Sunderland X Liverpool X: Match Review

Neil Atkinson’s post-match evaluation for The Anfield Wrap after Sunderland 0 Liverpool 1 within the 2025-2026 Premier League on the Stadium Of Gentle…

Win the best to play.

Soccer adjustments on a regular basis. Positions flit out and in of significance. Shapes are trend. Generally you want a 9. Generally a 9 is an indulgence.

However there are truisms. Listed here are two:

1. Win the best to play.2. Win your property video games.

Tonight Liverpool had been up towards the aspect that had taken making 1 as laborious as attainable and a couple of as essential as attainable to absolutely the limits.

In each model of soccer ever profitable the best to play has all the time mattered if you find yourself the higher aspect with the larger finances.

Tonight, for the primary time in what seems like endlessly, Liverpool gained the best to play. You possibly can lose the best to play in a load of how, not only a bodily battle, however by conceding a delicate one or by being much less good early or by “rising into the sport” which is usually only a pink rag to any bull you care to say.

Liverpool did none of that nonsense tonight and as a substitute they gained the best and rode it into the sundown. They performed and performed. Instantly within the unforgiving, pouring rain Sunderland had been begging for half time. They had been pulled this manner and that. They went from wanting and sounding like a soccer crew who had been craving contemporary meat to kittens who simply wanted Florian Wirtz to place the toy down for a bit.

They went into half time meek and gentle. They got here out higher, sharper, with an concept however Liverpool once more gained the best.

Let’s be clear – Liverpool ought to go in 0-1. Perhaps even 0-2. The subsequent part for this aspect is that form of factor.

However let’s be clear – the primary half was like taking off tight footwear. Greater than every other away league recreation this season, it was like watching the Champions. Unbeaten are you? Pouring down is it? Watch this.

Higher aspect, Liverpool. Again and again the higher aspect, again and again first to the whole lot, again and again the ball comes again.

It was presumably essentially the most significant 45 minutes of Florian Wirtz’s season. All of the climate, all of the aggression and he seems to everybody on the pitch the perfect participant by a mile. Not simply to everybody within the stand or on the telly, however to the opposite 21 gamers as the perfect participant they’ve seen all 12 months. Once more – this doesn’t end in a aim and that would have ended up mattering however it’s one other step ahead in Florian Wirtz’s steps ahead.

Sunderland are good. Not nice. However they dwell for duels they usually win their battles. Effectively not in the present day. Ibou Konate is profitable his battles and he’s profitable yours too. Konate’s journey since Elland Highway is a credit score to himself and his supervisor and his captain. This doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from teaching and from being a part of a collective. Tonight isn’t his finest efficiency of the season however it’s his finest towards a aspect which isn’t of European qualification high quality. Which is almost all of the groups you play.

You identify it and he managed it or dominated it. On this temper he’s the centre again of your Liverpudlian desires. He’s Lawrenson to Hansen. He’s Emlyn Hughes. All entrance foot and all faces and aggression and charisma. He’s the person you’d comply with to the jaws of hell.

Alexis Mac Allister throws in his finest efficiency of this season by a mile and his twelfth better of the final two seasons however you deal on that proper now. Once more, he’s all aggression, all profitable the best after which all taking part in. The ball snaps out of him.

Throughout the pitch Liverpool gamers have determined they only gained’t be second finest. What’s laborious within the recreation, for us and for them, is knowing a draw is okay in your private battle sometimes. If 11v11 you win 5 and draw 6 then you definitely are likely to win the sport. In the present day there’s a humility from Liverpool. These are unbeaten – they are going to take some beating. The climate is punishing – we have to settle for it may’t be good. The desk is towards us – we have to proper it and it begins now.

I’m gutted I by no means went as a result of tonight isn’t Liverpool’s finest efficiency of the marketing campaign however it’s their most right, their most severe. It’s one which ought to supply hope and perception. If they’ll do that right here then they’ll do it on the Metropolis Floor, on the Amex, on the Hill Dickinson.

Liverpool gained the best to play. After which they performed. Then they gained. Then they fought and defended for his or her lives. The higher aspect had been the higher aspect they usually took the factors residence. They might want to play higher however they gained’t must battle more durable as a result of no person will battle like Sunderland.

It’s an enormous step ahead and I really feel high of the world you realize.

Neil

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