Clearly the better team in the first. More even in the second & the draw is better for us than the Dippers.
HOWEVER today shows EXACTLY why we need a clinical striker! They have an instinct we don't currently possess & it shows.
There's an old adage that you're most at risk just after scoring & that's what proved our undoing today.
What the fuck we were playing at, at the beginning of the 2nd half is beyond me! We kick off, pass the ball to Ederson who boots it straight to Allison & we sat off them & allowed them the time & space to build up to a goal. We were caught cold by a sucker punch, which shouldn't be happening to City in a match of this magnitude at this level of football.
It's as if the halftime tea & digestives set like concrete in our bellies & we couldn't run it off in time! We should have kept possession, raised the tempo & gone at them, because we MUST have known that's what they were gonna do to us, so attacking them straight from the restart would have been our best form of defence.
Gabby's goal was sublime, but Ederson should have done better for their first. I never celebrated Sterling's effort, cos I could see he was just offside.
KDB & Bernardo in particular were our 2 best players & I'm seriously gutted we didn't get more out of a match that with a supreme finisher, we would have won 4/5 - 2. Any concrete news on that front? )(
Liverpool resorted to chopping us down in the second half & Taylor should have offered us more protection. Standing back & comparing both teams, we're close in ability, but City are clearly ahead. We just have to make our extra quality count more in crucial matches like this & increase our mental ability to raise the pressure or stifle as necessary, better than we did today.
If we'd won, I reckon The Dipper's heads would have gone south. Roll on Wednesday, & we'll see em next weekend.