Liverpool send out a warning to the rest of Europe with Champions League win over Atletico - The Warm-Up
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Updated 04/11/2021 at 09:09 GMT
A brilliant evening for Trent Alexander-Arnold helps Liverpool secure their place in the last 16 of the Champions League, although Atletico Madrid were disappointingly messy in the clash. Meanwhile, Joao Cancelo set up three goals for Manchester City, and Unai Emery will be staying well away from Newcastle.
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THURSDAY'S BIG STORIES
Sailing Through
When the draw was made for this season's Champions League, it was Group B that landed with the heaviest thump. This was going to be the hard one. This was going to be a proper three-way, maybe even four-way scrap. Good luck everybody. Good luck Liverpool.
And so it has proved… for the other three teams. Liverpool are through with four wins from four; Atletico Madrid, AC Milan and Porto are scrapping away in the dirt, a mere nine points between them. And if the away game in Madrid was a weirdly ragged affair, last night's win at Anfield was comfortable. Smooth. Maybe even — and whisper it, for there is no greater insult in football — a little easy?
Liverpool were pretty good, of course, because they're pretty good. But it appears that Atleti can no longer defend. Central defenders switching off for crosses, a frowning curve of an offside line, red cards earned not through the careful distillation and judicious application of violence but, instead, a pointless tactical foul when already behind.
It was all so wildly underwhelming. And this in a game that Atleti needed to win while Liverpool could happily take a draw. Still, the home team won't care that the Group of Extreme Awkwardness has largely failed to materialise. And Trent Alexander-Arnold had himself a very pleasant evening, capped with his cross for the first goal.
Yes, the defence were jogging out, heads down, apparently unconcerned by the ball rolling gently to the feet of Liverpool's right-back. But still, it was a lovely ball in; a pretty parabola to contrast with Atleti's less lovable effort. In games like this, when Alexander-Arnold is able to take possession of more or less the entire right flank, Liverpool can manufacture what must be football's most terrifying advantage.
It's not just that they seem to have a 12th player out there, a three-man flank, a right midfielder phasing in between their right winger and right-back. That would be enough. But if you narrow your eyes, and trace the path of the ball through the air, you realise that this 12th player is doing an incredibly good impression of David Beckham. And that doesn't really seem fair.
We know this Liverpool team isn't perfect: we have Brighton's hard work at the weekend to show for it. But then, even in their best moments under Klopp, they've never felt perfect. That would be too well-rounded a word. Instead, when it all comes together, they feel overwhelming. There won't be any bad teams in the last 16 of the Champions League, that's a given. But nobody's going to want to play this one.
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Diogo Jota of Liverpool celebrates after scoring a goal to make it 1-0 during the UEFA Champions League group B match between Liverpool FC and Atletico Madrid at Anfield on November 3, 2021 in Liverpool, United Kingdom. (
Image credit: Getty Images
Stop It At Once
While PSG were dropping points and tying their shoelaces, Manchester City were moving back to the top of Group A with a win over Club Brugge. The game featured a very impressive cameo from Raheem Sterling and a wondrous own goal by John Stones: you know something beautiful has happened when a defender ends up on one knee in his own six-yard box, facing in precisely the opposite direction from the ball.
"Did it go in? It went in? Ah, man." Is what we assume he said.
Of City's four goals, João Cancelo assisted three of them, and it's here that the Warm-Up feels the need to step in. We don't like to criticise anybody too much, but this achievement — setting up three goals — has been referred to in several places as "a hat-trick of assists", and it's here that our inner Old Man Yelling At Clouds rises up, shakes his fist, and takes the youth to task for their feckless ways.
You can't have a hat-trick of assists.
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This isn't just a problem with assists in general, although while we're here, they really are a daft thing to be counting. Somebody got an assist for Maradona's second goal against England in 1986, and what a feat of craftsmanship that was. Somebody else didn't get one for every missed open goal, however much work they did. There's a reason stats nerds have moved on to expected assists, big chances and other related metrics, and it's not just because they like inventing things to sound clever.
More importantly, it cheapens the very concept of the hat-trick. Take cricket as the parallel. A cricketer can do lots of cool things in the course of a match, but only one of them — taking a wicket — can be built into a hat-trick. Nobody ever said "hat-trick of sixes", and if they did, they should be arrested. This is because a wicket is the most important, most game-changing thing that can happen on a cricket field.
