The Europa League is a bit of a puzzle for a team like Liverpool, and it’s nights like this where it proves its most vexing.
There’s no point pretending Thursday nights in Toulouse are where Liverpool see themselves or where they want to be. We all know that Jurgen Klopp hates Toulouse. (Because it sounds a bit like to lose, yeah? And he hates to lose. No, you shut up. We’re unapologetically going after that lucrative Christmas Cracker joke-writing racket this year.)
Equally, though, this is a tournament there for the winning for a Liverpool side uncontroversially and objectively stronger than anyone else currently in it, and very probably stronger than anyone likely to find their way into it via Champions League failure.
But it’s still an awful lot of games to wade through. Lots of admin. Lots of motions to be gone through. And tonight Liverpool came unstuck in a chaotic 3-2 defeat.
It was a game that gave Klopp and Liverpool a particularly tantalising problem to work out. Victory here and the right result in the group’s other game between Union SG and LASK would have put Liverpool in a marvellous position: guaranteed not only qualification but also the bonus of securing the all-important top spot and thus avoiding two further fixture-list clogging games in the play-off round.
With LASK doing their bit with a 3-0 win, a Liverpool win tonight would have effectively allowed them to forget all about the Europa League until March. You can see how tempting and welcome a prospect that is.
But the reason it’s so tantalising is also the reason Klopp couldn’t whole-heartedly commit to it: his best players are quite knackered. Mo Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai, both called into action off the bench to try and salvage something here in the second half, have already gone past the 1000-minute mark and the 1-1 draw at Luton last weekend contained clear and troubling signs of fatigue.
Klopp had no choice but to change things up again, and he could reasonably have expected better of his second string than he got for long periods here.
The one large and undeniable benefit of the Europa League to Liverpool this season thus far has been its extreme usefulness as a tool for bedding in Ryan Gravenberch, who has been Liverpool’s standout player in the group stage.
Alas, he has been so good that he’s played his way right out of the Thursday night side and wasn’t risked here having picked up a knock. His absence was keenly felt with the willing and whole-hearted Wataru Endo a stark and unavoidable downgrade in the centre of Klopp’s midfield.
Toulouse were good value for their lead at half-time, at which point Klopp gambled on his big guns. Still the hosts were the better side and could have extended their lead before they did so. When Liverpool got a lifeline via a comical own goal, Toulouse simply went straight back up the other end and scored a third goal of their own.
That should have been that, but Liverpool ended a night where they were miles below their best with legitimate grievance that they didn’t emerge with a point. A lovely, slaloming Diogo Jota goal was the sort that in days gone past would be described as a consolation. With injury time being what it is now, an 89th-minute goal more often than not means a good 10 minutes to find another.
And Liverpool thought they had it when young defender Jarell Quansah smashed home in the eighth added minute, only for VAR to play spoilsport with a frankly silly decision to go all the way back and rule it out because Alexis Mac Allister’s chest control earlier in the move had contained a smidgeon of arm. It was the sort of small and twatty non-intentional handball that we see rule goals out when committed by the goalscorer, but at this far earlier stage of the move it can only have been concluded that Mac Allister committed a genuine regular handball. Which we really don’t think was the case at all.
A draw wouldn’t have quite confirmed top spot, but it would have been pretty much in the bag. It should still be fine, in truth, with games against the demonstrably weaker Union SG and LASK to come. But it really would have been a marvellous thing to square it all away now.
Klopp grew increasingly annoyed on the touchline as the game grew ever more chaotic. Having started the evening considering the prospect of four months not having to think about this competition at all, he’ll have ended it annoyed at a great deal: from performance, to having to use his biggest weapons to no avail, and most of all that last-gasp VAR nonsense.
He really will hate Toulouse now.
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