GRAEME SOUNESS: Forget Europe. The ONLY thing that will have Liverpool fans dancing in the streets is a Premier League title. Plus, the player who beats Martin Odegaard to my vote for Footballer of the Year
Jurgen Klopp won’t give a damn about fairytale endings on Saturday morning. If we have seen his last European night at Anfield then yes, it’s disappointing, fans will say he deserved better, but winning the Europa League is not what will get those supporters dancing in the streets of Liverpool come May. The Premier League title is – and that will be Klopp’s biggest farewell gift.
Liverpool are a Champions League club, losing 3-0 to Atalanta in the Europa League quarter final is nothing more than a bad night, these results can happen.
We can talk about fairytale endings for Jurgen, how this has damaged that prospect and he will be deeply disappointed but he has been around the block enough times to know what is really important to his club. Park it, now move on.
Klopp is a magnificent man-manager, a great motivator. He will be straight into lifting those players up to face Crystal Palace.
What happened Thursday night can happen to any team. Top players hate this feeling. It’ll be rattling round in their heads. They don’t like the taste of defeat and will want to play the following day to put it right. Sunday can’t come too soon.
Liverpool were overun by a rampant Atalanta side during their Europa League clash on Thursday evening
The Serie A side handed the Reds their joint-heaviest European defeat at Anfield with 3-0 win
But Jurgen Klopp is a magnificent man-manager, and focus will have quickly shifted to Palace
Sometimes you have to give credit to the opposition. The trouble with playing front-foot football, and it was the same style in the Liverpool sides I played in, is that you are going after the game so you are always vulnerable if someone beats your first press.
Squeezing up to the halfway line, Liverpool used to have goalkeepers Ray Clemence or Bruce Grobbelaar standing well outside of their own box ready to clear anything hit over our back four. You are effectively trying to play in one half. Joe Fagan used to say to us the benefits of playing this way over nine months far outweigh the vulnerability you have to a ball over the top.
I believe the difficulties Liverpool had last year were down to an ageing midfield, they couldn’t maintain that high intensity press every game in a long, hard season.
The energy levels required, putting pressure on the opposition all the time, it’s extremely demanding of players. Liverpool have a fabulous group but Thursday night they were just a half yard off and that can happen at this stage of the season. Look at Newcastle United, Eddie Howe has them playing with great intensity, high energy, it’s the same idea but look at how many injuries they have picked up trying to keep up. If you want to play this style in the Premier League and you want to compete you better have a large squad.
Critics have pointed at missed chances but Liverpool haven’t kept a clean sheet in eight games. It’s not about tactically switching off, it’s just the demands of playing this way.
Darwin Nunez has been singled out for example. But him missing chances will not be the reason Liverpool fail to win the Premier League title.
Darwin Nunez has been singled out for missing chances but he is a capable asset for his team
The Uruguayan striker is willing to do the hard yards but needs to put in work on his finishing
Keyboard warriors were quick to criticise following the draw against Manchester United at Old Trafford last Sunday when he and his teammates missed fabulous opportunities.
Erling Haaland has missed big chances too but you’d be foolish to be critical of him.
Nunez is very capable in nearly every part of his game: his athleticism, his willingness to do the hard yards, his aggression, he is nearly a ten out of ten in all aspects but I fear his finishing may always be the same.
He may score you 15 goals one season and 40 the next but you would still want him on your team. Every top club in Europe would want him or Haaland in their squad.
Statistics show that Nunez has had 99 shots and missed 24 big chances, so people pinpoint that especially as Arsenal lead Liverpool in the title race by goal difference. But no-one in this title race thinks it will be won on goal difference. The only thing in their minds, seven games out, is win the next one.
There’s a collective responsibility for why Liverpool didn’t beat United and Atalanta, Nunez may never be the most clinical but what he offers on and off the ball is why Jurgen believes he is a real team player and a terrific asset.
I like that Ollie Watkins was prepared to dig out his own Aston Villa teammates last week. I just hope he told them to their faces first.
