Daniel’s Debrief: Liverpool 4-1 Chelsea

It’s domination.

It’s destruction.

It’s a systematic and ruthless demolition of this Chelsea team. 

It’s Liverpool showing that they’re the best team in Europe right now and producing arguably their best performance of the season.

Both Newcastle games run it close, as does Bournemouth away from a few weeks ago, but this was the team rising to a challenge and making the opposition suffer for 90 minutes.

Chelsea don’t even come close to settling in the game until about 70.

And that’s because of the insatiable and relentless pressure that Liverpool place upon them, time and time again.

I don’t know when we last pressed that well. It’s not in the last four years. It never stopped.

The numbers will tell the story - thirteen times the Reds win the ball in the final third, the highest of any game in the league all season. Liverpool are rabid and Chelsea are forced into submission.

It starts with the attack. All of them post tremendous individual performances but they knit together as a unit so well. It’s not long ago that we were talking about the United and Arsenal games where Liverpool forwards look so disconnected with one another.

But here, they look like Salah-Firmino-Mane, Bale-Benzema-Ronaldo, Messi-Suarez-Neymar, Rooney-Ronaldo-Tevez or Robben-Lewandowski-Ribery.

A trident of forwards that look like they were born to play together. All three of Diogo Jota, Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz have had great Januarys and tonight all are bang on the money again.

Jota. The most intelligent forward around. The biggest criticism of Jota was always that his build-up play was lacking and he was just a poacher.

This season, he has added so much to his game. His link-up play, especially from the right-hand side this month, has been sublime. Everything he does is business, he is so effective.

He wins fouls, he releases people, he nicks in around the corner, he occupies space, he brings others into play. No Liverpool player has improved more than Jota this season.

And then there’s the goal. A typical Diogo Jota goal. A situation where you just know he’s going to score.

Conor Bradley nabs it off Ben Chilwell and drives forward into the empty space before spreading an inch-perfect pass into Jota’s path. It’s so similar to what he does for Nunez’s goal at the weekend.

Jota then shows everything that makes him him. The determination to literally force his way through Thiago Silva and Benoit Badiashile, and then check back onto his left foot and crash it home. 

Granted, he gets the break of the ball, but it’s typical Jota. What a footballer. 

Let’s not ignore Bradley’s contribution to this goal. He is sensational all night long and has been such a revelation since coming into the team in January.

We haven’t missed Trent Alexander-Arnold one bit in the last three weeks which is crazy considering the immense quality of the player we’re talking about.

The Jota goal was Bradley’s fourth assist in ten days and it was about to get a lot better.

Diaz does brilliantly for this goal, by the way. But it’s all about Bradley - another marauding run into that half-space - he’s phenomenal in transition - and it’s as easy as a touch to get it out of his feet, another to set himself and then wrapping his right foot around it, dragging it past Djordje Petrovic.

What a moment. It would’ve been so easy for him to blaze this over the bar or just send a tame effort Petrovic’s way, but Bradley’s single-mindedness is telling. 

His technical ability is so impressive but it’s his defending too - he is so competent at the back and limits Raheem Sterling’s influence on the game. His positional sense is very good.

He has a great first touch that time and time again carries momentum with it, and that’s what makes him so good in transition situations.

Not content with an assist and a goal, he doubles his assist tally with one of the crosses of the season.

Virgil Van Dijk sends an unbelievable switch of play in his direction and Bradley goes on the outside of Badiashile with a few touches and pings in an immaculate cross for Dominik Szoboszlai to head home.

Bradley gets a goal and two assists on the night and the last ten days has seen him rack up a goal and five assists. How he’s stepped up to the plate is one of the stories of the season. 

In he and Jarell Quansah, Liverpool have two youngsters who were in League One last season that are contributing greatly to a table-topping Premier League side.

On Szoboszlai, this is his best performance since October, for me. He is everywhere, you perhaps don’t notice him too much in the game and he doesn’t have many moments - goal aside - that contribute towards Liverpool’s incredible attacking display, but his off-the-ball work borders on the ridiculous.

He does the Georginio Wijnaldum work but with a better engine and a greater technical skillset.

And it’s another Liverpool midfielder scoring a goal with a late run into the box - we’ve seen Curtis Jones make a habit of it lately and it’s such a string to your bow to have.

Van Dijk’s switch, Bradley’s cross and Szoboszlai’s run and header. It’s three moments of the highest quality of execution. This goal is a piece of art and one of my favourites of the season, aesthetically.

The fourth goal is another great team move. It’s a gorgeous, line-splitting pass from Alexis Mac Allister into the feet of Nunez, who rolls Silva and knows exactly what he wants to do here. He pulls wide and gets so much pace and accuracy on his in-swinging cross for Diaz to turn home.

Diaz gives himself every chance here with his chosen technique and he has a very good game. He’s quietly had a very good January, both on the left and right wing, and his rediscovery of form has come at such a good time, with Mohamed Salah at AFCON and now injured.

He gives Axel Disasi a torrid time in the first half and goes inside and out, rides a challenge marvellously for the Bradley goal and is always an outlet on the left, particularly in the first half.

