The ACN Match Review – Liverpool (a)

Biggest positive

We played really well! We done a goal! Brandon Williams had a fantastic game. Normann is properly back and as good as ever. Rashica is a genuine Premier League player. Gunn is a superb shot-stopper and wouldn’t look out of place as our Number 1 Choice. McClean had some really, really strong moments. Hanley and Gibson were immense. Need I go on. It was a very good, fighting, creative, passionate, solid performance. 

Biggest problem

We lost, and teams around us didn’t. 

Funniest moment of the game?

When you’re playing A Big Team you expect some decisions to go against you and we had the usual 60/40 weighting against us in referee calls from Mike Dean. But when Alisson palmed the ball away from Pukki outside his area it had the feel of something that was so obvious the ref wouldn’t let it go, just for the sheer embarrassment of it. But no. No free kick, no yellow card, no interest in the protestations from the Norwich players. It was extremely aggravating at the time but in retrospect, you have to laugh. What a league. 

Did an along come Norwich happen?

You could get 22/1 on a Norwich win before the game, which made for the tasty prospect of a reverse ACN when Milot’s goal flew in. We were given a chance to dream but it didn’t last long. 

What was the atmosphere like?

I know that playing little Norwich hardly gets the juices flowing for Liverpool fans but for all the hype I’ve heard over the years, they were deeply unimpressive today. Not as bad as Arsenal but nowhere near the salivating they get from pundits. We didn’t hear them at all until the 35th minute and then not again until after the Norwich goal. Maybe the reality was never going the match the absurd levels of myth-making, especially in a game like this, but it was disappointing all the same.

Norwich fans made the most of a low roof and made a consistent, if not spectacular, noise throughout. 

I don’t go in for fan shaming as a rule and think that everyone has their own way of getting behind the team. Let a thousand flowers bloom. But I draw the line at half and half scarves. The number of Norwich fans wearing red around their neck, even if it was only half of the scarf was humiliating for them and embarrassing for the rest of us. I even saw one Norwich fan with a yelllow shirt and a full Liverpool scarf around his neck. I’m live and let live generally, but that’s just taking the piss. Get in the bin. 

Summary

If we can maintain the ideas on show today, the intensity and the consistent execution we’ll beat some teams we’re not expected to, like – pulling a name out of thin air – Brighton. Liverpool and Man City are beyond us, as we’ve seen. But with the sort of quality, we showed today, mid-table teams aren’t, and with that knowledge comes the most dangerous thing known to football fans: hope. 

Today’s game was good. I’m glad I went. The result was disappointing but it was my first time at Anfield and meant that I’ve now seen Norwich play away against every one of the 19 premier league teams. 

On my way in I stopped at the memorial to the 97 killed at Hillsborough. People just like us who went to a game, and never went home. Killed because of incompetence and indifference and then smeared and lied about. Working people face injustice in this country, and then face the indignity of having to fight for recognition and justice. We must never forget those 97 fans, or that this sort of injustice can happen again.