Watkins was bemoaning the fact that Villa keep throwing away two-goal leads and don’t possess the ‘big-team mentality’ to kill off the opposition. They didn’t manage the game properly.
Ollie Watkins called out his Aston Villa side for failing to possess a ‘big team mentality’
The striker included himself in the criticism but you would hope he had addressed his team-mates before speaking publicly
He included himself in the criticism, which is fair enough, so he wasn’t absolving himself from any blame and has spoken like an experienced professional making a generalisation about Villa’s team. But, if I was in that dressing room and he hadn’t told me before that was printed, I’d be asking him: ‘Are you talking about me?’
You would hope he has addressed the players first and told them his feelings before going on TV. If he has gone straight to the press and not spoken to his team-mates first then players will resent that and there will be consequences.
I’m all for telling a few home truths, I think it makes a group stronger but experience tells you that it may not be best done in public. It should really stay on the training ground or in the dressing room.
Unai Emery and his staff will be delighted because they will be hoping Watkins has lit the fire for them as they build up to face Arsenal on Sunday. At Liverpool the staff used to stand back and let us players sort it out among ourselves. Kenny Dalglish and I had disagreements on a regular basis if it wasn’t going right on the pitch. One time at Coventry City when we were 3-0 down at half-time.
I said to Kenny, ‘any chance you can get hold of the ball and get us started?’ And Kenny was saying, ‘any danger you can start winning a tackle to get the ball?’
And with every angry sentence we were taking a step closer to each other and it became more and more heated but none of the staff tried to intervene as we were doing their job for them. How was it resolved? We lost 4-0. It was a reminder that no-one is perfect.
It’s the Grand National on Saturday. As a player at Liverpool, I went to four or five but I never saw a horse.
The most valuable jump race in Europe, the Grand National, will take place at Aintree on Saturday afternoon
The furthest I ever got was the Holiday Inn hospitality tent with all the Liverpool boys. We used to be invited by the manager of the hotel, Jack Ferguson. There was no better feeling than winning an early kick-off then going to Aintree for a good bit of team bonding but that tent was the closest I ever got to a horse.
The votes are being cast for the footballer of the year and Arsenal’s captain Martin Odegaard will have to be in the mix. However, Manchester City’s Phil Foden gets my vote.
He has been outstanding. He appears to have that attitude where he wants to learn something new every day in training and we are seeing a real superstar in the making.
His goal against Real Madrid in midweek summed him up. Calmness under pressure, he shifted the ball out of his feet and hit it so smoothly. He is a terrific striker of the ball.
The standard of the quarter finals were everything you would hope for, a fabulous watch, a great advert for Champions League football and Manchester City and Arsenal have nothing to fear going into the second legs.
The only problem is every one of those teams will be thinking the same. That’s the mentality of the best players.
When I walked into the Liverpool dressing room in 1978 I was a young player but I fed off the confidence of the older players there.
Martin Odegaard will surely be under consideration for Player of the Year after his season
But Phil Foden is having the campaign of his career with Man City and must be in the mix
The Treble-winner was named Player of the Match in his side’s first leg clash with Real Madrid
When you are going for a league title and European Cup, as it was then, you are full of yourself and with great belief in your team-mates. By the time we ended up playing Bruges in the final at Wembley that season, the result was never in doubt. We were going to win. It was the same when we went to Paris to play Real Madrid in 1981. It was ‘Real Madrid? It’s only a name’. We will beat them.
When you are in that moment, there’s no thinking about the weight of the overall challenge, it’s that boring, old saying ‘one game at a time’, because that’s how you keep your focus.
It may be a little concerning that City’s Rodri says he is tired. I’m sure the prospect of beating Real Madrid to earn a Champions League semi final against either Arsenal or Bayern Munich will put a fresh spring in his step. But, on the evidence of what we have seen so far, it is a brave man who can bet on who goes through.
We come to that awful time of year again on Monday when people reflect on the tragedy of Hillsborough and remember the 97 who lost their lives. We are 35 years on, and those we lost are forever mourned not just by football supporters but by the whole nation.
