Match analysis
Liverpool 3-1 Tottenham: a rotated side, a real performance, and one number that finally moved
Tuesday night at Anfield, third round of the Carabao Cup, Liverpool win 3-1. If you read only the score you would file this under another bad week for Tottenham. I watched it twice, and the second viewing was more encouraging than the first.
First, the result stands on its own. Three goals conceded at Anfield is three goals conceded at Anfield, and a cup exit is a cup exit. There is no version of this where the losing coach gets to call it a good night. But a defeat can still be informative, and this one was, in a way that Tottenham's four league games had not been.
The number that moved
Conor Gallagher scored. That sounds small. It ended a run in which this squad had gone through its entire Premier League season so far without putting the ball in the net. When a group of players stops scoring, the problem stops being technical very quickly and becomes something closer to hesitation. You see it in the extra touch before the shot and in the safe pass in the final third. Breaking that at Anfield, of all venues, against a side that has been comfortable defending its box, is worth more than the fixture suggests.
Kudus, and the question the manager has now asked himself
Mohammed Kudus started, for the first time since a quad injury in January. That is a long absence, and a first start back is never a free hit: you find out whether the rehabilitation held, at match speed, with contact. Roberto De Zerbi said afterwards that Kudus can also play as a number ten, and then named the forward group he now has available: Savio, Kudus, Solanke and Marmoush.
Read that as a coach and it is not a boast, it is a decision he has just been handed. At Anfield the ten role belonged to Gallagher, and the fair criticism is that the creativity was not there. Gallagher is a good footballer doing an honest job in a position that asks for something else. Now the manager has an alternative, and the next two team sheets will tell you what he really thinks about it.
Archie Gray was set an exam he had not revised for
The other conversation coming out of the night was about Gray at right back, and specifically that his attacking output was thin. I would push back on the framing. He is a midfielder by trade, covering a specialist position, away at Liverpool, in a rotated side, while the first choice right back was sitting out with a muscle problem. Under those conditions the job is to hold a shape and not get isolated. Judging a stand-in on the numbers you would expect from the specialist is how young players get talked out of the game.
Destiny Udogie is the more legitimate worry on that back line, and it is a pattern rather than a performance: injury, rushed return, form dip, repeat. That cycle is a load management problem, not a character problem, and fixing it needs somebody with the authority to leave him out when he is fit enough to play but not sharp enough to defend one on one for ninety minutes.
What I take into the weekend
Spurs controlled spells of a game at Anfield with a second choice eleven and scored for the first time this season. Omar Marmoush said afterwards that the group is very close to turning it around, and the performance backed him up more than the scoreline did. The manager came out of the tie with more credit than he went in with, which is not a thing that usually happens to a coach whose team just lost by two.
None of that is a trophy. It is the sort of evening that either becomes the start of something on Saturday or gets forgotten by Monday, and the difference will be decided by whether the next goal takes another four games to arrive.