Jim Boardman and Jay Reid are back as Liverpool sit pretty at the top of the league, eight points clear of everyone after just a dozen games. It’s a good time to be a Red.
The match that put the Reds eight points clear was a 3-2 win over Southampton, the Reds carrying on where they left off before the latest international break.
As Jay and Jim discuss, it wasn’t a game where the best of Slot’s LFC was showcased for 90 minutes, but the job got done and the points came home. Arne has commented many times on how good a squad he inherited from Jurgen Klopp, and for this one he needed them to draw on one of the qualities they arguably needed more often under the former boss – the ability to bounce back from setbacks, self-inflicted or otherwise.
With one referee currently sat out from football, as an investigation takes place into an infamous video shared on social media, it wasn’t unreasonable for Liverpool fans to expect some decent refereeing, for PGMOL to ask for special effort from those they assigned to this game. Luckily no Reds fans held their breath on that.
Two penalties, one for each side, and obviously both sets of fans will differ on the fairness of them, but there were a few incidents that raised eyebrows. Jay wonders how Adam Lallana stayed on the pitch, an incident that got much less of a mention than it might have done had it been the other way round, but as Jim points out, PGMOL have made their own rules up on how VAR should be enforced, which is essentially making it toothless.
After the game Mo Salah made a point of stopping to speak to reporters as the players headed to board the team bus, letting it be known that he could be on his way soon, because he doesn’t want to retire but he hasn’t got a club for next season, at least as it stands. “We are almost in December, and I haven't received any offers yet to stay in the club,” he told reporters.
Obviously, football isn’t the only game players have to play when contracts are up for renewal, and as Jim explains in the podcast, the wording of what Salah said is important, and it’s more likely that his agent is yet to receive an offer he feels is worth putting in front of the player. If it did turn out there was no offer from the club to keep him, after spending no money in the summer, there’d be mutiny amongst fans. As Jay predicts, there are some big games coming up at Anfield where the volume will be loud, and fans will make it clear how important it is that the club do what’s needed to hang onto Mo, not to mention Virgil.
Trent won’t be involved against the club the rumours keep linking him too, but he’s also close to being able to talk to other clubs.
Coverage ahead of that game, against Real Madrid, is already including talk of the Spanish side being down a number of key players, much like the talk about Man City and Arsenal. Liverpool had two keepers on the bench on Sunday, a sign of the lack of options available to Slot, and are missing first-choice players in the shape of Alisson, Trent and Jota, not to mention some of the players that might rotate in to rest the legs of the others. Yet we don’t seem to hear about that when the rest of the media talks about injuries.
As for the Real Madrid game itself, Jim points to how different this one is to past meetings. This isn’t a vital group game, it definitely isn’t a final, and the Reds are top of the elongated league table. So, does give this the Reds a chance to play this fixture without the obvious nerves that have been on show the last couple of times they met?
Jay goes one step further, saying that with such a huge game coming up after it, Man City at home in the Premier League on Sunday, Slot would do well to use it as an opportunity to prepare for that. Harvey Elliott made the squad but not the pitch on Sunday, could this be a time for him to get a run out?
Plenty to discuss as always, because this is Liverpool.
