Andy Hunter's match report
One lapse at the back, wayward decisionmaking in the final third, unsatisfactory finishing. That’s the story of an irritating night for Liverpool. An away point isn’t the worst thing in the world, but they should be leaving Moscow with all three. Spartak weren’t up to much and were more than happy to take the draw. They took the lead against the run of the play thanks to an early free-kick from Fernando – Loris Karius should have saved it – but Liverpool should have had enough after Philippe Coutinho conjured a swift equaliser. They had more than enough chances from there, but it must be said that Spartak defended well at times and Liverpool couldn’t quite produce their most fluid football against negative opponents. The result leaves them level on two points with Spartak and two behind leaders Sevilla in Group E. They’ve got plenty of work to do. Thanks for reading and emailing. Night.
Full-time: Spartak Moscow 1-1 Liverpool
It’s all over. Jurgen Klopp has an angry word with the fourth official before shaking Massimo Carrera’s hand. An exasperating night.
90 min+9: We’re into added time in added time now. Moreno wins a header in the Spartak area, but the ball runs through to Selikhov. Jurgen Klopp is in danger of losing his rag. He’s simmering.
90 min+7: Pasalic sends a shot into outer space. That’s the first thing Spartak have done for ages.
90 min+6: Alexander-Arnold swings a cross into the middle and Salah beats Kutepov to the header, but it’s too close to Selikhov and the substitute goalkeeper saves Spartak with a brilliant reflex stop!
90 min+5: Moreno slides a stunning pass down the left and Firmino’s in behind, with Salah and Sturridge to pick out in the middle! He just needs to play the right ball, but he pulls it behind Salah! Oh dear.
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90 min+3: Here he is! Samedov finally departs, making way for Pedro Rocha Neves. That’s eaten up more time.
90 min+2: Samedov won’t leave until he’s been chauffeured off! He wants the buggy! Where’s the driver?
90 min+1: Samedov has gone down. Spartak are about to make their final change. Jordan Henderson’s bellowing at the referee for stopping play when Liverpool had the ball.
90 min: There will be eight minutes of added time.
89 min: Another chance for Liverpool goes begging! Henderson lifts a ball over the top of the Spartak defence for Sturridge, who watches it all the way before whacking his volley over the bar from close range! He even had time to bring the ball down before shooting.
88 min: Salah looks for Sturridge in the middle. Selikhov punches clear.
86 min: Moreno stabs a ball through to Firmino, who brilliantly redirects a header to Sturridge inside the six-yard box. He can’t bring the ball down properly, however, and as a result can’t bundle it past the exposed Selikhov! All in a flap, Sturridge ends up pushing the ball behind for a Spartak goal-kick. Two excellent chances have come and gone for Liverpool in the past few minutes.
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84 min: Lorenzo Melgarejo replaces the injured Popov. There might be a lot of stoppage time.
83 min: Popov is down now. His hamstring’s gone. Spartak are about to make another change. Another stoppage. This has turned into a frustrating night for Liverpool. Klopp is frowning.
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81 min: Moreno gets to the byline, but his cross is useless. Sevilla lead 3-0 against Maribor thanks to a hat-trick from Wissam Ben Yedder.
80 min: Sturridge dithers on the right of the Spartak area, wasting the opportunity to find Salah. He’s robbed of the ball soon enough. Classic Sturridge. But then comes a horror moment for Fernando, who fails to realise that Firmino’s nearby as he also takes his time to get rid of the ball on the edge of the area. The Brazilian nicks it off him, but having done the hard part he proceeds to waft a dismal shot miles over the bar! Where was the composure?
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78 min: This is the closest Liverpool have come in the second half. Trent Alexander-Arnold steps inside, on to his left foot, and wallops one inches over the bar from 18 yards. Selikhov probably wouldn’t have saved it.
75 min: Firmino picks up a booking for fouling Eschenko. Nothing’s happening. Spartak have done pretty well to turn this into a slog since the break. They’ll be happy with a point.
