Daniel’s Debrief: Tottenham 2-1 Liverpool

I saw a film. I like a good sports film. It was all about two football teams and this crazy referee guy and how the game gets changed by the officials. Load of shit. Extremely unrealistic in every way and scarcely believable.

Wouldn’t recommend.

Imagine my shock when it turned out this film was not a work of wild fantastical fiction but the live broadcast of a real Premier League fixture.

I’ve been sat staring at my notes for a good few minutes, thinking about how to open this piece. Typing something and then deleting it, and then repeat. 

It’s our first loss for nearly six months (April 1st at City) and it’s weird that in some ways, it feels like the most crushing and painful defeat I’ve ever felt, and in other ways it doesn’t feel like a loss in the slightest, because of the immense pride and respect I feel for my team.

I said after Leicester that the next two League games will tell us a lot about where Liverpool are at and where they might be going.

In my mind, a loss here wasn’t terminal but would temper expectations a bit and affirm that we are a top 4 side, rather than a title one.

What actually happens is we lose the game and yet I feel more confident than before in this Liverpool team.

The circumstances are ridiculous, preposterous, unheard of, once-in-a-lifetime stuff. Use whatever adjective you like. There’s plenty of them.

You know what else there’s plenty of. Balls. 

This team have got balls of steel.

And they show that for 96 minutes here. Because of the madness that follows, (and don’t worry, because boy will I get to that) I think it gets forgotten how well both teams start this game. Both Spurs and Liverpool show their bravery, courage and commitment to attractive football in a 25-minute opening period that showcases two teams playing risky, confident and exciting football in tight spaces and going toe-to-toe.

Joe Gomez and Mohamed Salah make very bright starts to the game and Spurs’ midfield, particularly Yves Bissouma, look to take control of the game. It’s a lightning start to a Premier League fixture that shapes up to be one of the most exciting in a long time.

And then, it all changes in a flash. Curtis Jones is booked for a foul on Bissouma when he slips and his foot goes over the ball. A yellow is a fair call. Simon Hooper is sent to look at the incident and for some godforsaken reason, is only shown a still image and then a slow-mo replay. At no point does he get to see the incident in full speed.

For the purposes of comparison, its worth saying that I think Alexis Mac Allister’s foul and Luis Diaz’s elbow on Cristian Romero are worse offences than this.

It looks bad on stills and slow-mos. The yellow is upgraded to a red. Awful, awful decision for me.

That alone would’ve been bad enough.

What transpires from here on in makes that look like child’s play.

Because Liverpool had done well until that point and had chances through Cody Gakpo and Andy Robertson, both of which were well saved by Guglielmo Vicario. Then, a gorgeous pass from Mohamed Salah has Diaz in. 

It’s a great finish. Rifled cutely into the bottom corner of the far post. Vicario doesn’t have a chance. Power and placement from Diaz. And Liverpool are 1-0 up.

Wait, what? That was offside? Are you sure? Okay, fair enough. Let’s get that checked on VAR then.

Huh, that doesn’t look offside to me. Maybe another angle will show it. Maybe the lines will prove me wrong.

Hang on, that was quick? Where’s the lines? Where’s the other angles?

The breakdown in communication between Hooper and the VAR is staggering. VAR are under the impression that the goal has been given (presumably not noticing that Liverpool players aren’t celebrating) and so confirm that the on-field decision - which they believe to be a goal - as correct.

VAR thought they were awarding the goal.

Hooper receives the information that the on-field decision is correct and on we go.

Could the VAR really not have intervened as soon as it was clear there’d been a miscommunication? Are we really, really supposed to accept this horseshit?

Heung-Min Son scores a well-crafted opener and with a goal down, a man down and a goal wrongly chalked off (or awarded, depending on your point of view), you’d forgive Liverpool for feeling sorry for themselves, imploding and going on to get arseholed by a good Tottenham team.

That doesn’t happen. This group of players and manager are much stronger than that. They dig in and resist Spurs’ initial pressure and then carve an equaliser. A superb ball from Dominik Szoboszlai is won well by Virgil Van Dijk, who guides it into the path of Cody Gakpo. The forward turns and shoots past Vicario and Liverpool are deservedly level at the break.

Sadly, this is Gakpo’s final contribution to the game as injury curtails his afternoon. Whilst I think he’s had a sluggish start to the season, all three of his goals (Wolves, Leicester and Spurs) have come at 1-0 down and you wonder whether he’s going to become one of those players who has a knack of scoring big goals.

