Liverpool should give up on Moises Caicedo transfer and sign Chelsea’s Conor Gallagher instead
Chelsea 1-1 Liverpool (Disasi 37′ | Diaz 18′)
For half an hour Liverpool owned west London. Thereafter they handed the keys back to Chelsea, and until a raft of substitutions later in the game Liverpool had no idea where they were. So dishevelled were they, it is difficult to properly assess the merits of either team, save for highlighting the imbalance of the Reds’ midfield and the sense of purpose instilled in the Blues.
In the latter regard, Mauricio Pochettino demonstrated his immediate influence. Whatever qualities his players might lack, each player knew his role and delivered it with a sense of unity that Graham Potter was unable to engender. With so many new additions to the Chelsea squad since his arrival in May that takes some doing, and if you were to identify a player that embodied this new will to power it would be the indefatigable Conor Gallagher.
The young Englishman is the opposite of the more visible Enzo Fernandez. He has few stand-out attributes, but what he lacks in flair he makes up with energy and drive. He is the epitome of no-frills simplicity, the kind of player few pay to see but every manager wants in his team. He tracks, tackles and spoils with a primal fury, breaking up play and resetting his team.
It all looks a bit agricultural and cluttered in moments of stress but by increments you begin to see the sense of him, which is basically to act as a battery-powered domestique to Fernandez, allowing the Argentine World Cup winner to set the tempo with his range of passing, and give licence to wingbacks Reece James and Ben Chilwell to hare forward.
In the opening exchanges it was another Argentinian who caught the eye. Deployed in a deeper role than he occupies for his country Alexis Mac Allister slipped seamlessly into the gap left by Fabinho. It is not a natural position for him and ultimately that became a problem as he was increasingly drawn upfield to compensate for the strangely ineffective Cody Gakpo, who had nil influence on this contest.
In that first 30 minutes, Dominik Szoboszlai did not look like a downgrade on Jordan Henderson, working tirelessly to feed the supply to Luis Diaz and Mo Salah. It was the interchangeability of Mac Allister and Szoboszlai that Chelsea so struggled to contain, with the latter’s ability to break forward at pace a singular menace. In the false-nine role Diogo Jota could have been Bobby Firmino, so good was he at dropping into pockets to thread the play.
In this period Salah was at his waspish best, ever alert to the half chance and utterly ruinous for Chelsea when freed down the right. His pass for the opener was vintage, cutting inside and picking the moment to release the ball so that the pass fell perfectly into the lunging stride of Diaz. The goal might be seen as a celebration of the pass from Mac Allister that set Salah away, a sweeping, intuitive laser that sliced Chelsea wide open.
Had Salah not fallen a fraction the wrong side of the Chelsea line the game might have been up for the Blues. In an act of extreme impishness Salah tormented Robert Sanchez with a sumptuous dink, only to have his strike erased by VAR. At that moment it was impossible to imagine that Salah would be ripping off the armband in petulant despair after being replaced by Harvey Elliott.
The Blues were rewarded for the intensity of their response. The equaliser was fittingly ugly, a repelled corner returned to the box more in hope for Axel Disasi – a composite of the modern defender – to smash Chelsea level.
On the touchline Mauricio Pochettino threatened to burst through the seams of his impeccably cut suit, the celebration a show of relief as much as joy. Klopp will have learned more from the way the game ran away from Liverpool than how it started, his team losing shape and belief under pressure.
Inevitably Trent Alexander-Arnold falls under the microscope. He started off in a conventional right-back role before drifting across the line and stepping into midfield. This seemed to be at a cost to Liverpool’s defensive organisation. The space allowed Disasi would have embarrassed a school team.
The greater and related issue for Jürgen Klopp was the absence of a defensive midfield anchor, someone like Gallagher in fact. Maybe he should give Gallagher a call, the player most likely to be looking for work when the great Moises Caicedo is unveiled. He would be a deal cheaper too.
