My (Increasingly Rare) Day at the Match – Reds Beat (Sheffield) United

Always a privilege

Move in. Track left.

Zoom in. Enhance 22 to 416.

Hold it. Centre. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan left.

Zoom in.

Zoom in. Enhance 34 to 46.

Shit, no! Zoom out! Zoom out!

That’s Adie, Matt and me, and I seem to be puffing my cheeks out in relief, whilst looking like my beard is actually just a white circle drawn around my mouth. (Ok, so that’s true.)

Back In Town

Since I last went to Anfield, back in May, I was diagnosed, on the eve of this season, with various inter-connected back issues, including a double fracture of the spine (the kind suffered by Conor Bradley in preseason), stenosis, trapped nerve, thickened ligamentum flavum, anterolisthesis, broad-based disc bulge, all relating to a congenitally deformed L5 vertebra that lacked protection, and as I age, gets more prone to damage.

So basically, in L4 for the day, it was also my first game in a girdle.

I hope to try again on the final day of the season (to ‘say goodbye’ to Jürgen Klopp and maybe to see the title win), but the car journey, walking, sitting and general stresses seemed to set back six months of physio work to some degree. And the older I get, doing stuff like this with an illness like M.E. takes more toll; but I definitely wanted to make it to at least one game this spring.

Unlike the games last season, at least the motorways weren’t shut after the game, with three in a row shut in last May on the way home, which just puts this particular ageing and not-that-well guy in less of a mood to even contemplate to the old days, when we did this every week.

After 16 minutes I turned to Adie and Matt in what the three of us used to share as our season ticket seats, and said:

“Every time I come, Núñez starts as the number nine and we––“

“––Goal!”

My point was that, Liverpool never play that well in these games, but all the same, something always happens with Núñez.

The three games I made it to last season were Palace (Núñez sent off for a headbutt), West Ham (Núñez scores a great header) and Fulham (Núñez nips in and gets kicked up in the air to win a penalty).

Now he’d chased down a keeper and got a block that bounced into the net, that may have been off his arse, but possibly the heel of his trailing foot.

None of the games were very good, however. It wasn’t fluid, albeit last night was a bit better than the games I made it to in 2022/23, against a team with a back six.

Liverpool didn’t play very well in those games last season, which is why I started to favour Cody Gakpo for the centre-forward’s role going into 2023/24, and how the team seemed to play better with Gakpo.

Gakpo has generally been less-good this season, but has been moved around a lot and used as a sub a lot, and is still a big success, I’d say.

To have 14 non-penalty goals – a beautiful header killed this game late on – is pretty sensational for a 5th-choice attacker.

Gakpo, at around £38m, and on very reasonable wages (£120,000 a week), has as many non-penalty goals (all competitions) in 26.3 “90s” (2,371 minutes) as the combined total non-penalty league goals scored by:

• Marcus Rashford

• Antony

• Mason Mount

• Jadon Sancho

• Anthony Martial

• Rasmus Højlund

... which, while only in the league, encompasses a massive 101 combined appearances, or 63.6 “90s”, at a wage of around £1.4m a week, and over £350m in transfer fees (or closer to £500m in you adjust for football inflation).

• £300,000pw, £0

• £200,000pw, £80m

• £250,000pw, £60m

• £300,000pw, £73m

• £250,000pw, £58m (albeit almost 3x that after inflation)

• £85,000pw, £80m

And of these, while Sancho has been loaned out, United are paying most of his wages for him to play for someone else. And I don’t know where or what Anthony Martial is anymore.

Aside from Rasmus Højlund, who often impresses me, the rest seem like either wastes of space or in Mount’s case, yet to really play.

This isn’t really to have a dig at Man United (Alejandro Garnacho looks good to me, as has Kobbie Mainoo since I saw his first game this season), but to show how someone like Gakpo, who has had some stick from the fans, is already on 14 goals; and if he’d taken the Reds’ penalties, would likely be on 20 or more.

Indeed, it’s players like Gakpo coming on to score and create that has added to this incredible feat of 26 late goals in league games, ten more than any other club. Even with up to 12 players out per week in 2024, the Reds have scored 59 goals, more than any team in Europe since the end of 2023.

That said, I feared a 1-1 draw last night as the game wore on, with no real sign of a goal coming as the last 20 drew near.

I’d said at 1-0, several times, it just takes one Sheffield United attack to score, and that happened. But of course, the same can happen when you attack 10-20 times in search of a winner; the goal out of nothing, especially if you can strike the ball from the edge of the box if you’re not creating Big Chances.

It helps if your midfield can weigh in the goals (18 so far from the four who were signed in the summer), and we had a lovely side-on view of Alexis Mac Allister’s fulminating thunderbastard, but where, such was the ferocity, we all assumed it was one of those that goes like an arrow right into the Kop, as if the power meant the shot lacked accuracy.

With no idea at all of where it hit the net, in relation to top corner or just right through the keeper, until seeing the replays later, it had that extra moment of surprise when the net bulged.

(Indeed, the net nearly ended up in the Kop.)

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