The Quad dream is still alive, but further scares like Villarreal are inevitable for Liverpool in the games ahead…
Liverpool will now, at the very, very least, play every possible game this season as their quest for An Unprecedented Quadruple reaches its final hurdles. They have the League Cup done, and now a Champions League final to go with the FA Cup showpiece.
This particular hurdle, though, proved far tougher than anyone could have expected or the final scoreline suggested. With a 2-0 first-leg lead safely in their pockets from Anfield, all Liverpool needed to do in Villarreal – which is, and you won’t hear this in the so-called mainstream media, quite a small place – was avoid disaster.
For 45 minutes, they flirted dangerously with just that. Now it does need saying that in those first 45 minutes Unai Emery’s happy-go-lucky ragtag bunch of Premier League rejects were absolutely magnificent. Etienne Capoue, who would end the evening collecting the most ‘head’s gone’ second yellow of all time for a pointless lunge at Curtis Jones, was the best player on the pitch by a frankly absurd margin. He got the assists for both goals, the second scored by another familiar face in Francis Coquelin, and there were heroes in yellow all over the pitch.
We’ll state with some confidence now that no current Spurs players will give Liverpool as much gip on Saturday night as Juan Foyth and Giovani Lo Celso did here.
The biggest compliment one can pay Villarreal’s first-half performance is this: it made Liverpool feel what pretty much everyone else feels playing against Liverpool. Just a relentless, unending examination where no pass is unpressured or straightforward and no respite is offered. Villarreal could hardly have offered a more different display in those first 45 minutes than the passive side with no answer or apparently plan in the first leg. Yet at three-quarters distance they had got themselves level in the tie and if momentum is a thing then…
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