Nick Miller recaps another wild weekend in the Premier League, as Liverpool continued to defy logic and Neil Warnock got caught crying wolf.
Performance of the weekend
You could see it all over their performance. Alisson‘s kicking. Mohamed Salah‘s increasing desperation to score. Even little things such as Divock Origi‘s freezing on the spot when he could have moved toward a deflected pass in the last 10 minutes.
Liverpool looked nervous. Panicked. Terrified even. It looked like they had frozen in the face of pressure. You wondered how they could possibly win the league.
Then they won 2-1. And you wondered how they could possibly not win the league.
— Ogden: Liverpool must keep their cool in red-hot title race
It’s easy to write off this sort of thing — a last-minute winner via an awful goalkeeping error that forced an own-goal — as a freak incident not to be repeated, something that can’t be relied on ever again. But with Liverpool, it keeps happening: It’s not especially logical, but then again, football very often isn’t.
And of course, it isn’t just down to luck. It was at least in part down to Liverpool’s relentlessly pushing on and the excellent and constant crosses from both full-backs that will always cause problems.
“There are 500 ways to win a football game,” Jurgen Klopp said afterward. “Today was slightly ugly. But who cares?”
Who cares indeed? Manchester City are still favourites to win the Premier League, but not by much. Liverpool are going to push them all the way.
Assist of the weekend
You could tell me anything while watching Andrew Robertson‘s cross for Roberto Firmino‘s opener. You’re stealing my car; you’re emptying my bank account; you’re removing my shoes and throwing them in the river; you’re divorcing Dad and running away with the circus. Just as long as that cross keeps being replayed, I’ll be happy.
Error of the weekend
Another of those rare mistakes by Hugo Lloris. According to Opta, the past three seasons, only one goalkeeper has made more than the eight errors leading directly to a goal that the Spurs captain has, and that’s Jordan Pickford. Apart from the generous donations to the Liverpool title fight from the pair of them, it’s rather troubling reading for England and Spurs.
This is yet another problem with a leading club being so inactive in the transfer market. As the barren windows widen further, cracks in Tottenham’s squad, positions previously thought solid and not to be worried about are forgotten. But after this latest mistake, if you were to identify one position that Tottenham need to strengthen this summer, it’s in goal. Lloris is becoming a liability.
Lucky manager of the weekend
In his prematch TV interview on Sunday in Cardiff, Maurizio Sarri was asked “how big an opportunity” this game was to put pressure on the top four. It was one of those questions that isn’t really a question — more an invitation for a manager to say anything he wanted. He used that time not to express his optimism or offer any encouragement to Chelsea fans, instead saying it was as much a risk as an opportunity because his team was “mentally vulnerable.”
Maybe there is a logic to undermining your players half an hour before a game, but it isn’t immediately obvious.
Sarri got away with it in Chelsea’s 2-1 win over Cardiff, thanks in part to an offside goal, as he got away with it against Brighton, Newcastle and Wolves earlier in the season, and just because they won that doesn’t mean the Chelsea fans who were singing “f— Sarriball” in the first-half are wrong. If you have players as good as Chelsea’s, sometimes you’ll win games regardless of how you play.
The mood music from Chelsea is that Sarri will remain in place until the end of the season, with the club showing rare patience with a man who was admittedly given a tricky task with a limited preseason and a squad that doesn’t suit his style. But therein lies half the point: Sarri seems to be a manager unwilling to adapt to his surroundings, who believes his thinking is so bulletproof that everyone else must shift to suit it.
At the moment, there’s little evidence that that is true.
Wolf crier of the weekend
Of course it was impossible not to feel sympathy for Cardiff after Cesar Azpilicueta‘s obviously offside goal stole vital points from them in the relegation scrap, but there are a couple caveats. Firstly, it was clearly an error on the part of the linesman but not as egregious at full-speed as it looked on replay.
Secondly, the problem with Neil Warnock’s postmatch outburst is it doesn’t carry as much weight because of everything he has said before. Warnock is the boy who cried bad officiating, with a career of complaints about referees eventually becoming like the buzzing of a fridge — background noise you ultimately ignore so you’re not really listening when he has a genuine point.
Perhaps if he’d kept quiet before, we’d pay more attention this time.
Team of the week
Finish of the weekend
The best footballers think differently than everyone else. They see things that the 99 percent below them don’t, but most importantly, they see them in milliseconds, allowing them to act before the rest of the world has caught up.
It might seem small, but Sergio Aguero‘s finish in Man City’s 2-0 win over Fulham on Saturday was a perfect example of that: Whereas most in that situation might try to beat the keeper low or clip it over him, Aguero rapidly assessed his options and selected a jab into the top corner, a merciless goal-scoring computer finding the only open spot in the goal like an X-Wing finding the exhaust port in the Death Star.
Low-key performance of the weekend
Leicester will have a number of items on their to-do list come the summer, but top of it should be signing Youri Tielemans on a permanent contract. He was superb again for Brendan Rodgers’ side in their 2-0 win over Bournemouth, providing the inspiration for their fourth win in the past five.
The Foxes have taken advantage of the Belgian’s dodgy spell with Monaco to sign such a class player, but with the greatest of respect, he clearly belongs at a higher level. But if they move with enough haste, they might be able to snap him up.
Rollicking of the weekend
People who work with Chris Hughton always say that the Brighton manager has a steel behind his nice guy persona, but you don’t often hear him reveal it in public.
“It was a big opportunity at home to increase the gap a bit more, and there’s more pressure now,” he said after their 1-0 defeat to Southampton.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do to make sure we stay in this division.
“If players aren’t doing well enough now, they may not play in the next game. All I’m interested in is performances now.”
One more win will probably be enough for Brighton. But if they play like they did Saturday much more, then it won’t come easily.