LFC 22/23 – The Good, The Bad And The Ugly – Gameweeks #9 & 10
Defeating City, with no pity. Those in claret and blue are sent packing too. The boss loses his head and thus sees red. The good, The Bad and The Ugly. The last two game weeks reviewed at Liverpool football club.
The Good
Without doubt this has to be the1-0 weekend victory over Premier League, Championship favourites, Manchester City.
Given Liverpool’s relative struggles this season, I think many fans would have been happy to take a draw against and inform City side.
However, as the history books show the blue, half of Manchester, very rarely come away from the red half of Merseyside with anything to show for their efforts.
A second-half goal from a resurgent Mo Salah was enough to give Liverpool all three points on the night, after a pulsating encounter in Walton Breck Road.
The Egyptian left his marker with an exquisite drop of the shoulder, setting him up perfectly to lift the ball past the onrushing Ederson in the resulting one-on-one.
Liverpool fans thought they were going to be in for a long night when Phil Foden put the visitors ahead, only for his effort to be ruled out by VAR. The technology having picked up Erling Haaland’s foul on Fabinho in the build up.
The result was a welcome three points, which moved Liverpool further up the table, following an indifferent start to the season. The situation was then further improved by…
The (Not) Bad
The hard-fought 1-0 win over West Ham United in the mid week game again at Anfield. 
A first Anfield goal for record summer signing Darwin Núñez was sufficient to give Liverpool all three points to maintain their recent momentum.
“He’s an exceptional talent,”
The Uruguayan lept above the West Ham defence in the 22nd minute to head Liverpool into the lead. “He’s an exceptional talent,” Liverpool boss said afterwards. “The runs, the speed, physicality and finishing skills… He has a really good technique…” said an enthusiastic Jürgen Klopp in his post match interview. 
The win now means that Liverpool have established a run of three straight wins in all competitions. Hopefully this will signal a change in their fortunes after enduring a tough start to this campaign.
The win of course, was not without incident. Alisson Becker was called on to save a penalty when Joe Gomez was a judged to have bought down a West Ham attacker in the Liverpool box. The Brazilians heroics kept the reds in front at the break.
The Ugly 
This has to be Jürgen Klopp’s face during his rant that led to his red card during the Manchester City game on Sunday.
The Reds boss (despite later apologising) was incensed at the persistent fouling on reds forward Salah. At one point, there was a blatant foul on the Liverpool number 11 on the right hand touch line during a Liverpool attack.
What seemed like the entire Anfield stadium, along with Klopp, immediately appealed for free kick for the treatment of their forward. However, referee Anthony Taylor saw no infringement.
At the end of the day, no one wants to see this kind of behaviour from a manager.  Despite the feelings of injustice, one must feel for the poor assistant, referee who felt the full force of the Liverpool manager’s wrath. 
While You’re Here…
The fourth and latest, edition of the, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: 2nd – And The Cup Double, is now available on Amazon, as an e-book (€5), paper back (€11.99) and on Apple Books (e-book, €5).