73 min: Gini Wijnaldum replaces the disappointing Emre Can.
72 min: From a deep position, just inside Liverpool’s half, Coutinho spots Salah’s dart inside and tries to pick him out with a raking pass. Selikhov’s alive to the threat, though, and his first contribution is to head the ball away. Karius is soon doing similar up the other end, making sure Luiz Adriano can’t cause any mischief.
71 min: Fernando swishes a teasing ball into the middle, but the French referee spots a foul and awards a free-kick to the visitors.
70 min: Daniel Sturridge replaces Sadio Mane. Before he can think about scoring, though, he’ll have to help Liverpool defend a Spartak free-kick on the right.
69 min: Salah finally takes the corner. It’s headed away at the near post. That definitely wasn’t worth the wait. Daniel Sturridge’s arrival is imminent.
68 min: Alexsandr Selikhov finally comes on for Spartak. It’s a blow for the Russians. Rebrov has been very good in goal for them.
67 min: Rebrov’s gone off on a buggy. We’re still waiting for Selikhov, though, who’s not ready yet. This is ridiculous.
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65 min: Rebrov’s evening is over. Aleksandr Selikhov will be on soon, although Rebrov still hasn’t left the pitch. Emre Can’s urging him to hurry up. He’s a fine one to talk after the part he played in Spartak’s goal.
63 min: Salah slips a pass through to Alexander-Arnold, whose dangerous cutback evades everyone in the middle. It comes to Coutinho on the left. He twists and turns, but he can’t find a way through. Mane ends up winning a corner for Liverpool. Before it can be taken, though, Rebrov will need more treatment. He’s still struggling after that collision with Salah a few minutes ago. Samedov is also trying to shake off some cramp.
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60 min: This half is drifting. Sevilla lead Maribor 2-0 in the other game in Group E. Two points from their first two games wouldn’t be a satisfactory return for Liverpool.
57 min: Mane skips down the left, evading a challenge, before looking up and slicing Spartak open with a lovely, gorgeously weighted pass through to Salah. However a combination of the covering Dzhikiya and the advancing Rebrov denies Salah, who’s not awarded a penalty despite tumbling to the turf. Rebrov’s down, too, and needs some treatment, but he’ll be fine to continue.
54 min: Spartak break and Luiz Adriano finds Eschenko on the right of the Liverpool area. He lets fly with a fearsome drive that Karius pushes over. The German then punches the resultant corner away.
53 min: Another free-kick to Liverpool over to the left, this time in a position for a shot. Moreno’s ordered to leave it to Coutinho, having wasted the previous one. A good idea. Coutinho skelps it over the wall and the ball dips as it heads towards the bottom right corner, but Rebrov plunges low to push it away.
51 min: Emre Can is having an extremely poor game.
50 min: Moreno tries to charge past Tasci on the left. The defender handles to stop him progressing any further. But the referee’s spotted that chicanery and awards a free-kick to Liverpool. It comes to nothing.
47 min: Coutinho swings the free-kick into the area, Lovren meets with a firm header that Rebrov pushes over, but the whistle’s long gone for something or other.
46 min: Spartak get the second half underway. Bocchetti’s booked for an off-the-ball foul on Emre Can midway inside Spartak’s half. “The free kick should have been saved,” says Chris. “Karius hardly staking a claim for the number one slot. Emre Can has been disappointing. Sloppy yellow early on. Then caught in possession and made another poor decision leading to the free kick. I’d like to see Wijnaldum replace him. He’s had a solid start to the season and is les prob to mistakes than Can.”
Half-time: Spartak Moscow 1-1 Liverpool
Spartak Moscow have had one shot. Liverpool have had lots. It’s level. It’s Liverpool.
45 min: Spartak make a piping hot mess of the corner and Liverpool break five on two. Firmino storms forward with abundant options. He finds Henderson on the right, but the Liverpool captain’s low centre finds Mane just offside in the middle! The ball evades him, mind you, and from a tight angle Salah ends up firing across the face of the empty net anyway. What a waste.
