not reckless’.
Angel Gabriel
‘Mikel Arteta’s reaction speaks volumes as Gabriel adds to Arsenal injury crisis’ – Daily Mirror website.
He ‘was spotted with his head looking down to the ground’. Without such volumes being spoken one might have assumed he would have been delighted to lose another member of his first-choice defence.
Palm reader
‘It just showed a level of class and when they take him off it looks like Chelsea at every single opportunity are going to lose the game,’ says BBC Sport team of the week merchant Troy Deeney of Cole Palmer’s pass for Chelsea’s first goal at Newcastle.
That is Cole Palmer, who a) played the entire match against Newcastle and b) has been substituted in two Chelsea games this season. But they didn’t half look like they were going to lose against Wolves (6-2 win) and West Ham (3-0 win) when he came off.
Troy story
Among Deeney’s other picks are Dean Henderson, who made three routine saves against ‘not great’ Tottenham but kept a clean sheet unlike the awful Mark Travers, and Marc Guehi, who was ‘excellent again’ despite being really not very good for most of this season and not as good as Maxence Lacroix against Spurs.
His players are broadly in the right positions so that’s one point up on Garth at least, but there is work to do.
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