Daniel’s Debrief: LASK 1-3 Liverpool

Sometimes you come out of a game with mixed emotions, drinking a cocktail made of questions and answers in equal measure.

What we see tonight is another reminder of how good Liverpool’s big names are - Dominik Szoboszlai, Mohamed Salah, Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz. We also see though a number of players who aren’t at that level and it’s perhaps a reminder that Jurgen Klopp’s ‘second team’ is named as such for a reason.

He makes eleven changes but with Virgil Van Dijk, Ibrahima Konate, Ryan Gravenberch, Diaz and Nunez all starting, it’s arguable that despite the full changes, he names five of Liverpool’s strongest eleven.

The major surprise, really, was Stefan Bajcetic at right-back, playing the inverted wing-back role. I’m still not a big fan of this system really and I think it’s baffling that in two consecutive games now without Trent Alexander-Arnold, Klopp has deployed Joe Gomez and Bajcetic in such a specialist and bespoke role. It’s no slight at all on Gomez or Bajcetic to say that if we insist on playing this way, then it should be exclusively when Alexander-Arnold is playing.

It’s another really sluggish start, just like Wolves, Newcastle and Bournemouth. Some sloppy passing early on. A lack of intensity swathed through the team and there needed to be a far greater degree of urgency and professionalism, because it felt like a group of players who’d expected to be able to just rock up and win, because it’s the Europa League.

I can live with the goal. It’s a worldie strike from Florian Flecker and it’s similar to Szoboszlai’s against Villa. What I can’t accept though, is the pathetically cheap concession of the corner from Konate that leads to the goal.

You’d like Liverpool to respond well to the atmosphere and to the strong start by their hosts but there’s not even a sniff of it. Gravenberch gets himself into some nice advanced positions but is a little shy with his pass selection, while Harvey Elliott - who I have raved about from the bench in recent weeks - struggles to make any impact at all with a performance he’ll be personally disappointed with. Though, I do like seeing Elliott encourage and comfort a frustrated Gravenberch late on in the half when a pass goes astray.

Wataru Endo though, Jesus. I don’t want to slaughter the guy but he’s started twice now - at Newcastle and here at LASK, and looked so, so far out of his depth on both occasions. It’s okay to struggle at Newcastle, but I was hoping he’d lead an inexperienced midfield and offer solid protection to the back four, but he was all over the gaff.

His biggest issue is pace, everything he does looks slow and laboured. There’s no pace to how he takes the ball on the turn and he struggles against a lively and athletic LASK midfield. 

Despite Endo resembling something of a semi-pro lad being dropped into the big time, he’s by no means Liverpool’s worst performer. 

That award goes, by some considerable distance, to Kostas Tsimikas.

It’s his third season at the club. It’s kind of make-or-break for him in that Andy Robertson is starting to show an increase in form, and Tsimikas is likely to get a fair bit of gametime with the Europa League here, and you’d like to think he sees the opportunity to really stake his claim.

If he sees it, he doesn’t take it.

It’s a hideous individual performance. If you’d been told he was drunk, you’d have believed it. If you’d have been told he’d won his place on the back of a cereal box, you’d have believed it. If you’d been told he was drunk and won his place on the back of a cereal box, you’d have believed it.

Liverpool have a great chance to level late on in the first half when Tsimikas finds himself with options ahead of him after a LASK corner is cleared but he somehow fails to find either of Diaz or Nunez and instead just runs into traffic. Baffling stuff.

Nunez sees a close-range header miraculously saved by Tobias Lawal but that’s about as good as it gets in a really poor first half, just as it was at Molineux on Saturday. 

It’s disjointed, extremely scrappy and lacking any quality or cohesion. This is what can happen when you make wholesale changes and pick a team that have never played together before. It often gets underestimated how important combinations, fluidity, systems and familiarity are.

Caoimhin Kelleher is one of Liverpool’s underrated performers on the night, though, and makes a few decent saves in both halves and doesn’t have a chance for the goal. One of his best attributes is how calm he is. That’s such a value to have in a modern-day goalkeeper, and almost entirely the reason Mikel Arteta has signed David Raya and now replaced Aaron Ramsdale. 

There’s a minor improvement at the start of the second half and some good combination play between Elliott and Bajcetic, who really squared to Nunez, results in a slightly fortuitous penalty award when Diaz is collided with after shooting. Nunez slots the penalty away with aplomb.

Changes come with Gomez going to right-back and the midfield being bolstered with Alexis Mac Allister and Szoboszlai joining Gravenberch, replacing Endo, Bajcetic and Doak - Elliott moving wide, where he does better.

The improvement is pretty much instant. Superb hold-up play from Nunez who feeds Elliott. It’s then his best moment of the game when he finds Gravenberch, and it’s a neat cross for Diaz to smash home. 

Easy to forget that Kelleher makes a superb save with his foot half a minute prior.

From 2-1 up, Liverpool control the game well and never look under threat. Gravenberch’s first start is brought to an early halt with cramp but that gives Mohamed Salah fifteen minutes, and it’s about as close as you can come to bringing on a goal.

He is electric. I think he’ll get a few of these cameos in the group stages and maybe even the odd start. You don’t have to worry about injuries or fatigue with him and he’ll want to play. 

What a goal. Unbelievable goal. Deft, delicate and subtle. Such technique. He’ll have a lot of fun in these games, Salah. He’s the only player in our squad who scores that goal.

So, an ultimately comfortable win in the end to start the group stage. Some concerns though over how bad the first 45 minutes were and how few of the fringe players impressed.

I’ve not really mentioned Ben Doak, who wasn’t really involved in the game as much as I’d have liked - not his fault though, why weren’t we playing any balls in behind to a front three with the pace of Doak, Nunez and Diaz? 

I like that he’s a natural winger. He gets to the byline really, really well. You know what though, I suspect his long-term future will be on the left though, with such an emphasis placed on inverted wingers these days.

The comeback kids? Four of the last five games have seen Liverpool go 1-0 down before coming back to win. Bournemouth, and particularly Newcastle and Wolves, were based on the character, quality and mentality of the team. This was based on a lower standard of opposition and an inevitability, given the players brought on.

Szoboszlai, for example, was a cheat code. Ludicrously good half an hour from him. I’d like to think that’s the last he sees of this competition until March but the truth is I think there’ll be some more cameos like that to come.

Two home games next up in this competition and two wins would virtually seal qualification at the halfway stage. This was always likely to be the hardest of the six games and it’s been ticked off now. 

Liverpool can get through this group playing a scratch team. But they can’t win the competition by doing so. 

Daniel