Pompey Chimes, City lose, and the Reds go marching in

Liverpool 2 Aston Villa 0, 9th November 2024

Nov 10, 2024

Darwin Núñez celebrating life, new life, and another wonderful goal for the Mighty Reds of Liverpool. Picture courtesy of and with thanks to **www.bbc.com**

LIVERPOOL 2 (Núñez 20, Salah 84)
ASTON VILLA 0

According to the boffins at the weather department, the UK is currently experiencing an “anticyclonic gloom” which when rinsed through the Orwellian language of our times roughly translates as day upon day of a Dickensian fug or the gloaming mist of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, sitting low beneath an enveloping battle ship grey blanket bereft of anything normally recognisable as an overhead sky. People tend to get a little cranky when there isn’t a dark cloud let alone a white and fluffy one to obscure their view of the approaching silver lining and those of us who bark at the nightly moon have stared in vain for many nights now. Perhaps only Sir Arthur’s hounds can see the full moon now or make any sense of what “anticyclonic” means. Who knows? All I see is Father Merrin arriving at the Exorcist house, a lone streetlamp lighting the gloom. But I haven’t seen the sun in weeks, I miss barking at a full moon with some noisy hounds, so pizza was the order of the day and three rather good games of football to lift the gloom, existential, atmospheric, or otherwise.

The first stop on today’s football merry-go-round was a return to the south coast and the city of my birth Portsmouth as they entertained fellow strugglers Preston North End. The more familiarly known “Pompey” won an entertaining if mistake filled game 3–1 as returning hero Colby Bishop finally checkmated their visitors with a final minute, game winning penalty, but I couldn’t help but reminisce on albeit bittersweet memories of the past as, for 90 minutes at least, I was transported home once more. Watching the game, aided and abetted by commentary from the local radio station, I was a young teenager again, listening to my home city’s game via the medium of hospital radio in the early to mid 1980’s where, if I unplugged from the commentary and poked my head out of my Dad’s hospital room window, I could hear the roar of the Fratton Park crowd and the tumbling of the “Pompey Chimes” from a football ground only a corner kick away. Well those chimes were ringing out loud and proud today and in celebration of the Blues first home win of a long season ahead where I can only foresee a continual battle against relegation and shredded nerve ends come May 3rd and a final day encounter with Hull City to possibly save their Championship lives. On today’s evidence, I see Preston North End down in the basement with them and maybe needing a final day win of their own to preserve their status in the toughest English league to gain promotion to the milk and money promised land of the Premier League, but a rather easier league to get relegated from and sucked back into the third tier of English football.

Time will tell.

It always does.

Some rambling musings from within the madhouse formerly known as Twitter.

Next up was the short 40 or so mile hop along the south coast to Brighton, the county birthplace of my dear old Dad, and the brass band sing-a-long of “Sussex by the Sea”. Mateo Kovačić was the undoubted star of a first half completely dominated by Brighton’s visitors and defending Premier League Champions, Manchester City. Pep Guardiola’s team, led magnificently by the tenacious Croatian in place of the irreplaceable and injured Ballon d’Or winning Spaniard Rodri, were by far the better team and comfortably leading 1–0 at the break before turning into simpering dogs in the second half and a performance that will not only rankle with their Spanish manager, but surely boil his piss. 4 defeats on the bounce for the all conquering Champions from Manchester. But this was as ordinary and meek and placid as I’ve seen them in a long, long time. Brighton were a team transformed in the second half led by local goal scoring hero and substitute today, João Pedro. His introduction of pace and quick thinking caused havoc in and around the Manchester City penalty area so typified by his equalising goal on 78 minutes. 5 minutes later, his sublime slide rule pass of an assist presented Matt O’Riley with the chance to be a goal winning hero, the 23 year old English born Danish international gleefully accepted the back page headlines, shared no doubt with a picture of Pep Guardiola looking rather worried. Erling Haaland scored and Manchester City still lost?

I’d be looking rather worried too.

