Liverpool 16 Points Clear After (Finally) Strolling Past Southampton

Top-gear for about 3 minutes was all it required

Paul Tomkins, Andrew Beasley, Daniel Rhodes and other TTT regulars will give their thoughts on the match for 24 hours after the game, so the article received via email is unlikely to be the final version. There's statistics from the match and videos too.

Post-Match Thoughts

Paul Tomkins

For years, Liverpool didn’t get the penalties that their play, and logic, and the fouls against them that were ignored, suggested they should; this season, while refs are getting worse for the Reds in other ways (game-management via insane Foul Balances), the stonewall penalties are at least being given, and there were two today.

Indeed, the deliberate and daft handballs in the box per-90 against the Reds by Yukinari Sugawara is off the charts, after he did the same in the reverse fixture. This time he nudged the ball with his elbow, to control it. It was blatant.

And Mo Salah, fasting and not as sharp so far in March, despatched both penalties with aplomb.

Even at half-time, the xG advantage Liverpool had over Southampton (+1.3) was the same that PSG had over Liverpool across the full 90 minutes in midweek. In the second half, that gulf went through the roof.

Arne Slot rotated players, and while I messaged mates on the stroke of half-time to say I’d make three changes, the three that occurred had me surprised, in that Darwin Núñez, while not deserving of a red card in the slightest (especially after the Myles Lewis-Skelly one, which was worse, was overturned), had just made a deliberate foul so stupid (but crucially, not dangerous or reckless) it put him in the crosshairs of the officials.

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