Salah plays yet another wonder ball through to Diaz in the final act of the first half but Diaz’s connection with it is minimal and it goes wide.

Liverpool do remarkably well. At 11 v 10 they actually look the more threatening team. Do you know how incredible that is?

We’ve scored four goals with ten men this season - Diogo Jota against Bournemouth, Darwin Nunez twice at Newcastle and Gakpo here. It’s actually five if you include Diaz’s, which, to reiterate, the VAR awarded as a goal.

There’s some real mettle in this Liverpool team.

Again, the Reds start the second half in fine fashion, Jota on for Gakpo now, and continue to resist Spurs, while having their own moments on the counter. This is marvellous stuff from Jurgen Klopp’s team.

Alisson Becker makes two terrific saves in quick succession; first an outreached right hand to James Maddison’s curling shot, then two hands to tip over Son’s powerful volley. The. Best. In. The. World.

Joel Matip and Virgil Van Dijk are imperious at the back while Gomez and Andy Robertson are having fine games. Mac Allister is crowded in the first half but is one of the best on the pitch after the break. I don’t know what you want me to say about Szoboszlai any more. Salah’s effort and shift up top is heroic.

There’s a four-minute period between 65 and 69 where Hooper certifies this as the worst refereeing performance to ever darken Liverpool’s door.

First, Salah wins the ball back from Bissouma. It’s a good win from Salah and it’s him against Vicario. We’ll never know what would’ve happened from this point because Hooper inexplicably blows the whistle because he thinks Salah has fouled Bissouma. Salah, apoplectic with the decision, launches the ball away and is booked.

Fucking hysterical scenes, these.

Two minutes later, Jota is booked when chasing Destiny Udogie back and the Italian, who looks like a very good left-back, by the way, falls over. He slips on a wet surface, just as Robertson and Mac Allister had done in the first half. There was, and I cannot stress this enough, zero contact from Jota.

Yet the yellow card is out like a fucking flash. He couldn’t wait to book him. It’s not even a foul, for Christ’s sake. He doesn’t even tackle him.

A minute later, and it’s a rash, brainless tackle from Jota. It’s a second yellow and he’s off. This is about the only thing that Hooper gets right all day long. But the fact is, Jota being sent off was another joke of a red card as the first yellow was so hilariously wrong.

Nine men. Nine.

Scarcely believable. Two players sent off for absolute bullshit in the space of forty minutes.

We’ve had four red cards in the first eight games of the season, and three of them have been utter bollocks. What is actually going on here? What on earth are the chances of that? 

At the point of the Jota red card, the game is over as far as I’m concerned and it’s about damage limitation in terms of the scoreboard. Try and maintain some respectability about the result and manage the goal difference as much as possible.

Basically, if we concede less than four goals in this next twenty minutes, we’ll take that.

The last time I can remember a team being reduced to nine with so much time remaining is Ajax at Chelsea in the Champions League in 2019. Erik Ten Hag’s team were 4-1 up when they had Daley Blind and Joel Veltman sent off with twenty minutes left. They ended up drawing 4-4 and it was widely considered that Ajax had done well to maintain dignity and not lose the game, conceding just three times with the nine men.

So what Liverpool do from here on in with their nine is other-worldly levels of heroism.

Klopp brings on Wataru Endo, Ibrahima Konate, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Ryan Gravenberch and essentially goes to a 3-5-0 system. 

Tottenham barely create a thing. The Reds are so wonderfully disciplined and smart and don’t give them any needless opportunities. 

On a few occasions, Liverpool actually make forays into Spurs’ half. Do you have any idea how phenomenal that is that Liverpool can still be a bit of a threat with only nine men?

Szoboszlai does superbly to win a corner, and yet Hooper comes back for a foul on the halfway line. There’s another one later on where Gravenberch has open space ahead of him with the ball and the useless moron comes back for an earlier foul.

Dejan Kulusevski, the best player in Tottenham’s squad for my money, is awarded a corner when the ball so clearly comes off his pink boot. 

And this is the thing. Even without considering the three game-altering decisions of two extremely harsh red cards and a factually incorrect disallowed goal, this was a diabolical refereeing performance from Hooper.

We cling on. And cling on. Minutes pass by and feel like hours. It gets to about 85 and I’m starting to think, “Jesus, could we actually hold on here?”

The effort, intelligence and work that Liverpool put in is special. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

We’ve seen probably the two biggest efforts, best and most gutsy performances of the Klopp era in the last four weeks.

