t’s October 28th - welcome dear listener to the latest edition of First State Kopites. I’m Paul and I am joined by Daz. We’ll do a review of the Everton and Toulouse games and briefly look ahead, given Liverpool play Forest in less than 24 hours.
Part One - The Merseyside Derby - 243rd version, Liverpool have 99 wins now.
We need a red card and a penalty to beat this lot - not great for a team with title ambitions OR solid win given the international break
The key decisions - which hardly feel like the 12 against 10 argument that we’ve heard.
Interesting approach to Everton set pieces - 4 breaks in the first 20, could have picked better passes
Everton had an xG of 0.29, if we’d played the final third of the match with 10 (again) do we really think they would have offered much? We had over 2 and that doesn’t take account of most of the breakaways.
Also bizarre that the Guardian’s report decided to single out this game to talk about poor officiating.
Young - first player to get 2 yellows against us since 2015 (Sadio Mane) - are the Tomkins/Beesley messages about refereeing bias seeping out there? Penalties at Anfield, fouls on Salah, and now 2 yellows.
Sean called out the liability that Young seems to have become and we talked about if he gets a yellow in the first 20 for the cynical foul he usually commits, it will limit his ability to foul. That bit wasn’t quite right, as the late challenge on Diaz wasn’t great.
Tsimikas should have had a yellow - to be fair, if Pawson had a better view of his 3rd foul it probably would have been a yellow. He just commits too many fouls.
Konate should have had 2 argued Toffee TV. I didn’t think the 2nd was a foul real time but on the replay it’s clear that Ibou clips Beto. The first yellow did seem a bit soft though (and one wonders whether the Jota 2 yellows and the admission that the first should not have been given, played into this decision).
The penalty is thrown in there as if it wasn’t absolutely blatant - but there were 2 non-calls that Marcus Rashford may have been given (one of which the TV didn’t even replay).
Some bright performances - Gravenberch, Mac Allister and Szobozlai. Salah did not seem very sharp (but still has the most goal involvement in the Premier League), but Jota and Luis Diaz were bright at times. Darwin looked sharp when he came on.
Briefly on Toulouse:
Weaker line up than against USG. Some great performances - Gravenberch, Jota, Endo
Definitely using these as training games - will be even more so for the next 3 you feel.
Part Two - another big week:
Forest 10am on Sunday (thanks to the UK clock changes) - what do we expect?
Forest have dropped points against Luton and Burnley. Won at Chelsea, lost at Man City - 3 straight draws.
Awoniyi has been out and they’ve had to rely on Chris Wood. They were potentially unlucky not to beat Luton (highest XG, most shots of their season).
Reds will have Gakpo back but not Curtis, Tsimikas will continue at left back we assume.
Strata beginning to develop - where are Forest?
Predicted line up and scores
Bournemouth in the EFL Cup - Europa League game
In other news:
Only Mo Salah corner - 7 goals, 4 assists - 144 PL goals for Liverpool in 227 appearances - 195 altogether for Liverpool - well past King Kenny and Stevie G on the all time list. Billy Liddell with 228 in 4th spot is next.
Mane is 14th and Firmino 16th in that list.
We will be back after the Forest game. Thanks to Daz for joining me. And thank you for listening.
If you enjoyed the pod, please share it with a friend. Follow us @FirstStateKopites on Twitter – we only tweet and retweet from sources we think are credible. Music is courtesy of Hypenotic – they are a Welsh electro-pop band – https://hyperfollow.com/hypenotic
