Liverpool made things much harder on themselves than they needed to be with a slow and sloppy start, gifting Villarreal two goals and only really getting going when they were two behind and thirty minutes had passed. In the end, though, they got where they wanted to go and finished the night with a hard-fought victory and three more Champions League points, although they once again got sloppy and sloppy at the end, allowing Villarreal to make things nervy.
It wasn’t perfect at the time, far from it, in fact, but when it counted he showed resilience and determination, and given that’s not something we could ever really say about the Reds last season, we’ll get the win and move on. Let’s dig into it…
Rio Ngumoha
Rio seemed to have understood the need to play on the right and gave left-back Sergi Cardona a hard time from the opening whistle. For at least the first thirty minutes, he was Liverpool’s best player on the pitch, launching constant dangerous raids and forcing Villarreal to double and even triple their defense to stop him even as Liverpool as a whole looked far from their best.
Coming wide from the right, he equalized Araujo in stoppage time from a scrambled corner, and as the game progressed he never stopped causing Liverpool’s La Liga opponents difficulty down the flank. It took a minute, but it seems that training to play on the right wing doesn’t just help Rio get used to playing on the right wing: it helps him develop and makes him a better player.
Alexis MacAllister
Ngumoha also set up Mac Allister’s second goal of the night, with a memorable Ronald Araujo header sandwiched in the middle and their fourth courtesy of Florian Wirtz. To focus on Macca, though, his two goals were the kind of scrappy, close-range conversions you’d expect from the Argentine when he’s at his fighting best.
It may be unknown how much improved he looks under Andoni Iraola in a more front-foot system, and so far the focus has been on Cody Gakpo’s revival, but if Macca can start to pop with a few more goals like tonight’s, his improved overall game will attract plenty of attention.
Virgil van Dijk
On the less positive side of things tonight, no one let the Reds down sooner than their captain. Iraola embraced the rotation, but rather than a struggling youngster or fringe player, it was stalwart Van Dijk who let the team down with a lazy, sloppy header in the vague direction of Alisson that instead landed in the path of Villarreal’s Georges Mikautadze, who gratefully recovered and headed home.
It wasn’t the captain’s only mistake in the opening minutes either, and it helped give the Reds a completely unnecessary hill to climb. Liverpool eventually managed to climb it in the end, and Van Dijk certainly looked better as the match progressed. Still, it was remarkable (and rather worrying) how much of a liability he was in the beginning.
Speaking of rotation, Liverpool were playing their fourth game in ten days, and Andoni Iraola continues to embrace rotation in a somewhat surprising way. Not in a negative sense, it should be noted. But he is a manager who has rarely had to manage more than 40 games per season. He has never led a top-flight team that has gone past 50.
One of the big question marks when he was hired was how he was going to handle suddenly having to play two games a week, every week, as well as the risk of attrition leading to a depleted, likely injured team in the new year. The answer to that question was rotation, rotation and more rotation.
Lewis Koumas was back in the nine in place of Alexander Isak, Cody Gakpo returned to the left wing in place of Bradley Barcola, Trey Nyoni started in midfield with Dominik Szoboszlai unavailable and Florian Wirtz on the bench, Kostas Tsimikas was at left back in place of Milos Kerkez.
None, with the possible exception of Nyoni, have seemed obvious or predictable, and perhaps it’s worth recognizing that they may not all have performed as Iraola might have hoped, but it’s clear that he believes in rotating his players in a way that you rarely see from a manager until they’ve put their starters on the ground and paid the price repeatedly.
“Last year was a really difficult year for all of us. It’s clear I wasn’t at my level and I’m the first to say that. Something was wrong in the group but the manager came and changed it, and that’s what’s important. The way we play now is quite different, and I don’t like to compare but I feel good now and we’ll see what happens.”
For the first time since club football returned following the September international break, the Reds will have more than two days off before their next match, with a full four-day break before the Reds face Brighton at Anfield on Sunday. Next up, it’s Chelsea in the League Cup at Anfield before Arsenal come to town to end an unprecedented run of four consecutive home games.
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