Fulcrum
Alright, it’s time to say it out loud: something special is brewing here.
It’s not just that this is shaping out to be a perfect weekend for the Reds, with both of their chief title rivals losing games where they would otherwise be expected to get points. It’s also not just that, with this victory, this Liverpool is showing that it can win against the big teams, too (Brighton is one of those right now.) Speaking of which, it is looking more and more like that loss to Forest wasn’t as much of a freak as it might have looked initially – take a gander at their position in the table!
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But it’s more than that.
Liverpool just played Brighton twice in three days, beating them in both games, and also with the Arsenal game last weekend, doing so in a manner that shows that Arne Slot brings to table a very specific, very important quality: the ability to adjust. This is now a pattern. Take today’s game. The Reds were atrocious in the first half. I could pick on most of the players, except perhaps Kostas Tsimikas who played well throughout and Darwin Nunez who played the role of defensive forward ala Firmino, but that would be a distortion. As a team, Liverpool were outmuscled and outplayed by a bright Brighton team to such a degree that at times, the Reds looked scared.
It was purely by fortune and heroics from Kelleher that the half only ended one down.
I’m not sure if Slot would have sent Gomez to the pitch if Konate wasn’t injured. Perhaps he would have anyway, to replace Trent who had nothing short of a nightmare in the first half. But the big frenchman had to go off after Virgil stepped on his hand (here’s hoping it isn’t too serious), and in came one of Liverpool’s most underrated players in the modern era.
Joe Gomez turned the game around.
But to enable that to happen, the entire team had to tweak its performance, and that required instructions delivered effectively in the locker room. It’s a difficult thing to do, yet Slot seems capable of doing it exceptionally well. He did it again today, and his subsequent subs came in at the right time to deliver more positive impact. They tipped the momentum buildup over with the outcome being those two goals in two minutes. Even then, Slot had more to do, and he did, bringing in Endo to help manage the game, a brilliant decision as Brighton wrestled momentum back in the last ten minutes; were it not for Endo, I suspect they would have been more effective.
It all started with Gomez, though, and even though he only played one half, he is easily my man-of-the-match. His two headers on goal were emblematic of the turnaround, and I can only imagine what would have happened had one of them gone in; Anfield might have registered a seismic earthquake.
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Brighton’s one successful effort was on point, coming after a series of confused and occasionally comical Liverpool defensive actions, but the finish still had to be superb to get past Kelleher. Gakpo’s equalizer was a bit random, but it was Nunez as much as anyone who made the goal; without him, Verbruggen would have easily collected the ball. And then came Mo, with a classic Mo finish off that left foot that nobody can stop. How many times have we seen him do this? Everyone knows it’s coming, defenders work so hard to stop it, but when he connects, there’s just nothing anyone can do about it.
I imagine these are his favorite goals.
Every season has crucial moments. I may well eat my words soon, but right now, this weekend feels like one. A fulcrum, a tipping point. Arsenal and City are plagued with injuries, much like we used to be, and these results show that no team is immune to the effects of such. So much yet to come, but on my end…
I’ll be celebrating the moment.
