Wolves vs. Liverpool: *Bumper* Post-Match Analysis

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

Well, the league, the TV companies and the PGMOL make it as hard for Liverpool as they possibly can, but Liverpool initially making it even harder wasn't enough to derail the Reds.

After a disjoined, sloppy and (naturally) tired/sleepy first half, the Red beast awoke, with Wolves all fireworks and no bang until the break; and then like terrified puppies after it.

In the first half, no one but Jarell Quansah (who remained man of the match) looked even remotely 'at it'; Alexis Mac Allister, after the mad dash back from Bolivia, played like a jet-lagged guy screwed over by the timing.

The worst VAR for Liverpool, who hates Jürgen Klopp? Check. The 12:30 away game after an international break? Check. Four South American players only back from international duty less than 24 hours before kickoff? Check.

Key defender suspended for using industrial language that has been used towards refs every week for 140 years? Check. And three of the back four understudies? Check.

(Since when has calling a decision a ‘fucking joke’ been a bannable offence? As with the yellow card Alexis Mac Allister got at Anfield for waving an imaginary red, the consistency and rules went out the window when Newcastle players did the same.)

Again, whether conscious or not, this is a kind of corrupt application of the rules; one rule for some, another rule for others. Increasing inconsistency is becoming the only consistent.

Mac Allister also got a very early yellow today for not much at all, but a cynical shirt pull haul-back on a breaking Darwin Núñez right in front of the ref was not a booking, when it's as much as a nailed-on booking as ... going towards the crowd after scoring.

Even Michael Oliver, who used to be the best ref, looks lost and confused now; not helped, in my eyes, by being a die-hard Newcastle fan taking Saudi money to ref over there. (Again, don't open yourself up to issues over integrity.)

I'll get onto the football, and the joys of that second half, but what is a yellow card anymore? It's surreal.

Joelinton literally ran in front of the referee – who had to have seen it – to ask for Virgil van Dijk to be sent off. Plus, no apology from the PGMOL or audio release of the 'VAR' work by Tierney and his elbowing mate when Howard Webb reviewed some controversial decisions; just an overturn from an independent panel for a terrible decision, and let's all keep quiet.

'Integrity' and the Premier League don't really go hand in hand.

To give the Reds twice as many of the most difficult timing of fixture than any other team in Klopp's tenure, and to again have Tierney who, as ref and VAR, constantly gives bad decisions (and whose linesman attacked a Liverpool player!), a whopping 25% of the time as a ref or VAR since the latter role was introduced, is almost wilful corruption at this point, as it's now gone well past 'accidental' or 'coincidental'.

Even Jermaine Jenas had to admit it's odd that Liverpool keep getting a fixture – in part dictated by the company he works for – adding that it "needs looking at". Who's up at 12:30 after the next international break? Liverpool.

Playing football at 12:30 is not as easy as later in the day. That's a fact.

If teams were forced to play games at 3am, that would naturally be deemed insane. But 12:30 isn't enough time to get fully fuelled. It's not a natural footballing time. Most intense sports are not played at lunchtime.

Someone has to start looking at patterns in data (if clubs do, why doesn't anyone else?), and how there can be no integrity if the playing field is not broadly even; no one will get perfectly ideal scenarios all the time, but if you had one team playing 10 home games and 28 away, you'd say that it's clearly unfair.

We know about home advantage, so why not about 'time of game' advantage?

How can Mac Allister (and the others) be expected to play two games in South America, come back and have a body clock set for midday? He must have been caught in possession five or six times, and no wonder.

Prior to games, teams tend to train at match-times, to get into the right rhythm. The past two weeks, most of the team has been all over the world.

Still, by the time the game moved more into the afternoon, the Reds were finally roused, with the tactical issues corrected, too, and some super cameos from the bench.

There's plenty to rave about, after the interval, including the 'new' Mo Salah we're seeing.

The majority of my analysis and the analysis of the others follows for subscribers only.