Liverpool and Leeds , going different ways ..
It was a match up of contrasting hopes.
Jesse Marsch wanted his team to get a result he thought his team deserved and Klopp on the other hand was fighting critics who were writing them off.
The hopes clashed in a high decibel, end to end football game played out in a noisy-as-usual Anfield, a fortress for the Reds.
Even as the late entrants in the stands , were settling in, the Leeds frontline had stung. Gomez , who like Trent Arnold has been often caught out by pacy wingers made the now familiar error. Hugging the lines and with a white shirt pushing, he flicked in a return pass to Allison. If it hadn’t been for his red shirt, one would have thought it was a cross by Leeds into the box. Allisson stranded at the corner waiting for the back pass, slipped and never recovered. Rodrigo gleefully accepted the perfectly weighted cross and fired home , into an invitingly empty goal. A cruel statistician would have recorded an assist to Gomez.
Liverpool kept pushing, busy and attacking. Crosses kept coming, but Leeds defended like they always do. Throwing their bodies in, lunging at forwards and leaping to clear crosses. Illan Meslier in the Leeds goal was in the midst of all this , as solid a rock. Salah did manage to get his feet on to one and directed it in, from a crowded box.
Anfield, Liverpool’s fortress falls
Leeds were always a threat on the counter and in the end , young Summervile, a promising product of Feyenoord academy, was on scene to poke in a cross deflected off Bamford in to deep corner of Allison’s net. After 29 matches Anfield had fallen.
Anfield had lost its voice as the traveling fans found theirs. The teams had moved in different directions on the table. Leeds lifted out of the dark valleys of the drop zone, and Liverpool left languishing in the unfamiliar mid table plateau.
An year in football can alter a romance story into a tragical farce. It was just last year that Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool was chasing four titles. The players had a swagger about them. The manager with due credit kept his head. The fans were over the moon. In a matter of months and a change in the Football season, it has all gone grey. An error prone defense, a midfield in shambles, and a forward line unable to be deal with low block defending has all signs of continuing misery. In a space of a few days they have lost to the two bottom of the table clubs.
How the mighty fall…..
Title hopes are all but over, with Arsenal and Manchester City miles ahead on the table. Liverpool urgently needs a revival and there are no two ways about it.
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