Daniel’s Debrief: Liverpool 0-0 Manchester United

Exactly what I feared.

A United side that is so low on confidence and numbers - missing Harry Maguire, Casemiro, Lisandro Martinez and Bruno Fernandes - comes to Anfield with a distinct plan.

To park the bus, be solid and look to hit Liverpool on the counter. Their midfield selection of Scott McTominay, Kobbie Mainoo and Sofyan Amrabat told us that.

Liverpool didn’t have the quality to break United down, or the composure to take the chances they did carve. 

A game which they badly miss Diogo Jota in front of goal and Alexis Mac Allister and Thiago in the middle of the park.

A lightning start from Liverpool in which the tone for the game is set in terms of attack vs defence, but Andre Onana finds himself relatively untroubled in the first half.

Virgil Van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate go close with headers but Liverpool’s best chances are coming from set-pieces and they are creating precious little from open play.

Once United get through the first ten minutes, they come into the game a bit and Liverpool’s momentum is sapped.

The passing is wayward and the interplay is non-existent. Dominik Szoboszlai has a horrendous first half and it is no surprise when he is withdrawn on 60.

It’s been a below-par period for him. He’s played a lot of minutes - some unnecessarily and it’s starting to show. 

What impressed me so much about him in the first part of the season was his ability to influence a game in all thirds across the 90 minutes. 

We know he is the fittest player in the Liverpool team but clearly energy or fatigue is a problem right now as he is having less and less of an effect on games.

He completed the full 90 in his first ten Premier League games, but has done so just once in his last seven outings.

Badly out of form. But he’s not the only one.

Ryan Gravenberch is brought off alongside Szoboszlai after another disappointing performance from him. He has a couple of decent drives in him but periods where he just goes completely missing.

Anyway, he does his hamstring and it’s another body that Liverpool lose.

Wataru Endo is comfortably the best of the midfielders today and is arguably the best player in the team. He wins his battles brilliantly and is fairly useful with the ball too.

Kostas Tsimikas is very good on the left flank and another who does well is Konate. Don’t think he did much wrong all day and puts in his most convincing shift in a while.

A great chance falls to him in the second half when he turns superbly but fires his shot straight at Andre Onana. 

Another good chance comes for substitute Joe Gomez, who fires into the side netting, while Trent Alexander-Arnold’s driven shot pulls up just wide.

Liverpool forge 2.7xG but that is through volume, rather than quality of chances. The few good ones they do create fall to the wrong people.

Mohamed Salah, Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz don’t really have a good chance between them all day.

Salah works hard all day but does what he sometimes does in the big games and tries too hard to make things happen. This was particularly a problem early on, but in the second half he adopts more of a playmaker role and does create some decent opportunities for his team-mates.

A serious conversation needs to be had about both Nunez and Diaz.

The latter hasn’t had a good game in months and just seems completely unthreatening. Diaz’s biggest strength is supposedly his dribbling ability but today he doesn’t complete a single dribble. When you can’t beat Antony or Diogo Dalot, there’s a problem.

He is so predictable to watch, too. Why does he never go to the byline or try and get on the full-back’s outside? He cuts in every single time.

Then there’s his production.

He has scored two goals since mid-September and not registered an assist all season. In all competitions.

There’s a moment in the first half where he looks like he’s going to try and recreate his famous Palace goal from last season but ends up not shooting. 

In the second half, there’s the ludicrous moment where the ball drops for Diaz in the box and he doesn’t shoot, gets it nicked off him, it comes into Nunez’s path, and Nunez stops in his tracks and appeals for a penalty on Diaz.

What is he thinking?

It’s another brainless performance from him, he spends so much of the game offside again and kills so many attacks.

It’s a ten-game drought for Nunez now. Worse than that is that he’s just not having a positive impact on games at all. 

You’re lying to yourself if you’re not having concerns about these two now. We’ve spent £130m on them and right now, they’re hindering the team hugely. It’s December, and they’ve got seven league goals between them.

Nunez is 25 next year and Diaz 27 in three weeks’ time. They should be so much more consistent than they are.

What a damning indictment that at 0-0 when you’re chasing a goal, two forwards are taken off in place of Harvey Elliott and Curtis Jones, midfielders.

They should be embarrassed.

That being said, they keep getting picked because what is Cody Gakpo offering? He comes on from the bench and puts in a woeful cameo that features wild shots and awful ball retention.

I compared him to Kai Havertz at Arsenal a few weeks ago but Havertz has double the number of league goals that Gakpo has.

For someone of such size (1.91m), he is so fucking soft.

In our last ten league games, forwards other than Salah have scored four goals. Two of those are from Jota.

Diaz, Nunez and Gakpo aren’t offering nearly enough right now.

Salah hasn’t been great lately but he, Alisson and Virgil Van Dijk have done a lot of heavy lifting that has helped get Liverpool where they are in the league so far.

Because poor performances like today’s haven’t been anomalous this season, they’ve been regular. More often than not, Liverpool have somehow found a way to win, though that has often been through individual brilliance rather than earning deserved victories.

Van Dijk and Alisson have solid games again. Alisson offers incredible security and despite being untested, the best chance of the game falls to Rasmus Hojlund and he saves very well from close range.

In the other goal, Onana doesn’t make any spectacular saves but does his job. Too many times Liverpool are wasteful in front of goal and too many times they see moves break down - Alexander-Arnold was guilty of some needless Hail Mary plays at times, but did also contribute some high-quality deliveries that weren’t capitalised on.

Raphael Varane is immense for United at the back and it is staggering that Erik Ten Hag has frozen him out for so long because he is still one of the best defenders in Europe.

Jurgen Klopp’s tactics and changes leave a bit to be desired today. Moving to 4-4-2… wouldn’t a wiser choice have been to stick with 4-3-3 and have Alexander-Arnold as a right-sided eight? Putting Jones on the left wing and Gakpo on the right felt unnecessarily complicated.

It’s a result which had probably been coming. Results have been better than performances for a while and that’s not sustainable - in fact I can’t really think of a season like this where the results have superseded the performances so much.

If we’re being real about this, there’s only Villa, West Ham, Spurs, Forest, Brentford where we’ve played well for the full 90 this season. As I say, we’ve been reliant on individual brilliance and elite mentality.

Neither happen today.

So, it’s a result and a performance which adds fuel to the fire of those who don’t think this Liverpool team are ready for a title challenge.

Certainly, they need to be better. I don’t entirely agree with the judgement but I can also see why people are thinking like this.

They need players back and they need more players in form.

It was going to be a huge week at Anfield and it still is. Four points from the United and Arsenal games would’ve been the target, with an eye on six, and four is still achievable.

We’ll have to play considerably better next weekend but Arsenal will come and play football and try to win, which we know Liverpool can play against with more comfort.

So much of what this Liverpool team have done this season has been built on quick transitions that when they come up against a low block like today, they don’t have the pace to break them down.

There’s also Wednesday. Progress in the quarter-final is essential because if we aren’t equipped for a title race - which maybe we’re not - then cups become even more important.

34 shots yet the best chance fell to Hojlund.

Credit to them, they executed their plan brilliantly.

I’ve no idea what Liverpool’s gameplan was. But it didn’t work. 

We could still be playing that game on Wednesday and we wouldn’t have scored.

Daniel