This felt like an older brother engaged in a contest with a younger sibling who they felt slightly sorry for and so held back just enough to give them a fighting chance, knowing they could just go and deliver the killer blow when they needed to.
This game became so unbelievably scrappy in the final 20 minutes as to give the lie to the analogy, but the important thing was this: youthful Chelsea just couldn’t resist Liverpool in the most vital moments, and nor did they have the conviction necessary to make the most of their own openings.
Chelsea were arguably the better team in many regards throughout the first half, but left Caoimhin Kelleher pretty well entirely untested.
Liverpool, meanwhile, seemed content to play on the counter-attack, and did it clinically and well, earning one penalty – dispatched by Mohamed Salah – and then having another awarded and then (correctly, just about) overturned after Robert Sanchez got a touch on the ball more through luck than judgement a millisecond before he smashed into the excellent Curtis Jones.
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That incident, plus another correctly-not-given penalty shout by Salah moments before the one that actually stood, showed a strange hint of…complacency, perhaps? Gamesmanship? Cynicism?…on Liverpool’s part. Whatever it was, they felt just a little bit off.
In both those cases, for instance, they had opportunities to shoot that they had seemingly no interest in actually taking, instead hoping Chelsea would over-commit to daft challenges and allow them to convert from the spot. That is, frankly, an odd gambit to try and pull off several years into the VAR age.
Nor did they seem to have much interest in trying to take control of the game in spite of holding the goal advantage, and in spite of Chelsea constantly getting into threatening areas.
Noni Madueke gave Andy Robertson a particularly torrid time right from the off, and they could not get to grips with Malo Gusto stepping into midfield from left-back. If Liverpool didn’t start taking steps to manage the game better, a Chelsea goal felt inevitable.
We were rooting for it to come. You often get games between two heavyweights that feel like they desperately need a goal to make it interesting; this one needed two.
It took less than three minutes for our wish to be granted, with Ibrahima Konate seemingly going out of his way to ensure young buck Nicolas Jackson was onside as he raced onto Moises Caicedo’s through ball and fired past Kelleher.
That was the jolt Liverpool needed to remind them that Chelsea are, in fact, not totally crap these days, and it took them just three minutes again to restore their lead.
If Liverpool’s offside trap had been bafflingly executed for the equaliser, then Chelsea’s in this instance was absolutely laughable. Oblivious to the fact that Jones – several yards onside – was sprinting through at pace to get onto Salah’s cross from the right, they stood stock still and watched as he controlled the ball before poking past Sanchez. He, too, was guilty of expecting a non-existent flag or VAR check to save him again.
Chelsea have shown a a huge improvement this season after years of under-performance and – dare we say it – transition, and have shown they have enough talent to batter most teams in the division on their day.
At this late stage of their post-Abramovich adolescence, Chelsea remain a cut below the top three – but give them a bit of time, and they may just get there yet.
Where Chelsea have shown they can play well against the best and still not win, Liverpool have meanwhile demonstrated an ability that is often cited as the stuff of champions: not playing particularly brilliantly – not terribly, but not brilliantly – but still having more than enough about them to find a way to win. Not for the first time this season, either.
Of course, they had that trait (to a much greater extreme) last season, too, and eventually it caught up to them. They are top of the table for now; whether they stay there or not depends whether they can use this extremely solid baseline and build something even better on top of it.
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