What happened against Arsenal was so frustrating. The trend has been for us to "turn up" in high profile matches and "go missing" in matches that might be seen by the players as having a lower profile.
You could see the players were up for this one, and I thought, here we go again, we are gonna tear the Arse a new one. This is gonna be another Man City like performance, this is gonna be fun.
You work so hard to score goals against good sides, and the last thing you want is to concede cheap goals. Unlucky in a sense with the first one, the referee could have stopped the play when one player was on the ground writhing in pain after a head clash, and the other one, Sakho, was in an obvious state of dizziness, still trying to gather himself when the goal went in. Ramsey had it all to do, and Mignolet seemed to be culpable as he was beaten at his near post from a very tight angle.
After a moment of brilliance from Firmino, it felt like we were much the better side and deserving of the lead. It is a mystery, when you see what this fella is capable of, and then how poor he is on other days. Firmino's inconsistency, is to be frank endemic of our performances all season long, so he is not alone in that regard. Then the second disaster comes, and we are all reminded of why Mignolet is in the goal in the first place, "calamity Bogdan" became "calamity Mignolet" 2-2
The scoreline in a football match always affects the mentality of the players, when the Liverpool players are sat in the dressing room at half time, they are probably thinking, "how are we not winning?" The Arsenal players are thinking, "we have been bossed and how are we level?"
We looked tired second half, and I thought the game was gone, and then you found yourself having yet another reason to get swept up in the euphoria that has sometimes surrounded the coming of Jürgen Klopp. A substitution that few could honestly say was inspiring, yielded a winner. Benteke just did what he is paid to do, and won the ball in the air, but little Joe came charging in like a man possessed and rammed it home.
So what can you conclude from all this? Well for me this was a missed opportunity. We once again proved we can more than hold our own against a top team, even dominate them. We once again saw evidence of a fade out, suggesting mentality issues continue to plague us.
But by far the biggest lesson from this match, was the confirmation of what we all knew already. We need a better goalkeeper.
We shall never know what would have unfolded if we led 2-0 at half time, but we do know that those goalkeeping blunders are bound to affect the confidence of our players, and we can't afford that to continue.
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