Spurs’ utter commitment to their brand of nonsense continues to strike brave new ground, with the irredeemable Angeballers having now scored 10 goals across their last three home games yet been soundly beaten in two of those games and had an alarmingly impressive stab at losing the other. Liverpool, meanwhile, are galloping gleefully towards the title despite towards the end allowing themselves to be dragged ever so slightly down to their opponent’s level.
But while it’s tempting to make this all about Spurs – because let’s face it, everything is in fact always about Spurs – we really must start with Liverpool.
It’s easy – and fun, and we’ll get there, we promise – to get distracted by the sheer relentless p*ss-take clown-car efforts of Spurs, both in the way they barely even competed in this match and in the ‘entertaining’ way they finally got involved long after it was all over, but for the first 35 minutes or so here Liverpool were close to perfection.
Liverpool struck a perfect balance. The eye is naturally drawn to the speed and zip of the attacking play. Of the patterns of Salah and Alexander-Arnold and Luis Diaz, of the string-pulling of Dominic Szoboszlai, a man who spent 90 minutes here seemingly not fully believing his luck in finding himself, once again, 30-odd yards from goal with no opponent within 10 yards of him.
They scored twice in that blistering 40-minute onslaught and could have had twice that at least. They had 10 shots in the first half-hour; Spurs, for all their belated involvement as an attacking threat after the contest was over, managed only nine across the 90.
That Spurs number perhaps points to what was truly the most impressive thing about Liverpool in that opening spell, the element that has perhaps even more relevance for future games against less proudly and determinedly unserious football teams: the way that Spurs frontline was shut down.
Salah and co. dominating a defence containing one-fifth of its first-choice components and in which the only halfway reassuring presence is provided by an 18-year-old, playing out of position, who a month ago had never started a Premier League game really isn’t a great surprise.
But the speed with which Spurs were squeezed out and run over when they did vernture up the pitch was immense. The ease with which Spurs’ rare attacks in that time were not just halted unfussily but used as launchpads for another swift counter-attack was stunning to watch.
Spurs’ contribution to their own despair cannot be entirely ignored, but we struggle to think of a more complete performance front to back than Liverpool produced in that period.
Football being football, Spurs being Spurs, Liverpool then gifted them a route back into the game with the Spursiest defending of the lot, but we’ll get to that later.
We’re going to file that one under ‘bold strategy’. And it didn’t pay off. We suppose the idea, such as it was, involved stopping Salah or Alexander-Arnold or Diaz or Robertson occupying the half-spaces and picking Spurs off from there.
But the thing with those players is that they’re all quite handy in wider places anyway. Especially Alexander-Arnold, who doesn’t really need acres of space and hours of time to pick out a world-class cross but was nevertheless provided with both for Diaz’s opening goal.
A strong contender, too, for the most ‘it just had to be him’ opening goal of any game ever played given what happened in this fixture last season.
It was embarrassingly poor from Spurs of course, but one could have plenty of sympathy with the players out there who are largely blameless pawns in a wider game, footballers who have been badly let down by their club and their manager and also very specifically today the players in front of them in this team in finding themselves so ruinously exposed.
Szoboszlai operating in front of a Gravenberch-Mac Allister pivot against James Maddison doing likewise ahead of Yves Bissouma and Pape Sarr shouldn’t produce an outcome as one-sided as this.
Liverpool’s midfielders were quicker in deed and thought, more committed, more energised and more decisive. Despite the more obvious horrors occurring elsewhere, here is where the contest was decided.
But Liverpool went as Spurs as Spurs for a brief moment. Alexander-Arnold spent most of the first half showcasing his best traits but still found time here for his worst with a nasty pass that put Mac Allister under pressure. He was weak in the challenge against Dejan Kulusevski – a man who would ludicrously end up a genuine man-of-the-match contender in a 6-3 defeat – while James Maddison’s shot was made to look more unstoppably precise than it actually was by Alisson standing lead-footed to watch it past him.