44 min: Spartak fly forward after another loose pass from Can. In comes the cross, but Lovren beats Adriano to it, at the expense of a corner.
42 min: Can’s cross, Rebrov’s catch. The match has quietened down a bit in the past few minutes.
38 min: Firmino bustles inside from the left and shoots. Taschi’s in the way. Liverpool probe down the right. Henderson clips a teasing first-time ball into the middle from the right. Taschi has a swing and a miss and the ball just hits the unwitting Firmino, who was no more than six yards out and completely unmarked, and rolls to an exceedingly grateful Rebrov.
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37 min: “It’s wrong to say Liverpool’s defence is a comedy of errors,” says Paul Griffin. “It’s an multi-season, Emmy-winning, box set of comedies of errors, with a gifted ensemble of comic talent. If one player is off their game, the rest will rescue the farce with uproarious pratfalls and slapstick. The last but one time Liverpool won Big Cup, Steve Nicol was on the bench. He must be fifty, but would still start ahead of any if these defenders.”
35 min: Can lifts the ball into the Spartak area. Salah tries to make something of it and claims he’s been barged in the back. Nothing doing. He was probably offside in any case.
32 min: Liverpool are on it now. Coutinho skitters through the middle, Spartak all over the place, and sees his pass take a deflection and run to Salah, who lifts a curler over the bar from 20 yards.
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GOAL! Spartak Moscow 1-1 Liverpool (Coutinho, 31 min)
You can’t keep them quiet for long. Two of Klopp’s artists combine for a beautiful equaliser. Coutinho plays a beautiful one-two with Mane, skips behind the Spartak defence, sets himself and confidently lifts the ball over the advancing Rebrov, who can’t do anything this time. Spartak couldn’t live with that turn of speed and movement.
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29 min: Rebrov, who’s having a very impressive game in goal for Spartak, speeds off his line to beat Mane to a through-ball from Henderson.
28 min: Sadio Mane drives inside from the left and lets fly with his right foot from the edge of the area. It’s a firmly struck effort, but to close to Rebrov, who holds down to his left.
26 min: Liverpool are all at sea at the back now. They’re rocking! They lose possession in midfield and Spartak pour forward. Luiz Adriano breaks into space on the right, cuts inside and finds Popov, who ruins the move with a poor pass to the left for Pasalic, who was unmarked. Pasalic would have a clear sight of goal if Popov had been more accurate. A let-off for the visitors, who need to get their heads back in the game!
25 min: Liverpool look to hit back immediately and Sadio Mane briefly thinks he’s scored an instant equaliser when he buries a low header past Rebrov from Alexander-Arnold’s cross. The flag is rightly up for offside, though.
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GOAL! Spartak Moscow 1-0 Liverpool (Fernando, 23 min)
All that Liverpool pressure, all those hopeful moments, and now look! Fernando punishes that Coutinho foul by stepping up to the free-kick, which is in a central position 25 yards out, and bending a delicious effort over the wall and high to Loris Karius’s left. A fine goal, although questions will be asked of the Liverpool goalkeeper. Fernando’s shot wasn’t in the corner! The critics will say he should have saved it! This is a familiar feeling for Liverpool.
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21 min: The ball breaks kindly for Popov inside Liverpool’s half. His run’s stopped by Lovren, but Liverpool suddenly look ragged, unnerved. Emre Can dawdles on the right, taking far too long to release possession and he ends up putting his team in trouble with a loose pass down the flank. The ball’s moved inside and Coutinho, tracking back from midfield, denies Spartak. Moments later, though, Coutinho attempts to win the ball again and concedes a free-kick for a trip on Samedov 25 yards from goal.
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19 min: This does feel like something of a mismatch at the moment. Now Matip’s pass forward causes problems for the Spartak defence and Salah almost takes advantage of a slip on the edge of the area, only for the ball to run away from him just when it seemed he had a clear path to goal. It surely can’t be long before Liverpool score. Then again, their supporters were probably saying something similar at Leicester this time last week.
