Digging Deeper Into Liverpool’s 0-1 Victory Over Sunderland

Liverpool actually did the thing, with a single goal from Virgil van Dijk the decider on the day in the win against Sunderland. It was not a perfect match, with the deluge of rain wreaking havoc on the players and the pitch, but a nice small bandage after the loss to Manchester City over the weekend. Sunderland maybe even deserved more from that match than to drop points, but the Reds were resilient in turning the screw to finally take the lead.

Now join us as we examine some of the narratives, tactics, reactions, and questions Liverpool will be dealing with and the fans will be talking about in the aftermath.

Winners: Virgil van Dijk and Mohamed Salah

The defender scored the only goal of the day off of a corner from Mohamed Salah, with both players breaking records in the process. Van Dijk officially became the defender with the most goals in the Premier League for Liverpool, surpassing Sami Hyppia’s tally of 22. Salah himself tied Steven Gerrard’s record of most assists in the Premier League for Liverpool, with 92 moments of setting up goals for the Reds. Not a bad day out for our leadership, despite Salah being unable to find a goal himself.

Loser: The right-back position

Unfortunately for Endo, who got his second Premier League start of the season on Wednesday, the Japanese international went down with a significant ankle injury after slipping on the wet grass. The poor guy had to be stretchered off the pitch in another blow to the defensive roster for Liverpool, and another body part taken by what appears to be a curse on the right-back position. That is now three players that have gotten injured playing that position this season alone. At least Dominik Szoboszlai only has to serve the one suspension and Joe Gomez was fit enough to come in and fill that space after Endo came off, but it was a heartbreaking thing to see involving a well loved player.

The win will take a little bit of pressure off the coach, but Liverpool are still in 6th and behind historic rivals Manchester United. There have been just two wins in the last ten Premier League matches, too, which isn’t a great record to think of it. Regardless of where we land in the battle for the Champions League places, we should be doing whatever we can to not finish behind our neighbors. We will surely hear about the pressure for the next few days until the coach is tested again on Saturday.

It may be the obvious pick, considering they lost the match, but they also lost their unbeaten home record and probably deserved more than 0 points. They sit in 11th place on the table so unless they fully implode they are almost assured Premier League football and wages again next year, and with the way they played today they will probably be fine for the rest of the season. They’ve just gotta be disappointed from today to not get anything out of a difficult match.

The current narrative is, whether we like it or not, how much longer does Arne Slot have at the helm of Liverpool? As mentioned above, the win does buy him a little more time towards the end of the season, and this writer is definitely of the mind that if he does get sacked, it’ll be at the end of the season. The does still mean that every performance and result until then will be weighted for or against him, and so a scrappy 1-0 win away from home in the pouring rain, with a crisis in the right back position, may go a lot further than the frustrating loss to Manchester City on the weekend. It is of course still only February but it has been a year of the cracks first starting to appear for the coach.

Liverpool play Brighton and Hove Albion at Anfield on Saturday, 14 February. We sit in sixth place, three points off of fourth place and the guaranteed Champions League spaces. Obviously there is still a lot of league to play for and a lot of time for other teams to drop points, so there is still a chance (disregarding any attempt to actually win the Champions League). There is no way we’ll win the league this year, so our sights have to be on those places, even if Slot seems to think Europa League isn’t that bad.

How The Players/Manager Reacted

Virgil van Dijk: “To come here, to play like we did today, [it’s] a well-deserved three points. A great game, so we’ll take it and move on. I think they showed this season how difficult it is to beat them. A lot of credit to them, it’s a very hard-working team. With their fans behind them, it makes it a good atmosphere over here. It’s good to come here and for us to win and keep the clean sheet. A good night for us.”

Arne Slot: “Very important. I think we dug deep, after only two days of rest. Then going to a difficult away game. We showed again how well we can play on the ball. The character we have shown throughout the whole game was very good and that is why we leave this place with a 1-0 win. Second half, we had so many good moments and so many moments where we had quality players in promising positions.

“The overall performance in terms of work rate was really good.”