Liverpool v Crystal Palace – A Quick Liverpool Perspective

Liverpool v Crystal Palace A Liverpool Perspective

It seems to be a standard now, Liverpool play poorly and specialise in slow, tedious, rolled balls around the back, but sometimes get a result despite the poor performance. This was one of those good results despite playing poorly. The goals being just about all that was good, in terms of play, coming from quick attacks, rather than slow play. The counters were excellent, but the actual overall play was sloppy, particularly early on when a number of unnecessary corners were given away.

The first 25 minutes or so were particularly bad, with Wirtz, Isak, Salah and Gakpo barely seeing the ball as Mac Allister dropped between the centre-backs and the ball was rolled slowly between the three of them. There can be no complaint about the penalty awarded being overturned by VAR, it was clearly not a penalty and it was, for once, a good thing VAR was there to help out the referee there.

It took nearly half an hour before Palace were put under any pressure, none of that was from a press though, as that was woeful, disorganised even, with huge gaping holes in it as players stood too far off and lacked aggression. It is worrying that nothing was created in normal play, there is absolutely no creativity which is fine against a dreadful Palace side, who looked like they were on the beach, but the final four games are against teams with something to play for.

Even more concerning was the way Palace were able to stroll through the midfield at ease, there was absolutely no protection from midfield. The only thing worse was the reaction to Woodman going down injured. It was absolute amateur hour, everyone just stood and watched as Munoz waited and then put it into the empty net. There was absolutely no reason for the referee to stop the game and it was shocking to watch players as experienced as the Liverpool defence to just stand and watch. No one tried to close him down, no tried to cover the goal line. They all just stood around like spare pricks at a wedding. Embarrassing.

Crystal Palace

Palace were incredibly poor, offering very little threat and never looked like they were even giving their all to get it back to level scores. They had come out with a gameplan to spoil and time waste, once they conceded they looked lost as to what to do. They were not helped by Glasner, who made the strange decision to take off Mitchell at half-time, despite him giving Jones real trouble at times. He was pretty much…