As Mark Twain might have said, rumours of Jesse Marsch’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Just when it seemed inevitable that we would part with our head coach in the near future, his players produced a superb battling performance to come away from Liverpool with an unexpected but very welcome three points.
Much of the pre-match chatter on social media was discussing how many goals we were going to lose by, and what margin of defeat would constitute a good result. But much would depend on what version of the inconsistent Liverpool would turn up. Would it be the one who put a hatful of goals past Bournemouth and beat Man City, or the one who lost to Forest?
Jesse March made three changes to his starting line-up, but it wasn’t through ‘not knowing his best line-up’ as the Sky commentators suggested. At least two of the changes were injury related, with Tyler Adams returning after missing last week’s game and Summerville coming in for the absent Sinisterra. The other change saw Kristensen being handed right back duties in place of Ayling.
After a wet and windy day throughout the North-West conditions were always going to be tricky. A few of the players were to find it difficult to keep their footing, and Jurgen Klopp almost managed to fall over on his way to the dug-out. The game began in a similar vein, with a tale of two defensive mix-ups.
Our own scary halloween moment came when Meslier came rushing out of his area to meet a long through ball when he didn’t need to, as Cooper was clearly going to get to it first. Cooper was concentrating on the ball and headed it to where he thought our keeper would be, only to lob the ball over the top of him. Thankfully Struijk was on hand to race back and clear the ball before any Liverpool forward could pounce on it.
Then Liverpool produced a comedy moment of their own, and this time it was to result in our opening goal. Gomez picked up the ball under pressure from Aaronson on their right touchline, and turned to play the ball back to Allison without looking to see where his keeper was. Like Meslier, Alison had come off his line a little too far, and as the overhit backpass whizzed past him, Rodrigo sprinted in to complete the simple task of tapping it into the net.
But Liverpool recovered from their early setback and started to put Leeds under pressure, with our narrow formation giving their two talented full-backs plenty of space to create chances from the flanks. A cross from Alexander-Arnold eluded everyone but found it’s way to Roberson beyond the far post. He sent it back across the face of goal to find a clutch of Liverpool players at the far post, and Salah stretched a leg to guide the ball past Meslier to bring the Anfield mob level.
At that point I thought Liverpool might go on to win the game 3 or 4-1, but Leeds responded by getting back onto the front foot, with our rapid attacks continuing to cause problems for their defence. And the 3,000 Leeds fans were giving the players plenty of backing, informing the locals that the atmosphere at Anfield these days is like "football in a library”.
We complied with the request from our club not to chant anything offensive, but would up the scousers by singing the national anthem because they had booed it a few times, which was pretty damn funny.
A long ball down the right found Kristensen in acres of space, and his cross picked out Aaronson in the centre, but the American had to stretch for it and got a bit too much height on the shot, so it came crashing back off the crossbar. We also had a couple of free kicks from decent positions, which the whispering brothers stood over before taking it in turns to send their shots over the bar.
Harrison and Rodrigo force Allison into decent saves, but there was on anxious moment to endure before the break. A long ball through the centre split the Leeds defence and sent Nunez clear, but Meslier had come off his line very quickly and saved with his legs as Nunez tried to flick the ball past him.
Five minutes after the restart Rodrigo came on for Bamford, after our main striker had again been deemed not to be fit enough to start, but Bamford still looked rather laboured even against players who had been on from the start. And Liverpool were having more of the possession by now, with Meslier needing to get his positioning right to keep out a fierce shot from Robertson.
On 65 minutes the hosts had a better chance as Cooper failed to deal with a long pass through the middle, and actually missed the ball twice as he tried to deal with it. Salah took possession and played the ball to Nunez on the left, only for Meslier to deny the Uruguayan once again with his legs. And as the pressure continued to mount, a neat passing move involving Henderson, Salah and Robertson set up Nunez for a shot from outside the area, only for Meslier to make yet another fine save.
At that stage I would have taken a 1-1 draw, but Marsch was still being positive, taking Harrison off to give Gnonto the debut that many on social media have clamoured for. But our chance of snatching a win seemed to have gone when Bamford was played in but took a poor touch, allowing the Liverpool defence time to recover and block his eventual shot.
Klopp has attracted quite a bit of flack on one of their forums for the changes he made around this time, as they lost a bit of momentum with Henderson and Jones coming on, and certainly the latter caused a few attacks to break down with misplaced passes. They have one of the oldest squads in the Premier League, and seemed to be running out of puff a little before the end, while a couple of our youngsters were involved in the move that put us back in front in the 89th minute.
Gnonto controlled the ball well as he spun round before he jinked along the line and got his pass inside despite the presence of two Liverpool defenders. Bamford laid the ball off to Summerville, and the Dutchman controlled it and then sent the ball across Allison and just inside the far post. Cue for rapturous scenes in the Leeds section in that corner and on the sidelines, as the substitutes ran on to join in the celebrations.
Jesse Marsch however seemed to be calming everyone down, perhaps conscious that a couple of earlier stoppages would mean about five minutes of injury time, so we still needed to concentrate to see the game out. So Summerville was removed immediately after scoring and Ayling was sent on to shore things up, as a more defensive presence on the right hand side.
Meslier was still called into action in the time that remained and he took a whack on the face as he bravely dived at the feet of Roberson. Thankfully he was able to continue, but with the time taken to treat that injury the extended time came to about seven minutes in total. But after Meslier had taken his time with a couple of clearances we managed to keep the ball in the Liverpool half for long enough, until the final whistle sealed a famous victory.
Now Jesse Marsch could finally celebrate as a great weight was lifted off his shoulders, and from the way that the whole squad ran to embrace him we could see that the team spirit is still there, and they all wanted to win this game for their head coach. There is no doubt this win has kept him in a job, but we need to build on this and get another good result next Saturday.
Hopefully this won’t be like the wins we had at West Ham and Wolves last season, when we seemed to have got clear, only to drop back into trouble with another bad run. But after a weekend when the rest of the bottom seven picked up one point between them our position looks much better, and we’ve climbed to 15th. We always said Jesse Marsch was a great manager.