And that's the hat-trick. That's the point of the hat-trick. You can rack up three assists, three penalty saves, three goal-saving tackles; Josip Simunic once collected three yellow cards in a single game, which takes some doing. But none of these things, not even Graham Poll's great moment, can be allowed to constitute a hat-trick. It's the most important thing, three times, or it's not worth having at all.
Indeed, the very construction of the phrase "hat-trick of assists" betrays its weakness. You can modify "hat trick" with adjectives: perfect, flawless, hilarious, dirkkuytish. But once you start trying to specify what it's a hat-trick of, the concept has already collapsed. If you have to explain, it isn't a hat-trick. The power of the thing comes from the fact that everybody already knows what it is. The most important thing, three times. (The exception here is Gaelic football, which has goals and points and hat-tricks of both. What a sport.)
Besides, what to do after the game? How to mark this achievement? "Nice one, Joao. Cracking hat-trick. Here, take this home with you. Yes, it's your own boot. You've earned it."
Thanks, But No Thanks
Money changes people, so they say. But if you were worried that all this new cash might have transformed Newcastle United into a sleek and smooth operation, you can breathe a little easier. Yesterday, Unai Emery was on his way, and it was just a question of how many zeroes. Today? Well, here's the man himself:
Villarreal is my home and I am 100 per cent committed to the club. Honestly, I am grateful for the interest shown by a great club, but I am also even more grateful to stay here … I also want to show gratitude for the love and support that has always been shown to me.
The official version of this will probably be something like: Newcastle were interested, polite discussions were had, an amicable "no" was delivered and received. And who knows! Maybe that's what happened. Maybe nobody needs to be the punchline…
Ah, who are we kidding. This is football. Everybody's going to assume that the comedy version happened, even if it didn't. Somebody Toon-adjacent leaks Emery's quiet negotiations to the papers. He then starts to realise that this isn't the whip-smart hyper-professional project he'd been promised. And then the phone rings, and his current boss asks him why this is all coming out hours before a crucial Champions League game.
All's well that ends with an official statement. But this does serve to highlight just how weird a job vacancy this is, for a club with Newcastle's money but also Newcastle's predicament. Would you like to manage the richest club in the world? Sure, why not. Would you like to manage a club that could and maybe should go down this season? Hey, what's this thing in the contract?
Whatever his reasoning, whatever did or didn't happen, we reckon Emery's made the sensible decision here. To be the second manager appointed by PIF, that will be a career-defining opportunity. To be the first looks far too complicated.
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Emery confirms Newcastle interest after Villarreal’s 2-0 win against Young Boys
HAT TIP 1
Last night's Liverpool-Atletico match took place in the long shadow of March 2020, when a near-capacity crowd watched the same fixture just two days before all football in England was suspended. The Athletic's Simon Hughes looks back at that game and its bleak consequences.
Over the weeks and months that followed, it would become clear that the staging of this match was not just a problem for Liverpool. The city’s most successful football club attracts fans from all over the country. Not all friends sit in the same area of the ground. Thousands will have shared cars on their way home to other places. Many will have travelled to and from Merseyside on trains and planes. Those who contracted the virus that day would have left the stadium and taken it with them, to their families or flatmates, who in turn will have passed it on to colleagues at work or familiar faces in the gym.
HAT TIP 2
Tottenham play their first game under new management this evening, and while Antonio Conte may not be in the dugout, it's not too soon to start asking the big questions. Here's Ian King over at Football365 wondering which is stronger: Conte's managerial brilliance or Tottenham Hotspur's ancient curse, the mysterious, appalling, hilarious quality known to scientists as spursiness?
Sometimes when a football club goes into decline, it can feel as though what is happening is cyclical, a near-inevitability … But at Spurs, it was different. There was a clear timeline of failure, from the club’s inertia in the transfer market at a point when it was clear that the playing squad needed refreshing, through the decision to fire the coach who’d taken the club to places that most supporters had forgotten even existed, to the decision to replace him with a caricature of Jose Mourinho played by the man himself, and firing him shortly before a cup final, as well as the catalogue of calamities that followed.
COMING UP
We'll get an immediate insight into how things have changed at Spurs — maybe not the team, yet, but certainly the atmosphere — as Spurs host Vitesse. Because the reverse fixture was dreadful. There's also West Ham v Genk, Leicester v Spartak, and approximately a million other games.
And watching every single one of those million other games will be Andi Thomas. "Hero" is a strong word, but we'll allow it.
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