So I turn with praise to my Manchester United supporting mother who, for reasons I still can’t explain with any kind of sensible reasoning bathed me in the Red of Liverpool, and a team this evening sitting not only proudly atop the highest perch of them all, but 5 points clear of the chasing pack and surely top of the Premier League come December 1st when the Champions from Manchester City come to town. What a humdinger of a game that promises to be! But to this evening, to Aston Villa, and another opponent vanquished. Amadou Onana and Diego Carlos both had close-in, almost point-blank headers denied by the spectacular saves of Reds goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher on 36 and 37 minutes, and both were a result of a corner in a first half under the Anfield lights of corners and counter-attacks, and Liverpool being by far the more threatening team to score a goal and quixotically, whenever Aston Villa had a corner and were pressing men of their own into attacking positions. Here the Reds countered brilliantly, time after time, with Darwin Núñez scoring one superbly taken break-away goal before he should have added at least a second before forcing Emi Martínez in the Villa goal into further saves from long range drives in both halves of football and a second half entirely dominated by those oh so mighty, table topping Mighty Reds of Liverpool.

Ibrahima Konaté was again immense beside his skipper Virgil van Dijk who this evening, actually had to put in a defensive performance, and boy did the skipper come through. I’ve written, what seems like all season long, that Konaté is playing so well as to allow his captain to glide effortlessly through games. A compliment to both players, I’m sure you’d agree. Konaté mopped up every loose ball as van Dijk played defensive strongman. When you have a world class goalkeeper like Caoimhin Kelleher behind you pulling off wondrous saves, you’re not going to leak too many goals. With the added defensive cover of Ryan Gravenberch plugging midfield holes and both Luis Díaz and Mo Salah defending like lions for the team, the Reds get the ball back and with it, ultimate control of the game and playing from a position of real strength: water tight at the back, counter-attacking pace to burn. Díaz and Salah freed of their defensive responsibilities playing high, the Colombian magician looking to cut inside with a trick or flick, the Egyptian King flying past the last man and a rapier like cross into the penalty area or this evening, one third of the Anfield pitch all to himself as he bears down on the Aston Villa goal, the ball at his mercurial left foot. Little wonder that Salah celebrated his goal, as he did his goal against Newcastle United on the first day of this year, by sitting on a perimeter advertising board. A King sat upon his 21st Century throne once more. A footballing professional driven by an insane desire to win, win, and win again.

So there we have it. A day in three footballing acts. From an anticyclonic gloom to a sporting Coliseum under the lights and a field in Anfield Road. From a Bishop to a King via the chimes of my home city and the big band strains of good old Sussex by the Sea.

There was even pizza.

And the Reds of Liverpool are top of the Premier League.

Arne’s Afterword

“We did put effort in defending them from scoring because that was also today — not in general, but today — that was their main threat in my opinion, their set-pieces, so we had to do a lot to prevent them from scoring and one or two times we needed our goalkeeper for that. And then these counter-breaks had nothing to do with what we do on the training ground or what we tell them before: that is pure quality and purely what the players come up with in these transition moments. For us, it’s about preventing the other team from scoring but for the ones that have been here for so many years it’s not going to be a complete surprise because it happened before I think”.

“It was definitely a big week but every game is a big week. We play so many games in all these competitions against so much strong opponents, so hopefully we will have a lot of these weeks to come because these weeks are mostly big if you are competing for something and that is what we are doing at the moment. We are competing, trying to compete for the league, trying to compete for the Champions League and trying to compete for the cups we are in as well. We also know it’s a long season where we have to continuously be on top of our game because the likes of Arsenal, City and Chelsea and all these other clubs are able to win just as many games as we did in the first 15 to 16 games. So, we have to stay on top of our game, which is never going to be easy but we’ll push for it as much as we can”.

Thanks for reading. I often lament that despite my hundreds of articles here I rarely if ever make contact with genuine Liverpool fans so, if that is you, please say a hearty hello and, whilst you’re here, can I interest you in these spectacularly good self-published books on the Mighty Reds?

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please put a few pennies in this particular author’s hat. That sort of thing. Thanks.