I didn’t actually see the game. I was working ‘til 9 and then travelling home, depending on text updates from my better half (whose head I nearly took off in the excitement following Yossi’s winner in this fixture back in ’09) and twitter and slowly feeling like I was going mad. No way to follow a match, no way at all. I did catch the extended highlights of the second half on Sky when I got home and, to be honest, it looked to me like we played quite well. Not “beating Arsenal 5-1” well, but then football doesn’t work like that, does it? I can’t speak for the first-half, but if it was as bad as I’ve seen some suggesting then at least we put it right after half-time. We were pleasingly patient and controlled, I thought, the exact opposite of what Manchester United were on Sunday against the same opponents. Aside from another poorly-defended cross, this time against the run of play, and Steve Sidwell briefly channelling the spirit of Xabi Alonso, Fulham barely got a sniff.
I wrote earlier in the day of the 3-2 against Portsmouth in 2008/09 as a means to illustrate the kind of talent you typically need to change a game that’s getting away from you, the kind of talent that Brendan Rodgers simply doesn’t have on his bench right now. That night, Kuyt, Alonso and Torres were unleashed at various times to terrorise the home side, and the result was a constant pressure that built and built over the last half-hour of the game, a vice closing tighter and tighter until Portsmouth simply buckled. That team was the best that Rafa managed in his time at Anfield and had been four and a half years in the making. It was also battle-hardened in the Champions League. As such, it was experienced and could be expected to keep its head having gone 0-1 and 1-2 behind. Rodgers’ team, on the other hand, is just eighteen months old and full of youngsters like Coutinho, Flanagan, Sterling, and now Teixeira, and yet you look at that game last night and tell me whether their heads went at 1-2, whether they went and hid, whether they started panicking? No, no and no. Instead, they kept doing what they needed to do, they kept probing, they kept that vice tightening on Fulham until they couldn’t stand it anymore. And that’s when Riether flew in on Sturridge and gave away the winning penalty. Just like Özil’s flop to the Anfield turf under pressure from Henderson on Saturday, it was the physical manifestation of submission, a groggy boxer taking a swing and getting his jaw crushed for his troubles. And it was all borne of that pressure, of doing the right things and keeping your head at the crucial time. Mentality, I believe they call it. You’ll win fuck all without it. This team would appear to have it, and it was hugely impressive to watch it in action.
There are still problems at the back for sure. I appreciate what Mignolet has brought to the team, but I would respectfully suggest that the cross for Fulham’s second needed to be claimed. Perhaps his mishap against Arsenal on Saturday at 1-0 was playing on his mind, perhaps he’s decided not to come for anything anymore or maybe, just maybe, he’s being told not to, but anything on the edge of his six-yard box should be fair game. Ahead of him, the team is missing its best two full-backs and best two centre-backs, so there’s plenty of context there. Manchester City are a completely different animal when Kompany doesn’t play. If Arsenal lost Koscielny and Mertesacker for as long as we’ve been without Agger and Sakho, or Chelsea lost their entire back four as we have, I would expect a dip in quality from them as well. Poor Kolo looks under siege every time the ball comes near him and that doesn’t just affect the way we defend, it affects how we attack. Agger’s appearance at the end, then, on a night when the team overcame those defensive lapses and claimed a hugely significant three points, was a pretty welcome sight in and of itself ahead of 12 games that have the potential (and that’s a fact) to be extraordinary, and that three points last night will undoubtedly stand to this team as they try to make that happen.