Reds back top after Mac Allister Masterclass at the Coliseum
Liverpool 2 Brighton 1, 31st March 2024.
LIVERPOOL 2 (Díaz 27, Salah 65)
BRIGHTON 1 (Welbeck 2)
A sage football writer once posited that Alexis Mac Allister would be the “linchpin” of a Liverpool midfield for the coming generation and within Jürgen Klopp’s “evolution” that would surely see player, manager and indeed club to a glory laden future full of trophies. What this particularly astute, overly biased and overly emotional football writer didn’t bargain for was a trophy so soon within a season now ending with the heart breaking departure of the Boss, a season so far removed from evolution as to be a sprint to the line in a revolution with a team ravaged by injuries, a team of fresh faced teenagers not only admirably filling in but staking their claims to permanent starting XI positions, and his linchpin, his “number 6” or “double number 6”, “pivot” or more simply the World Cup winner in the number 10 shirt having a good, if slightly underwhelming season. You’ll be unsurprised to learn that the sage writer of footballing balderdash is of course me and, returning to the first person, I’m Alexis Mac Allister’s biggest fan and in a team forever changing, full of teenagers making debuts and winning Wembley Cup Finals as their esteemed colleagues watch injured and frustrated in the stands has been astonishing in such a turbulent season, and sit proudly atop the Premier League once more with 9 games of the season to go and yet, Alexis Mac Allister just hasn’t seemed his majestic self and only standing out in a “Man of the Match” performance in a handful of games.
Today wasn’t just one of those occasions as the Argentinian’s performance was way in excess of such epithets and beyond the reach of mere sage football writers such as myself. He was just blooming magnificent today and how my heart sung as he barely made a stray pass, tackled and tracked back in help of his defence, ridiculously yellow carded by a referee who shall remain nameless as frankly he got a number of decisions wrong today, Mac Allister’s booking the top of a lengthy list. Constantly involved in play, fetching and carrying that bag of footballing wind around the fields of Anfield Road, finding a Red shirt with an acute, risky or, as in the case of Mo Salah’s winning goal, a sublime inch perfect pass for the Egyptian King to send Liverpool 2 points clear once at the top of the Premier League. When the Argentinian took the first 20 minutes off in the second half, Dominik Szoboszlai came out to play, and to press, press, press Brighton back into their own half of the field and a half of the field they stayed as Mac Allister resumed the conductor’s role, supplied the game winning pass to Mo Salah and the Argentinian carried away another “Man of the Match” award to go alongside his arguable similar performance in winning the Carabao League Cup at Wembley or any number of recent superlative performances in that vaunted Red number 10 shirt.
His boss described his performance as “incredible, absolutely incredible” and when Lionel Messi demands you play next to him for the national team, well, that’ll do for me.
"Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles"
After going behind early to a wonder strike from ex Arsenal and Manchester United striker Danny Welbeck, the tactical side to the game was writ large for the first 45 minutes: As the Reds, and Conor Bradley in particular, marauded forward down the Liverpool right-hand side, so the “Seagulls” of Brighton brilliantly exploited the space left behind the young Irishman. Although the Reds stacked up a host of chances on the visitors goal, Brighton were organised and comfortable in possession as well as constantly threatening to break in behind the right side of the Liverpool defence. Luis Díaz’s equalising goal on 27 minutes saw the Reds not only equal but now pressing home a territorial advantage that would see Mac Allister, Luis Díaz, Mo Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai constantly creating small or half goal scoring chances before a second period of play forever in the Brighton half of the field and Salah’s killer winning goal on 65 minutes. The final 10 minutes were more than a little nervy and anxious and here’s why: This was a BIG result today from a stupendous team performance and an unbreakable desire for 3 Premier League points.
Mission
Accomplished
In the later game and a game I didn’t watch, Manchester City and Arsenal played out the perfect result of a 0–0 draw and Liverpool end another Premier League weekend top of the tree. There were goals aplenty yesterday, a record of sorts, as well as a whole host of VAR travesties of justice, last minute equalisers, valuable points gained in respective fights to stave off the ugly spectre of relegation and Manchester United were back to being their woeful worst. One suggests they’ll be rather more formidable come 7 days time and after the merry-go-round of midweek games that sees both of today’s protagonists in our three horse race to the finish with a chance to regain top spot before the Reds entertain the free scoring (and defensively shambolic) Sheffield United on Thursday evening.
There will be a lucky 7 games to go for Liverpool in the Premier League come this time next Sunday.
But will they still be on the highest perch of them all?
Time will tell.
It always does.
A final word from The Boss
“It was, from my point of view, the best performance we had against Roberto De Zerbi’s Brighton. More possession, better possession. A really good rhythm in the game — besides the goal, we lose the ball. We can lose the ball high up the pitch, that doesn’t mean you have to concede, that was really well done. Great, great finish as well, as far as I saw it. I liked the reaction a lot but I saw as well in our finishing we were a bit in a rush”.
“You cannot create all the time like we did and then one or two of them must be proper chances; we didn’t have enough shots on target in the first half and the few we had were rollers. We had to do that better, but we still scored an equaliser after a set-piece, which is always a good and very helpful asset. We showed the boys a couple of situations at half-time and told them what we should keep doing, where we had to calm down and our defending we could improve. We tried that and again controlled big parts of the game, as much as you can against them. It is not always possible because it is super-intense to deny them. It is real hard work”.
“The front line had to work hard, had to be patient in the right moment. Wataru Endo and Macca Alexis Mac Allister in the right spaces and Dom Szoboszlai was the surprising act there, the chaser, the chaos creator, and that worked really well I thought. They had possession but not the possession they wanted and that helps. We scored a wonderful second goal, a wonderful third goal but was unfortunately slightly offside but still a good goal. Then you have to bring it over the line. To be 100 per cent honest, we are not now in that situation for 10 years with this team so I thought we would have been a bit more nervous, but actually I thought the boys were really calm and I liked that a lot. Yes, they still had moments, that’s how it can go and you cannot deny them completely. We won the game, I think we all agree we deserved to win the game, so a really good afternoon”.
Thanks for reading. I pen my thoughts on every Liverpool game with well over 180 articles past and present filling my “Liverpool FC” library here. Alternatively, here are my three most recently published articles on the team I adore:
Quadruple dreams over as wasteful Reds crumble at the “Theatre of Dreams”
Raining goals at Anfield as Reds stroll into last 8 of the Europa League
Honours even in the “chaos” of Anfield