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17 min: Liverpool work Spartak over on the left, Salah appearing in the area. His low drive’s beaten out by Rebrov. But it just keeps coming back at Spartak, who look very low on confidence indeed. Moreno wins back possession on the left and finds Mane. He whips a cross into the middle and Firmino is all alone. He should score, but sends his header too close to Rebrov, who makes an outstanding reaction save, somehow pushing the ball to safety! Firmino really shouldn’t have given him a chance, though. The danger’s not over yet. Mane wriggles down the left and pulls the ball across goal, but Rebrov is down quickly to hold.
15 min: Rebrov claims Coutinho’s corner.
14 min: Mane has a look down the left again. He wins a corner.
13 min: Coutinho slips a clever pass through to Salah, who sees his shot blocked behind by Taschi. Liverpool have settled well. Coutinho delivers the corner from the right, but it’s headed away.
11 min: Can clips a pass out to Alexander-Arnold on the right. He does well to control on his chest before knocking it inside to Salah. The combination continues when Salah, also thinking quickly, lays the ball back to Alexander-Arnold, who tees himself up for a volley that swings just wide of the far post.
10 min: A loose ball breaks for Mane down the left. Away he goes. He stands up Kutepov on the edge of the area and beats the defender with a gorgeous swerve of the hips, but he can’t pick out Coutinho, who was waiting eagerly inside the six-yard box.
9 min: The noise is deafening. Liverpool will do well to silence these fans.
7 min: Emre Can takes a heavy touch in possession, panics and brings down Bocchetti with a late slide tackle, earning himself a foolish early booking. That was utterly needless. There was no danger: Can was near the centre circle when he made the foul. What was Bocchetti going to do from there?
6 min: This is a pleasingly open start. Palasic clips a pass inside to Luiz Adriano, who almost bursts through the middle, but for an interception by Matip.
5 min: Over on the left, Coutinho swings a cross to the far post, looking for a reprise of Mo Salah’s headed goal against Leicester on the weekend, but Firmino, in the Salah role, can’t keep the ball from flying behind.
4 min: Deep on the right, Can hooks a deep cross into the area. Rebrov momentarily looks in a flap under his crossbar, but the ball had drifted out of play and back in again.
3 min: Remember, Liverpool haven’t won away in the Champions League since beating Debrecen in 2009. Not that it’s a statistic that means much given they’ve barely been in the competition since then. I’m not sure why I’m even bothering to bring it up. Sorry. I’ll end it here. Sorry.
Peep! Off we go! With the Spartak fans increasing the volume, the French referee blows his whistle and Liverpool get the game underway, kicking from right to left in the first half. It is very noisy.
It’s all level in Group E at the moment. Liverpool drew their opener with Sevilla, while Spartak picked up a point away to Maribor. It’s finely poised before the second round of matches and Liverpool’s dropped points against Sevilla means they probably can’t afford to stumble here. Here come the teams. Spartak are in red, Liverpool are in white and the visitors can expect a raucous atmosphere inside the packed Spartak Stadium. There are plenty of intimidating banners in the stands.
“We cannot just bring all the artists but if it fits together we will do it,” Jurgen Klopp said. It turns out it fits together. For the first time this season Sadio Mane, Philippe Coutinho, Roberto Firmino and Mo Salah all start together. Gini Wijnaldum, dropping to the bench as Coutinho drops into midfield, perhaps to show that he can be Liverpool’s Andres Iniesta. Maybe. It’s a role he often played for Brendan Rodgers’s Liverpool in 13-14 and Klopp has decided he can take the risk against a Spartak Moscow side struggling in the Russian league after winning the title last season. “If Liverpool ain’t so bothered about defensive competence what about finding room for Studge,” Ian Copestake says. “Is five musketeers too much to ask?”
Team news
Spartak Moscow: Rebrov; Bocchetti, Tasci, Kutepov; Eschenko, Fernando, Pasalic, Dzhikiia; Samedov, Popov; Adriano. Subs: Selikhov, Petkovic, Bakaev, Samsonov, Melgarejo, Davydov, Neves.
