SoccerOutside the Box

Liverpool enjoy Spurs’ farcical nonsense

Ange Postecoglou needs to review his risk-and-reward calculation

Liverpool's Mohamed Salah celebrates scoring their side's fifth goal during their spectacular Premier League win over Tottenham. Photograph: Adam Davy/PA Wire
Liverpool's Mohamed Salah celebrates scoring their side's fifth goal during their spectacular Premier League win over Tottenham. Photograph: Adam Davy/PA Wire

“Are you not entertained?” In the excitement of Tottenham’s 4-3 win over Manchester United last Thursday, Ange Postecoglou couldn’t resist throwing out the Maximus quote.

He was asked about it again the next day, of course, and took the opportunity to talk about how he sees the larger purpose of the game of football.

“I genuinely believe that a big part of our game is, maybe entertainment is the wrong word, but you go to the game of football to kind of feel emotions that maybe in your day-to-day existence you don’t get the opportunity to, both exhilarating and both anxious. I think that’s what we love about it.”

Postecoglou is right about that, but it was interesting to remember his words while listening to Tottenham fans in the last few minutes of their 3-6 defeat against Liverpool. What emotion were the crowd feeling in this moment? By the sounds of it, stunned disbelief. They were dumbstruck by the inanity of what they had just witnessed.

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Other than hilarity – and football fans are not known for finding their own team’s defeats very funny – what emotions can anyone feel watching a farce? Because that is what Spurs’ performance in this game was: farcical nonsense.

On Friday Postecoglou had been asked whether he might have to ask his team not to play out from the back now that they have Fraser Forster rather than the injured Guglielmo Vicario in goal.

“No, because that would give us multitudes of other problems. We are where we are and will progress because of the way we play and I don’t think we need to protect anyone in our team.” Multitudes of other problems. Two minutes into the Liverpool game Forster took a short pass from a team-mate and, with an air of careful deliberation, passed directly to Mohamed Salah 15 yards away. Luckily for Spurs, Salah’s instant shot went just the wrong side of the near post.

What we have here is a failure to properly calculate basic questions of risk and reward. Postecoglou doesn’t want to play long because he reasons, correctly, that Dominic Solanke probably won’t win many high balls against Virgil van Dijk. But is being forced to scrap for second balls in midfield really as big a problem as handing the opposition multiple dangerous chances within 15 yards of your goal?

“Risk and reward” was one of Arne Slot’s buzz phrases from earlier in the season as he spoke about the changes he was making to the team’s established style of play. The Liverpool manager had praised Postecoglou’s approach in the build-up to this game. “How can you be too attacking?” he asked, as if daring Postecoglou to show us. Notice that Slot claims only to be an admirer of Spurs’s style. He stops well short of being an imitator.

Liverpool revelled in the wide-open spaces afforded by Spurs’s refusal to defend, scoring three in each half to move four points clear at the top of the table. The performance had the swagger of their 4-0 win at Leicester in December 2019 on the way to winning that season’s title.

The same Liverpool back five started at Tottenham on Sunday, and Trent Alexander-Arnold had another of those astonishing games where you are excited to see what he is going to do with every passing opportunity. One ridiculous early ball towards Salah seemed to almost boomerang back into the Egyptian’s path, allowing him a shot from a position where there had seemed no angle to reach him.

His cross for Luis Diaz’s opener was another phenomenal delivery, and even a clearance by Alexander-Arnold while under pressure from Djed Spence set off the move for Liverpool’s third goal just before half-time. He brought a good save from Forster with a dipping shot in the second half. He did all this while avoiding any defensive mistakes against the top-scoring team in the Premier League.

Liverpool have yet to come up with a good reason for Trent Alexander-Arnold to resist any offer from Real Madrid or other admirers. Photograph: Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images
Liverpool have yet to come up with a good reason for Trent Alexander-Arnold to resist any offer from Real Madrid or other admirers. Photograph: Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images

It was a performance to remind everybody why Real Madrid want Alexander-Arnold to replace their long-serving (now injured) right-back Dani Carvajal. After the game the fullback’s future became the focus of intense debate among the TV pundits.

Jamie Carragher asked whether Alexander-Arnold wants to be remembered like Steve McManaman (now generally ranked by his former fans at Liverpool as “good but not great”), or Steven Gerrard (a legend). But the case of Gerrard surely shows that commanding a nailed-down place in your club’s All-Time XI is not necessarily a sound basis for happiness or fulfilment in later life.

At the root of Carragher’s logic is the idea that Liverpool fans will be angry if Alexander-Arnold leaves on a free transfer, as though he were somehow swindling Liverpool by leaving at the end of a contract the club foolishly forgot to renew.

“My advice to Trent would be to sign a new deal, with a reasonable buyout clause, that will give the club some value if Real or anyone else decide to meet it,” Carragher wrote in his Daily Telegraph column.

But if the club that signed Alexander-Arnold had to pay a transfer fee, they would have less money to spend on his signing-on fee and wages. The advice therefore translates to “I think you should sign tens of millions of pounds of your own future earnings over to John Henry, so your former fans don’t abuse you when you come back here to do punditry”.

It’s hard to see Alexander-Arnold finding that message very persuasive.