Pilgrim’s Progress no more for Slot’s Reds in the FA Cup
Plymouth Argyle 1 Liverpool 0, 9th February 2025
PLYMOUTH ARGYLE 1 (Hardie 53)
LIVERPOOL 0
Football is awash in cliches at the best of times but yesterday’s fully deserved and rightful victory for the Pilgrim’s of Plymouth over an almost unbeatable Liverpool is fully deserving of every one you can think of. Whilst there are mitigating circumstances it would be churlish to raise these so early in the piece and so let’s admit that yesterday was a “giant killing” in every footballing cliched sense and a struggling, bottom of The Championship David had slain the Goliath and Premier League pacesetters fully 44 places higher on English football’s pyramid and the continuing world wide fascination for the “Magic of the FA Cup” was evident for all to see in the south western dockyard city of Plymouth and their full to bursting green and white Home Park Stadium home. There can be no doubting or arguments made that they didn’t deserve their victory or indeed their hefty slice of FA Cup history and folklore that will live on within the annals of the competition now forever more. The gameplan of manager Miron Muslić was a simple and highly effective one: For his team to play to their strengths, get the ball forward and away from a goal his defensive unit of Nikola Katić, Maksym Talovierov and Julio Pleguezuelo would defend like lions and, perhaps more importantly, not invite Liverpool onto them and suck them into their forward press and thus risk losing cheap balls in their third of the pitch. The aim was to continually bypass this risk, get the ball forward and away from their goal and then solidify their defensive back three and midfield four in front of them. Muslić’s gameplan worked a treat for 80 minutes and had his goal scoring hero Ryan Hardie added a second goal on the hour mark rather than hitting the outside of a post they would have had the insurance of a second and deserved goal with which to coast through the remainder of the game, but no matter. His defensive lions repelled any desperate, last ditch attempts from a ragged Liverpool to force an equaliser and extra-time and 9 long minutes into 2nd half injury time, Home Park erupted perhaps like never before to acclaim the slaying of a Goliath only seen within the realms of wondrous wizardry and magic of the oldest cup competition in the world.
Post match, Miron Muslić, an emotional man by his own admission, was calmer and more assured than expected as he first confessed to being “speechless” but after drilling into his players the importance of the FA Cup and “the biggest cup in the world”, although the gameplan was to be structured, organised, intense and “brave”, it was also as important to “represent Argyle as best as possible” and as he was particularly keen to reinforce to his players to “use this huge stage” and “it was an opportunity for the players to shine. They did it. Outstanding”.
Whilst being keenly aware to reinforce once more how Plymouth thoroughly deserved their win, it was a rather sobering FA Cup afternoon for a defeated Arne Slot. His youthful and much changed team simply didn’t play or weren’t allowed to play or gain any foothold in the game and James McConnell aside, they rather floundered and wilted and struggled to have any impact on the game whatsoever. No finger pointing or recriminations or apportioning of blame or at least, not for the youngest and most inexperienced players yesterday. But of the senior members of the team only goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher, Wataru Endō and Luis Díaz should escape the ire and a fan’s frustration in defeat, as Harvey Elliott (I’m his biggest fan) was abysmal, but just as woeful and half hearted as a struggling Diogo Jota, substitute Darwin Núñez (I’m his biggest fan too), Kostas Tsimikas was barely OK on the left side of defence but whatever it was Federico Chiesa was trying to do on the attacking right hand side is anyone’s guess.
One shot on target in the first half and only two late efforts in the desperate final minutes of second half injury time tells its own woeful story. A dreadful all round display best forgotten but because of the magic of the FA Cup, it won’t be. A returning from injury Joe Gomez captained the side in the absence of Virgil van Dijk who didn’t travel to the west country in league with Mo Salah, Cody Gakpo, Alisson Becker, Dominik Szoboszlai, Ibrahima Konaté, Andy Robertson and Alexis Mac Allister and it should have been one of if not the proudest moments of Gomez’s ten year career with the Reds, the senior man captaining a youthful and experimental team. But he limped from the field of play after just 8 minutes and his brilliant first half to the season is now injury plagued once more and one hopes he recovers quickly for the back end of a season where Slot’s albeit all conquering and mightily impressive starting XI needs as many veterans in reserve and on stand by as possible as despite yesterday’s defeat, a long season still lies ahead.
Starting Wednesday with arguably the most important game of the season so far. A win in the Reds vaunted game in hand will see them top the Premier League by 9 points with 14 games to go in a 2 horse race with Arsenal. But it’s Everton, a resurgent Blues desperate for 3 points to pull away almost permanently from the trapdoor of relegation into The Championship and the last ever Merseyside Derby at their Goodison Park home. Arne Slot’s Reds will be back to full strength with his preferred starting XI. The Blues under a returning David Moyes will be an entirely different proposition than the limp and uninspired unit under the gravel voiced control of Sean Dyche and, it’s worth reiterating, desperate for a victory in a bear pit of an atmosphere fit for the last ever Merseyside Derby at their storied home since 1892. A new stadium awaits, as does the telling of more historical tales and hopefully for the Reds of Liverpool and the Pilgrims of Plymouth but hopefully not the Blues of Everton, but time will tell.
It always does.
Arne’s Afterword
“The result is obvious, it’s a big disappointment, and the way we played wasn’t a lot to be happy about as well. The only thing I was happy about is that the boys kept on fighting for 100 minutes and probably the best part of our game were the last 10 minutes. So, that tells you that they kept on fighting. But credit to them, a good game plan, they worked incredibly hard and they got a penalty that was deserved, because it was a clear penalty; a correct decision. But that had a lot of impact on the game, of course, because both teams hardly had any chances and all of a sudden you get a penalty kick. Again, which was the correct decision, but they were 1–0 up and kept on fighting until the end. The goalkeeper made one or two good saves in the end, but we hardly created anything at all”.
Thanks for reading. I pen my thoughts on every Liverpool game and in recent seasons, with the addition of numerous pieces of retro writing on Reds games of the past, I’ve curated and created the following two self-published books:
"A Final word from The Boss" - link to Amazon
"Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles" - link to Amazon
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books too. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.