Liverpool FC; The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – FA Cup Third Round Review
The Gunners fire blanks against the Reds, and pitch invaders get sore heads. Tactical nous leaves the opponents in shreds. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, the FA Cup third round reviewed at Liverpool FC.
The Good
Liverpool defeated Arsenal 0-2 in their own back yard yesterday. A super game for the neutral and an even greater game for the LFC faithful.
Jürgen Klopp’s Reds will now go into the hat for the fourth round draw having made their hosts pay dearly for their profligacy in front of goal. However, Liverpool also had their chances with Trent Alexander-Arnold and Diogo Jota also hitting the crossbar.
Add the second half word on, Arsenal continued to disappoint, and the Reds looked a threat on the counter. The latter fully took the lead when Trent’s free kick was glanced in by an Arsenal defender.
The victory was sealed when Luis Diaz thundered a shot Aaron Ramsdale in the dying seconds. All this without Virgil van Dijk who reprises in sick and No Salah who is away on international duty with Egypt.
The draw will take place tonight before the Wigan Athletic vs Manchester United game.
The (Not) Bad
Jürgen Klopp’s substitutions made the result yesterday. This season his use of substitutes has been nothing short of sensational.
The Liverpool manager was praised for his tactical astuteness yesterday. Liverpool started the game in a 4-3-2-1 formation but changed out to their more familiar 4-3-3 at the break.
The boss explained: “Then we changed things obviously as well, quite a bit and that caused Arsenal problems, that is how it is. These little parts cannot always be that influential but as little influence as I had in the first half on what they did, we just used the information from the first half and tried to do better. Everything was better”
The decision to play Loco on the right, return Harvey Elliott to the midfield three and Darwin Núñez out left clearly confused their hosts Liverpools confidence grew as the game went on.
This won simply underlined the versatility that Kip had at his disposal with his Liverpool 2.0 team. Time after time we have seen Ryan Grabenberch, Curtis Jones, Elliott or Diaz among others deployed in technical substitutions to devastating effect.
Its early days, but if the squad can produce this type of performance without both can Do and Salah, then there remains plenty to look forward to from Liverpool in the near to mid term.
The Ugly
The state of this pitch invaders head after Darwin Núñez and Ibu Konaté got hold of him yesterday! If he hasn’t got a sore head after this treatment, then he’s got the toughest nut on earth!
This pitch invader joined the goal celebrations after Liverpools opening goal, only to get a proper few bops on the head.
First it was Núñez and then Ibu, who proceeded to remove the supporters hat!! I’m sure he needed some Ibu after that… LOL!!
