Daniel Storey: With Fabinho filling the middle Liverpool look whole again
Mohamed Salah, Fabinho, and Thiago celebrate after Liverpool scored their second goal against Arsenal during the Premier League match at The Emirates. Â
It’s amazing what a difference having round pegs in round holes can do. Fabinho filled in excellently at centre-back for the most part as Jurgen Klopp looked to cover up his central defensive injury crisis, but nobody could replace Fabinho’s role in central midfield. Suddenly Thiago has space to find a pass and roam forward without fear of the counter-attack. Suddenly the full-backs could overlap, knowing Fabinho would cover their space if possession was lost.
Diogo Jota’s return also bodes well, offering versatility and fluidity in a front three that had become a little predictable and more than a little fatigued in his absence. Jota has scored in nine Liverpool matches this season — they have won eight of them and drawn the other.
Until this weekend — and defeats for Chelsea and Leicester — we had presumed that only the Champions League could save Liverpool’s season. Now they have the favourable path to the final in that competition and are back in contention for a top-four place with six of their last eight remaining league games against teams in the bottom half.
The performance of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang probably ranks some way down the list of gripes that Arsenal fans have after a wretched performance against Liverpool effectively ended all interest in their league season with a quarter of the campaign still to go. They were without several players in key positions, but that doesn’t explain the near-total lethargy and inability to pass the ball.
But Aubameyang is a symbol of Arsenal’s mismanagement. They really did look at the desperate Mesut Ozil situation, pondered on it for a moment, and then handed a £375,000-a-week contract to a 31-year-old that they seemingly had little intention of building the team around. Aubameyang can be effective from the left in a 3-4-3 that allows him to stay high up the pitch, but in a 4-2-3-1 he just gets totally lost.
And would Aubameyang even command a start in a meritocratic Arsenal XI? Emile Smith-Rowe and Bukayo Saka, both absent on Saturday, offer far more energy in his position. Mikel Arteta seems to prefer Alexandre Lacazette as the central striker despite there being barely any evidence of that being a workable long-term solution.
And yet what is the alternative? Dropping your captain and highest-paid player to the bench? If that could reignite Aubameyang’s passion and hunger to win back his place, we saw with Ozil the more likely end game of such a strategy.
For 48 minutes, it was like watching Frank Lampard’s Chelsea: The attackers spurned chances, the midfield was virtually non-existent and the defence seemed unsure of which opposing player to pick up and settled upon none of them. West Brom deserve huge credit for their attacking ambition (particularly the substitution of Branislav Ivanovic for Callum Robinson rather than a like-for-like defender), but this was a defeat all of Chelsea’s own making.
Thomas Tuchel clearly had one eye on Porto in midweek; N’Golo Kante, Andreas Christensen, Antonio Rudiger and Mason Mount were all rested. But without resorting to Joe Cole’s punditry jingoism (“This is the Premier League not the Bundesliga”), this was a lesson to Tuchel that he can take nothing for granted in Chelsea’s pursuit of a top-four place. That is where the true excitement of the late season lies.
There should be no shock at watching Manchester City sweep aside any Premier League peer given their vast resources. But a trip to Leicester, so often their bogey team, coming immediately after an international break and immediately before a midweek Champions League assignment, offered Brendan Rodgers’ team hope. They were outclassed and out-passed by a wonderful team that didn’t even include John Stones, Raheem Sterling, Ilkay Gundogan, Bernardo Silva, Ferran Torres, Phil Foden or Joao Cancelo.
Amid all the talk over whether City can land an unprecedented quadruple, do not allow their performance since Christmas to be underestimated. At the turn of the year, City were in eighth place in the Premier League and discussion focused on whether Pep Guardiola had the desire to rebuild another great team in Manchester. Since then, they have won 23 of their 24 matches in all competitions. Nobody in Europe comes close to that record.
On January 4, Southampton beat Liverpool at home to temporarily jump into the top six. At that point they were on the same number of points as Manchester City and just four behind the Premier League leaders. They had taken 22 points from their previous 12 league matches.
After 30 minutes at St Mary’s on Sunday lunchtime, Ralph Hasenhuttl was staring down the barrel of a crisis. Defeat would have meant that Southampton had taken four points from 13 league games and slipped from the top six into a relegation battle.
Hasenhuttl is working within difficult circumstances. Southampton’s squad is one of the smallest in the Premier League and the drop off from the first team to the rest is worryingly pronounced. But pre-game on Sunday he spoke of his delight at finally having enough fit players to leave those in need of a rest on the bench. In the space of an hour, Southampton dissuaded talk of emergency and secured their place in next season’s Premier League. Now to build upon it with a meagre transfer budget.
