Southampton shows signs of hope despite indefensible self-destruction | first division

Although most people would have always considered the outcome inevitable, there was little predictable about this game. Even once Liverpool took control in the final half hour, their momentum swings rarely seemed to make sense. Like a leaf in the middle of a wind storm for long periods, it fell gently in no particular direction, before zigzagging through a series of sudden, unexpected and often inexplicable turns. Was an extraordinary match in a disconcerting and often disappointing way, filled with a combination of the surprising and the indefensible.

Two goals were from center backs who gave the ball away, two from penalties, one from an inexplicable handball, one (scored by the goalkeeper's team) from a loose ball by the goalkeeper, another from the same goalkeeper not so much going for the ball as giving a walk in your general direction. Goals are generally considered the highlights of a soccer match; here, with one wonderful exception, the opposite happened. “My predominant feeling is frustration because the goals were so bad,” Russell Martin said. “If they produce a magical moment, maybe you can accept it a little more, but the quality of the goals was very poor. How awful”.

But for all that Southampton finished the game still with a win, four points off the bottom of the table, with an unsatiated appetite for defensive self-destruction and a couple of new injuries to join an already extensive list, there were signs of hope here. Less so because they were narrowly beaten by theoretically much stronger opponents than at the feet of Tyler Dibling, the intrepid 18-year-old who has already made his England Under-19 and Under-21 debuts this season and looks anything but finished.

It was a dribbling Dibling who won the Saints penalty after turning Andy Robertson into a terrified, retreating mush, and Dibling again who produced the excellent turn and pass that left Adam Armstrong with an easy chance to play in Mateus Fernandes, who duly crowned the best. play of the game. There may be nothing in the team's recent results or their upcoming fixtures (with four of their next five games coming against teams currently in the top six, including Liverpool's return in the Carabao Cup) that will make fans jump with optimism. to St Mary's in one day. but the promise of watching Dibling and Taylor Harwood-Bellis evolve on defense is probably enough.

In a game full of random changes, Southampton's team roster had some of their own. It made for a particularly disconcerting afternoon for Alex McCarthy, the 34-year-old who replaced the injured Aaron Ramsdale in goal and brought to the game not so much the calm head of a seasoned professional but the flailing arms of a drowning man. Meanwhile, Flynn Downes played at centre-back and Ryan Fraser was used at left-back because, Martin explained, “we tried to get as many attacking players on the pitch as we could.”

The selection of Fraser, which put him in direct opposition to the country's most destructive striker, Mohamed Salah, seemed an almost callous act of cruelty. He entered the field the same way you take a chicken skewer to a barbecue, not so much prepared but marinated. But thanks in part to an unusually inefficient display from Salah, he was barely burned before being moved after half an hour to the indirect heat of the opposite flank.

By then, Salah should probably have scored a couple, most memorably shooting at McCarthy after being found at the far post without Fraser in sight. Kyle Walker-Peters tried to follow him for the rest of the game, tellingly missing the goal in the 65th minute that tipped the game in Liverpool's favor. From there, Salah probably should have given the game an unfairly one-sided shine, scoring a penalty, firing over the crossbar when a goal looked more likely, curling a dull shot into the base of the near post.

Before the game, Arne Slot had talked about how the quality of the division's bottom team illustrated the team's unique strength. first division. Anyone who witnessed the often numb and clumsy struggles of the division leaders and title favorites here might have come to a very different conclusion. There was mitigation, in a team newly reunited after an international break, in the violent storm in which they were forced to play and in the torrential rain that drenched the second half.

For an hour they struggled to open a patched, improvised and often kamikaze defense or to beat a goalkeeper who could barely kick or, for that matter, catch. “We know how hard it is to win a game,” Slot said. They've done it 10 times out of 12, and if it hasn't gotten easier, it's gradually getting more exciting.