It’s been a bruising weekend for Liverpool but this could have been a lot worse. They could have lost Mo Salah for nothing last summer.
What matters now is how well Arne Slot and the Anfield recruitment team manage this situation. Thanks to their efforts at the end of last season, Salah is under contract and as such should be sold and replaced in January.
How well Liverpool manage to do that will tell us much about how well set up they are in terms of recruitment and player crisis management.
Manchester City have been here before and look as though they are coming out the other side if it. Pep Guardiola has lost a number of top players over the last 18 months and not all of that was foreseen.
But slowly the loss of Kevin de Bruyne, Jack Grealish, Ilkay Gundogan and Kyle Walker is looking less catastrophic as the players recruited and brought through to replace them are beginning to demonstrate their quality. French midfielder Rayan Cherki already looks a steal at £30m, for example.
Replacing Salah like for like is impossible. The Egyptian is a unique footballer. The 33-year-old has a record of 363 goal involvements over eight seasons. That is unlikely to ever happen again.
But Liverpool must shake the shock from their system this morning, take a leaf out of City’s book and get on with the process of building a new future.
Slot’s team have scored seven goals without Salah starting games over the last eight days so they are not exactly impotent without him.
They have some wonderful attacking players in their squad and played well in parts at Leeds and indeed eight days ago at West Ham.
They do need pace and that will be uppermost in their thoughts. Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo would be a decent place to start but Liverpool and their sporting director will have other attainable targets on their list. And if they haven’t they really should have.
EKITIKE MUST START AHEAD OF ISAK
Slot will have his own issues to wrestle with as the Liverpool managers takes his team to Milan for a Champions League game at Inter tomorrow.
One thing clear now is the need to start Hugo Ekitike as his number nine.
The French forward has been the most impressive of Liverpool’s new signings but has also arguably been the greatest victim of the Alexander Isak business.
Given the need to find Isak some form and some fitness since his move from Newcastle, the Swede has been shoe-horned into the team on occasion with Ekitike sitting on the bench.
Surely that must change. Slot needs performances and victories and progress and as such must pick his best team. Ekitike took his goals well at Leeds and spreads Liverpool’s play well with the variety and energy of his running off the ball.
The 23-year-old should now be handed the number nine shirt for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t manner how much Isak cost, it’s up to him to force himself in to the team.
And he’s not the worst impact sub in the world is he?
CHERKI MISSED THE (SHOW) BOAT
It’s not been easy for Guardiola and City to undergo transition and at times it’s tempting to rub your eyes and look at that team and wonder at just how different it now looks.
Stars are starting to emerge, though. Nico O’Reilly never seems to have a bad game at full back and has a foot on the plane with England for next summer’s World Cup. Now Cherki is showing himself to be a player of real quality too.
His ‘rabona’ cross for Phil Foden – proving a few naysayers wrong with his own return to form – in the win against Sunderland at the Etihad on Saturday was a superb piece of skill and it was perhaps the highlight of a fabulous performance.
But for once I was with his coach when he spoke afterwards of a player’s need to always concentrate on the simple things.
Some of things Guardiola says and does can look a little performative. We have discussed them before in this column. But I am on board with this one.
‘The best player in the world was Lionel Messi and for him it was always simple,’ said Guardiola to Match of the Day.
Guardiola hit exactly the right tone, there. If a player needs to wrap his right foot behind his left to cross the ball then it’s usually a sign he needs to spend a bit of time working on his weaker foot.
Cherki is handy off both feet, though. Maybe he really was just showing off.
THIS IS A REAL TITLE RACE
Much shock at the fact that Premier League favourites Arsenal are not winning every game but this is what a traditional title race actually looks like.
City and – to a lesser degree – Liverpool skewed everybody’s perceptions by chasing down titles by simply refusing to do anything but win in that golden period for the league between 2018 and 2022.
In 2017/18, for example, Liverpool lost one league game and didn’t win the title.
The truth is that, over the history of the modern top flight, teams have had to endure setbacks and recover in order to triumph.
When Manchester United won the treble in 1999, for example, they won just 22 of their 38 league games and clinched the title with 79 points. When they won it again two years later, Sir Alex Ferguson’s team lost six times.
There are always outlier years. Arsenal’s ‘invincible’ season saw them unbeaten in 2003/04 while Chelsea under Jose Mourinho lost just once the following campaign.
Usually, though, a champion team loses between four to six games on the way to a title. Mikel Arteta’s team have lost two so far this season so it’s not time to panic just yet.