This goal isn’t just about Diaz, it’s the Mac Allister pass and Nunez cross too.

Mac Allister is the best player on the pitch whose name isn’t Conor Bradley, for me. He absolutely runs the show from deep and is terrific in the press.

He makes eight tackles in the game and his positioning is wise enough to allow him to do so. Since he came back from injury at the start of the month, he’s produced his best football for the club so far.

It’s not just his dogged defensive work, it’s how well he’s orchestrating play. Some of his passing and vision, particularly his through balls, are to die for.

The whole game operated around him and remember that Chelsea started with a midfield two of Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez. On the opening day of the season, Fernandez was great against Liverpool and the man of the match that day.

And we all know about the Caicedo story. But it’s a sign of Mac Allister’s development across the season that he runs rings around the both of them here; the man touted as Liverpool’s DM and the man who played alongside Mac Allister as Argentina won the 2022 World Cup.

I’ve touched on Nunez’s assist for the Diaz goal and I’ve managed to get to this point without talking about his collection of near-misses in this game. 

He hits the woodwork on four occasions but to focus on this - a show of desperate misfortune combined with some finishing that was just not quite precise enough - is to detract from everything else that he does in the game.

Nunez is a key part of why Liverpool win this game, how they suffocate Chelsea with their press. After he misses the penalty, he doesn’t have his head down, he keeps going and is just as involved in the second half.

The first one is a good save from Petrovic that comes off the inside of the post, as does the second, the bar. The third is the penalty and the fourth is a downward header from Andy Robertson’s cross that just isn’t downward enough.

He’s a combined 20cm from coming away with four goals but he leaves the stadium with none. He sends Petrovic the wrong way for the penalty and the wise-after-the-event suggestions that he shouldn’t be taking it are strange considering that’s his first ever penalty miss, and that he’s the only Liverpool player other than Salah to score a penalty since November 2022.

It’s his performances that have been so eye-catching and so noticeable in a January that has seen him get three goals and four assists - so it’s hardly been a measly month. He, Jota and Diaz have stepped up so much in Salah’s absence.

And he does something tonight that I’ve never seen anyone do, ever. He makes Thiago Silva actually look 39.

Curtis Jones is wonderful in midfield again, no-one does his role quite as well as he does and Liverpool are a much better team when he’s in it. His pressing and ability to retain the ball are so crucial to games like this and Newcastle where the Reds just slaughter the opposition with their intensity.

Jones is the intensity.

Words too for Ibrahima Konate and Virgil Van Dijk. Konate has really gone up a notch since the Joel Matip injury - prior to then, Matip was getting picked ahead of him but Konate is one of the most in-form defenders in Europe right now.

Van Dijk gets very lucky with the award of no penalty from Paul Tierney for Christopher Nkunku in the second half but is imperious otherwise in both defending and passing departments.

Joe Gomez continues at left-back and it should be no surprise that Andy Robertson stays on the bench because Gomez’s form is top-class.

He’s robust almost to point of being seemingly unbeatable in one-v-ones at the back and is developing as a playmaker too, stepping into midfield and inverting and operating in a double pivot with Mac Allister.

It’s working really well for the balance of the team having a natural, flying full-back in Bradley and a more conservative, inverted one in Gomez.

Alexander-Arnold and Robertson have got huge fights on their hands to get back in the team ahead of these two for Sunday.

In fact, when they, as well as Harvey Elliott and Cody Gakpo come on, despite all being bright, there’s a bit of a settling period where Nkunku gets the goal where everyone momentarily switches off and then the penalty appeal soon after. Four subs at once may be one too many and I doubt we’ll see that again.

Chelsea have four shots on the night and peril doesn’t really exist for Liverpool in the game. Cole Palmer is one of the most in-form players in the league but you end up barely registering that he plays, while Caicedo and Fernandez, both of whom Liverpool wanted, are given a torrid time by Mac Allister, Szoboszlai and Jones.

That midfield is so clearly Liverpool’s strongest. Thiago being back would question that statement but these three operate so effectively together.

Things have moved on since the first game of the season where these two sides looked evenly matched. Chelsea have flattered to deceive while Liverpool have become the best team in Europe.

I was worried about January. 

They had three tough-looking league fixtures in Newcastle, Bournemouth and Chelsea. Won them all, scored four in them all.

They had a League Cup semi-final. Job done and they’ve just thrashed their Wembley opponents too.

They had a horrid FA Cup third round tie at Arsenal. Won there and they cruised through the fourth round as well.

This January could’ve been what broke this team’s season, especially without Salah and Wataru Endo, as well as those who’ve been out injured, but instead they’ve had their best period of the season and now look ahead to a February that starts with Arsenal and ends with a cup final.

This was the best performance of the season, in my opinion. It was what they do to Arsenal at home in 2021/22, or Man City in 2019/20. It was as good as anything from the Klopp era, especially the first half.

To me, particularly in the pressing, it felt like the most complete performance of the season and the coming of age of this team.

Daniel