It did not require anything particularly exceptional to add a splash of colour to the worst game of the new Premier League season, but something exceptional was exactly what Philippe Coutinho delivered when he struck a winning goal at the Britannia which reminded us why it is we watch football.
Goodness knows there were times during the afternoon at the Britannia when that reminder was very much required, and while Mark Hughes’ team will have felt that they lost the three points on one five-second sequence of brilliance, that is occasionally all it takes. No-one else on the pitch got close to achieving what Coutinho did with four minutes of the game remaining and ultimately he, and that shotgun ability of his to hit a football, was the difference.
The only goal of this dismal game was worth waiting for, although it should be said that there were many who would have been justified in taking their leave long before the 86th minute when it arrived. For Liverpool, at the stadium where their season ended in May in such a spectacular conflagration, it was a moment of reassurance that a gloomy summer might be lifting.
Coutinho was not even facing goal when he took the ball from Joe Gomez, from the left side, rolled off the challenge from the substitute Steven Sidwell, and lashed a shot from 30 yards with such fearsome power that it went through Jack Butland rather than beyond him. A great goal from a player whom Liverpool have to hope can one day be great too, following the departures of Steven Gerrard and Raheem Sterling in the summer.
You could tell by the way each of Coutinho’s team-mates were unwilling to let him go without adding their own personal thanks, just how much it meant to them. Before then Liverpool had tried their hardest to exorcise the memories of the 6-1 defeat here last season but had looked pretty laborious as this team, featuring four of Rodgers’ eight new players, struggled to put it all together.
They got there in the end, although in the first half in particular it was hard to see how they might do it. For all Stoke’s hard work in midfield it should also be said that they had very decent chances on goal. In the second half there was one for Marco Van Ginkel with ten minutes left, and a free-kick from Charlie Adam that drifted beyond Mame Biran Diouf but they created precious little.
At the other end Rodgers’s team struggled to release Christian Benteke on goal and he spent the game a frustrated figure, looking to break off the back of a Stoke defence that handled him quite comfortably. Otherwise it was a game of short tempers and four bookings for Liverpool including one for Dejan Lovren for a stray elbow that cracked Diouf on the nose and might have merited a tougher punishment.
It would be safe to say that before Coutinho’s goal arrived no montage-maker would have been troubling himself transposing Thierry Henry into footage of this game, when they come to market the 2016-2017 Premier League season this time next year. Reassuringly for Rodgers it looks like he will be able to rely on this Brazilian to make the difference when things are tough this season.
It was a truly forgettable first half of misplaced passes and mystifying incompetence on both sides. The goalscoring chances, if there were to be any, looked as if they would come from an error. Perhaps Simon Mignolet’s erratic kicking or Van Ginkel’s occasionally wild passes but in the end both sides escaped unscathed.
The best chance before the break fell to Glen Johnson, Stoke’s new right-back, wearing No 8 and presented with the rare opportunity to put the ball away against his former club. Stoke had sliced Liverpool open down the right side where Jonathan Walters slipped in Van Ginkel.
His cross was flapped away by Mignolet and then Martin Skrtel before it came back to Johnson via Ibrahim Afellay. The former England international had to adjust his feet and the ball’s position before he allowed himself a shot which was struck without power or placement.
Otherwise it was of a poor quality, to say the least. Liverpool looked at their most dangerous when Coutinho had the ball and passed it quickly. When he lingered on it, they tended to lose their effectiveness. Benteke was not fed the ball quickly and early, as he likes it, and as a result was notably peripheral.
In the second half the pure tiredness of both sides meant that there was greater opportunity in either box before Coutinho decided it with a goal that was straight out the playbook of Hughes’ own playing career. There was a late debut for Roberto Firmino and that wonderful end to the match although not quite good enough to dispel the memory of the low quality of what had come before.