BUENDIA WINNING AT THE LONG GAME
Aston Villa’s match winner Emiliano Buendia was a big money player when the club paid Norwich £33m for him four and a half years ago.
But the 29-year-old has not always played a starring role at Villa Park. Indeed when Villa splashed out on Philippe Coutinho on manager Steven Gerrard’s say-so a year later, the plan was to ease Buendia out of the picture.
It turns out that the Argentinean won that particular battle. Coutinho was a flop back in England and is now playing his football for Vasco de Gama back in his home country.
Buendia still has work to do to. He spent the second half of last season on loan at Bayer Leverkusen and has made more substitute appearances than starts in the league at Villa this season.
But this was his fourth goal in the top flight this term – one more than Morgan Rogers and indeed centre forward Ollie Watkins – and that was enough for some people to take issue with TNT pundit Martin Keown’s decision to award the man of the match gong to Arsenal’s Martin Odegaard.
‘Surely Emi Buendia for man of the match @footballontnt ?!’ asked the X account linked to the Prince and Princess of Wales on Saturday night.
We can presume that one was posted by Villa fan Prince William rather than wife Kate.
PEARCE WINS, FERDINAND DOESN’T.
There weren’t many stand-out performance at the World Cup draw last Friday but if anybody emerged with credit it was the BBC’s Jonathan Pearce.
Pearce was once known for his rather excitable commentary for Channel 5 back in the 1990s but over time has emerged as a much more considered and thoughtful analyst of the game.
There was doubtless much Pearce was thinking – just like the rest of us – as he watched FIFA president Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump embarrass themselves in Washington DC at the start of the weekend.
Understatement was the 65-year-old’s greatest gift on this occasion, though.
‘Hopefully the draw will be finished in time for the first match to kick off in June,’ was one of Pearce’s more pithy observations.
As for Rio Ferdinand, it’s harder to be kind. The former Manchester United defender actually did a very good job of guiding everybody through what was a far from straight forward draw process. He had clearly done his preparation.
But whether Ferdinand should have ever agreed to be anywhere near the ceremony in the first place is another matter entirely. Few people walked off that stage with much credit left in the bank.
STAT’S THE WAY FORWARD
On the radio meanwhile the BBC continue to innovate and Saturday’s 5Live content was enhanced greatly by input from David O’Brien – known as Statman Dave – who was alongside Mark Chapman and Andy Reid as the Villa-Arsenal game played out.
Reid – once of Nottingham Forest and Tottenham – is emerging as an analyst of great value but O’Brien’s understated contribution was the winner – fitting that all important metric of telling us things we don’t already know.
AMORIM DOESN’T HAVE MARESCA’S EXCUSES
Another big night for Manchester United, it seems. But when does it ever feel any different?
One excuse that manager Ruben Amorim does not have ahead of tonight’s game at Wolves is that his players are faced with too much football.
While the rest of the traditional big clubs and indeed teams like Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace juggle with the demands and travel related to European football, United have as much time on the grass as they could possibly wish for.
Chelsea, for example, have played twice as many games as United since late May. Thirty as opposed to fifteen. The summer Club World Cup played a part in that, of course.
So if inconsistency remains a problem for Enzo Maresca and his team – their draw at Bournemouth on Saturday means Chelsea’s longest league winning run stays at two games – then at least they can look at their circumstances.
United cannot. Amorim was hired just over a year ago as a coach as much as a manager.
When do we get to see the evidence of that skillset?
SAME HANDBALL, DIFFERENT OUTCOME.
The weekend’s most contentious decision came amid the rain of a strangely empty-looking Amex Stadium in Brighton.
Georginio Rutter clearly handled the ball in the build up to his team’s 91st equaliser against West Ham but was not penalised because it was not deemed deliberate and because there was another flurry of activity before the same player lashed it into the net.
To put it simply, had Rutter scored immediately after the ball bounced from his chest to his arm then the goal would not have stood.
But because West Ham goalkeeper Alphonse Areola saved Rutter’s first shot and was only beaten by the rebound, it was allowed to stand.
Does that make sense? Of course it doesn’t.
Read more
- Is VAR’s judgment in question again? Why the late decision in favor of Man City’s stoppage-time clincher caused chaos at Wolves!
- Was VAR right to let Chelsea secure victory after controversy struck with that contentious equaliser?
- Why was a panel split over Chelsea’s penalty decision in their thrilling victory against Brighton?
- What VAR drama surrounded John Stones’ decisive goal against Wolves, sparking controversy on and off the pitch?
- Why was Joao Pedro’s potential match-defining goal for Brighton against Manchester United controversially disallowed?