Alexander-Arnold possesses a wicked ability to deliver a long pass, but here needed only a long ball and subsequent flick-on to leave Liverpool, in the final added minute of a first half Spurs were about to get out of with the match somehow alive, with a four-on-two break that was duly and expertly rounded out.
There was an obvious gulf in class for so much of this match, but frequently the most eye-catching difference was one of awareness and really quite basic intelligence.
Salah’s numbers grow ever more ridiculous, though. Two goals to take him clear in the Golden Boot, two assists to secure the double-double of 10 goals and 10 assists before the season is halfway done.
It’s always possible to find other reasons and other factors and other players to praise for Liverpool being where they are. But while it’s long stopped being in any way a revealing thing to state it still does need saying that Salah is the most critical component of it all.
Seven shots and three key passes are wild numbers to be recording away from home against a team who, when the season began, would have been considered a genuine rival.
It had, in truth, a similar feel by this point to Spurs themselves at Southampton last week. Spurs took their foot off the gas and coasted to a 5-0 win without adding a goal in the second half and Liverpool just slightly lowered their levels from this point as well.
That’s completely understandable, if slightly disappointing for those of us who would very much like to see records sent tumbling. No score felt out of reach at this point, and while Liverpool deciding to preserve energy for the many varied and greater battles ahead made just as much sense here as Spurs’ own thinking did a week ago, we’re still annoyed about it.
For extra irritation value, the two crack-papering goals Spurs scored were excellent. They really are a pack of pricks, this Spurs team. They can’t even get thrashed properly. Kulusevski, who is having a genuinely brilliant season and deserves more than any other Spurs player to be playing for a proper football team rather than this failed experiment, volleyed home superbly before Dominic Solanke showed strength and composure to score against his former side.
What made these goals at least halfway palatable was the deserving nature of the scorers. Solanke’s all-round contribution to this Spurs team is under-rated and under-appreciated; it’s hard to begrudge him a junk piece of stat-paddery in the goals column. And Kulusevski right now is without caveat or question simply one of the best players in the division.
For the second time in the match, when the prospect of genuine mild peril surprisingly re-emerged, Liverpool were able to quell it in a moment. They really could have scored as many goals as they wanted to here, and we are greatly if greedily annoyed with them that they decided six would be sufficient when other sillier and funnier numbers remained so thoroughly available.
There’s mitigation certainly in the defensive injury list, although Ange cannot be excused blame entirely here given his own role in Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven being rushed off and back on to that list just before the busiest time of the season.
But it is also just generally too easier a wriggle off the hook for Postecoglou to be allowed to even attempt to “the-way-we-play-mate” his way out of it. Everton have Dyched their way to goalless draws against Arsenal and Chelsea this week. Liverpool have dropped recent points against both Newcastle and Fulham.
Liverpool are an excellent side but this was not the mission impossible Postecoglou’s team made it look.
Two funny things there, of course. First, what a mortifying day this turned out to be for Manchester United; slapped 3-0 at home by Bournemouth and then forced to watch what a proper team does to the very Spurs team they had lost so cartoonishly against three days earlier. The second is that Postecoglou’s very correct prioritising of the Carabao at the possible expense of a humiliating collapse against Liverpool in the league is that he now gets two more games against them in the cup.
Liverpool will be more inclined to make changes for those games, but we wonder whether Arne Slot might look at this game, at a first leg in the first week of January when Spurs will still be similarly depleted to today, at a second leg in the first week of February when several missing men may have returned and wonder whether his best bet isn’t to just go full strength in the first leg and sort it all out there and then. There just seems no reason to risk allowing the second leg to be of any importance at all when Spurs have shown here – even at something close to their worst – that they remain capable of inflicting damage of their own.
They should absolutely expect to come out on top in that fight. And they’ll probably also do so in the Carabao without even really trying or caring. It might be they just have to settle for 6-3 as only an aggregate score in that one.