Liverpool: Karius; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Lovren, Moreno; Henderson, Can; Salah, Coutinho, Mane; Firmino. Subs: Mignolet, Flanagan, Klavan, Milner, Wijnaldum, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Sturridge.
Referee: Clement Turpin (France)
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Preamble
Hello. The chief accusation against Rafael Benitez always was that he lacked the expansiveness ever to make Liverpool anything more than a very good cup team. Only in the spring of 2009, when Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard and Andrea Dossena devastatingly combined to give Manchester United, Real Madrid and Aston Villa what for, did the Spaniard ever truly lift the handbrake. Otherwise it tended to be the case that Benitez’s approach always erred too much on the safe side, ultimately leaving him too reliant on moments on individual genius from your Gerrards and Dossenas, and that was no way to go about bringing the Premier League title to Anfield. You can’t win the league if you adopt the Babbsian approach to defending, but you also can’t win it by averaging 62 goals a season.
Of course Benitez will always be revered at Liverpool after bringing them their fifth European Cup in 2005. That tactical discipline and organisation tended to fare better in Europe, with Benitez never afraid to dip a stick in some sh1t and wave it in the face of disgusted and outraged neutrals if his team happened to be confronted by opponents boasting fearsome attacking might. Benitez’s Liverpool might not have been great to watch, but they could be horrible to play against. Unlike Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, who are brilliant to watch but often terrific fun to play against.
Klopp’s critics have been handed plenty of ammunition in recent weeks and this is probably the point where I’m meant to say that the German could learn a thing or two from Benitez’s defensive focus. Maybe. Liverpool are electric going forward, but they have conceded 11 goals in their first six league games, struggle at set-pieces and have a couple of iffy goalkeepers, while even Klopp knows that his team can be naive when they try to kill games. This evening they visit Spartak Moscow having dropped two points in their opening Champions League match after conceding a late equaliser in their 2-2 draw with Sevilla at Anfield. Probably wouldn’t have happened under Benitez.
But perhaps the argument is more nuanced than that. It’s true that Liverpool need to cut out the stupid defensive errors, that they could occasionally do with slowing things down a bit and that they probably need to find better goalkeepers than Simon Mignolet and Loris Karius. Until they make such improvements, there is a strong chance that Klopp will follow Benitez, Gerard Houllier, Brendan Rodgers and Roy Hodgson Evans by being remembered as a Liverpool manager who impressed in many ways before falling short because of a failure to find the right balance between defence and attack. But the key for this Liverpool team is not to compromise their ideals by forgetting who they are and shutting up shop, it is to become a more complete and well-rounded side by making sure that the drive to concede less does not force them to compromise their attacking instincts.
As Pep Guardiola might say, what is tackles? What is good defending? Keep your shape. Win your headers. Don’t let him get goalside. Don’t mess about with it at the back! Second ball. Second ball. SECOND BALL, JORDAN. Jurgen Klopp, who won successive Bundesliga titles with Borussia Dortmund before taking them to the Champions League final in 2013, doesn’t necessarily think of defending in this way. Unlike the more pragmatic Jose Mourinho, who is easier to trust because he prefers to reduce the element of risk as much as possible, Klopp believes defending is something that starts from the front, by pushing the opposition back and denying them territory, by keeping them pinned back with furious non-stop pressing. They can’t score if they can’t get the ball. They can’t score if they can’t get out of their half. The problem is the fragility, though. One long ball. One dropped cross. One useless backpass. Football is random. Players lose concentration. Things go wrong.
If Liverpool malfunction against Spartak, there will be more questions. Klopp knows how it works. He isn’t a fool. It’s a results business. He has to deliver, else he’ll go the same way as his predecessors. However he does it, though, he can’t be Benitez, he can’t be Houllier and he definitely can’t be Mourinho. He has to be himself. Liverpool, who can’t say they didn’t know what they were getting, have to let him be himself. It’s not like it won’t be more fun that way.
Kick-off: 7.45pm BST.
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