Liverpool return to ugly, winning ways against Brighton

Liverpool weren’t at their best against Brighton on Saturday, but they came away with three points all the same.

Liverpool’s win against Brighton on Saturday wasn’t pretty. Their only goal came from a penalty. Mohamed Salah barely touched the ball until the second half. Trent Alexander-Arnold may or may not have been playing injured. For a long time it seemed like the main takeaway would be that Jordan Henderson is fond of playing first-time passes to his center-backs. It was, in other words, not so dissimilar to most of the Reds’ season so far.

There were two basic readings of the first three and a half months of Liverpool’s 2018-19: Either they were grinding out wins at an unsustainable rate based on the quality of their performances, and would soon start dropping points, or they were winning despite not playing particularly well, and would soon start cruising, rather than fighting, through games. The smart money seemed to be on the former.

Then came December, when they won all seven of their league games by a combined score of 21-3. They failed to score multiple goals only once, against Everton (when their xG was 3.08), and scored three or more goals five times. Add in three losses for Manchester City (praise be to Andros Townsend), and an eight-point swing in the table, and it’s hard to remember a better month for the club in recent history. Perhaps the latter reading was correct after all.

This being Liverpool, however, such anti-drama simply will not stand, and so a Jan. 3 loss at the Etihad happily restored a sense of weapons-grade anxiety to what had seemed, for a very brief moment, like it was shaping up to be a disturbingly easy run to the title. Whether Jurgen Klopp considers the FA Cup a needless distraction or not, the loss to Wolves on Monday further underlined the pressure that comes with leading the title race, something Liverpool have failed to handle twice in the past decade.

And so once again, with City resurgent and the Reds out of adult center-backs, we were left to wonder what kind of team this season’s Liverpool really are. Saturday’s win suggested an answer that was both obvious and (presumably) deeply troubling to any Kopites who hope to complete this season without having to buy new underwear: the same kind of team they have been for the majority of the season so far.

They’re a team, for all their attacking talent, whose best and most important player seems quite clearly (at least from where I’m sitting) to be their star central defender. They’re a team who started Henderson and Georginio Wijnaldum in central midfield and left Naby Keita on the bench against Brighton, and whose first substitution in the same game was to bring James Milner on for Xherdan Shaqiri. They’re an excellent team — possibly even more than excellent — but they aren’t going to make this easy.

The Brighton game was the first in a very winnable run for Klopp’s side. Their next four fixtures are home against Crystal Palace and Leicester, away to West Ham and then back to Anfield to face Bournemouth.

These are not must-wins in the way Cardiff’s trip to Huddersfield in August was a must-with. They’re must-wins in the way that City could very well win their next 17 matches, meaning Liverpool can afford to drop only three points if they’re to win the title. With an away trip to Manchester United and home games against Tottenham and Chelsea still to come, dropped points against non-big-six sides are a luxury Liverpool almost certainly can’t afford.

All of which is to say, if you found the final minutes at the Amex hard going, strap in.