Klopp said that Newcastle was bigger than Barcelona. I think this, in terms of the shift that everyone puts in, is even better.

Nine men. Away from home at a very good side. Having had anything and everything go against you.

Nine men. No room for error. Not the slightest little snicket of margin for mistake or a tiny lapse in concentration. Every single movement has to be perfectly calculated and executed.

How exhausting and draining must that be?

They get through until 90+6 minutes.

Sadly, it goes in. Matip connects with the Kulusevski cross and it’s in. And he’d been immense as well.

Never mind though. Not an ounce of blame or responsibility is on Joel Matip there. A Liverpool legend who puts in another beast of a performance.

I tell you, every single one of our players, apart from Jota, is a 10/10 there. And I mean that wholeheartedly.

I’m so unbelievably proud of every single one of them. For their spirit, their heart and their quality in the most disgraceful of circumstances.

This season’s team revel in adversity. And their responses have been that of a champion side every single time.

If you’re going on Thursday, give them every bit of applause and love that they deserve. Cheer Joel Matip’s name when the lineups are read out. 

It’s cruel on Liverpool and it’s cruel on him. But, as hard as it is to accept this right now, a 2-1 defeat when you’ve played for 40 minutes with ten men, and then 30 minutes with nine, away from home at a top team, is an effort that should be talked about for decades to come.

The officiating is on its sorry arse in this country. The best League, players, managers and fanbases and yet the worst officiating anywhere in Europe. 

I’m not so insular as to think this is all about Liverpool, by the way. There’s atrocious refereeing decisions in the Premier League, Championship and below week after week, and all teams both benefit and suffer because of them. I don’t really like the ‘evens itself out’ argument because I think it’s highly reductive.

But it does feel like Liverpool have been on the receiving end of some stinkers this season. Four red cards - three of which are wrong. So to be where we are in the league with the adversity we’ve faced so far is extremely good.

No opposition player has been sent off against Liverpool for two yellows since Sadio Mane for Southampton in October 2015. Jota gets sent off for two yellows when one of them isn’t even a foul.

Simon Hooper then. The worst performer on the field this season and in possibly any season. I want to keep this away from personal stuff. He might have a wife or husband, he might have a mum or dad, he might have children. He might be the nicest guy in the world. 

But, he is clearly fucking abysmal at refereeing football. Dropped to the Championship after the Andre Onana incident in United/Wolves, he returns and soon serves this shite up.

They go on and on about respect. We’ve got to respect the referees. We’ve got to respect the officials. But the thing is, you’ve got to earn respect, by being trustworthy and being respectable.

They can’t earn the respect they so desperately crave by being competent and capable at their jobs so instead they try and command it by being disciplinarians, military-style. By carding, fining, warning or banning anyone who has the temerity and the audacity to question or challenge the untouchables, who we must bow down to at every opportunity.

Yeah, fuck off. You want respect? You can earn it by stopping fucking teams over week on week. This is not about Liverpool. Liverpool have been beneficiaries of it before, actually.

But yesterday was another level of scandalous. What happened yesterday has got to be the catalyst for change. We need a root and branch review and dissection of everything to do with the officiating.

This has got to be the turning point now. Yesterday has got to be Frank Lampard’s ‘goal’ for England against Germany in the South Africa World Cup 2010 that eventually brought about goal line technology.

I don’t want apologies, statements and admissions from PGMOL. That makes no use to us whatsoever. It’s genuinely astonishing that VAR don’t communicate with the referee that there’s obviously been a misunderstanding. It would’ve taken seconds. 

VAR was supposed to be foolproof, supposed to eliminate human error. Yet we have them having to come out and apologise for… human error.

Choose whatever emotion you feel. I’m currently choosing proudness at the fortitude and quality that Liverpool show, in their most gutsy and brave performance of the Klopp era, that doesn’t get the rewards it so deserves.

I don’t begrudge Tottenham their win and their celebrations. They have a young, likeable team and Ange Postecoglou is a breath of fresh air. Building around young players like Mickey Van de Ven, Vicario, Udogie and Kulusevski is good to see and they have still got Rodrigo Bentancur, one of the league’s most underrated midfielders, to come back from injury.

I think they’ve got a chance of top 4. But I think Liverpool have got a chance of more than that. It’s a loss, our first loss since exactly six months ago today, but if we can do that with ten and nine men away from home at a good side, then this side has got both the skill and the mentality required to compete in any circumstances.

Liverpool made one hell of a statement there.

And it’s a far more interesting and meaningful one than PGMOL’s.

Daniel