Reds Rout Spurs En Route To Wembley

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

A semifinal is so one-sided … you take off Virgil van Dijk, and wrap him in cashmere.

As the cameras focused in on the captain going off, and if you paused the live feed, and zoomed in, and zoomed in again Bladerunner-style, then you could see it, glinting on the big man’s forehead: a bead of sweat.

Or was it a trick of the floodlights?

When the first game ended 1-0, unfairly due to Lucas Bergvall not being sent off by a truly incompetent referee (unlike the very competent Craig Pawson), I said I thought Liverpool would likely take Spurs apart in the second leg, but the more I saw it written up as an inevitability, the more I felt pangs of concern.

But in truth, a 1-0 lead is hard to defend a week, or 30 days later, as you feel you’ve done the hard work, only to discover that the hard work hasn’t even started. It’s yours to lose, after you celebrate the first-leg win.

Liverpool only had one job, and that was to score at least one goal. In the end, four flew in, both posts were hit, and it was a proper pounding.

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